When you look for Robert Johnson’s grave, you are faced with a choice. Johnson died 69 years ago, and a serious mix-up with the funeral arrangements means there are three headstones, miles apart, each proclaiming that the great blues musician lies beneath. Along the back roads of the Mississippi Delta people chuckle and say that’s the way his life was — you never knew where he was at.

I found one grave near a two-bit ramshackle hamlet known grandly as Morgan City. When I stepped out of the car, the Delta heat folded around me. Cicadas droned. Flat cotton fields stretched away beneath a white sky. A pickup truck passed on the road, spiralling dust in its wake.

“You may bury my body down by the highway side,” Johnson sang, “so my old evil spirit can catch the Greyhound bus and ride.” An elderly black man materialised from the long grass. He stood with his hands in his pockets. “Been gawn mos’ of ma lifetime,” he said. “Still casts a spell.”

The blues was born here, just over a century ago, among the black plantation workers of the Delta. All the great blues artists — from Robert Johnson and Charlie Patton through to Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, BB King, John Lee Hooker and countless others — came from the Delta.

From the 1920s, the music and the musicians began to drift north to Chicago with the great black migration out of the South. Highway 61 became the Blues Highway, carrying the music to a wider world. This was the great musical journey of America. All popular music owes a debt to the blues — R&B and rock’n’roll, soul and Motown and every other variation. “The blues is the roots,” Willie Dixon used to say. “Everything else is the fruits.” “WENT DOWN to the station. Jump the first mail train I see. I got the blues all over. And the blues they is chasing me.”

Mail trains are trickier to jump these days, so I opted for a rental car — not very bluesy but it had a CD player. I wanted to chase the blues all the way up to Chicago. From the Dixieland jazz bars of New Orleans, recovered now from the trauma of Katrina, I drove north through the bayou country of Louisiana. In the Rural Life Museum at Baton Rouge I wandered round the reconstructed shacks, the company store and the white board church of a former slave plantation where the most moving items were the old auction notices: “For Sale, four children, ages 13, 7, 5, and 11 months. Two to be sold with mother, others separately.”

Up in Jackson, Mississippi’s state capital, the wood-panelled lobby of the Eddy Hotel seemed to be full of extras from Gone with the Wind. A gentleman in a white suit, with a florid complexion and an ivory-headed cane, was reading the Jackson Clarion-Ledger in an armchair by the door. Nearby, a Southern belle sat with her parents, hands folded in her lap, demure and dangerous.

On the other side of town, in the 930 Blues Cafe, the black singer was rasping into the microphone: “We gonna get that Wang Dang Doodle, all night long...” The 930 is in the fine tradition of Mississippi juke joints. At the top of rickety stairs, folks were drinking beer and eating ribs while the band wailed the blues. It was the kind of place that was once exclusive to black culture. But blues has long since been desegregated, and young white kids, bursting with hormones and acne, were happily jiving with older black couples. A middle-aged white guy turned up. He might have been the high-school geography teacher. Unpacking a trombone, he joined the sweaty band and began to blow a mean horn.

The next morning I drove north into the Delta proper. It had the eerie power of a prairie. Roads, straight as ruled lines, diminished towards a flat horizon. Abandoned cotton gins were silhouetted against a bleached sky. The Delta is not really a delta; the Mississippi flows southwards for another 500 miles before reaching the sea. But it feels like one, as if the sea is just over the horizon. In fact it is the great river that is just out of sight — fat, sluggish, occasionally rearing into view beyond the levees.

Every town in the Delta is steeped in the history of the blues. This was the strangeness of the place — that so much music had emerged from so small an area. There is Indianola, where BB King was born, where he sang for nickels on the street and to which he returns every year to play a free concert. There is the Stovall Plantation, west of Clarksdale, where Muddy Waters worked as a tractor driver before catching the train north to Chicago one morning in May of 1943. There are Robert Johnson’s three graves, two of them just southwest of Greenwood.

Johnson lived the rock’n’roll lifestyle before rock’n’roll was invented. People believed he had sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his talent. He was an itinerant, travelling from town to town, busking on street corners, playing in whisky dives and in Saturday-night juke joints. A small-boned man with intense eyes, he was addicted to women and whisky. Both were implicated in his early death. Playing at a house party, he was served poisoned whisky by a jealous husband. He died some days later. They say at the end he was on his hands and knees, barking like a dog. The devil had come to claim him.

Of all the Delta towns, Clarksdale’s blues heritage is perhaps the strongest. The train station, where Muddy Waters caught the Illinois Central to Chicago, is now the Delta Blues Museum. Among the displays are Muddy’s plantation shack as well as some rare archive footage of him playing to rapturous audiences on his tour of Europe in 1953.

