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Six musical birthplaces across America
By Tom Adkinson
January 26, 2024
The Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale is one of several places in the Mississippi Delta to learn about the birth of the blues. Image courtesy of Clarksdale Tourism
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NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Nashville’s nickname is Music City, earned largely from the evolution of the country music recording industry and the Grand Ole Opry’s worldwide fame, but cities across the U.S. are the wellsprings of several styles of music. One of them – Bristol, Tenn. – even lays claim to being “the birthplace of country music.”
Let’s look at those two country music meccas and then sing away to other musical destinations.
The Library of Congress says the Bristol Sessions, which captured the songs of the earliest country artists, were one of the 50 most important recording events in history. Image by Tom Adkinson
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Go ahead and grant Tennessee with two destinations. Bristol is where country music’s “Big Bang” occurred. That was 10 days in 1927 when New York producer Ralph Peer recorded seminal talents such as the Carter Family (the “First Family of Country Music”) and Jimmie Rodgers (the “Father of Country Music”). These were the Bristol Sessions, which the Library of Congress deemed among the 50 most significant sound recording events in history. The whole story is at the Birthplace of Country Music Museum.
Country music wasn’t born at the Grand Ole Opry, but it did a lot of growing up on the world-famous radio show. Image by Tom Adkinson
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Commercial broadcasting of that music blossomed in Nashville, where the Grand Ole Opry radio show went on the air in 1925. A century later, the Opry is going strong, with shows in the 4,400-seat Grand Ole Opry House and the smaller Ryman Auditorium. Complement an Opry show with time at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, songwriter showcases, the Musicians Hall of Fame and Nashville’s honky tonk scene.
Go south to connect with the birth of the blues. Start in Florence, Ala., at the birthplace of W.C. Handy, “the Father of the Blues,” and then head to the Mississippi Delta, where the roots of the blues are deep.
Cleveland, where the 95-room Cotton House is a good base for exploration, offers the GRAMMY Museum Mississippi, which illuminates Mississippi’s impact on many types of music, including the blues. Monitor DeepDeltaRoots.com for blue artists’ performances.
Up the Blues Highway (U.S. 61) is Clarksdale, called “Ground Zero” for the blues. Visit the Delta Blues Museum, Mississippi’s oldest music museum, and then head for the Ground Zero Blues Club for moody blues and cold beer.
Don’t overlook the B.B. King Museum in Indianola, and taking your picture with the bronze statue of King and Lucille, his beloved Gibson guitar, Lucille.
Head farther south to New Orleans, where the National Park Service tells the jazz story at the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park. In addition to ranger talks, there are jazz performances featuring rangers – they take their Arrowhead Jazz Band name from the NPS logo – and local musicians. The park’s visitor center is in the French Quarter, just two blocks from Jackson Square.
Various groupings of approximately 50 jazz performers are on stage at Preservation Hall in New Orleans almost every night of the year. Image courtesy of New Orleans & Company
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Fans of traditional jazz head to Preservation Hall. Ensembles from a collective of more than 50 musicians perform multiple 45-minute sets almost every night. Frenchmen Street offers a concentration of jazz-heavy clubs such as d.b.a., Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro, the Spotted Cat Music Club and the Royal Frenchman Hotel.
The most famous Motown artists recorded in this little house in Detroit, which became known as Hitsville U.S.A. Image by Tom Adkinson
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Back up north, finding the origins of the Motown Sound is easy. It’s a white house with blue trim with Hitsville U.S.A.” spelled out over the front porch. Walk in the footsteps of Diana Ross and the Supremes, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Lionel Richie and other legends who recorded there. A major museum expansion is in the works.
Other ties to Motown music are throughout Detroit. The stunning Fox Theatre (opened in 1928 as a movie palace and later the site of Motown concerts) offers tours, the city’s 6,000-seat riverfront amphitheater is named for Aretha Franklin and tribute murals to various artists are downtown and along the Detroit River. Seeing the Motown Room – and enjoying a soul food meal – at Bert’s Marketplace near the Eastern Market offers another connection.
This impressive collection of guitars and keyboards is a major installation at Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture. Image courtesy of Visit Seattle
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Seattle is one more musical birthplace stop. It’s “grunge,” even though the most famous grunge bands hated the term. Regardless, the name stuck and is tied to Seattle just as the Space Needle, Starbucks, Pike Place Market and rain are. Whether or not Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden (sometimes called the “big four” of grunge) liked the term, they developed a sound identified in one Seattle music history as “high levels of distortion, feedback, fuzz effects, and a fusion of punk and metal influences.”
You’ll find grunge history in several locations. Catching any performance at the 1,800-seat Moore Theatre has ties to the music because Soundgarden recorded its “Fopp” EP there, and the Alice in Chains “Live Facelift” and Pearl Jam’s “Even Flow” video footage came from the historic theater. Clubs to seek out include the Showbox and the Crocodile. Also, you’ll always find a grunge connection at MoPOP, the expansive Museum of Pop Culture, where “Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses” is a core exhibit.
Trip-planning resources: VisitMusicCity.com, BirthplaceOfCountryMusic.org, Alabama.travel, VisitMississippi.org, VisitDetroit.com, VisitSeattle.org, NewOrleans.com
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