Abe “Cag” Young

Senatobia, MS 1993

Abe “Cag” Young spent most of his years playing drums in the Mississippi hill country for fife players like Otha Turner and Napoleon Strickland. He was the son of fife player and drummer Lonnie Young, who along with brother Ed Young and cousin G.D. Young, had a popular fife and drum band that played picnics on weekends and was recorded in the 1950’s by the Library of Congress. “Cag” started learning music at an early age. “I started playing drums by playing a gas tank out of an old Chevrolet truck,” says Young. “The only way I could get it to play was to set in on grass. I was 6 or 7 years old.”