I was staying at the Big Pink Guesthouse. It was like a stage set for a Tennessee Williams play. I kept expecting Blanche DuBois to drop in for mint juleps.

Beneath the ceiling fans were parlour settees, glass lamps, old portraits, potted palms, and a bust of Elvis. There was an organ in the hall and an inner courtyard with a tiled fountain. Upstairs was a library of Southern classics, and a bath the size of Alabama.

It was only stumbling distance from the Big Pink to Ground Zero, a blues club recently opened by the film star Morgan Freeman. In spite of the Hollywood connections, it is in the tradition of Delta juke joints, a down-home, spit-and-sawdust kind of place, barn-like, friendly and crazy for music. The walls were covered with graffiti and posters, and the crowd was a mix of locals and ardent blues tourists.

The band had a guest guitarist with them, a 13-year-old black boy called Omar Gordon, another child prodigy of the Delta. For those who despair of the way music has become manufactured and worry about the decline of the blues, young Omar is the antidote. Serious, self-contained and dignified, he lit the place up with fluid lines of notes that would have impressed Robert Johnson. The next morning I headed north to Memphis with his guitar licks still humming round my head. MEMPHIS MAY be in Tennessee but its soul is in Mississippi; it is the big city for all the small towns of the Delta. It is no coincidence that Elvis, the white boy with the black sound, grew up here. His first single, That’s All Right (Mama), was a cover of a song that had been a hit eight years before on local black radio stations for Big Boy Crudup.

Beale Street was the black entertainment district of Memphis from the early 1900s. Today it is Memphis’s answer to New Orleans’s Bourbon Street — a string of blues bars and taverns, largely populated by visiting tourists. It may be rather Disneyfied, but you can’t knock the music. The bands in Beale Street are as good as you will hear anywhere.

For a more authentic Memphis blues experience, I set off with Tad Pierson, a musical tour guide who takes his clients round town in a 1955 Cadillac. On the corner of Chelsea and Hollywood, we happened upon a three-piece band busking in front of a row of shops including “Cheques Cashed” and “Hot Wings and Things”. It was a timeless Delta scene. Cars were drawn up. People sat on the bonnets drinking and eating hot wings and things. Some danced. It was a local gathering but the Caddy seemed to break the ice. While Tad was showing off her curves, a slightly tipsy black mamma pulled me into the dancers where my best jive moves provided endless merriment for the musicians and audience.

Next stop was Wild Bill’s, a renowned Memphis blues bar. All the black dudes were in three-piece suits. Purple was popular as was red satin. Accessories included matching wide-brimmed hats. A number of musicians were sitting in. A Delta man was called up to play the Mississippi saxophone — the harmonica — on The Thrill Is Gone. Miss Nicky was coaxed into a few numbers and her voice sent shudders of pleasure down our collective spines. IN THE morning, Chicago beckoned. I drove through Missouri and Iowa, past small towns slumbering in the midst of cornfields. I broke the journey in St Louis, where the Blues Highway meets Route 66. The next day, Chicago drew me in through a web of expressways, and suddenly I was in big city streets, car horns blaring like saxophones.

In spite of a host of distractions, Chicago remains a great blues city. There seem to be cracking blues bars in every neighbourhood, playing everything from laid-back Delta blues to throbbing horn-inspired R&B. In Buddy Guy’s Legends I met the legend — Buddy Guy, who was enjoying a quiet drink at the end of the bar.

“The blues found a new energy when it arrived in Chicago,” Buddy said. “The city inspired it. It went electric. Solo musicians formed bands. It got new life, and it is still going.” Born 70 years ago just south of the Delta in Louisiana, Buddy has a fine blues pedigree. His mentor was Muddy Waters, who helped him get his first gigs in Chicago. Muddy learnt everything from early country blues musicians like Robert Johnson.

“You don’t ever have to worry. You don’t ever have to cry. I’ll be there beside you. And don’t you ever ask me why.” In one of his three graves, Johnson must lie content.

Stanley Stewart was a guest of North American Highways

HOW TO PLAN YOUR DEEP SOUTH MUSICAL ADVENTURE

The Blues Highway is one of America’s classic road trips, running from the Delta all the way up to Chicago. It’s also pretty manageable: less than 600 miles from end to end. Spend a few days around the Delta, take two or three for the drive, and set aside three more for Chicago. Here’s our guide to getting the most from the trip.

