The Mississippi Blues Trail

Mississippi Blues Trail – Malaco Records Trail Marker Location: Jackson Marker Front: Malaco Records, one of America’s foremost labels in the fields of southern soul, blues, and gospel, was founded at this site in 1967. Malaco’s studio was the first […]

Blues piano master Joe Willie “Pinetop” Perkins was born on July 7, 1913, on the Honey Island Plantation, seven miles southeast of Belzoni. […]

The theatre presented blues and jazz concerts by artists such as Nat “King” Cole, Elmore James, Louis Jordan, and Cab Calloway during the 1940s and ‘50s. […]

Mathis James “Jimmy” Reed, one of the most influential blues artists of the 1950s and ‘60s, was born here on the Shady Dell plantation on September 6, 1925. […]

In Prairie Point near the Mississippi-Alabama state line, Willie King kindled a new blues movement as the political prophet of the juke joints. […]

The musical programs of the Piney Woods School have produced many fine artists over the decades, including bluesman Sam Myers. […]

The first Mississippi 3 Blues Festival was held on October 21, 1978, here at Freedom Village, a rural community founded as a refuge for displaced agricultural workers. […]

Trail Marker Location: Bentonia Marker Front:  The haunting quality of Nehemiah “Skip” James’s music earned him a reputation as one of the great early Mississippi bluesmen. James (1902-1969) grew up at the Woodbine Plantation and as a youth learned to […]

Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup was one of America’s top-selling blues artists before other pop stars began recording his songs. […]

Joe McCoy, and his brother Charlie McCoy, both born on a farm near Raymond, wrote, performed, and recorded widely during the pre-World War II era. […]

Bobby Rush, a Louisiana native who lived for decades in Chicago, earned the title “king of the chitlin circuit” after relocating to Jackson in the early 1980s. […]

McKinley Morganfield, better known as Muddy Waters, led the way in transforming traditional 3 blues into the electric Chicago blues style that paved the road to rock ‘n’ roll. […]