MISSISSIPPI & MISSOURI, THE GREAT FLOOD OF 1993

The Great Flood of 1993

Today, The Grandma is at home trying to survive to the intense heat wave that is affecting Barcelona.

She has been reading about another weather phenomenon, the Great Flood of 1993 that affected the American Midwestern, along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and their tributaries, from April to October 1993 and had its high peak on a day like today twenty-seven years ago.

The Great Flood of 1993 or Great Mississippi and Missouri Rivers Flood of 1993 was a flood that occurred in the Midwestern United States, along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and their tributaries, from April to October 1993. 

The flood was among the most costly and devastating to ever occur in the United States, with $15 billion in damages, approx. $26 billion in 2018 dollars.

The hydrographic basin affected over around 1,199 km in length and 700 km in width, totaling about 830,000 km2.

Within this zone, the flooded area totaled around 78,000 km2 and was the worst such U.S. disaster since the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, as measured by duration, area inundated, persons displaced, crop and property damage, and number of record river levels. In some categories, the 1993 flood even surpassed the 1927 flood, at the time the largest flood ever recorded on the Mississippi.

Above average rainfall and below average temperatures beginning in the summer of 1992 resulted in above-normal soil moisture and reservoir levels in the Missouri and Upper Mississippi River basins. This weather pattern persisted throughout the following autumn. During the winter of 1992–93, the region experienced heavy snowfall.

These conditions were followed by persistent spring weather patterns that produced storms over the same locations. Soils across much of the affected area were saturated by June 1, with additional rainfall all running off into streams and rivers, instead of soaking into the ground. These wet-weather conditions contrasted sharply with the droughts and heat waves experienced in the southeastern United States.

More information: National Weather Service

Storms, persistent and repetitive in nature during the late spring and summer, bombarded the Upper Midwest with voluminous rainfall.

Portions of east-central Iowa received as much as 120 cm of rain between April 1 and August 31, 1993, and many areas across the central-northern plains had precipitation 400–750% above normal.

In the St. Louis National Weather Service (NWS) forecast area encompassing eastern Missouri and southwest Illinois, 36 forecast points rose above flood stage, and 20 river-stage records were broken.

The 1993 flood broke record river levels set during the 1973 Mississippi and the 1951 Missouri River floods.

Civil Air Patrol crews from 21 states served more than 5,000 meals to flood victims and volunteers, and their pilots logged more than 1,500 hours in the air inspecting utility lines and pipelines.

The Great Flood of 1993

Over 1,000 flood warnings and statements, five times the normal, were issued to notify the public and need-to-know officials of river levels. 

In such places as St. Louis, river levels were nearly 6 m above flood stage, the highest ever recorded there in 228 years. The 16 m-high St. Louis Floodwall, built to handle the volume of the 1844 flood, was able to keep the 1993 flood out with just over 0.6 m to spare.

This floodwall was built in the 1960s, to great controversy, out of interlocking prefabricated concrete blocks. Had it been breached, the whole of downtown St. Louis would have been submerged.

Emergency officials estimated that nearly all of the 700 privately built agricultural levees were overtopped or destroyed along the Missouri River. Navigation on the Mississippi and Missouri River had been closed since early July, resulting in a loss of $2 million (1993) per day in commerce.

James Scott, a 23-year-old Illinois man, was convicted in 1994 for intentionally causing a catastrophe and sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in causing some of the flooding across the river from Quincy, Illinois. In an attempt to strand his wife on the other side of the river so he could continue partying, Scott removed several sandbags from a levee holding back the water. The breach flooded 57 km² of farmland, destroyed buildings, and closed a bridge. His conviction was overturned in 1997, but reinstated in 1998. He maintains his innocence behind bars.

More information: AccuWeather

The Redwood River in Minnesota began experiencing severe flooding in May. On May 22, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, received 190 mm of rain in a three-hour period. From May through July, Sioux Falls, South Dakota received 573 mm of rain, the wettest three-month period in its history.

