Elizabeth Wise

“I’ve been all over the world/I’ve seen almost everything/I’ve sung all kinds of places/People call me the queen.”

That’s the start of the middle verse from the modern blues standard “Mississippi Woman,” a gritty song that’s been handed up and down the muddy banks of the mighty river that bears its name and passed along like a secret from the hills of Holly Springs to the juke joints of Memphis and into the hands of Elizabeth Wise, a young folk singer and guitarist who possesses what they used to call an old soul.

With a slide in her left hand and conviction in her voice, Wise inhabits the lines that come next, delivering them as a mystical incantation and a purposeful statement of fact. “No matter where I go y’all/I give them something real/People all over the world/Need that Mississippi feel.