Blues Traveling
Blues Traveling
The Holy Sites of Delta Blues, Fourth Edition
This acclaimed travel guide, hailed as the bible of blues travelers throughout the world, will shepherd the faithful to such shrines as the intersection where Robert Johnson might have made his deal with the devil and the railroad tracks that inspired Howlin’ Wolf to moan “Smokestack Lightnin’.” Blues Traveling was the first and is the indisputably essential guidebook to Mississippi’s musical places and its blues history.
For this new fourth edition, Steve Cheseborough returned once again to the Delta, revisited all of the locales featured in previous editions of the book, and uncovered fresh destinations. He includes updated material on new festivals, state blues markers, club openings and closings, and many other transformations in the Delta’s ever-lively blues scene. The fourth edition also features new information on the Mississippi Blues Trail, updated information on the many blues sites throughout the Delta, and twenty new photographs.
With photographs, maps, easy-to-follow directions, and an informative, entertaining text, this book will lead the reader in and out of Clarksdale, Greenwood, Helena (Arkansas), Rolling Fork, Jackson, Memphis, Natchez, Bentonia, Rosedale, Itta Bena, and dozens of other locales where generations of blues musicians have lived, traveled, and performed.
This localized, detailed, and lively guidebook to blues music in Mississippi recommends following by car ‘a rough circle beginning and ending in Memphis’ for a comprehensive tour. With maps, specific directions, and succinct historical tidbits, Cheseborough describes blues venues as well as points of special interest. A recommended listening section completes the picture.
Providing excellent maps and driving instructions. . . . Along the way, Cheseborough provides details on the towns, homes, and grave sites of famous blues musicians, buildings where they played, radio stations, sites of music festivals, and current clubs and restaurants that feature the music. Essential.
Sometimes you just know a book is going to cost you money. Delightfully so, when you’ve got a copy of Steve Cheseborough’s Blues Traveling in hand. So perhaps it’s time to revisit, and I’m going to let Blues Traveling be my guidebook and excuse to make a trip to these holy sites of Delta blues. Lots of fun, this one.
A serious blues fan of the Mississippi Delta wouldn’t dare leave home without it.
Steve Cheseborough is an independent scholar and blues musician. His work has been published in Living Blues, Blues Access, Mississippi, and the Southern Register.
