Blues Historical Sites

Written by Administrator |

Before there was rock-n-roll, there was blues music! As Muddy Waters sings, "Blues had a baby and they named it rock-n-roll! " We would not have rock or pop or rap or hip-hop or even, to a certain degree, country music, without the influence of the famed bluesmen and blueswomen of the past and present.

Over the past few years, I made, and continue to make, a special effort to document the people who created blues music, the sites where they lived, worked, died or lay in peace after joining the "Great Blues Band in the Sky" and other sites in blues-do before that history disappears forever into the mists of time.

In 1998 and 1999, I made what I called a "Blues History Tour" of the Mississippi Delta region where blues music originated in such locations as Dockery Plantation, Clarksdale and the famous Highway 61 and 49 Crossroads. Those pictures appear on these pages here at Bluejeans' Place:

Dockery Plantation, Often The Home of Many Blues Musicians

Charley Patton, The Original Rock-n-Rolling Bluesman
Walking in B.B. King's Footsteps, Indianola, MS, his hometown
Sonny Boy Williamson II, Blues Harmonica Master, Glendora and Tutweiler, MS
The Blues Murals of Tutweiler, MS, where W.C. Handy "First Heard the Blues"
Mississippi John Hurt, Country and Folk Bluesman, Avalon, MS
Elmore James, Originator of the Slide Guitar Playing Style, Newport, MS
Robert Johnson, "the" inspiration to so many bluesmen and rock-n-rollers,
"Where the Southern Crosses the Dawg" is a famous line in a blues song--here's what that famous railroad junction looks like now in Moorhead, MS.

In 2000, I stopped by "The Crossroads" in Clarksdale, MS which Robert Johnson sang about selling his soul to the devil in his song "Crossroads"

The Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, MS where the sound of the Delta Blues is preserved for posterity and future musicians' learning (not to mention visits from fans like us!) is one of my favorite places to visit.

Howlin' Wolf rests in peace in Chicago-land where I paid my respects in early September 2001. Read how I paid some unique respects to this musical legend for influencing my cultural education in the blues!

Muddy Waters lays in eternal rest a few miles from Howlin' Wolf in Restdale Cemetery. Just like I did at Howlin' Wolf's grave, I made sure Muddy knew someone who cared about his music was in the area...playing "Got My Mojo Workin'" kinda loud in the cemetery on the car's tape deck!

The Gennett Records studio site in Richmond, Indiana is a silent monument to an early blues music recording location outside the deep South. Charley Patton recorded here at one point in the 1930s.

The King Records Studios, home of Rhythm and Blues, country, blues and other stars, in Cincinnati sit in silence today, converted to a United Dairy Farmers convenience store warehouse. In its prime for nearly 30 years, it was a hit factory for stars like John Lee Hooker and James Brown.