23 years later, Lucille Spann will receive a gravestone for her final resting place in Vicksburg.
“Lucille Spann was a blues singer, she was also the wife and manager of blues great Otis Spann, the piano player for Muddy Waters,” said Steve Salter, President and Founder of the Killer Blues Headstone Project.
Spann died in 1994 and was buried in an unmarked plot in the Cedar Hill Cemetery in Vicksburg.
“Our mission is to provide headstones for blues artists lying in unmarked graves and to document the final resting places of all the blues artists that we can locate,” said Salter.
Salter said the inspiration for the non-profit organization came to him in 1997 when he left his Michigan home to visit graves of blues artists in Chicago, Illinois.
“Among them was the husband of Lucille, Otis Spann,” said Salter. “He was the first one that I discovered the did not have a marker.”
Salter said the project has come somewhat full circle. However, Salter said there are many more graves in need of receiving headstones.
Spann’s grave will be the 83rd headstone that the Killer Blues Headstone Project have placed.
