September 26, 1918

Caroline Tracy Dye, better known as “Aunt Caroline,” died in Newport (Jackson County). Dye was a highly respected seer whose name was recognized in Arkansas and the Mid-South in the early years of the twentieth century. Dye’s reputation lives on in two songs written by Memphis bluesman W. C. Handy. He said the gypsy mentioned in “St. Louis Blues” (1914) was Dye. In “Sundown Blues” (1923), he named the fortune teller as Aunt Caroline Dye of Newport, Arkansas. Through the years, the legend of Dye has been distorted and stretched, identifying her as a fortune teller, a “hoodoo” woman, or a “two-headed doctor” (or psychic).