As noted above, rains in South Dakota contributed to flooding downstream. In June, flooding occurred along the Black River in Wisconsin, with flooding also starting to occur along the Mississippi, Missouri, and Kansas rivers.

Starting as early as June 7, reports of levees being overtopped and levee breaks became common. These breaches acted to delay the flood crests, temporarily storing excess water in the adjacent lowlands, but the rain kept falling.

The Great Flood of 1993

In the beginning of June, the Missouri and Mississippi rivers dropped below flood stage and were receding.

During the second week of June, river levels rose to near flood stage before yet again beginning their slow recession. By the end of June, the Mississippi River was 1.2 m below flood stage at St. Louis, while many other river locations in the region were near flood stage. Precipitation for the month averaged from 25 mm above normal in Kansas City, to nearly 100 mm above normal in Springfield, Missouri.

July brought more heavy rain to the Missouri and upper Mississippi River basins in Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Illinois, and Minnesota.

Rainfall amounts of 125 to 175 mm in 24 hours were common. Precipitation for the month averaged from 25 mm above normal at St. Louis and Springfield, to between 150 to 175 mm above normal at Columbia and Kansas City, Missouri.

From July 11 until July 22, the Des Moines Water Works treatment facility was flooded by the Raccoon River. This resulted in the plant being powered down, unable to provide running water for that period. During this time the Army National Guard and American Red Cross set up water stations, and the local Anheuser-Busch distributor contributed water in white six packs with their logo on it.

More information: Live Science

Once running water was restored, there was enough pressure for people to bathe and flush toilets, but the water was not certified potable until July 29. The final usage restrictions were lifted in August.

Major sandbagging activities took place along the higher Missouri River, the River des Peres in St. Louis, the Mississippi River south of St. Louis, and on many other tributaries across Missouri and Illinois. Some of these efforts were successful, while others were not. The copious rain during July sent record-setting crests down the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, causing river gauges to malfunction along the way.

The record crests met within days of each other at their confluence near St. Louis. Navigation on the Mississippi and Missouri River was closed in early July, resulting in a loss of $2 million (1993) per day in commerce.

Mississippi River levels stabilized for a few days at April 1973 record stages. When the crest from the Missouri River arrived, levels rose again.

The Mississippi River broke through levees, drove people and their possessions to higher ground, and caused havoc through the floodplains.

The crests, now combined as one, moved downstream through St. Louis on the way to the Upper Mississippi's confluence with the Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois. Only minor flooding occurred below Cairo due to the Lower Mississippi's larger channel below that point, as well as drought conditions in the eastern U.S.

If the Ohio River watershed had not been in drought while the Missouri and Upper Mississippi were in flood, the 1993 flood might have rivaled the 1927 flood in overall damage on the Lower Mississippi, beyond Cairo.

On August 1, levee breaks near Columbia, Illinois, flooded 190 km² of land, inundating the Illinois towns of Valmeyer and Fults. The released water continued to flow parallel to the river, approaching the levees protecting historic Prairie du Rocher and Fort de Chartres.

On August 3, officials decided to break through the stronger Mississippi River levee to allow the water back into the river. The plan worked and the historic areas were saved, although some residential areas were flooded in counties above Prairie du Rocher.

More information: The Waterways Journal Weekly

The Mississippi River at St. Louis crested at 15.1 m on August 1, nearly 6 m above flood stage. It had a peak flow rate of 30,600 m³/s. At this rate, a bowl the size of Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis would be filled to the brim in 70 seconds.

Some locations on the Mississippi River flooded for almost 200 days, while various regions by Missouri neared 100 days of flooding.

On the Mississippi, Grafton, Illinois, recorded flooding for 195 days; Clarksville, Missouri, for 187 days; Winfield, Missouri, for 183 days; Hannibal, Missouri, for 174 days; and Quincy, Illinois, for 152 days.

The Missouri River was above flood stage for 62 days in Jefferson City, Missouri, 77 days at Hermann, Missouri, and for 94 days at St. Charles in the St. Louis metropolitan area.

