S2E10: Driving the Blues Highway and Riding the Soul Train, from Chicago to New Orleans

On this Episode, host Tony Fletcher is in conversation with his old London friend Richard Heard about the latter's recent Great American Road Trip from Chicago to New Orleans, setting out to trace the Story of the American Blues. Covering 1300 miles in 10 days, Richard and his American road partner also visited the Stax Museum of American Soul in Memphis, took in revered Country revue show the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, attended Jazz Fest in New Orleans, traveled through the Robert Johnson Crossroads in Clarksdale, and saw the destruction wrought by a recent tornado in Rolling Rock, Mississippi. As Richard says, "Once I lifted the bonnet [translation: the hood] on the road trip, I thought, 'This is not just about music, this is a really really interesting part of American culture and social history which I didn't really know a lot about.'"

Subjects include:

• Planning an American Road Trip around music
• Choosing the right travel partner
• Focusing on four cities: Chicago, Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans
• Learning about The Great Migration
• The Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis, with Isaac Haye's gold-plated Cadillac, the Soul Train disco ball, the recreated sloping studio - and a history of Black American Music from Gospel on through.
• The National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and the Stax songwriters wrote many of their hits.
• Seeing Buddy Guy jump on stage to jam at his Buddy Guy's Legends Club in Chicago - on the first night of their road trip.
• Why doing the Tourist Trail in these cities is no bad thing
• The best live music of the whole journey
• Frenchman Street in New Orleans, with a live music bar every 20 yards
• The Johnny Cash Museum in Nashville
• The magic of Sun Studio in Memphis
• Driving Highway 61 from Memphis to New Orleans, via the Blues capital of Clarksdale.
• Planning a return journey: Detroit, Cleveland and so much more

Short videos from Richard's trip can be seen at: https://www.instagram.com/rh64.2022/

Tony Fletcher's books on:

Wilson Pickett

Eddie Floyd

Music from the Streets of New York, 1927-77

One Step Beyond Socials:

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Facebook is One Step Beyond with Tony Fletcher

E-mail us at [e-mail].

Tony's other podcast, the [Jamming!] Fanzine Podcast is available via https://wavve.link/JammingPodcast/episodes (Richard was a guest on the first episode)

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