The land bordering the Mississippi as it runs through Missouri and Illinois is where the old river highways, the Missouri, Des Moines, Illinois and Ohio, join the mainstream of the river for the journey south to the main port of New Orleans, and its towns were defined by the river traffic. By this history, if not by geography, this region became for many people the center of the United States. In the nineteenth century, it was the divide between east and west, and traces of that division still hold good. West of the river, the prairies begin, the land of cowboy boots, cattle and myth. East is white America's version of the "old country," the towns that liked to consider themselves as centers of civilization on the border of the barbarous wilderness. In later years, when the national migration pattern became as much south to north as east to west, this area was once again an important point on the journey, and a place where some travelers would choose to remain.

The river flows into the deep South, heartland of the blues and breeding ground for rock 'n' roll and soul music. This is farm and plantation country, and Memphis, the regional metropolis, is far less distinct from its rural surroundings than Minneapolis, St. Louis, or New Orleans. Its population retains strong country roots, and its musical history has been made by all the folks from the surrounding fields who came into the city to record and sell their music, just as the cotton plantation owners came in to sell their bales to the national brokers.

The plantations, built by African slaves and later worked by African-American sharecroppers, created a population in which blacks were the majority and, while their political power was brutally curtailed, they were a dominant influence on music. All the musicians to come out of this area, whatever their race, have been deeply affected by black traditions. Despite segregation, black and white musicians have traded tunes and played together for generations, from the days when Mississippi John Hurt was working at dances with the white fiddler W. T. Narmour to the Stax studio scene that produced the Memphis Horns. The mixing was not easy, but it made for a unique musical world that could produce a white r&b singer like Elvis Presley and a black country star like Charley Pride.