On October 7, 103 days after the flooding began, the Mississippi River at St. Louis finally dropped below flood stage. Approximately 100,000 homes were destroyed as a result of the flooding, 60,000 km² of farmland inundated, and the whole towns of Valmeyer, Illinois, and Rhineland, Missouri, were relocated to higher ground.

The floods cost 32 lives officially; however, a more likely target is suspected to be around 50 people, as well as an estimated $15–20 billion in damages. Even after the water was gone, large amounts of sand still covered the farmlands and homes.

More information: NASA-Earth Observatory

Scientists have been warning

about global warming for decades.

It's too late to stop it now,

but we can lessen its severity and impacts.

David Suzuki

WILLIAM C. FAULKNER, A NOBEL PRIZE FROM MISSISSIPPI

William Faulkner

After celebrating the Festivity of La Mercè, the Patron of Barcelona, during five intensive days, The Grandma is exhausted. Today, she has decided to rest at home and reread one of her favourite writers, William Faulkner, who was born on a day like today in 1897.

The Grandma has invited Jordi Santanyí, her closer friend, to talk about Faulkner, his literature, his ideas, and his influence over the Universal Literature.

William Cuthbert Faulkner (September 25, 1897-July 6, 1962) was an American writer and Nobel Prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi. 

Faulkner wrote novels, short stories, screenplays, poetry, essays, and a play. He is primarily known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where he spent most of his life.

Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers in American literature generally and Southern literature specifically.

Though his work was published as early as 1919 and largely during the 1920s and 1930s, Faulkner's renown reached its peak upon the publication of Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner and his 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the only Mississippi-born Nobel winner. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and his last novel The Reivers (1962), each won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

In 1998, the Modern Library ranked his 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury sixth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century; also on the list were As I Lay Dying (1930) and Light in August (1932). Absalom, Absalom! (1936) appears on similar lists.

More information: The William Faulkner Society

Born William Cuthbert Falkner in New Albany, Mississippi, he was the first of four sons of Murry Cuthbert Falkner and Maud Butler. He had three younger brothers. Soon after his first birthday, his family moved to Ripley, Mississippi, where his father Murry worked as the treasurer for the family-owned Gulf & Chicago Railroad Company.  

William Faulkner

Murry hoped to inherit the railroad from his father, John Wesley Thompson Falkner, but John had little confidence in Murry's ability to run a business and sold it for $75,000. Following the sale of the railroad business, Murry proposed a plan to get a new start for his family by moving to Texas and becoming a rancher. Maud disagreed with this proposition, however, and they moved instead to Oxford, Mississippi, where Murry's father owned several businesses, making it easy for Murry to find work. Thus, four days prior to William's fifth birthday, the Falkner family settled in Oxford, where he lived on and off for the rest of his life.

His family, particularly his mother Maud, his maternal grandmother Lelia Butler, and Caroline Callie Barr, the African American nanny who raised him from infancy, crucially influenced the development of Faulkner's artistic imagination. Both his mother and grandmother were avid readers as well as painters and photographers, educating him in visual language.

More information: Writing Cooperative

While Murry enjoyed the outdoors and encouraged his sons to hunt, track, and fish, Maud valued education and took pleasure in reading and going to church. She taught her sons to read before sending them to public school and exposed them to classics such as Charles Dickens and Grimms' Fairy Tales.

Faulkner's lifelong education by Callie Barr is central to his novels' preoccupations with the politics of sexuality and race.

As a schoolchild, Faulkner had success early on. He excelled in the first grade, skipped the second, and did well through the third and fourth grades. However, beginning somewhere in the fourth and fifth grades of his schooling, Faulkner became a much quieter and more withdrawn child.

He began to play hooky occasionally and became somewhat indifferent to his schoolwork, instead taking interest in studying the history of Mississippi on his own time beginning in the seventh grade. The decline of his performance in school continued, and Faulkner wound up repeating the eleventh and twelfth grade, never graduating from high school.

William Faulkner

Faulkner spent his boyhood listening to stories told to him by his elders including those of the Civil War, slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Falkner family. 

