About Billy
A Master Storyteller
Billy Jeter
Jeter’s music is a collage of influences, including Mississippi Delta blues, rock 'n' Roll, Ozark folk, Colorado bluegrass, and a touch of Grateful Dead campfire-type songs. Born in the Mississippi Delta in Arkansas 1955, Jeter was exposed to an intricate tapestry of music styles, rich in history and colorful characters. The late sixties and early seventies were an exciting time for a young music listener — from the great songwriting of Robbie Robertson, Neil Young, to Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia. Growing up during this seminal time in America’s music history helped Jeter establish a musical foundation that began broad and continues to expand.
Although admittedly late to songwriting, the regional cast of characters always provided a fertile ground for storytelling. With his talent as a distinguished storyteller and a lifelong love of music, Billy Jeter’s evolution into a talented singer, songwriter, and musician was a natural progression. Once he began writing, the songs started to flow like the Mississippi River during the rainy season. To date, he has released five full-length albums: Minstrels, Misfits & Melodies (2016), Song Dog Blues (2018), House on Fire (2019), Shine Eye Landing (2021), and Hysteria (2023). His latest, Delta Traces, is due for release in October 2024, featuring several greats in the industry, such as Bobby Rush, who collaborated on the single Hambone Stomp.
The strength of his stories, colorful characters, and references to real events establishes Billy Jeter as a master storyteller, historian, and songwriter who uses music as the canvas for his artistry.
These days, Jeter divides his time between the Colorado Mountains and the Arkansas Delta…and has even inadvertently picked up some red dirt influences in between the two.
Delta Traces
Delta Traces
Billy Jeter
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Follow these Delta Traces through southern lands on winding country roads and lonely highways where the dust of gumbo clay hangs heavy in the air, where songs are sung in the dark heat of juke joints and haunted Read more
Follow these Delta Traces through southern lands on winding country roads and lonely highways where the dust of gumbo clay hangs heavy in the air, where songs are sung in the dark heat of juke joints and haunted encounters at legendary crossroads.
The music here flows thick as muddy water, passing the bluffs and the levees, the rows of white cotton rising from black soil southbound by the river from Memphis to Storyville.
Listen to the wailing rhythm of the blues harp and the sweet harmony of the gospel choir. You are drawn to the church out in the field and the sharecropper’s shack aflame in the night.
Your guides are the shooting star, Miss Spider Lily, and the convict bluesman, Goosie Willie, his mind forever fixed on the penitentiary electric chair.
Rose’s Shack is center stage, a hallowed ground alive with stories and songs of the land: the gospel and the walking blues, the jump-up stomping rock and roll boogie, the solitary country blues, mournful and slow, sung from a front porch on a hazy afternoon.
These are the roads that take you there, these Delta Traces, a musical landscape of the rural South.
