Beale St in Memphis, Tennessee is the musical heart of America, a neon gulch of juke joints and music halls where Delta blues found Elvis and rock 'n' roll resulted. But for the city of Memphis this beautiful accident is overshadowed by a darker legacy.
Read MoreLooking trim, exuding cool, 81-year-old Buddy Guy dips his head to the microphone. 'They don't play this kinda blues on the radio no more,' he growls. The audience in his eponymous bar in downtown Chicago whoops in anticipation.
Read MoreIn the badlands of northern New Mexico, deep in America's Southwest, you stock up when you can. An hour north of Santa Fe on US Highway 84 there's a filling station, general store and diner called Bode's that sells everything from raccoon traps to pickling jars…
Read MorePreservation Hall, in the French Quarter of New Orleans, is a lowlit capsule of whirring ceiling fans and crumbling walls - cosily monochrome save for the Exit signs in red neon. At the front (there is no stage) Shannon Powell, 'the King of Treme'…
Read MoreWith its façade of new brick and tinted glass the five-storey building in the west of downtown Baltimore could be the HQ of an asset management company or an executive recruitment agency. In fact it is dedicated to the study of human death and its causes.
Read MoreThis is how fate works. Hugh Aynesworth was a 32-year-old reporter with the Dallas Morning News when President John F Kennedy came to town on November 22, 1963. That morning, feeling miffed that he wasn't assigned to cover the story,
Read MoreIt was nearly midnight in downtown Dallas. As we crossed Dealey Plaza on Elm Street the taxi driver braked sharply - 'This is where the first bullet hit' - then floored the accelerator, whipped us round on to Stemmons Freeway and headed for Parkland Memorial Hospital at 80 miles an hour.
Read MoreBig storm over the Mississippi River. Right-thinking folks is indoors, minding their secret hoard of lickrish pieces and pinch-bug beetles, but we ain't no right-thinking folks. 'Let's go to the cemetery and cure some warts!' says the juvenile pariah sitting across from me.
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