Deep in the Mississippi Delta region is Dockery Plantation in Ruleville where the blues as we know it came alive.

Charley Patton, the original bluesman and rock-n-roll inspiration, lived here.  Robert Johnson visited here often as did Howlin' Wolf when he was a child.  I felt a shiver run through me when I thought "This is where Charley Patton first performed...where Howlin' Wolf, here with his family visiting relatives, used to learn the blues from Charley Patton, and where Robert Johnson first played his guitar."

Dockery Plantation is to the blues what Jerusalem is to religion, what New Orleans is to jazz, what Philadelphia and Boston are to freedom, the place where blues music's greatest influences grew and flourished.

And if you look closely at this picture,  you can see where Bluejeans made his pilgrimage to this birthplace of blue music!

A special thanks to William Dockery Jenkins of Philadelphia, MS who provided this photograph of Great-grandfather Will Dockery's painting.