Vicksburg-born blues legend Willie Dixon has been celebrated around the world as one of the most recognized songwriters, as well as a pioneer of the early Chicago blues scene. But Thursday will bring it all back home to Vicksburg, where Dixon began his journey.

A marker, a mural and a jam session are planned to help laud the River City native’s accomplishments in a daylong series of events in his honor. The day is also the kick off a six-week Smithsonian traveling exhibit, &#8220New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music” at the Southern Cultural Heritage Center. The exhibit will include photographs, recordings, instruments, lyrics and artist profiles that will explore the cultural identities of American roots music forms. In addition to the Smithsonian exhibit, a collection of local roots music items will be on hand to show Vicksburg’s musical contribution. Items about Dixon, as well as the 1960s traveling dance group The Red Tops, local blues and jazz hot-spot the Blue Room and the film &#8220O Brother Where Art Thou?,” a comedy set in Mississippi and filmed partially in Vicksburg, will be showcased. Events surrounding the exhibit, which will run from Thursday to Aug. 9, are planned at the center to further the local connection.

&#8220We are very pleased to be able to bring ‘New Harmonies’ to our area,” said Bess Averett, executive director of SCHF. &#8220It allows us the opportunity to explore this fascinating aspect of our own region’s musical history, and we hope that it will inspire many to become even more involved in the cultural life of our community.”

Dixon will be the centerpiece of the exhibit’s opening, which will include a tribute jam session in his honor, in addition to other musical samplings, at the center.

Jacqueline Dixon, the youngest of the late bluesman’s 12 children, said the day will be the largest celebration of her father she and her family have ever attended.

&#8220It’s like a hometown victory when you’re recognized by the place you grew up,” she said. &#8220You can go out all over the world, but there’s something about your home place – when you’re recognized, it feels more like a victory.”

She and her mother, Marie Dixon, along with other family members, will travel to Vicksburg, where the late bluesman lived until he was 17. Her father’s hometown is a place Jacqueline Dixon has never visited, but remembers hearing stories.

&#8220He had very fond memories of Vicksburg,” Jacqueline Dixon said. &#8220I wish I had the opportunity to visit Vicksburg with my dad. I always heard good things.”

Before his death in 1992, the blues great often traveled to Vicksburg. On Oct. 27, 1990, – Willie Dixon Day in Vicksburg – the artist was given a key to the city, and his daughter said that always made him feel honored.

&#8220Of all the places he’s been, that was one of his proudest moments,” she said. &#8220It was displayed in our home in California. In fact, I think it still is.”

Dixon, born at 1631 Crawford St. in 1915, spent his formative years in the family home on Openwood Street. The house stood even after his death, but was demolished by the city in 2002, coincidentally the same year family members traveled here for a musical tribute and the city’s naming of a street Willie Dixon Way.

In his early teens, Dixon sang spirituals at Spring Hill Baptist Church and even joined a group called the Union Jubilee Singers, a gospel quartet with a radio program on local station WQBC.

Blues music permeated Dixon’s life in Vicksburg. In 1936, he hitch-hiked his way to Chicago to pursue dreams of being a boxer. That dream came true when he was named the Golden Glove Heavyweight Champion in 1937. But Dixon soon hung up his boxing gloves for a double bass and a skyrocketing career in music.

In 1951, the established musician, who had stints in groups such as The Big Three Trio and the Five Breezes, went to work full time for Chess Records, with whom he had previously recorded. There, he was a recording artist, session musician, in-house songwriter and staff musician. During that time, he performed with Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson – to name a few.

He also founded the annual American Folk Blues Festival in Europe and the Chicago Blues Festival. In his later years, Dixon became an ambassador of the blues and founded the Blues Heaven Foundation, an organization that works to preserve the blues’ legacy and to secure copyrights and royalties for blues musicians who were exploited in the past. Dixon’s family now runs the Chicago-based foundation.

Throughout his career, Dixon penned more than 500 songs, many of which were later recorded by groups and musicians who carried the torch for the rock and pop genres.

For Vicksburg native Daniel Boone, a self-proclaimed music lover and owner of the Highway 61 Coffeeshop downtown, discovering his hometown blues took turning to the popular 1960s rhythm and blues sounds of the Rolling Stones, Yardbirds, Eric Clapton and The Doors.

&#8220We didn’t listen to blues from our own backyard. Instead, we would hear it from people from England,” he said. &#8220They seemed exotic and glamorous to us. The irony is, they thought this was an exotic place and the reason they thought that was because of Willie Dixon.”

Dixon’s songs have a down-home blues backbone, and his lyrics are often about people or characters that Boone said seem to link to his Vicksburg experience.

&#8220His songs are character-oriented and about colorful people,” Boone said.

Vicksburg native Bill Ferris, who is a blues and folklore scholar and author of &#8220Blues from the Delta,” said Dixon’s roots dig deep into his hometown soil.

&#8220His formative years were in Vicksburg,” he said. &#8220And Willie Dixon is without question the most important blues composer ever.”

His importance is something the community needs to embrace, said Nellie Caldwell, chairman of the Vicksburg Riverfront Mural Committee.

&#8220People in Vicksburg, I’m afraid, don’t understand how many songs he has written. He’s best known as a composer than as a singer,” she said. &#8220To be from Vicksburg, we need to celebrate his life.”

Thursday’s events will begin at 3 p.m. at Willie Dixon Way, between South and Veto streets, when the Mississippi Blues Commission will unveil the Willie Dixon Mississippi Blues Trail Marker. The trail is a collection of more than 100 historical markers and interpretive sites throughout the state to recognize Mississippi’s blues heritage.

At 4 p.m., community members will gather at City Front for the unveiling of a mural depicting Dixon and his musical contributions. The mural, sponsored by Ray and Nancy Neilsen, is the 22nd historic mural painted along the floodwall. At the unveiling, prizes relating to Dixon will be given away and Red Tops crooner Rufus McKay, along with local group Osgood & Blaque, will perform.

Also on tap will be Wardell Wince, son of Tom Wince, owner of the Blue Room, a former Vicksburg hot-spot for regional blues and jazz musicians, including Louis Armstrong.

&#8220I’m expecting one of the biggest turnouts we’ve ever had,” Caldwell said.

Dixon, often quoted as saying, &#8220The blues are the roots. The rest is the fruits,” had a conscious grasp of his role in the genre.

Beginning at 6 p.m. Thursday, the Willie Dixon tribute jam session will kick off the event, followed by bluegrass and gospel sessions, as well as the opening of &#8220New Harmonies” and the coinciding local exhibit.

Dixon &#8220illustrates the point of the exhibit so well,” Boone said. &#8220He had the roots that connect to all the music that we listen to. He was nourished – literally – in Vicksburg. The blues was the roots for him.”