Faulkner's grandfather would also tell him of the exploits of William's great-grandfather and namesake, William Clark Falkner, who was a successful businessman, writer, and Civil War hero. Telling stories about Old Colonel, as his family called him, had already become something of a family pastime when Faulkner was a boy. According to one of Faulkner's biographers, by the time William was born, his great-grandfather had been enshrined long since as a household deity.

When he was 17, Faulkner met Phil Stone, who became an important early influence on his writing. Stone was four years his senior and came from one of Oxford's older families; he was passionate about literature and had already earned bachelor's degrees from Yale and the University of Mississippi.

Faulkner also attended the latter, joined the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, and pursued his dream to become a writer. Stone read and was impressed by some of Faulkner's early poetry, becoming one of the first to recognize and encourage Faulkner's talent. Stone mentored the young Faulkner, introducing him to the works of writers such as James Joyce, who influenced Faulkner's own writing.

More information: Writers Write

In his early 20s, Faulkner gave poems and short stories he had written to Stone in hopes of their being published. Stone would in turn send these to publishers, but they were uniformly rejected.

The younger Faulkner was greatly influenced by the history of his family and the region in which he lived. Mississippi marked his sense of humor, his sense of the tragic position of black and white Americans, his characterization of Southern characters, and his timeless themes, including fiercely intelligent people dwelling behind the façades of good ol' boys and simpletons.

William Faulkner

Unable to join the United States Army due to his height (he was 5' 5½"), Faulkner enlisted in a reservist unit of the British Army in Toronto. Despite his claims, records indicate that Faulkner was never actually a member of the British Royal Flying Corps and never saw active service during the First World War.

In 1918, Faulkner's surname went from Falkner to Faulkner. According to one story, a careless typesetter simply made an error. When the misprint appeared on the title page of his first book, Faulkner was asked whether he wanted the change. He supposedly replied, Either way suits me.

In adolescence, Faulkner began writing poetry almost exclusively. He did not write his first novel until 1925. His literary influences are deep and wide. He once stated that he modeled his early writing on the Romantic era in late 18th- and early 19th-century England. He attended the University of Mississippi in Oxford, enrolling in 1919, going three semesters before dropping out in November 1920.

Faulkner was able to attend classes at the university because his father had a job there as a business manager. He skipped classes often and received a "D" grade in English. However, some of his poems were published in campus publications.

More information: The Culture Trip

Although Faulkner is identified with Mississippi, he was residing in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1925 when he wrote his first novel, Soldiers' Pay. After being directly influenced by Sherwood Anderson, he made his first attempt at fiction writing. Anderson assisted in the publication of Soldiers' Pay and Mosquitoes, Faulkner's second novel, set in New Orleans, by recommending them to his publisher.

The miniature house at 624 Pirate's Alley, just around the corner from St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, is now the site of Faulkner House Books, where it also serves as the headquarters of the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society.

During the summer of 1927, Faulkner wrote his first novel set in his fictional Yoknapatawpha County, titled Flags in the Dust. This novel drew heavily on the traditions and history of the South, in which Faulkner had been engrossed in his youth. He was extremely proud of the novel upon its completion and he believed it to be a significant step up from his previous two novels. However, when submitted for publication, it was rejected by the publishers Boni & Liveright. 

William Faulkner

Faulkner was devastated by this rejection, but he eventually allowed his literary agent, Ben Wasson, to significantly edit the text, and the novel was published in 1929 as Sartoris.

In the autumn of 1928, just after his 31st birthday, he began working on The Sound and the Fury. He started by writing three short stories about a group of children with the last name Compson, but soon began to feel that the characters he had created might be better suited for a full-length novel. Perhaps as a result of disappointment in the initial rejection of Flags in the Dust, Faulkner had now become indifferent to his publishers and wrote this novel in a much more experimental style.

In describing the writing process for this work, Faulkner would later say, One day I seemed to shut the door between me and all publisher's addresses and book lists. I said to myself, 'Now I can write.'

After its completion, Faulkner insisted that Ben Wasson not do any editing or add any punctuation for clarity.

