2007--The Year of Mississippi Blues on Highway 61

By Mark Coltrain

2007 is the year of Mississippi Blues on Highway 61 Radio! To coincide with Black History Month and our generous grant from Seattle’s Blues Music Foundation, we’re launching a year’s worth of shows on February 17 dedicated to the artists, influence, and heritage of the blues in Mississippi past, present, and future.

Themed shows in our usual 10 pm Saturday night slot this year will feature the lives and music of Mississippi staples like Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, and Earl Hooker, along with lesser known innovators Hound Dog Taylor, Johnny Littlejohn, and Joe Carter on an upcoming show dedicated exclusively to slide guitar. Highway 61 also plans on producing shows this year to coincide with the Mississippi Blues Commission’s ongoing unveiling of historic markers along the Mississippi Blues Trail. The first three markers were unveiled at Charley Patton’s gravesite in Holly Ridge, Nelson Street in Greenville, and the former site of WGRM’s radio studios in Greenwood where B.B. King first found an audience in the mid-1940’s.

In addition to shows produced in-studio, Highway 61 plans on hitting the road to record live blues concerts in Clarksdale in conjunction with Cathead Delta Blues and Folk Art, Inc. and the Delta Blues Museum in our efforts to begin partnering with local heritage groups around Mississippi to document and rebroadcast concerts and artist interviews in other towns and venues throughout the state, not to mention some of the performers that stop by Oxford on a weekly basis.

Highway 61 isn’t just about the radio this year either. We’re in the process of redesigning our website to make it more interactive complete with Podcasting each week’s show, a blog regularly updated by host, Scott Barretta, and video clips from another new venture we’re planning: Highway 61 Films, which will be produced as the result of our field trips around the state in our everlasting goal to entertain and inform fans with the best in blues from around the state.

From Memphis to Mobile, 2007 will continue to show Highway 61’s listeners why Mississippi’s oldest and longest continuous running blues radio show is also the best.