Cast of Blues exhibit to close with free Eden Brent concert

Eden Brent concert: Cast of Blues exhibit, celebrating Mississippi music, will soon leave the Union County Heritage Museum with a blast of boogie woogie, jazz and blues music from acclaimed Mississippi Delta pianist Eden “Little Boogaloo” Brent on Friday, November 8, 6 till 9 p.m.

Brent was nicknamed “Little Boogaloo” by her Greenville, Mississippi , mentor Boogaloo Ames who taught her his piano style at an early age . A life-long piano enthusiast, Eden was surrounded by music and had an ear for tunes early on, “pecking out my brother’s recital piece before I was old enough to go to school,” she said.

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Piano lessons were part of her early education from primary school through graduation from the University of North Texas and beyond. “I always loved to play, but I hated to read, and I really hated to practice until I started hanging around Boogoloo. He put the music right into my hands. Daddy jokes he could have saved a lot of money on my college tuition if he had introduced me to Boogaloo a few years earlier,” she said. The duo traveled and worked together for 16 years until Boogaloo’s death in 2002.

Born in the heart of the Delta in Greenville to a family of riverboat captains and guitar pickers, Eden’s story could have been written by any number of Mississippi’s colorful authors. The Greenville bridge is named for her grandfather Jesse, the Waterways Journal “Riverman of the Century.” Her father, Captain Howard, famous for his Hank Williams renditions and grand story-telling, is a bonafide living “River Legend,” and her mother, Carole, was born a sharecropper but became a big band singer and a fashion model, working at Chicago’s Chez Paris in the early 1950s.

Eden’s accolades include being featured in three documentary films: Boogaloo & Eden: Sustaining the Sound; Forty Days in the Delta; 180 degrees: Changing Lives in the Mississippi Delta. She has appeared in print publications like USA Today; Garden and Gun and has been highlighted on national radio broadcasts, including NPR Weekend Edition, House of Blues Radio Hour and American Routes.

Eden travels the United States and abroad performing in festivals including Notodden, Chicago Blues Festival, Cognac’s Blues Passions and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. She is a frequent piano bar host abroad the Legendary Rhythm and Blues Cruise and has been a special guest aboard the American Queen Steamboat.

Bren’s four solo albums include Something Cool 2003; Mississippi Number One 2008; Ain’t Got No Troubles, 2010; and Jigsaw Heart, 2014. She has also released the Brent Sisters Party Dress with sisters Jessica and Bronwynne, who are also songwriters. Released in 2012, the album is a collection of songs written by their late mother, Carole Brent.

The closing event for the Cast of Blues exhibit ,Wine, Cheese & Eden Brent concert, is free and open to the public. The Cast of Blues features the facial casts of 40 Mississippi blues musicians created by artist Sharron McConnell Dickerson, who began her sculpting artwork as a result of progressive macular degeneration and eventual blindness.

For more information visit the museum, located at 114 Cleveland Street, New Albany, MS, or call at 662-538-0014.

Cast of Blues:  http://newalbanyunionco.com/cast-of-blues-exhibit-museum/

More about the museum: http://ucheritagemuseum.com/