About Highway 61

An Overview of Highway 61
By Mark Coltrain

Every week for over twenty years, Highway 61 has brought the best in blues music to fans across Mississippi and the Mid-South. The show, broadcast at 10pm (Central Time) on Saturdays, is aired over eight stations of the Mississippi Public Broadcasting network. Now, thanks to both streaming shows and Podcasting from our website, www.highway61radio.org, Highway 61 is able to spread its unique perspective to blues fans all over the world.

Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown and host Scott Barretta in New Orleans, photo by Deadric Malone

Each week host Scott Barretta plays records from his vast personal record collection, supplemented by recordings from the Blues Archive at The University of Mississippi’s J.D. Williams Library. Barretta was previously the editor of Living Blues magazine, founded in Chicago in 1970 and housed at the University of Mississippi since 1983, as well as the Stockholm-based blues magazine Jefferson. Barretta’s other blues-related work includes conducting folklore work for the Mississippi Arts Commission and writing and researching markers for the Mississippi Blues Trail, which he conducts together with Living Blues co-founder Jim O’Neal.

Previous hosts of Highway 61 have included blues scholar William Ferris, the former director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, David Nelson, a former editor of Living Blues, and D. Allan Mitchell, who currently teaches blues-related courses at Delta State University.

In 2007 the Blues Music Foundation–funded through proceeds from Martin Scorsese’s film series The Blues, awarded Highway 61 with a $15,000 operating grant. This facilitated further travel by Barretta and Highway 61 production staffers to conduct interviews with artists as well record at concerts, clubs and festivals.

Highway 61 is recorded and produced each week at the The University of Mississippi’s Media and Documentary Projects Center under the supervision of producer and engineer Joe York, with the assistance of co-producer and graduate assistant Melanie Young. Andy Harper, the director of the Media and Documentary Projects Center, is the show’s executive producer