!! HOMEPAGE !!

Our UNIQUENESS

PLANNING a Tour
TOPICS for a Tour

ITINERARY Ideas

DESTINATIONS
USEFUL TOOLS
CREDENTIALS
REFERENCES

!! E-MAIL US !!
 
 
 
For ideas on some possible tour destinations and topics, first see Itinerary Ideas. Then return to these Destination pages where we have begun to give you links to explore specific cities and destinations that might be part of your itinerary. For nationwide and global lists of categories of destinations (e.g. Jazz Clubs, Museums, etc.) see Categories. We are always adding to these lists. Please let us know the type of destinations you are interested in!


THE U.S. CENTRAL AND
MISSISSIPPI RIVER HEARTLAND
 From North to South
TABLE OF CONTENTS Linking to Full Information Below
  • Chicago and Illinois Destinations
  • St. Louis and Missouri Destinations
  • Memphis and Tennessee Destinations (including Nashville?)
  • Clarksdale, Mississippi and the Delta Blues Museum
  • New Orleans and Louisiana Destinations
  • An Introductory Bibliography

    Chicago and Illinois Destinations
     The northernmost city of this country's music corridor, Chicago has inspired many famous jazz and bluesmen, including Muddy Waters, Little Brother Montgomery, and Elvin Bishop. Powerful industrial and cultural influences keep Chicago on the cutting edge of the music scene. This is a city of fine blues clubs to fill evenings - with the possibility of meeting the principals before their evenings begin. Daytime hours could also easily be filled with some of the famous institutions of the American "heartland": Chicago Board of Trade comodities trading floor, Chicago Art Institute (home of "American Gothic"), one of world's best Natural History Museums (just bought the famous dinosaur Sue), and the Miracle Mile of fine shopping.
    St. Louis and Missouri Destinations
     Pianist Scott Joplin introduced Ragtime music at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, and blues musicians throughout this century have stopped in this river town on the way north. We visit Scott Joplin's home, a Missouri State Historic Site, perhaps for a live ragtime performance. At night, "Gaslight Square" captures this earlier era and, down on the Mississippi waterfront, the Laclede's Landing district of old warehouses and cobblestone streets keep these rythums alive. On the Misssissippi Eero Saarinen's Gateway Arch, at 630 feet, stands twice as high as the Statue of Liberty (with a train taking you to the top). Under this soaring structure is the Museum of Westward Expansion - part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. This is the story of raw American energy on the move.
    Memphis and Tennessee Destinations (including Nashville?)
     Memphis is an eclectic mix of ornate buildings and glass-and-steel skycrapers - "birthplace of the blues." This is the city where B.B. King combined jazz technique with blues tonality to pioneer his own musical style; and young Muddy Waters and Bobby "Blue" Bland attended "music school" late at night in the city's many clubs. In the evening there is Beale Street - specifically the historic three-blocks that were and are the heart of Memphis' music scene, where the W.C. Handy statue honors the great bandleader and modern day disciples still grind out the poor-boy blues.
    Clarksdale and Mississippi State Destinations
     Heading south out of Memphis is the land of sprawling cotton plantations and sleepy southern towns of the Mississippi Delta landscape. This is the route of the old Illinois Central rail line - immortalized in Steve Goodman's song, "City of New Orleans" to Clarksdale, a once-tiny town that played a giant role in the blues during the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Highways 61 and 49 - the actual subjects in Robert Johnson's legendary "Cross Road Blues" - meet here. John Lee Hooker, Ike Turner, Little Junior Park, Sam Cooke, and others call this veritable cradle for the blues their home. We could tour Clarksdale's legendary sites, including WROX Radio - the first station to put the blues on the airwaves, and the Delta Blues Museum, which preserves and displays thousands of blues-related books, records, tapes, photo collections, and memorabilia.

    New Orleans and Louisiana Destinations
     Known for its cool jazz, soulful blues, heavenly food, and insatiable appetite for the good life, New Orleans is a lively mix of French, Cajun, Anglo-American, Spanish and African-American influences. A sense of eccentricity and ease permeates the narrow streets, wrought-iron balconies, and public squares of the city's French Quarter, or Vieux Carré. Central to all this is Bourbon Street, a cross-cultural, anything-goes strip, where red beans and rice have become haute cuisine, and home-town parades have evolved into the fevered celebration called Mardi Gras. An old-fashioned riverboat could take us on a Mississippi River cruise to the sounds of a live Dixieland Jazz band. A city tour - by foot and coach - could include Jackson Square, New Orlean's fine architecture, and the Jazz Collection at the Louisiana State Museum in the Old Mint Building. This is also a town of authentic French or Creole cuisine.
    An Introductory Bibliography

