Content Produced in Partnership with Deep South USA
Put America’s Deep South at the top of your list if you love the Blues, Jazz, Rock ‘n’ Roll, Bluegrass, Country and/or all those other forms of popular music that were born and/or bred – and continue to thrive – in this vibrant, colourful region.
Tennessee alone is home to two of the world’s most famous popular music cites. In Nashville, the go-to destination for Country Music fans is the landmark Grand Ole Opry with its unmissable live shows. Other places to check out are the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, such Honky Tonk Highway (aka Broadway) sites as Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge and the Bluebird Cafe, where you can listen to some of the best up-and-coming artists (it launched the likes of Garth Brooks and Taylor Swift).
In Memphis, nightclub-lined Beale Street, one of the birthplaces of The Blues, still offers daily renditions of the genre in such places as B. B. King’s (the street was a regular hangout for the legendary musician) and the tiny, traditional juke joint, Rum Boogie Cafe Blues Hall. It’s also home to the Memphis in May festival featuring such artists as Aretha Franklin, Santana and Lou Reed.
Tour Sun Studios, where Elvis recorded his first single, and learn more about such Rock ‘n’ Roll legends as Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins, and then marvel at the contents and eccentricities of Elvis’s palatial Graceland Estate.
Throughout the state are numerous other homes, museums and other sites associated with such music icons as Johnny Cash, Tina Turner, Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, some of them covered by the free Country Music Passport (tnvaction.com/tennessee-music-pathways/passport).
Head south of Memphis and you are soon in the music-rich Mississippi Delta. As you travel along Highway 61, known as The Blues Highway, you will discover that it was from the surrounding cotton plantations and small towns that Gospel and Blues music evolved. Indianola is home to the fascinating B. B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center, and at Clarksdale you will find the Delta Blues Museum and Ground Zero Blues Club, plus the Sunflower River Blues and Juke Joint festivals. Along the way are places associated with the likes of W. C. Handy, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and Robert Johnson. And Elvis fans won’t want to miss a detour north-east to visit the modest Tupelo home where he grew up, the impressive museum dedicated to him and the hardware store where he bought his first guitar.
There’s also a bit of Elvis legacy in northern Louisiana where ‘the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’ launched his career in 1956 on Shreveport’s popular The Louisiana Hayride radio show (you can visit the Municipal Auditorium). It’s also where superstar cousins Jerry Lee Lewis and Mickey Gilley were born and raised.
But, of course, the state is best known for that unique American art form Jazz, which originated in – and still thrives in – colourful, nearly three centuries old New Orleans. For a tribute to the past, visit Preservation Hall and then head to Frenchmen Street, lined with clubs and street musicians. And if you’re in town in late June/early May make sure to take in The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
To savour more of Louisiana’s African-American and French music heritage head southwest into the picturesque bayou region settled by the French-Canadian Acadians in the 18th century. In places such as Lafayette, you can enjoy Cajun and Zydeco music – plus dancing and great food – in clubs, restaurants and at festivals.
Not far across the border from Tupelo in north-western Alabama the small town of Muscle Shoals is the centre for a group of music studios which have been recording the likes of Aretha Franklin and the Rolling Stones since the 1960s. After touring one of them, drop by nearby Tuscumbia‘s Alabama Music Hall of Fame, and, to the south-east in Birmingham, The Jazz Hall of Fame and the Carver Theatre where jazz legends such as Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton once played, and there’s still live music. There are annual music festivals in the city, and Blues lovers might want to drop by Gip’s Place in nearby Bessemer.
Hank Williams fans are drawn to Montgomery, site of a namesake museum, his grave and an annual festival, even as Jimmy Buffett fans head for his coastal hometown, Mobile, where his sister Lucy owns Lulu’s Homeport Marina and there are a number of live music venues such as Florabama here and in nearby beach resorts.
To the north of Tennessee, Kentucky has its own unique Bluegrass music heritage. Owensboro, on its northern, Ohio River border, is home to the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum and the massive, late June ROMP Bluegrass festival. Nearby Henderson hosts its annual two day Bluegrass in the Park Folklife Festival in August.
In the eastern part of the state, Highway 23 passes by the birthplaces of so many stars such as Loretta Lynn, Ricky Skaggs and Billy Ray Cyrus that it is known as the Country Music Highway with its own museum in Paintsville, and there is an additional tribute not only to Country and Bluegrass but also to the Blues, Folk, Rhythm and Blues and Rockabilly each Monday night at the live Woodsongs Old-Time Radio Hour in Lexington, at the heart of the Bluegrass horse country in central Kentucky.
Not planned your 2020 holiday yet? We can definitely recommend a Deep South USA Road Trip as a 2020 holiday destination and we are giving one lucky winner £500 to use against a Deep South holiday provided by Bon Voyage Travel & Tours Ltd. Find out more here.
