Traveling Highway 61, “The Blues Highway”
In 1965, Bob Dylan persuaded his record company to name his new album, Highway 61 Revisited. The title referenced the road that connected his birthplace of Duluth, Minnesota to southern cities famed for their musical heritage: St. Louis, Memphis, New Orleans, and the Delta blues region of Mississippi. Highway 61 is often called the “Blues Highway,” especially for the stretch from Memphis where it runs south to the Delta, “the land where the blues began.” Dylan’s innovative combination of the force of blues-based rock ‘n’ roll with lyrical, free-form Beat poetics changed popular music history forever.
Join presenter John Howell, a former Southern radio DJ and currently a consultant to the Delta Blues Museum, for a listening party to share the rich history of the Delta that inspired Dylan. We will hear music from those Delta blues artists—Muddy Waters, Charley Patton, Son House, and Robert Johnson—whose “deep blues” are the foundation of much modern popular music.