More information: UVA Magazine

In 1929, Faulkner married Estelle Oldham, Andrew Kuhn serving as best man at the wedding. Estelle brought with her two children from her previous marriage to Cornell Franklin and Faulkner hoped to support his new family as a writer. He began writing As I Lay Dying in 1929 while working night shifts at the University of Mississippi Power House. The novel would be published in 1930.

Beginning in 1930, Faulkner sent out some of his short stories to various national magazines. Several of his stories were published, which brought him enough income to buy a house in Oxford for his family to inhabit, which he named Rowan Oak. He made money on his 1931 novel, Sanctuary, which was widely reviewed and read, but widely disliked for its perceived criticism of the South.

William Faulkner

By 1932, Faulkner was in need of money. He asked Wasson to sell the serialization rights for his newly completed novel, Light in August, to a magazine for $5,000, but none accepted the offer. Then MGM Studios offered Faulkner work as a screenwriter in Hollywood.

Although not an avid moviegoer, he needed the money, and so accepted the job offer and arrived in Culver City, California, in May 1932. There he worked with director Howard Hawks, with whom he quickly developed a friendship, as they both enjoyed drinking and hunting. Howard Hawks' brother, William Hawks, became Faulkner's Hollywood agent. Faulkner would continue to find reliable work as a screenwriter from the 1930s to the 1950s.

Faulkner served as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville from February to June 1957 and again in 1958.

On June 17, 1962, Faulkner suffered a serious injury in a fall from his horse, which led to thrombosis. He suffered a fatal heart attack on July 6, 1962, at the age of 64, at Wright's Sanatorium in Byhalia, Mississippi.

Faulkner is buried with his family in St. Peter's Cemetery in Oxford, alongside the grave of an unidentified family friend, whose stone is marked only with the initials E.T.

More information: Brain Pickings

From the early 1920s to the outbreak of World War II, Faulkner published 13 novels and many short stories. Such a body of work formed the basis of his reputation and earned him the Nobel Prize at age 52.

Faulkner's prodigious output includes his most celebrated novels such as The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936). Faulkner was also a prolific writer of short stories.

Faulkner was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature for his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel. It was awarded at the following year's banquet along with the 1950 Prize to Bertrand Russell. 

Faulkner detested the fame and glory that resulted from his recognition. His aversion was so great that his 17-year-old daughter learned of the Nobel Prize only when she was called to the principal's office during the school day.

He donated part of his Nobel money to establish a fund to support and encourage new fiction writers, eventually resulting in the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and donated another part to a local Oxford bank, establishing a scholarship fund to help educate African-American teachers at Rust College in nearby Holly Springs, Mississippi.

More information: Archive

Read, read, read.

Read everything -trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it.

Just like a carpenter who works 

as an apprentice and studies the master.

Read! You'll absorb it. Then write.

If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.
 

William Faulkner

JOHN LEE HOOKER: MISSISSIPPI COUNTRY BLUES

John Lee Hooker

John Lee Hooker (August 22, 1912– June 21, 2001) was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. The son of a sharecropper, he rose to prominence performing an electric guitar-style adaptation of Delta blues. Hooker often incorporated other elements, including talking blues and early North Mississippi Hill country blues. He developed his own driving-rhythm boogie style, distinct from the 1930s–1940s piano-derived boogie-woogie.

Hooker's date of birth is a subject of debate; the years 1912, 1915, 1917, 1920, and 1923 have been suggested. Information in the 1920 and 1930 censuses indicates that he was born in 1912. It is believed that he was born in Tutwiler, Mississippi, in Tallahatchie County, although some sources say his birthplace was near Clarksdale, in Coahoma County.

More information: The Official Website of John Lee Hooker

The Hooker children were home-schooled. They were permitted to listen only to religious songs; the spirituals sung in church were their earliest exposure to music. In 1921, their parents separated. The next year, their mother married William Moore, a blues singer, who provided John Lee with an introduction to the guitar. Moore was his first significant blues influence. He was a local blues guitarist who, in Shreveport, Louisiana, learned to play a droning, one-chord blues that was strikingly different from the Delta blues of the time. 