THE MUSIC

Blues is a living culture, and the place it happens is in blues bars. There are dozens, but these are favourites. In Jackson, the 930 Blues Cafe (00 1-601 948 3344, www.jesdablues.com) is a good ole juke joint with live acts every night. Club Ebony (662 887 9915, www. clubebony.biz) in Indianola is BB King’s home-town bar — he plays here every year — with live blues on Sunday evenings.

Ground Zero (662 621 9009, www.groundzerobluesclub.com) in Clarksdale is the home of the blues in the home town of the blues, with live music from Wednesday to Saturday. And in Memphis, Wild Bill’s, a shop front at 1580 Vollintine Avenue (901 726 5473), has live music Thursday to Sunday.

When you reach Chicago, don’t miss Rosa’s Lounge (773 342 0452), run by an Italian mother and son at 3420 West Armitage Avenue. B.L.U.E.S. (773 528 1012) at 2519 North Halsted Street is good, as is Kingston Mines (773 477 4646) across the street. Buddy Guy’s Legends (312 427 0333) at 754 South Wabash Avenue is fun, but a bit more touristy.

A couple of festivals are also worth noting. In Helena, the Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival (www.bluesandheritage.com), formerly known as the King Biscuit Blues Festival, is a great gig, held at the beginning of October. And the Chicago Blues Festival (www.chicagobluesfestival.org) is the big one — June 7-10 in Grant Park.

THE MUSEUMS

There are plenty of opportunities to appreciate the culture’s past as well as its present. Mississippi has THE DELTA recently inaugurated a Blues Heritage Trail, with 100 markers at bars, grave sites, plantations and much else; see www.visitmississippi.org. The Delta Blues Museum (www.deltabluesmuseum.org) in the middle of Clarksdale is a must, and just up the street is the Cat Head store (www.cathead.biz), a great blues emporium with everything from CDs to artwork.

Memphis is home to Elvis’s Graceland, of course, but the real highlights for me were the Stax Museum of American Soul Music (www.soulsvilleusa.com) and the unmissable National Civil Rights Museum (www.civilrightsmuseum.org ).

In Chicago, check out the Blues Heaven Foundation (www.bluesheaven.com) in the old Chess Records Studio at 2120 South Michigan Avenue, or the Chicago Blues Museum (773 828 8118, www.chicagobluesmuseum.com). The latter caters mainly to groups but give them a call; they may be able to fit you in.

THE LOCAL TOURS

One stands out: blues nut Tad Pierson and his 1955 Cadillac (www.americandreamsafari.com) can take you on a tour of the Memphis juke joints for £40pp, or a Delta day trip for £115pp. Even if you are travelling independently, his insights and local knowledge are well worth paying for.

THE ACCOMMODATION

There’s no shortage of drive-up-and-check-in motels along the Blues Highway, but most of them are standard American fare with little character. Two exceptions in Clarksdale are the Big Pink Guesthouse (www.bigpinkguesthouse.com; doubles from £40), a plantation owner’s dream; and, just outside of town, the Shack Up Inn (www.shackupinn.com), which provides the field workers’ experience in reconstructed plantation shacks, with full mod cons, from £30 a night for a double. You could reasonably break the drive to Chicago at any one of the dozens of roadside motels outside St Louis, but when you get there it may be time to splash out: the Park Hyatt (312 335 1234, www.parkchicago.hyatt.com) is fantastic, with doubles from £185.

GETTING THERE

The best way to combine the Mississippi Delta with a drive along Highway 61 to Chicago is with an open-jaw ticket into New Orleans and out of Chicago, or vice versa. United Airlines (0845 844 4777, www.unitedairlines.co.uk) and American Airlines (0845 778 9789, www.americanairlines.co.uk) have fares from about £500, from Heathrow or Manchester to New Orleans (via Chicago), and back nonstop from Chicago. Alternatively, Continental Airlines (0845 607 6760, www.continentalairlines.com) has flights via New York in both directions, from Gatwick, Belfast, Bristol, Manchester, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, plus Dublin and Shannon, with fares from £400.

GETTING AROUND

For picking a car up in New Orleans and dropping it off a week later in Chicago, Hertz (0870 844 8844, www.hertz.co.uk) charges about £300, including the drop-off charge. Or try Alamo (0870 400 4562, www.alamo.co.uk).

TOUR OPERATORS

North American Highways (01902 851138, www.nahighways.co.uk) has a tailor-made 12-day itinerary from New Orleans to Chicago for £1,297pp, including flights, car hire and accommodation; one-way car hire adds about £270. AmeriCan & Worldwide Travel (01892 511894, www.awwt.co.uk) specialises in tailor-made musical routes; its 14-day Roots of Blues itinerary costs from £1,328pp, including flights, car hire and accommodation.

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