NOWHERE is music more inextricably linked to American popular history and culture than in the US Deep South.
But America’s Music Corridor not only takes in Blues, jazz and country music capitals such as Memphis and New Orleans, but also the Midwest frontier state of Missouri.
Its capital St Louis is equally famous for its legendary blues history, Kansas City for jazz, and Branson, which claims to be the live popular music capital of the US, with more theatre seats than either New York’s Broadway or Las Vegas.
Branson, a four-and-a-half hour drive from St Louis, is located in the South Ozark Mountains and dominated by more than 30 theatres, many with lakeside settings, putting on nightly performances throughout the year.
In St Louis, the city’s music heritage extends beyond the Blues. A good introduction is the Walk of Fame in the Loop neighbourhood of the city where the sidewalk’s bronze stars celebrate the likes of Chuck Berry, Scott Joplin, Miles Davies and Tina Turner.
You can also catch a concert featuring everything from classical music to jazz and pop at the St Louis Symphony Orchestra’s Community Music School.
It is operated in conjunction with the world-renowned St Louis Symphony Orchestra, which stages performances from September through to May at the historic Powell Symphony Hall in the city’s Grand Centre Arts and Entertainment District.
Still in the Loop, rock-and-roll fans will be drawn to Blueberry Hill’s where the Elvis Room is full of memorabilia of the ‘King’. Live bands play here at weekends and regular performances are also put on by St Louis resident Chuck Berry.
Pianist Scott Joplin, known as the father of ragtime, spent most of his productive years in the capital at the turn of the century, and his house is now a National Historic Landmark.
A recreated version of the Rosebud Cafe, one of Joplin’s favourite haunts where he would practise compositions to patrons at its original location near St Louis Union Station, has opened next door to his home. Today’s followers can enjoy regular sessions there by modern ragtime masters.
The old rail station itself, with more than 120 shops and restaurants, stages live concerts, and Laclede’s Landing, also on the National Register of Historic Places, has a mixture of live music clubs.
The cobblestoned-street area, once part of St Louis’ famous riverboat port, is lined with restored warehouses which once stored tobacco and cotton. Today, they’re filled with diners and clubbers in such nightspots as Boomer’s, Hannegan’s and Mississippi Nights.
Soulard is the city’s oldest neighbourhood and also one of its most musical, with more than 30 restaurants and music clubs scattered throughout the area of red-brick townhouses and ornate churches.
At Soulard’s 1860’s Saloon and Hard Shell Café, manager Joanie Thomas describes the St Louis Blues as “not real down and dirty, like in MississippiÉ it’s a bit more upbeat, like soul and rhythm and blues mixed”.
However, UK representative for Missouri, Cellet Travel Services, thinks the state has plenty more to offer than just its music heritage.
Managing director Stella Clery Ackland said: “Missouri can be sold as offering the ‘real America’, with its cowboy culture, the history of the pioneer trails and the great trading routes and communities along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.
“Other attractions are the homes of Mark Twain and President Truman, the Pony Express Museum and soft-adventure activities in the Ozark Mountains.”
She describes Kansas City as a “beautifully laid-out early-Victorian city, offering some of the best jazz clubs outside of the Left Bank in Paris”.
Clery Ackland said it is an ideal destination for independent agents to learn about and sell to clients.
Cellet’s first product-training session on Missouri for 40 agents at the US embassy in London on April 13 has already sold out, with another planned for the autumn. It is also planning one in early May at a venue at Manchester Airport.
These will be followed by educational visits to the state for some of the participants.
Clery Ackland added: “I have found that customers are usually very well clued up about the US, so agents will need to do their homework before they can confidently sell places like Missouri.”