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Got the blues? Listen to these 25 essential Mississippi Delta blues songs

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Got the blues? Listen to these 25 essential Mississippi Delta blues songs 
Lici Beveridge- Mississippi Clarion Ledger-USA Today Network “Hallowed Sound”
(JACKSON, MS) – Blues is inspired by place — the railroads, fields and slaughterhouses where the musicians once worked by day; by the triumphs and struggles in life; by love found and love lost.

And no place has produced more influential American bluesmen and women than the Mississippi Delta. So it’s only fitting to celebrate some of the most noted musicians who came from Mississippi or whose ties to the genre were formed here.

These 25 recordings encapsulate the broad reach of Mississippi’s influence on the blues: “Yellow Dog Blues” – W.C. Handy (1919), “Spike Driver Blues” – Mississippi John Hurt (1928), “Mississippi Boweavil Blues” – Charley Patton (1929), “Walking Blues” – Son House (1930), “Hard Times Killing Floor Blues” – Skip James (1931), “Crossroad Blues” – Robert Johnson (1936-37), “Rosie” – Unidentified Mississippi State Penitentiary prisoners (1939), “That’s All Right” – Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup (1946), “Dust My Broom” – Elmore James (1951), “Baby Please Don’t Go” – Muddy Waters (1953), “I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man” – Willie Dixon (1954), “Don’t Start Me Talkin’” – Sonny Boy Williamson II (1955), “Smokestack Lightning” – Howlin’ Wolf (1956), “Boom Boom” – John Lee Hooker (1961), “Poor Black Mattie” – R.L. Burnside (1960s), “Born Under a Bad Sign” – Albert King (1967), “Mary Had A Little Lamb” – Buddy Guy (1967), “The Thrill is Gone” – B.B. King (1969), “I Wanna Do the Do” – Bobby Rush (1979), “She-Wolf” – Jessie Mae Hemphill (1981), “Keep Your Hands Off Her” – Junior Kimbrough (1982), “Shimmy She Wobble” – Othar (Otha) Turner (2001), “Mississippi Woman” – Denise LaSalle (2010), “High Minded” – Jarekus Singleton (2014), “Catfish Blues” – Jimmy “Duck” Holmes (2019).
…Find various artist photos and song descriptions
Click here to listen to these songs on Spotify
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