Language of the Blues: How the Mississippi Delta Gave Rise to the Blues

Language of the Blues: How the Mississippi Delta Gave Rise to the Blues

The Delta is a two-hundred-mile, leaf-shaped triangle of rich black soil bounded by the Tallahatchie and Yazoo Rivers to the east, and the Mississippi River to the west. This birthplace of the blues is completely flat from Memphis, Tennessee to Vicksburg, Mississippi. The land was flooded each spring by the Mississippi River before man intervened. Once, the river-rich soil was hidden beneath dense forests and canebrakes, through which sluggish b…