Every week for over the last twenty years, Highway 61 Radio has brought the best in Blues music and culture past, present, and future to fans all over Mississippi and the Mid-South. Now, thanks to both streaming shows and Podcasting from our website, www.highway61radio.org, broadcasting from the birth state of the blues, Highway 61 is able to spread its unique perspective to Blues fans all over the world!

The encyclopedic knowledge and vast music collection of host and renowned Blues scholar, Scott Barretta, are only a couple of the many sources Highway 61 draws its rich content from every week. Highway 61 also features resources from the world’s largest blues archive at The University of Mississippi's J.D. Williams Library, material from artists featured in another longtime Ole Miss partner in Blues, Living Blues Magazine, the world’s oldest and most authoritative Blues magazine; not to mention field recordings and interviews with artists, and live shows that Barretta and other Highway 61 staff continue to cull from every juke and cranny of Mississippi.

Over the years, Highway 61 has featured a wide variety of hosts including former director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and internationally known blues scholar, William Ferris, D. Allan Mitchell, and Highway 61 engineer and former editor of Living Blues Magazine, David Nelson. Highway 61's current host, Scott Barretta, was also editor of Living Blues Magazine for several years as well as editor for another prolific blues publication, Sweden's Jefferson.

In early 2007, The Year of Mississippi Blues, Seattle’s Blues Music Foundation through the generosity of Martin Scorsese, Paul Allen and Experience Music Project, rewarded Highway 61 with a generous $15,000 operating grant. These award dollars will enable Scott Barretta to continue to travel and record music and oral histories with blues artists all over the world not only for use on the radio show but these field recordings will be deposited at the University of Mississippi's Blues Archive for future use by blues scholars or enjoyment by fans, as the university archives use is free and open to the public. This operating grant will also allow Highway 61 to start expanding into its long-awaited goal of film and documentary production.

With up to 100,000 listeners in Mississippi and a potential of over three million listeners in the Mid-South, Highway 61's current home is The University of Mississippi's Center for Documentary Projects where it is recorded and produced each week under the supervision of producer and engineer Joe York.  Andy Harper, the director of the Center for Documentary Projects, is the show's executive producer.

As Highway 61's reputation grows along with the vibrant evolution of a tradition as hallowed as the Blues, it is a radio show that will continue to entertain and inform listeners from Memphis to Mobile and beyond, and demonstrate why Mississippi’s oldest and longest continuous running blues radio show is also still the best.