On September 16, the Mississippi Action for Community Education, (MACE),a non-profit organization, sponsored the 23d Annual Delta Blues Festival in Greenville, Mississippi.   To say MACE does a hell of a job each year is an understatement! The admission is decent -- $20 for 12 hours worth of music on three stages -- no charge for parking and they have you directed into your parking space in less than 3 minutes from when you enter the grounds - -and the food is reasonably priced at about $5.00 for supper plus 75 cents to a buck for a soda.  Congratulations, MACE, on a class act!

With the luck of having a "road warrior" job, I was able to swing through Memphis and Greenville for the festival.  Since you couldn't be there with me, I thought you'd like to see a few pictures from the festival like Lil' Howlin' Wolf and Johnny Winter. Besides those pictures, how about a few photos from the ground to make you feel like "you are there"....

Here's the Juke Joint stage where the musicians play using an electrified blues Stevie Ray Vaughn type of sound.

Here are Lil' Howlin' Wolf and Jerry Kattawar showing some juke joint blues playing to a cheering crowd.

As you can see, it was a brilliantly clear, sunny and hot day.   It's a good thing I brought my hat and Oakley sunglasses this year....it was a scorcher!  At least I didn't have to buy a hat down there like last year.

Like my shirt?  It's from the Slippery Noodle Inn, one of the great American blues clubs, in Indianapolis.

But when darkness fell, it got cool, yet the bands played on!  Here's what it looked like when Bobby Rush took the stage around 930 pm.  Bobby is in the center just to the right of the person in the whitish shirt on stage.

But there's more to see from that day--the performances by Lil' Howlin' Wolf and Johnny Winter.  Click here to see the two of them at the 2000 Delta Blues Festival

• Lil' Howlin' Wolf
• Johnny Winter