George Mitchell is one of the most renowned photo-documentarians of roots and blues music in the US. He is also the producer of field recordings, The George Mitchell Collection on Fat Possum Records, consisting of field recordings and photographs.
In the summer of 1967, Mitchell traveled with his wife Cathy and a Wollensack tape recorder and borrowed a 35mm camera from the University of Minnesota to document blues musicians in Mississippi. They recorded legends Fred McDowell and Robert Nighthawk (his final recordings), and became the first to record R.L. Burnside, Jessie Mae Hemphill, and Othar Turner.
Born in Florida in 1944, George Mitchell moved to Atlanta at the age of two. In 1961, while still in high school in Atlanta, Mitchell began recording and photographing blues singers in Tennessee, including Furry Lewis, Will Shade, and Gus Canon in Memphis, and Sleepy John Estes in Brownsville. In 1963, he located and recorded the early Atlanta legends, Peg Leg Howell and Buddy Moss. Also in 1963, he worked in Chicago for Delmark Records and, with Michael Bloomfield, produced concerts at the Fickle Pickle, bringing in both unknown blues artists and re-locating such bluesmen as Washboard Sam.
From 1967 until 1984, Mitchell recorded many unknown blues singers in Georgia and Alabama, including Precious Bryant, John Lee Ziegler, and J.W. Warren.
In Atlanta in 1984, Mitchell produced the National Downhome Blues Festival, the largest gathering of old-time blues musicians before or since. A one-hour program of performances and interviews held during the festival was broadcast on PBS.
The most recent albums of his recordings are available now on the Fat Possum label. His most recent book, primarily a photography book, is MISSISSIPPI HILL COUNTRY BLUES 1967. He is also the producer of the famed George Mitchell Collection.
Mitchell resides in Fort Myers, Florida, with his wife, Cathy.