John Lee Hooker

Another formative influence was Tony Hollins, who dated Hooker's sister Alice, helped teach Hooker to play, and gave him his first guitar. For the rest of his life, Hooker regarded Hollins as a formative influence on his style of playing and his career as a musician. Among the songs that Hollins reputedly taught Hooker were versions of Crawlin' King Snake and Catfish Blues.

He worked in factories in various cities during World War II, eventually getting a job with the Ford Motor Company in Detroit in 1943. He frequented the blues clubs and bars on Hastings Street, the heart of the black entertainment district, on Detroit's east side.Hooker's popularity grew quickly as he performed in Detroit clubs, and, seeking an instrument louder than his acoustic guitar, he bought his first electric guitar.

More information: All Music

Hooker's recording career began in 1948, when Modern Records, based in Los Angeles, released a demo he had recorded for Bernie Besman in Detroit. The single, Boogie Chillen', became a hit and the best-selling race record of 1949. Despite being illiterate, Hooker was a prolific lyricist. In addition to adapting traditional blues lyrics, he composed original songs. 

John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd and John Lee Hooker

Hooker performed Boom Boom in the role of a street musician in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers. In 1989, he recorded the album The Healer with various other notable musicians, including Carlos Santana and Bonnie Raitt. He recorded several songs with Van Morrison, the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton.

Hooker spent the last years of his life in Long Beach, California. In 1997, he opened a nightclub in San Francisco's Fillmore District called John Lee Hooker's Boom Boom Room, after one of his hit songs.

Hooker fell ill just before a tour of Europe in 2001 and died in his sleep on June 21, 2001, in Los Altos, California, at around 88 years of age. He was interred at the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland.

More information: The Guardian

Among his many awards, Hooker was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991 and the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2016. Two of his songs, Boogie Chillen and Boom Boom, were included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. Boogie Chillen was also included in the Recording Industry Association of America's list of the Songs of the Century. He was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. He also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

 I want to play music when I want, write a song if I want 

or watch a baseball game if I want. 

John Lee Hooke

ELVIS AARON PRESLEY: THE KING OF THE ROCK'N'ROLL

Elvis Aaron Presley aka The King

Forty years without the King of the Rock'n'Roll is too much time. The Grandma remembers, clearly, the importance of Elvis Presley in the recent history of the United States and his influence in the world music. To homage The King and to remember the excellent moments together, The Grandma wants to talk about him, one of the most important legends of the last century:

Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935–August 16, 1977) was an American singer and actor. Regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century, he is often referred to as the King of Rock and Roll or simply the King.

More information: Elvis

Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and relocated to Memphis, Tennessee with his family when he was 13 years old. His music career began there in 1954, when he recorded a song with producer Sam Phillips at Sun Records. Accompanied by guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, Presley was an early popularizer of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country music and rhythm and blues. 

Elvis Presley's Jailrock House

RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arranged by Colonel Tom Parker, who managed the singer for more than two decades. Presley's first RCA single, Heartbreak Hotel, was released in January 1956 and became a number-one hit in the United States. 

He was regarded as the leading figure of rock and roll after a series of successful network television appearances and chart-topping records. His energized interpretations of songs and sexually provocative performance style, combined with a singularly potent mix of influences across color lines that coincided with the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, made him enormously popular and controversial.

More information: Elvis Presley Photos

In November 1956, Presley made his film debut in Love Me Tender. In 1958, he was drafted into military service. He resumed his recording career two years later, producing some of his most commercially successful work before devoting much of the 1960s to making Hollywood films and their accompanying soundtrack albums, most of which were critically derided. 

Elvis Presley's Suspicious Minds

In 1968, following a seven-year break from live performances, he returned to the stage in the acclaimed televised comeback special Elvis, which led to an extended Las Vegas concert residency and a string of highly profitable tours. 

In 1973, Presley featured in the first globally broadcast concert via satellite, Aloha from Hawaii. 

On August 16, 1977, he suffered a heart attack in his Graceland estate, and died as a result. His death came in the wake of many years of prescription drug abuse.

