Crystal Springs born Dexter Allen is a Mississippi blues and soul musician who has spent the last three decades touring and performing across the U.S.
At age 12, he was playing bass guitar with The Christian Travelers, his parents’ gospel band, which performed regionally and nationally, and, as he has matured
an artist, has earned an international following with soulful vocals and passionate, driving guitar.
“Music is music, and I love music,” he says. Most musicians don’t just play one genre, but one thing may be closer to their heart than the other, My thing happens
to be blues, soul and gospel. When young people tell me they don’t like the blues, it’s because visually the mainstream shows blues as an old guy sitting on a bucket. But when
they come to my show, they say ‘Man, you rock.’ So I structure my music in a way, production wise, to catch today’s ear and keep the root of where it comes from.
I sing the blues of today, not yesterday. My blues is the 2020 blues.”
A 1988 Crystal Springs High School graduate, Allen moved to Jackson in 1990, started playing with secular bands and artists, met legendary blues artist
Bobby Rush while playing at a local church and joined his band as a guitarist, traveling with it from 2000 to 2006 before launching his career as an individual
performing artist. He closed out the decade wowing audiences everywhere from Seatle to Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival, touring on his album,
Dexter Allen: Live from Ground Zero Blues Club. He performed to sellout audiences on a European festival tour and at Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise,
a Chicago Blues Festival, where he also had standout jam session with other musicians, including top touring guitarist Ana Popovic.
Allen’s credits include playing in James Brown’s band in the Oscar-winning Get On Up, scoring films and a leading role in the western Indie. He was
honored as the Mississippi Music Awards Entertainment of the Year as a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer in multiple genres. He served on
the Blues Foundation Board and won the JUS Blues Award presented by Bobby Rush, who called him “a legend to tomorrow.” British musician and radio personality
Robin Phillips invited him to record at Muscle Shoals Studio, which asked him to play its annual benerfit.
When Allen isn’t on tour, he makes his home in Byram, and conducts workshops in schools and for autistic youth.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Throughout the 2023 Copiah County Bicentennial year, Wesson News will feature sketches of past and present visual artists, musicians, authors and photographers who are natives of the county. They will be excerpted from Tricia Nelson’s reporting in A Shared History: Copiah County, Mississippi 1823-2023 edited and compiled by Paul C. Cartwright and available through Cartwright for $25 plus $5 for shipping at 3 Waverly Circle, Hattiesburg, MS 39402. Nelson is a Crystal Springs writer who contributes to the Copiah County Monitor.