Welcome to Junior's Juke Joint!

Up here in chilly Canada, you don’t come across a whole lot in the way of genuine Juke Joints. Hockey arenas yes-juke joints not so much. So when a frost bitten blues fan like yours truly wishes to see some live blues at a genuine juke joint –well he best pack a change of boxers, gas up the car and point it south.

There is another option however. You can make your way over to Junior’s Juke Joint. This website was created John L. Doughty Jr., a Mississippi resident (on the Louisiana side) and self-described cultural anthropologist.

If there’s a juke joint in Mississippi, Junior knows about it intimately. Where it is, who owns it, even the price of a beer. These aren’t the “Juke Joints” you’ll find by clicking around Mississippi’s Tourism website either, as Junior explains " I’m not talking about white people blues bars filled with college students. I'm talking about edge-of-a-cotton-field juke joints filled with real Delta folks.”

If you’re a fan of not only blues, but the culture and history from which this great music form sprang- Junior’s Juke Joint will provide you with amplitude of great stories, pictures and even maps to, as Junior puts it,” Delta places the local chambers of commerce never heard of. (Heck, let's face facts: if the chambers knew about those places they'd want to shut them down.)”

Juke joint locations aren’t the only things Junior dishes out. He also gives you tips on how to camp around Mississippi on the cheap while travelling from juke joint to juke joint. He provides good southern recipes for stick to your ribs home cooking. Suggestions for side trips like great out of the way eateries and grave markers of the blues greats. Oh yes- and Junior spins a pretty good yarn also. There are stories of honkey tonk shoot ups ,living at a brothel and weekends spent under T-Model Ford’s shade tree.

The design and look of the site is rudimentary at best-but don’t let that fool you. This site has been honoured various times, most notably named "Most Entertaining Online Ethnography” by the Smithsonian Institution, National Anthropological Archives.

The deeper you delve into the Juke Joint the richer the material gets. Junior is definitely a character- a true original. It goes to demonstrate that sometimes the fans of blues are as much a national treasure as the musicians themselves.
"If you're in one of these places and you notice a tall white guy with a gray ponytail, that's probably me. Buy me a beer for directing you to such an awesome place." - John L. Doughty Jr.