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Grant Stewart - Modinha

That sound draws thousands to Clarksdale each year for the annual Juke Joint Festival. They come for the familiar licks and wails. Over the years, the town of around 14,000 people, nestled among the cotton fields of northwestern Mississippi, has produced some of the world's most famous blues stars. Many blues greats, including Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, worked the surrounding plantations.

A mix of slide guitar with a howl to the human condition. Blues houses, known as juke joints, opened up. By the 20s and 30s, the first stars emerged, including Robert Johnson, who, per legend, sold his soul to the devil just outside of Clarksdale in exchange for his guitar chops.

These kinds of experiences are what helped forge the blues in the Delta, where places like Clarksdale were built into boomtowns on the backs of slaves and later, sharecroppers. But as musical tastes changed over the years, local blues houses closed down. Farm work dried up. Today, Clarksdale sits in one of the poorest counties in the poorest region of a stubbornly poor state.


Grant Stewart - Modinha
Written by: Antônio Carlos Jobim
First release in: May 1958
Released in: 2007

"At 17 Grant Stewart took up the tenor saxophone and was soon playing with such master saxophonists as Pat Labarbara and Bob Mover. By 18 he was leading a quartet in Toronto for a regular gig."

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