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The Blues™ Road Trip traces the migration of the blues throughout the USA from its origins in slave communities
on plantations in the Deep South. The blues, a mix of African and New World musical influences, spread from its birthplace in the
Mississippi Delta through Louisiana and Texas, northward to Memphis, St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, and beyond as freed slaves and
their descendants left the South in search of better lives in northern cities in "The Great Migration" of African Americans in the
early to mid 1900s.
As the new musical form spread across the country, countless styles of the blues emerged. Each region imparted its
own flavor and culture as jazz, gospel, country, and ragtime all fused with the blues in various combinations to create an endless
variety of blues styles.
By the 1950s and '60s, the blues had crossed the Atlantic and young audiences and musicians in Great Britain launched a blues
revival with their reverent admiration of American blues music. The blues blended into rock, and as rock and roll took center
stage on the global popular music scene, the blues faded into the background for decades for many listeners and record buyers.
But in the early 1990s, a renewed interest in American
roots music spurred a resurgence of the blues and the art form that once
inspired Willie Dixon's remark "The blues is the roots: everything else
is the fruits."
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