Highway 61 Resurfaced was published in April of 2005. Classic Rock deejay and private eye, Rick Shannon’s adventures continue, this time in the Mississippi Delta. As always, the story is high in protein, low in carbs.   BUY IT NOW!

It all starts when Southern Belle Lollie Woolfolk sashays into Rick Shannon’s office at Rockin’ Vestigations in Vicksburg. She hires him to find the grandfather she never met, one-time blues producer Tucker Woolfolk. The day after Rick finds him, the old man is murdered. A couple of days later, Tucker Woolfolk’s former partner is killed too. Then Lollie Woolfolk disappears.

Things start to get weird when another woman claiming to be Lollie Woolfolk shows up and hires him to find out who killed the two men and why. Rick’s investigation turns up evidence pointing to the legendary Blind, Crippled, and Crazy sessions, a fabled blues recording date featuring Blind Buddy Cotton, Crippled Willie Jefferson, and Crazy Earl Tate. Blues scholars have been searching for these tapes for fifty years. But no one has ever killed for them. Until now.

Rick and Lollie soon find themselves looking back half a century to solve the case and it takes them up famed Highway 61 to places rich in the history of the blues.

One of those places is the quaint town of Leland, Mississippi, home of Muppets creator Jim Hensen. But it wasn’t always so picturesque. Back around 1908, Collier’s Magazine called Kermit’s birthplace, ‘The hellhole of the Delta.’ In those days Leland was a wide-open town, busting with cotton money and awash in illegal liquor, cocaine, and gambling. It was the wildest party you could find between Memphis and New Orleans.

But it wasn’t all fun and games. And for the past fifty years, certain people have worked very hard to keep the lid on some unsavory business. But when Pigfoot Morgan gets released from Parchman Farm half a century after going in, all hell breaks loose, threatening the fortunes of three old bluesmen and four generations of a Delta cotton dynasty.

It’s the sort of book that raises questions like: Who killed Lamar Suggs and why did they stick a fork in his back? Why is former high school football star Crail Pitts driving around the Delta with a lawyer in his trunk? Can Blind Buddy Cotton see a lot better than his name implies? Can Crazy Earl Tate really cripple a man by wrapping a black cat hair, two rusty coffin nails, and a chicken snake skin in a tobacco sack? What made Crippled Willie Jefferson stop playing the Devil’s music and turn to the Lord? And why are they selling hot tamales all over the Mississippi Delta? Get the book and find out!