US-61-- The "Blues Highway"

The March 11th hattiesburg (Ms) American had an article about the highway that is forever linked with one of my favorite kinds of music, Da Blues.

A new marker for the Blues Trail has been dedicated in Vicksburg at the corner of Washington and Jackson streets.

Highway 61 is strongly identified with the blues. Many artists traveled north on it on their way to jobs in the Midwest and Chicago, the World Capital of the Blues.

Both the rise of the automobile and development of the US highway system in the 1920s and 1930s coincided with the explosion of the blues, jazz and spiritual in the north.

Originally, US-61 ran from New Orleans to Grand Portage, Minnesota on the Canadian border. It connected the blues cities of Memphis, St. Louis, and St. Paul.

In Mississippi, it was originally mostly gravel and covered 400 miles through the main business districts of towns. Today, it mostly bypasses down towns and has been significantly straightened, shaving 80 miles off the length.

The 1921 Federal Highway Act mandated numbered highways. In 1926, work on US-61 began and continued into the 1940s. By then, at least seven blues singers had recorded songs about 61.

One of two Mississippi Blues Trail markers are on 61, the other being in Tunica.

See www.msbluestrail.org

Blues You Can Use. --RoadDog