The blues music originated in the Mississippi Delta region in the early 1900s. It was developed by African Americans combining influences from work songs, spirituals, and American instruments. The blues told of the hardships of life under Jim Crow laws. In the 1920s, record companies began recording and promoting blues musicians, spreading the genre nationwide. Today, the Mississippi Blues Trail honors over 170 important locations and individuals from the history of blues music in the Mississippi Delta region, the birthplace of the blues.

1. A Rich History of Blues Music in
the Mississippi Delta
E l i z a b e t h C r e e k m o r e

2. Melancholy, soulful blues music and the
genres it has inspired were shaped by the
early African American voices of
Mississippi, a state rich with musical history
and sites that honor it.

3. Today, most of the original Delta
Mississippi bluesmen have passed on.

4. DELTA BLUES: A BRIEF HISTORY

5. The blues as we know them are widely
thought to have been born in the Mississippi
Delta, a section in the state’s northwest
between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers.

6. But the blues’ story extends back much
further: notably, as far as the coasts of Africa,
when men, women and children were taken as
slaves to American plantations.

7. Post-slavery, African Americans developed this
music further, incorporating influence from
Christian hymnals and American instruments,
all the while enduring hardships under Jim Crow
laws and Klu Klux Klan oppression.

8. Music was an escape, and during the Civil War it
emerged as part work-chant, part sorrow song.

9. Music was an escape, and during the Civil War it
emerged as part work-chant, part sorrow song.
At the turn of the 20th century, the blues were a
distinct and recognizable style performed by bluesmen
at venues around the Mississippi Delta region.

10. Record companies first realized the
potential market and began to record and
produce blues musicians in the 1920s.

11. Record companies first realized the
potential market and began to record and
produce blues musicians in the 1920s.
Artists spread the style throughout the country, where
it influenced almost every later genre including jazz,
hip-hop, country, and rock ‘n’ roll.

12. MISSISSIPPI BLUES TRAIL

13. For blues enthusiasts, tourists, or general music
lovers, the Mississippi Blues Trail marks historical
sites related to the birth, growth and influence of
blues music throughout Mississippi, with the
largest concentration in the Delta region.

14. What exactly can one hope to find
along the trail?

15. What exactly can one hope to find
along the trail?
Roadtrippers eager to follow the history of blues music
can travel between over 170 markers, which honor
individuals, venue, recording companies, historical
events, radio stations and other hubs of blues activity.

16. First implemented in 2006, the Mississippi Blues
Trail tells the stories of the talent behind one of
the most important genres of music in America,
perhaps of all time.
From B.B. King to Charley Patton, individual pioneers
and the places they created and performed at live on
through these markers.

17. The blues have been immortalized as much in
Mississippi Blues Trail, but more importantly, they
persist continuously in their influence of over a
century of musical evolution.

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