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Street musicians on a sunny French Quarter street between colourful houses with iron balconies in New Orleans

Sample journey · 10–12 days

Songs of the South: from New Orleans to Nashville

New Orleans, Cajun country, Natchez, the Mississippi Delta, Memphis, Muscle Shoals & Nashville

Photo: João Francisco / Unsplash

Illustrative journey ideas — not bookable packages. No prices, dates or accommodation are implied.

Much of the twentieth-century music the whole world hears today was born in a small corner of the American South. In New Orleans, jazz grew out of African rhythms, brass bands and church hymns. In the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta came the blues, later carried north by Black Americans in search of work. In Memphis, the blues met country and rock 'n' roll was born, while in the small Alabama town of Muscle Shoals came soul records everyone knows. Nashville turned it all into the craft of songwriting.

This route is about more than concerts. The same land carries the hard history of slavery, segregation and the struggle for civil rights, without which the music can't be understood, so the journey gives it time too. It suits groups of friends, couples and anyone who travels for culture and food: drives run from an hour and a half to four hours, evenings are spent near a stage, and the route, concerts and museums are shaped around the music you love.

The route

The journey

  1. New Orleans
  2. Lafayette & Cajun country
  3. Natchez
  4. The Mississippi Delta & Clarksdale
  5. Memphis
  6. Muscle Shoals
  7. Nashville
  1. A trumpeter and a brass band playing in the evening street on Frenchmen Street in New Orleans

    01Days 1–4 · New Orleans

    A city where the streets play

    Three nights in New Orleans. Mornings in the French Quarter while the streets are still empty: iron balconies, hidden courtyards and coffee with beignets dusted in powdered sugar. Congo Square, where in the days of slavery people of African descent gathered on Sundays to drum and dance, and Tremé, one of the oldest Black neighbourhoods in the country, show where jazz came from; the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park offers free concerts and talks. In the evenings, Frenchmen Street, where local musicians play in small clubs, and on a Sunday, with luck, a second-line parade with a brass band. One afternoon, a former plantation on the Mississippi where the story is told through the eyes of the enslaved.

  2. Bald cypress trees standing in the water at Lake Martin near Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

    02Days 4–6 · Lafayette & Cajun country

    Fiddle, accordion and swamp

    About two hours west lies Acadiana, Cajun country, and two nights in Lafayette or the small town of Breaux Bridge. The Cajuns descend from the Acadians, French settlers expelled from Canada in the eighteenth century, and many families still speak French. On Saturday mornings Cajun fiddlers and accordion players strike up in local cafés and markets and people dance before lunch; in the evening you might hear zydeco, Creole music played on accordion and rubboard. In the daytime, a small boat through the cypress swamps of Lake Martin or the Atchafalaya Basin, where alligators, herons and other waterbirds are often seen. The food is a story of its own: gumbo, étouffée, boudin sausage and, in spring, a crawfish boil.

  3. The parlour of the antebellum Melrose house, with red upholstered furniture and a chandelier, in Natchez National Historical Park

    03Days 6–7 · Natchez

    A town on the bluff above the Mississippi

    About three hours north, past sugar-cane fields, lies Natchez, one of the oldest towns on the Mississippi, and one night here. Dozens of antebellum mansions built on cotton wealth stand on the high bluff, which is exactly why Natchez is a place to look at both sides of history. Natchez National Historical Park tells the story of the mansion owners and of the enslaved people whose labour built the houses, while the home of William Johnson, a free Black barber, and his diary reveal a rare picture of everyday life in the mid-nineteenth century. Just outside town lies the Forks of the Road, the site of one of the largest slave markets in the South. In the evening, sunset over the river from the bluff and a Southern dinner.

