Highway 61

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.