    • River of Song : A Musical Journey Down the Mississippi
      The official companion to a major PBS documentary series (also available in video). "River of Song", by Elijah Wald, John Junkerman and Theo Pelletier, tells the story of the Mississippi River and its place in the heart of American music.by Elijah Wald, John Junkerman, Theo Pelletier" Smithsonian Institution's PBS Broadcast Series. Kirkus Reviews: "It's hard to be dull when you're describing the lives, memories, and music (country, blues, rock 'n' roll, gospel, and zydeco, among others) of several hundred performers, and even harder when you rely, as the book does, largely on the frank and salty words of those performers. Following the Mississippi downstream turns out to be a particularly useful conceit: because the river touches so much of the American heartland, almost every kind of popular music is being performed along its length."
    • Land Where the Blues Began
      By Alan Lomax. Amazon.com review: "Previously the author of Mister Jelly Roll, Lomax stalks the ghosts of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Big Bill Broonzy and Charlie Patton, among many other blues pioneers. This winner of the 1993 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction is more than just another profile of a musical genre. It's an intimate diary of a purely American art form born of a powerful mix of despair and hope." (N.Y., Pantheon Books, 540 p.)
    • Blues From the Delta
      By William R. Ferris, Billy Taylor (Designer). N.Y., Da Capo Press / Plenum Publishing, 226 p, illus.
    • Treasury of Mississippi River Folklore
      Edited by B.A. Botkin. Subtitled: Stories [500], Ballads [30] and Traditions of the Mid-American River Country" (N.Y., Crown, 1955, 620 p. - out of print)
    • Fabled Land / Timeless River: Life Along the Mississippi By Stephen Feldman and Van Gordon Sauter. (Chicago, Quadrangle Books, 1970, 179 p., illus. - out of print)
    • Life on the River
      Subtitled: "A Pictorial History of the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Western River System." By Norbury L. Wayman. (N.Y., Crown, 1971, 338 p., illus. - out of print)
    • The Mississippi River
      Subtitled: "Nature, Culture and Travel Sites Along the 'Mighty Mississip'". By Tom Weil. Amazon.com synopsis: "Beginning at the river's mouth, St. Louis Post-Dispatch travel editor Tom Weil explores the 2,552-mile long river traveling down the great waterway. The book covers 10 states and 1,583 historical sites in 288 river towns. 24 illustrations and 5 maps." (Reprint edition April 1993, Hippocrene Books).
    • The Mighty Mississippi
      By Bern Keating, Photographs by James L. Stanfield. (Washington D.C., National Geographic Society, 1971, 199 p., illus.)
    • Atlas of American History
      By Robert H. Ferrell, Richard Natkiel. Booknews, Inc. Annotation: "Focuses almost exclusively on warfare, both domestic and foreign, with some information on colonization and expansion. The 200 maps, most in color, are accompanied by drawings and photographs. Sections such as Founding a Nation, Imperial Democracy, and The Two World Wars, are introduced by essays. First published in 1993 by Brompton Books in Greenwich, CT, and here updated to include the invasion of Panama, Desert Storm, and the 1992 presidential election. No bibliography."
    • Atlas of American History
      By Martin Gilbert.
    • Atlas of American Indian Affairs
      By Francis Paul Prucha. (Dec. 1990, Univ. of Nebraska Press, 191 pages)
    • Atlas of Ancient America
      By Michael Coe, et al. (Oct. 1986)
    • Atlas of American History
      Edited by Kenneth T. Jackson. James Truslow Adams, Editor in Chief, (Original Edition. N.Y., Charles Scribner's Sons, 294 p., illus. - out of print)
    • Restored Towns and Historic Districts of America
      Subtitled: "A Tour Guide." By Alice Cromie. (N.Y., Sunrise/E.P. Dutton, 1979, 384 p., illus. - out of print)
    • Fresh Blood for the Blues
      Subtitled: "Classic genre finds new fans -- and artists -- among young blacks." This is a January 8, 1999 artical from the San Francisco Chronicle updating us on US perceptions of the Blues.
    • "America's Music Corridor" brochure and information packet from AMC (800-916-0038)

    Our list of Destination Ideas
    is continually being revised and expanded.
    Please visit again periodically
    Let us know the type of destinations of interest to you!
    In the meantime, see also Itinerary Ideas.
    • Back to Top

    !! E-MAIL US !!