Walls of Sound
The first time Luther Dickinson stepped onto the aged plank floor of the Ocean Springs Community Center in coastal Mississippi, he knew. As he walked amid the mural-covered walls, a maelstrom of colors towering twelve feet from floor to ceiling in all directions, the renowned artist Walter Anderson’s seventy-year-old masterpiece, Seven Climates of Ocean Springs, came alive to the rhythm of his own footsteps.
Known for his work leading Hill Country blues preservationists the North Mississippi Allstars and his lead-guitar tenure with the Black Crowes, Dickinson heard Anderson’s trees as strong major chords. Diminished and augmented variations sprouted as hardy limbs. Melodies twinkled on fluttering leaves and rose into the spiral motifs that repeat again and again on the walls. “It was the
