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Updated information New Orleans is - slowly - getting back to normal and visitors are already returning. Here's a message I received from a good friend and New Orleans resident on 20 January 2006:Don't wite New Orleans off. The French Quarter, CBD, Uptown, Warehouse District & Algiers are all up and running and some outlying areas are coming back. The worst hit areas - 9th Ward, Lower 9th & N.O. East may take a little longer - but, for the music lover, there is almost as much as there was before the hurricanes hit us. Sounds like the good times will roll again. Hurricane Rita Hurricane Katrina and its successor Rita have devastated New Orleans. I was on the Gulf Coast three days after Katrina hit and I've seen for myself the extraordinary scale of the the damage, death and chaos. I would advise readers of The Blues Highway to avoid not just New Orleans but, for the moment, all of southern Louisiana. Though New Orleans is the only destination covered in The Blues Highway to have been hit, evacuees are placing great pressure on most adjacent commnunities. Readers should note, however, that the rest of the Blues Highway is unaffected; there's no reason to avoid the Mississippi Delta, Memphis or any of the more northern blues and jazz towns described in the book. Clearly, anyone who loves New Orleans - and that includes me - has watched events there with very great sadness. And we all hope America's finest city will rise again - and that, when it does, its distinct flavour will remain intact. If you'd been planning a trip there - or if you were considering buying The Blues Highway to plan a trip there - might I suggest you send money instead to the American Red Cross (http://www.redcross.org). That organisation was among the first to provide relief to many places along the Gulf Coast after Katrina hit. Sam Phillips and Johnny Cash have left the building Sam Phillips's epithet was no exaggeration. They called him 'The Father of Rock & Roll' and that's exactly what he was. The one-time radio engineer created Sun Records in the fifties and was the first man to record the likes of Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash. Together these four great musicians were dubbed the 'Million Dollar Quarter'. On 12 September Jerry Lee Lewis learned that he had earned the questionable honour of becoming the last surviving member: Johnny Cash had died. Phillips himself had died just weeks earlier on 31 July. Both were icons of American culture. Both contributed to the very foundations of popular music. Cash's death coming so soon after Phillips's marks the closing of a chapter in the story of American music. But it's a story millions will remember through those famous black-and-yellow discs cut in that little studio in Memphis half a century ago. While researching 'The Blues Highway: New Orleans to Chicago' Richard Knight spent a day with Sam Phillips in his Memphis home. You can read part of that interview in his book. Notes from Richard Knight, author of The Blues Highway: New Orleans to Chicago |
The Blues Highway