Beverly Annette Payton

A musician died Friday. Her name was Beverly Annette Mask Payton. She was 86 years old (AUG 21 1939 – DEC 12, 2025) and she brought magical music into the lives of everyone who knew her. In the earliest years of her life, she lived on the Chickasaw Bluff overlooking the Mississippi River at Memphis and spent summer days sliding down that bluff in cardboard boxes with her brother, Charles. In the cool of evenings, she and her parents, Arnold Edison Mask and Edna Mae Pierce, would stroll over to the bandstand in DeSoto Park and listen to music ranging from The Memphis Blues to Vienna Waltzes. Those sounds lit a fire in Beverly that never died. Long after dementia robbed her of speech and recognition of those she had loved, she sang songs with words and melodies only she could recognize. She never lost the sweetness she shared with others all her life and chuckled softly as she slipped from our world into our memories.