Seven decades of blowin’ fife and hollerin’ goat: Othar Turner

"PURE FUNK and earth" is what Luther Dickinson calls the lilting blues played by 90-year-old Othar Turner, last surviving master of the cane fife. And Dickinson (son of Memphis musician and producer James Luther Dickinson) is one to know, having devoted recent years to documenting Turner’s obscure blues tradition in the heart of the Mississippi hill country.