Scott Barretta

Scott Barretta is writer and researcher for the Mississippi Blues Trail, former editor of Living Blues magazine, and host of the radio show Highway 61 on Mississippi Public Broadcasting and Radio Free Amsterdam.

Barretta, a native of Virginia from suburban Washington, D.C., received his master’s degree in sociology from the University of Virginia. He moved to Oxford after a long stint abroad in Sweden where he edited Jefferson, a Swedish blues magazine published by the non-profit Scandinavian Blues Association, and worked on his Ph.D. in sociology at Lund University in southern Sweden.

Barretta was first introduced to blues as a teenager through friends’ records, and he also recall hearing live blues at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C., at a young age. After prodding, he names as his favourite artist Lightnin’ Hopkins, yet he is also a fan of Cajun music, zydeco, bluegrass, rockabilly, and jazz. He has lectured on Southern music at the university level and enjoys being in Oxford because of the University and the Southern Studies program as well as its prime location for blues. Though a lover of travel and a touch lonesome for Swedish culture and friends, Barretta is glad to be where he is–in the middle of the South’s musical traditions.

On his show Highway 61, Scott Barretta spotlights the historic Nashville blues scene with a nod to WLAC Radio, the 50,000-watt clear-channel powerhouse that beamed crucial rhythm & blues recordings all over the eastern United States during the 1950s and beyond. Featured artists from the Nashville legacy are Pvt. Cecil Gant, Jimmy Sweeny, Billy McAllister, Christine Catrell, Ivory Joe Hunter, Shy Guy Douglas, Johnny Jones, Lillian Offitt, Esquezito, Arthur Gunter, Bernard Harrison, Gene Allison, Arthur Alexander, Roscoe Shelton, Herbert Hunter, Sam Baker, Joe Henderson, and Johnny Jones.

Listen To: Highway 61 with Scott Barretta