Description
By: Tim Steil .
Running straight up the gut of a nation, Highway 61 begins on the edge of New Orleans' French Quarter, rolls past Delta cotton fields, and makes a mad dash to Lake Superior's rocky North Shore, slicing through eight states along the way. Cajuns, slaves, sharecroppers, fur trappers—all have a common heritage along the route of this historic road.
In Highway 61 Revisited, author Tim Steil presents a beautifully illustrated and highly entertaining three-act travelogue that kicks off in the heat of a Crescent City nightclub and ends at the Canadian border, just one day ahead of the season's first snowfall. In between, the author celebrates the highway's rich musical roots, profiling seminal artists like Robert Johnson, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, and Bob Dylan, and name- checking dozens more. He also leafs through the road's literary and historical associations, recalling the works of Eudora Welty, Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Garrison Keillor, and exploring locations like Vicksburg and the Lorraine Motel. Throughout, his story is interspersed with quotes from songs, poems, essays, and other writings that evoke the heavy atmosphere of Highway 61.
In addition, Steil frequently eschews the legendary, introducing readers to a colorful cast of everyday folks. Sip tea with a Louisiana author who took a revolver full of slugs from her husband's .38 and lived to write about it . . . sit a spell with the proprietor of the Riverside Hotel in historic Clarksdale ... pick a few bars with a truck driver who creates guitars from old gas cans .. . step inside the shop of a Memphis haberdasher who dressed Elvis in his early days ... spare some change for a former Iowa nurse down on her luck . . and work the Mississippi with a Wisconsin paddlewheel captain, one of the nation's last true rivermen.
It's a marvelous journey set against a drapery of Spanish moss hanging from ancient Louisiana oaks, the neon jungle of Beale Street after a warm rain, and Minnesota's north country as it offers one last blaze of glorious color. From the murderous legacy of slavery to the magic of rhythm and blues, from the spirit of intrepid exploration to the silent corpses of sailors at the bottom of Gitchigumee, the poignant stories and evocative photographs and illustrations in Highway 61 Revisited connect an entire nation's diversity to one remarkable road. Highway 61, like a thread of asphalt woven through the American fabric, is a singular reminder of all the joy and sorrow that this boundless variety presents.
The Author
Tim Steil has worked as a television, radio, and print media correspondent for two decades, including stints with the Chicago Tribune, Daily Southtown-Economist, and numerous national magazines. He is also the author of MBI's Route 66 and Fantastic Filling Stations, and a member of the Society of Midland Authors, the legendary Chicago literary roundtable formed by Hamlin Garland. A former naval air crewman, he was awarded the Naval Expeditionary Medal in 1983 for intelligence-gathering operations conducted while attached to the Multinational Peacekeeping Force in Beirut. Steil lives in Chicago, Illinois.
