Memphis Blues: Birthplace of a Music Tradition

The blues was born in the Mississippi Delta, and since that fateful night in 1903 when W. C. Handy heard the mournful sound of a pocketknife sliding over the strings of an acoustic guitar and the plaintive song of a long-forgotten musician in the hot night of Tutwiler, Mississippi, the blues has been on a journey around the world. From the cotton fields and juke

joints of the Delta, up Highway 61 to Memphis�s Beale Street, St. Louis, the Southside of Chicago, England, and points beyond, th...