Deep South Early Blues Tour 2008 - Preamble

Two years ago I went on a book signing tour of Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas with my good friends Max and Rex Haymes. The book was ‘Railroadin’ Some – Railroads in the Early Blues’, it’s the first ever comprehensive study of the enormous impact of the railroads on 19^th/ 20th Century black American society and the many and varied references in early blues lyrics.

The trip was so enjoyable, I nattered to my wife Christine about it for months afterwards. I kept saying, we’ll have to go and show you all the places we visited from Memphis, through the Delta to Vicksburg and some that we missed. Now Christine would be the first to say she isn’t a ‘raving nut’ about the blues as I am, but she had never been to Mississippi and although she had been to New Orleans, Louisiana, twice before through work, she hadn’t really appreciated the richness of musical heritage in the Deep South. So, whilst on a chill out holiday in Spain in 2007, we started to plan a four week blues pilgrimage to the Deep South USA in 2008. Well that was an initial thought, but of course we needed to balance our interests, so it became the “blues pilgrimage / civil war historical expedition / civil rights appreciation tour”.

As we toured the states, we explored these themes, depending on where we were and what time was available, so the travelogue is a mixture of the three. I should mention that as a blues pilgrimage, my intention was to visit and tour the land where much of the blues began and pay homage to the early blues greats, not necessarily attend blues festivals (this would have been too time consuming and impractical given out tour schedule - we only had four weeks!). 

We planned to spend the first week in the Delta (mainly for the blues), the second week around Vicksburg (mainly for the civil war), the third week in Louisiana (for the music, food, swamps (you don’t get many swamps in Lancashire, England), and most importantly, to pay our respects to the people of New Orleans and find out first hand how the city was recovering from Katrina and the floods). The fourth week was planned to travel back up Mississippi to Tennessee, checking out Jackson and Nashville before returning to Memphis for our plane home.  

Hope you enjoy reading about our experiences.

Beale Street, Memphis, Tennessee

Ground Zero Blues Club, Clarksdale, Mississippi

Stovell Farms (home for Muddy Waters), Clarksdale, Mississippi

Sharecropper Shacks, Shack Up Inn, Hopson Plantation, Clarksdale, Mississippi

Tracking down Charlie Patton's grave, Holly Ridge, Mississippi

Mural, Leland, Mississippi

Hunting Lodge, Linden Plantation, Vicksburg, Mississippi

Original Natchez Trace Trail, near Vicksburg, Mississippi

Civil War Fortifications, National Military Park, Vicksburg, Mississippi

Swamps in Lake Martin, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana


Bourbon Street, New Orleans, Louisiana

Farrish Street (old centre of the blues), Jackson, Mississippi

Mississippi Fred McDowell's grave, Como, Mississippi

Greyhound Bus Station, Jackson, Tennessee

Broadway, Downtown Nashville, Tennessee

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