juke joints

Ten years ago, some buddies and I made a film called We Juke Up in Here. It was an insiders’ journey into the underbelly of Mississippi’s surviving juke joint culture. Three years later, The New York Times showed up on my doorstep. “How many such places still exist?” the reporter asked. “With actual real, live blues music at least sporadically?” I clarified. “Maybe five.” I gave them the list to visit in a three-state region, centered by Mississippi. And they did. Red Paden outside Red’s Lounge (Clarksdale, MS, 2011) CREDIT: Lou Bopp The Great Migration In Reverse In the early 1990s, I often took a cheap Southwest Airlines flight from my native Dayton, Ohio to Chicago in search of down-home blues venues like Lee’s Unleaded and Rosa’s. Then, in 1995, my advertising career moved me to ...