Five of my favourite Mississippi-born musicians – maybe it’s something in the water

Recent comments from Jackson, Mississippi resident E.F. Bartiam led me to look up a list of well-known 20th Century musicians born in the state. I knew there were a lot of them – but the list is so long, the quality so ridiculously high, and there are so many personal favourites on it that even this lifelong fan of American “Roots” music was astonished. (You can read the list here.) Apart from Bo Diddley, there’s Elvis, Sam Cooke, Jimmy Reed, Jerry Lee Lewis, John Lee Hooker, Ike Turner, Robert Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin’ Wolf and on and on and on.

Six great acts I discovered thanks to Jools Holland and "Later..."

Skiffle and Rockabilly - what did they put in the water in 1954?

Blues meets Rockabilly meets Surf - the Fulminators go all eclectic

Alvin Youngblood Hart - big, black, bluesy and brilliant

Rhythm and Blues - the very best of the grown-up music that made everything possible

Without Rhythm and Blues,  the musical genre invented by Black musicians in Chicago in the 1940s and 1950s by electrifying guitars and adding drums (and anything else they fancied) to acoustic Country Blues, there would have been no Rock ‘n” Roll, no Rockabilly, no Rock. We'd probably be listening to George Formby imitators.