More information: Elvis, The Music

He won three Grammys, also receiving the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at age 36, and has been inducted into multiple music halls of fame. 

The Grandma and Elvis in his Tupelo's birthplace

Presley was scheduled to fly out of Memphis on the evening of August 16, 1977, to begin another tour. That afternoon, he was discovered unresponsive on his bathroom floor. Attempts to revive him failed, and death was officially pronounced at 3:30 p.m. at Baptist Memorial Hospital.

Presley's rise to national attention in 1956 transformed the field of popular music and had a huge effect on the broader scope of popular culture. As the catalyst for the cultural revolution that was rock and roll, he was central not only to defining it as a musical genre but in making it a touchstone of youth culture and rebellious attitude. With its racially mixed origins, repeatedly affirmed by Presley, rock and roll's occupation of a central position in mainstream American culture facilitated a new acceptance and appreciation of black culture.

More information: Graceland

In this regard, Little Richard said of Presley, He was an integrator. Elvis was a blessing. They wouldn't let black music through. He opened the door for black music. Al Green agreed: He broke the ice for all of us. President Jimmy Carter remarked on his legacy in 1977: His music and his personality, fusing the styles of white country and black rhythm and blues, permanently changed the face of American popular culture. His following was immense, and he was a symbol to people the world over of the vitality, rebelliousness, and good humor of his country. 

Truth is like the sun. 

You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. 

Elvis Presley

BLUES: AMERICAN CHORDS OF SADNESS & MELANCHOLY

Blues was born in Mississippi Delta

Blues is a genre and musical form originated by African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The genre developed from roots in African-American work songs and European-American folk music. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The blues form, ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and roll, is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes or worried notes, usually thirds or fifths flattened in pitch, are also an important part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove.

More information: American Blues Scene

Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current structure became standard: the AAB pattern, consisting of a line sung over the four first bars, its repetition over the next four, and then a longer concluding line over the last bars. Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating the troubles experienced in African-American society.

More information: Blue Radio Stations

Many elements, such as the call-and-response format and the use of blue notes, can be traced back to the music of Africa. The origins of the blues are also closely related to the religious music of the Afro-American community, the spirituals. The first appearance of the blues is often dated to after the ending of slavery and, later, the development of juke joints. It is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the former slaves.

More information: National Blues Museum of Sant Louis, Missouri

Chroniclers began to report about blues music at the dawn of the 20th century. The first publication of blues sheet music was in 1908. Blues has since evolved from unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves into a wide variety of styles and subgenres. Blues subgenres include country blues, such as Delta blues and Piedmont blues, as well as urban blues styles such as Chicago blues and West Coast blues. World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a hybrid form called blues rock evolved.

B.B.KING

B.B.King in a concert

Riley B. King (September 16, 1925 – May 14, 2015), known professionally as B.B. King, was an American blues singer, electric guitarist, songwriter, and record producer. King introduced a sophisticated style of soloing based on fluid string bending and shimmering vibrato that influenced many later electric blues guitarists.

King was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, and is considered one of the most influential blues musicians of all time, earning the nickname The King of the Blues, and one of the "Three Kings of the Blues Guitar" along with Albert King and Freddie King. King was known for performing tirelessly throughout his musical career, appearing at more than 200 concerts per year on average into his 70s. In 1956, he reportedly appeared at 342 shows.

On May 14, 2015, King died and his body was flown to Memphis. The funeral procession led down Beale Street, with a brass band marching in front of the hearse, playing When the Saints Go Marching In, as mourners called out BB. Rodd Bland, son of the late blues singer Bobby Blue Bland, carried the latest iteration of King's famous guitar Lucille. Thousands lined the streets to pay their last respects. His body was then driven down Route 61 to his hometown of Indianola, Mississippi.

More information: B.B.King

I was born on a plantation, and things weren't so good. 

We didn't have any money. I never thought of the word 'poor' 'til 

I got to be a man, but when you live in a house 

that you can always peek out of and see what kind of day it is, 

you're not doing so well.

 B.B.King