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This music can be found at the Hwy 61 Lounge,
maintained through tomorrow by our very own Crashing Vor.
Old U.S. Highway 61, originally ran from New Orleans, roughly along the course of the Mississippi River, to the Canadian board. Known as the Blues Highway, it is perhaps second in fame only to Route 66. I've travelled this route—off and on—for much of its length and only in the last decade or so began truly to appreciate its musical history.
Consider this:
As the major route northward out of Mississippi, U. S. Highway 61 has been of particular inspiration to blues artists. The original road began in downtown New Orleans, traveled through Baton Rouge, and ran through Natchez, Vicksburg, Leland, Cleveland, Clarksdale, and Tunica in Mississippi, to Memphis and north to the Canadian border. Mississippi artists who lived near Highway 61 included B. B. King, Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Son House, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson No. 2 (Rice Miller), Ike Turner, Robert Nighthawk, Sunnyland Slim, Honeyboy Edwards, Sam Cooke, James Cotton, Jimmy Reed, and Junior Parker.
Roosevelt Sykes is often sited as the first musician to record a song about this road: a tune entitled "Highway 61 Blues" recorded in 1932. A bit of quick research landed me on no fewer than six tunes with the highway mentioned before the end of the decade. The next three decades brought us Gatemouth Moore, Sunnyland Slim, James Thomas, Big Joe Williams, Honeyboy Edwards, Fred McDowell and a host of other bluesmen. This solid bedrock paved the way for such seminal works as Bob Dylan's
Highway 61 Revisited, of course: an influential album in the history of music and the one that brought us "Like a Rolling Stone."
In Highway 61: Music, Race and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom, Dennis McNally taps a rich vein of culture and art along the same route. A profile of McNally in SFGate, sums up the book pretty well:
The book explores Mark Twain’s affection for minstrel shows and touches on musicians like Scott Joplin, Bessie Smith, W.C. Handy, Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong. One artist leads to the next, until Robert Johnson is standing at the crossroads, on the outskirts of Clarksdale, Miss., famously selling his soul to the devil in exchange for the ability to play the blues on guitar.
Beginning in New Orleans, Hwy. 61 is called "Airline Highway" until it gets through Baton Rouge, where it heads up to the Mississippi boarder and on to Natchez, Mississippi. From there it heads up to the very southwest edge of Tennessee where it clips Memphis, then into Arkansas and northward to St. Louis. Northward still, it passes such places as Hannibal, Missouri on its way to Dubuque, Iowa and then to St. Paul, Minnesota, now ending close to the headwaters of the Mississippi River. That trip has taken us from jazz and the delta blues to Memphis gospel and the cradle of rock and roll. With the windows down you can hear the St. Louis Ragtime, R&B and Soul vibrate up from the road. This route takes us past cheap hotels, honky-tonks, road houses, gin joints, and the music of Elvis, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Bessie Smith, and B.B. King.
Up and down these 1,200 miles of pavement a uniquely American diaspora took place in our history; this road and roads just like it were the starting points of countless trips of African-American souls escaping the South to such disparate places as Chicago, Lansing, Columbus, Indianapolis, Detroit, and beyond; searching for better opportunities and the freedom to pursue true happiness, they carried with them our collective traditions and songs and memories. In a sense, they are our prophets. And kids like Robert Zimmerman of Duluth, Minnesota and countless others heard that calling and took to Highway 61 in search of salvation.
It makes no difference where I choose to be,
Every road leads to your memory.
Grab your coffee and pull up a chair. What's on your mind this morning?