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in doing the blues, they want to be an r&b or pop singer and
I knew at that age that I didn’t want that life. I needed to be in
a close knit, welcoming, warm, family orientated environment
and that’s the blues. I said to myself: I’m from Mississippi,
I’m a black guy and I play guitar and that’s three strong
characteristics for playing the blues. So I started studying and
reading and looking and that was before I really knew that
most of the blues guys were from Mississippi, maybe migrated
to the city, but their birth grounds were Mississippi. So I
thought, what better timing to do something fresh coming out
of Mississippi and doing it right, not half do it, and with the
blues I don’t have to depend on seven or eight guys, I can get
at the least two more guys and we can make this work. My
next step was to figure out how do I get into the blues here,
so I got on my laptop and googled ‘blues opportunity in the
state of Mississippi’ and I ran up on the Vicksburg Blues
Society and Shirley Waring. There was a number there and I
called and I asked Shirley about blues opportunities and she
told me she was having a blues challenge this coming Saturday
so I asked if I could enter and I was told no because the
competition was on Saturday and this was November of 2012.
Mr Sipp at Maccomb She told me she could try me for next year and I told her I
didn’t have a year, I wanted to do it now and I pretty much
begged. She asked me if I had a band and I told her I would
by Saturday and she asked if I had any original material and I told her I will by Saturday. She asked me if I can play
and sing which I can of course. She said if I could send in the registration fee and get the application filled and get
her a picture she would try it. I got my wife to fill out the application and pay the $25. I had not paid to play since I
was about sixth grade. I’m a professional musician with a wall full of awards and stuff. I then called my cousins and
asked them if they wanted to play some blues which they did and we met at the house on Tuesday and we figured it
out. I wrote the songs ‘Can I Ride’, ‘Mrs Jones’ and ‘It’s My Guitar’ and we competed that Saturday 2012 and we
won first place. When we got there we had on black suits, white shirts, black ties, white shoes and the glasses with
the tape. Shirley told us we would be up first and we blew them away. That advanced us to the IBC in January 2013.
I went there with no intentions to win and I wasn’t worried about winning as at that point we were two months old
and we were playing on Beale Street in all these clubs which was really cool and each time we kept going to the next
round and we made it all the way to the finals. I heard people talking about the Orpheum Theatre and there I was
about to play there. I didn’t care about winning as I had made it to the finals and, win or lose, I had won making it
to the IBC in Memphis. I had never really been in a club until I played The Bottleneck, I had never been on that
scene. I didn’t win the competition. Selwyn Birchwood won it and folks couldn’t understand why I was so happy
for him, but I was wasn’t ready then to be a winner.

After the IBC in 2013 I was getting so many calls for gigs and festivals but I wasn’t ready for that, as I only knew a
few songs, and you would have to have played for an hour or so. My dad told me that if I was going to do this, then
this was my chance; my phone was ringing and people were asking about me so he said now is the time. I had a
record finished, so I put the record out which was ‘It’s My Guitar’ and I took some of the dates and I went back and
looked at the videos from the casino where I had done a couple of shows. I was standing on stage with the sheets,
singing and reading the words. I’ve now got six hours worth of Mr. Sipp material I can do. Zac Harmon, who saw
me at the IBC, requested for me to open up for him at the Tall City Blues Festival in Texas and that was the very
first festival that I played. I did three songs with Zac’s band and then I played with Zac and it was great and I thought
that I could do this. Zac Harmon was the first bluesman to give me my shot, as for bringing me out on a real stage
in front of a lot of people. I will forever pay him his respect because he didn’t have to do it, but he did it for me, and
after that I got booked onto the Chicago Blues Festival in the same year. I played on Saturday but I was there on
Friday and Bobby Rush let me play with him that Friday night. The TV clip they showed on the Chicago news was
me and Bobby, so now it hasn’t been seven months and I’m on TV. When I decided to do blues, Miss Shirley asked
if I had a name and I didn’t want to use Castro Coleman. I was playing it safe, as at that point I had over twenty years
of fans and followers as Castro Coleman, so I wanted to do something different and I wanted another name and all
this plays a major part. I’m from Mississippi so I said ‘Mr Sipp’ short for Mr. Mississippi and I added the Mississippi
Blues Child as I thought I was the blues child of all the great blues artists that have come from Mississippi, I’m the

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