When you go to the Deep South of the United States to cover the places of the blues, you can’t be an “accidental tourist,” because there is a great risk of losing pieces of history. You must entrust yourself to a meticulous and extremely detailed “travel companion,” like the optimal guidebook Blues Traveling: the Holy Sites of Delta Blues by the scholar Steve Cheseborough, who has not limited himself to the single activity of author, directing his passion also as a musician.
Therefore from paper and pen, to the harmonica, guitar, percussion and voice, with which, from three CDs including this one (the first two have been reviewed in issue 87 and the two editions of the book in issues 80 and 89), Steve seems to continue the deepening of reclaiming material from the passage of the African-American tradition. Compared with the two preceding CDs, where the versions of Son House, Charlie Patton, Robert Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, Tommy Johnson, Bo Carter etc. lacked emotional involvement because of an academic presentation and a nasal and shrill vocal tone, in this his third chapter, we recognize Steve’s effort to give more expressiveness to the singing, rendering it slower, so that also his clean accent turned out a little richer in shadings. With the guitar and the harmonica then he does not go beyond pure accompaniment, but that is not a defect, because in some cases he also makes it his own. The tracks that turn out notable in our opinion are “Hear Me Talking To You” (by Ma Rainey), “Who Broke The Latch” (by Bo Carter), the straight-ahead boogie which is helped also by the harmonica “Shake Your Hips” (by Slim Harpo), the delicate version of “Vicksburg Blues” (by Little Brother Montgomery), the ballad, again with the harmonica and a hint of yodel “Little Ole Wine Drinker Me” (by Jennings/Mills), the traditional “Shortnin’ Bread” with the use of slide, and “Last Kind Words” (by Geechie Wiley).
Since we like Steve Cheseborough and he is a sincere and passionate person, we invite to you to contact him through his site, www.stevecheseborough.com
By Silvano Brambilla
Translated from the Italian by Steve Cheseborough

Katherine Carr Esters of Kosciusko, Miss., actually is Oprah’s cousin, although Oprah addresses her older relative as “Aunt Katherine.” Ted Ownby, director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, recently was visiting with Esters and telling her about the center’s programs. The only ones she was already were familiar with, Ownby said, were a couple of radio shows — Highway 61 Blues and Thacker Mountain Radio — and my book, Blues Traveling: the Holy Sites of Delta Blues (which actually is unconnected to the center except that I am a graduate of the center’s Southern Studies program). Esters told Ownby she carries the book around in her car and refers to it as she drives around Mississippi.

I asked Ownby if Esters has the current edition and he said he wasn’t sure. So I signed a copy of it for her and gave it to him to give her.

I don’t know if Esters has shared the book with her cousin Oprah. But if Oprah wants me to take her on a tour of the blues sites of her home state I’d be delighted!