Ain’t no needa go no further, brother. Ain’t no needa go no further, man. Tole you packin’ .45 You had better quit that jive. —LITTLE WALTER (B. LOUISIANA, 1930) I ride DL into the CL, gun right in my grip. I slip a clip in every rip, cause hatas likely to trip. —LIL WAYNE (B. LOUISIANA, 1981) PROLOGUE I SPED ALONG HIGHWAY 61, darting from one small town in the Mississippi Delta to the next with nothing but my old army duffel bag and CDs of blues singers I spent my life researching. Two weeks on the road from New Orleans and still nothing to show for it. I drove back to Clarksdale on a spring afternoon where heat broke in gassy waves from the pavement to find my old buddy JoJo. He was waiting for me when I arrived, a sack lunch filled with cold fried chicken sandwiches and potato salad. Loretta waved to us from the porch of their old farmhouse. Large and brown, she squinted into the white-hot sun, knowing I had to get back to New Orleans by Friday and that only JoJo could help me.
