Jaunted

Music Travel / Mississippi Travel / Delta Travel / Road Trips / → All Tags

It May Not Look Much, But This is (Kinda) the Place Where The Blues Was Born

Think this is a railway track just like all other railway tracks? Nuh uh, reader, it is not—and not just because it has a funky mural on the wall opposite. These railway tracks are historic. Because it was right here, in 1903, that the blues were born.

Or rather, if we don’t get carried away by the excited notices on entering town, it’s here that the blues stepped from local musical style to national movement.

See, it was here, on the railway tracks in Tutwiler, Mississippi, that composer WC Handy was waiting for a train and watched a man press a knife on the strings of his guitar, sing, and produce “the weirdest music I have ever heard.” Handy then started putting the blues to paper and took the previously regional style national (and then global).

more ›