CITY DAILY PHOTO MAY THEME - MUSEUMS

We have a good art museum for a city our size that seemed like an obvious choice for today.  But lots of cities have an unusual collection that's worth a visit. This is one of ours. It's debatable whether a national blues museum belongs in the Mississippi delta, Memphis or Chicago but somebody took the initiative here. The displays are very well done and there is a performance space where you can hear the genuine stuff.          

The Entertainment

The museum opened with a performance of the marching band from suburban Normandy High School. Inside, there was a place to pose before a photo of a blues-jazz band from 1920.  Sharp-looking young men.

That's about all I have of this event.  Muddy Waters provides the summary.         

 

St. Louis Blues

It's been years in the making. The National Blues Museum opened in downtown STL yesterday and it was worth the wait. It is a block and a half from my office so your faithful photoblogger showed up. The place is just spectacular.

The museum takes you on a walk through the history and styles of the blues, from the call-and-response field hollers of slave laborers on Southern plantations, across the south and up the riverways to Memphis, St. Louis and Chicago, to both coasts and around the world. There are exhibits about how it blended with country and western music and then, in the hands of our own Chuck Berry, created rock and roll. (Did you know that rock and roll was hatched in St. Louis? Chuck Berry is a native and life-long resident.) All the major musicians are featured as the exhibits take us to the present. Remember that the Rolling Stones were originally just an electric blues band. The corridors end at a room covering the active blues scene around our city.

A few more pictures to come - it was awfully crowded. If you find yourself in this part of the world you owe it to yourself to visit.