Author(s): Garth Cartwright

Music

Armed only with a Greyhound ticket and enough money for his next beer, Garth Cartwright set out to see whether the American roots music he loved - blues and country, folk and soul - was still alive in the twenty-first century. His journey took him from the LA bus station to the Mexican cantinas of San Antonio, the Indian reservations of New Mexico to the last surviving juke joints of Highway 61. Along the way he meets an exotic mix of surviving legends - from soul diva Mabel John to the queen of Mexican American song Lydia Mendoza, funk pioneer Charles Wright to country troubadour Billy Joe Shaver - plus a supporting cast of cowboy poets, down and out bluesmen and a feller called Lee who becomes Cartwright's co-pilot for an epic drive across the deserts of the South-West. A remarkable piece of travel writing and an introduction to the real stars of Americana.