  4. An old wooden cabin with a porch among the fields near Greenville in the Mississippi Delta

    04Days 7–8 · The Mississippi Delta & Clarksdale

    The blues road, Highway 61

    The longest day of the journey: about four hours north on Highway 61, through Vicksburg and the flat Delta, where fields of cotton and soybeans run to the horizon. Along the way, Mississippi Blues Trail markers tell of the musicians born or playing in that very village; there's Dockery Farms, which many call the birthplace of the blues, and the B.B. King Museum in Indianola. One night in Clarksdale: by day the Delta Blues Museum, in the evening a small juke joint where the blues sounds much as it did decades ago. The Delta also holds painful pages of civil-rights history: in Sumner, the Emmett Till Interpretive Center tells of the fourteen-year-old murdered in 1955, whose death became one of the sparks of the civil rights movement.

  5. The historic Lorraine Motel sign against a blue sky in Memphis, today home to the National Civil Rights Museum

    05Days 8–10 · Memphis

    Soul, rock 'n' roll and the balcony where time stopped

    About an hour and a half to Memphis and two nights. The National Civil Rights Museum occupies the former Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April 1968; it tells the story of the struggle for equal rights with great care and deserves a whole morning. In the afternoon, music: the Stax Museum of American Soul Music on the site of the famous studio, and the small studio where Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and many blues musicians made their first recordings. In the evenings, Beale Street with its neon signs and live music, or for a quieter night, barbecue ribs and sunset over the Mississippi. For Elvis fans, Graceland on the southern edge of the city.

  6. Neon bar signs and evening traffic on Broadway in downtown Nashville

    06Days 10–12 · Muscle Shoals & Nashville

    Studios by the river and a city of songs

    About two and a half hours east lies Muscle Shoals, an Alabama town on the Tennessee River. From the 1960s, two small recording studios here cut songs for Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and even the Rolling Stones, and the local session musicians became a legend; both studios now welcome visitors. About two more hours bring you to Nashville and two final nights. The Country Music Hall of Fame, the National Museum of African American Music, a reminder of how much of America's music Black Americans created, and the story of the Fisk Jubilee Singers. In the evenings, not only the loud bars of Broadway but small listening rooms where songwriters sit in a circle, play their songs and tell how they were written. From Nashville, the flight home via a major US or European hub.

Experience highlights

  1. 01

    Evenings on Frenchmen Street

    Local jazz and brass-band musicians in New Orleans' small clubs.

  2. 02

    A Cajun Saturday morning

    Fiddle, accordion and dancing before lunch.

  3. 03

    Highway 61

    Blues Trail markers, Delta fields and an evening in a Clarksdale juke joint.

  4. 04

    The National Civil Rights Museum

    A morning at the former Lorraine Motel in Memphis: a difficult but essential part of the journey.

First, we listen. Then, we explore what's possible.

Make it your own

  • With friends

    For a group, a rented house in New Orleans or Nashville, evenings planned around the concert calendar, and a driver to take the wheel.

  • Around a festival

    The journey can be timed to one of New Orleans' big spring music festivals or a blues festival in Clarksdale, though stays then need booking very early.

  • Slower in the Delta

    An extra night in the Delta breaks the longest day and leaves time for the Vicksburg battlefield or Dockery Farms.

  • With the Smokies or New York

    From Nashville it's about four hours to Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Appalachian music, or the journey can end with a few days in New York.

Practical considerations

  • The most pleasant months are roughly March to May and October to November. Summer is hot and humid, and the Atlantic hurricane season officially runs from June to November, usually most active from August to October, so at that time we plan flexibly and follow the forecasts.
  • The journey is planned as a self-drive from New Orleans to Nashville; the longest day is from Natchez to Clarksdale. You don't need a car in the city, so we pick it up as you leave.
  • Live-music line-ups change weekly and many clubs and cafés open only on certain days, so we match concerts and Saturday dances to the calendar before you travel.
  • Sites of civil-rights and slavery history are places of memory; we visit them with respect, and some are best seen with a local guide.

General guidance only. Seasons, weather and wildlife are never guaranteed, and travel requirements are always worth checking before you go.

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