Suggested Readings
Dispatches
If you really want to experience the Mississippi delta in all its best most awesome weirdness, read Dispatches from Pluto. It’s a laugh out loud primer for Delta visitors.
90’s Delta Music Scene
Panny Flautt Mayfield, a lifelong resident of the Clarksdale area is a true blues fan and was hip to the early 90’s Delta music scene when many were not paying attention. Her book Live from the Mississippi Delta is a wonderful photographic tribute to the area and its music.
Muddy Waters
The definitive biography of Muddy Waters is by GRAMMY-winning author Robert Gordon is titled Can’t Be Satisfied
Blues’ African Roots
If you want to tie the blues back to its earliest Africa roots in a very scholarly and compelling way, check out Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy by the late great Robert Farris Thompson who taught decades of students at Yale (including festival founder Howard Stovall) where cool came from.
Delta Blues Images
Rex Miller is another wonderful photographer and friend of the blues. Check out his All the Blues Gone for an awesome collection of images.
Delta Blues
Perhaps the definitive work on Delta Blues was Robert Palmer’s Deep Blues, published in 1982 and never bested by any later work.