This is a song that a couple of songwriters sent to me last week and asked me to see what I could do musically to make it fit. I wrote the music to it, and rearranged a few words here and there and this is the finished product. The two songwriter are Tina Neumann, and Marcus Upchurch. Out of my own curiosity, I started looking up the names and places mentioned in the song, and was amazed that it gives an accurate description of the era of blues in the Mississippi Delta!!

The Mississippi Delta Highway 61 Blues

https://soundcloud.com/ronniefields/mississippi-delta-hwy-61-blues

Old blues live through turn rows in cotton fields,
winding through the delta and down the river bend.
B. B. King’s birthplace off highway 82,
Charley Patton father of the delta blues.

Chorus:

it’s The Mississippi Delta Hwy 61 blues,
the stories to the lives before rolls inside of you.

There’s Panther Burn and alligator towns that make it great,
Clarksdale and Vicksburg when you cruise across the state.
You see the devil’s crossroads where Robert Johnson sold his soul,
to play a mean guitar decades ago.

Repeat Chorus:

Poverty and pain still rampant today,
King biscuit time radio where Sonny Boy played.
American blues music started by slaves,
but right here in my heart, the talent melts it all away.

Bridge:
Mississippi in the summertime,
cotton fields I can hear them cry.
Blues ring out from cars , passing by,
on hwy 61 man how time flies,
it’s a Mississippi state of mind.

Repeat Chorus:

Chorus II
A music born, out of pain and scars,
John Lee Hooker rocked the world
and ruled our hearts.

Repeat Chorus Twice