Journalist Hugh Merrill takes us on a sweeping road trip in search of the distinctly American music known as the blues. Tracing blues culture from its beginning in rural Mississippi up through the Delta to Chicago and beyond, Merrill visits with legendary musicians such as Son Thomas, Koko Taylor, Son Seals, Valerie Wellington and Magic Slim. In fascinating interviews, Merrill uncovers wonderful stories about Robert Johnson, Big Bill Broonzy, Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Jelly Roll Morton, Bessie Smith, Ida Cox and Ma Rainey. The trip dips into New Orleans as Merrill explores how the blues exploded in clubs and cribs, influencing dixieland, jazz and zydeco. A trip out west presents a lovely tour of the cocktail lounges of Oakland and Los Angeles and the guardians of the blues who live there. The Blues Route is an engrossing narrative, a book that celebrates not only the music but the continuing search for sympathy, understanding and affinity that the blues embodies.

Includes hotels and restaurants; music clubs and bars; music landmarks; music festivals and events; interviews; jazz, blues, Cajun, zydeco, country, gospel, soul and rock and roll; and more.

Highway 61 is the legendary Blues Highway and route taken by modern-day blues pilgrims on their journey south into the Mississippi Delta. For anyone embarking on the journey this is essential reading that ensures the blues pilgrim gets the most from the land where blues began.

The legendary Blues Highway has played a key role in the lives of countless musicians. Running from Nashville, Tennessee, to New Orleans, Louisiana, there’s music around every bend. The greatest blues singers, rockers, and country wailers have all traveled this fateful road, U.S. Route 61. From the two-room home where the King was born to the original Heartbreak Hotel to the crossroads where Robert Johnson allegedly sold his soul to the devil for fame, every stop has a story to tell. Inspiring, practical, and entertaining, this is the premier guide to all the off-the-radar stops along America’s Blues Highway that you simply must not miss. Author Amy Bizzarri, road trip expert and author of the bestselling guide to the Mother Road, The Best Hits on Route 66, provides a comprehensive list of 100 unique stops that you’ll want to take a moment to explore as you journey along the fascinating, 730-mile route from Nashville to New Orleans. Experience its world-famous music landmarks, tucked-away locations, and one-of-a-kind stops. Travel one section at a time, or plan an extended trip along the entire route.

Highway 61 - the legendary Blues Highway and route taken by modern-day blues pilgrims on their journey south into the Mississippi Delta. Littered with iconic place names and immortalised in the songs of the Deep South, the great river road was taken by countless African Americans in search of the promise of work in the northern cities and escape from the legacy of slavery and hardship of the rural south.Highway 61 takes in the work of the early musicologists looking for an authentic delta folk music in the 1930s, the music arising from the struggles of a newly emerging black American proletariat in the 1940s, and the young white musicians who brought their awareness of blues back to the States from England in the 1960s.A heady mix of blues and civil rights unfolds as the reader accompanies the author on a southbound trail from Chicago, known as the 'blues capital of the world', to New Orleans, close to Chuck Berry's fabled 'gateway from freedom'. For anyone embarking on the journey this is essential reading that ensures the blues pilgrim will get the most from the land where blues began.

"Daniel Erickson has the blues. There's a Russian mobster wearing his finger on a necklace, two hit men hot on his trail, an FBI agent obsessed with his capture, and a rogue motorcycle gang hunting him down as he desperately races cross-country following musical clues he hopes will lead him to the stolen million dollars that might not be enough to save him. Or his son"--Cover p. [4].

At a crossroads in the Mississippi Delta, Robert Johnson is said to have sold his soul to the Devil so that he could become a guitar virtuoso and King of the Delta Blues. Blues Traveling: The Holy Sites of Delta Blues will tell you where that legendary deal was supposed to have been made and guide you to all the other hallowed grounds that nourished Mississippi's signature music. Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, Memphis Minnie, Jimmie Rodgers, Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Howlin' Wolf, B. B. King, Little Milton, Elvis Presley, Bobby Rush, Junior Kimbrough, R. L. Burnside-the list of great artists with Mississippi connections goes on and on. A trip through Mississippi blues sites is a pilgrimage every music lover ought to make at least once in a lifetime, to see the juke joints and churches, to visit the birthplaces and graves of blues greats, to walk down the dusty roads and over the levee, to eat some barbecue and greens, to sit on the bank of the Mississippi River, and to hear some down-home blues music. Blues Traveling is the first and only guidebook to Mississippi's musical places and blues history. With photographs, maps, easy-to-follow directions, and an informative, entertaining text, this book will lead you in and out of Clarksdale, Greenwood, Helena (Arkansas), Rolling Fork, Jackson, Natchez, Bentonia, Rosedale, Itta Bena, and dozens of other locales that generations of blues musicians have lived in, traveled through, and sung about. Stories, legends, and lyrics are woven into the text so that each backroad and barroom comes alive. Touring Mississippi with Blues Traveling is like having a knowledgeable and entertaining guide at your side. Even people with no immediate plans to visit Mississippi will enjoy reading the book for its photos, descriptions, and lore that will broaden their understanding and enhance their appreciation of the blues. Steve Cheseborough is an independent scholar and blues musician. His work has been published in Living Blues, Blues Access, Mississippi, and the Southern Register .