NEXT TRIP
JANUARY 4-13, 2011

Chasing the Blues explores the culture and history of the Mississippi Delta, called by folklorist Alan Lomax, “the land where the blues began.” Our itinerary includes such blues landmarks as the “blues crossroads” (where US highways 61 and 49 intersect), the Clarksdale Delta Blues Museum, the Stovall plantation (where Muddy Waters lived), the Tutwiler train station (where W.C. Handy first heard a farmhand singing the blues), and the Mississippi John Hurt Museum. In Memphis, we visit Beale Street, Sun Records, The Rock & Soul Museum, The Stax Museum, Graceland, and The Center for Southern Folklore, where we enjoy a private concert. Along the way, we travel through and discuss important sites of Civil Rights Movement activity, culminating in a visit to the National Civil Rights Museum, located in the former Loraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. We also meet with blues photographer and former manager of blues musicians Dick Waterman, musician/blues scholar Andy Cohen, and others and hear live music featuring local blues musicians at blues clubs and juke joints.