Welcome to the official website for Jimmy Ray Hipp, guitarist, singer and songwriter from Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Folks around the Great Lakes know him by his adopted name, Jim Ohlschmidt, because for most of his solo work performing live and on recordings, videos, and movie soundtracks he’s used that name. His first lp, Behind The Eye, a collection of mostly original acoustic guitar instrumentals was released in 1977

Folks around Avalon, Mississippi and Birmingham, Alabama know him as Lost Jim, a name he coined in the early 2000s when he returned to solo acoustic performing and recording after years of playing electric guitar and bass in bar bands. Jim performed several times at the Mississippi John Hurt Blues and Gospel Music Festival near where the country blues legend lived and worked most of his life, and he got to know some of the remaining residents of Avalon, Carrollton, and Greenwood. Jim’s faithful renderings of Hurt’s guitar style are featured in an instructional video The Rural Blues of Mississippi John Hurt published by Stefan Grossman’s Guitar Workshop.

Still other folks in Clarksdale, Mississippi know him simply as Jimmy Ray. When he came into the world at the tail end of 1954, he was born James Raymond Hipp. Because he was adopted, this information was kept confidential for many years. Jimmy Ray is the moniker he goes by in the city where blues began up on top of the Mississippi Delta, and it is also where the name of the website comes from.