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" Between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers, there&amp;#039;s the Mississippi Delta. The region was once rich with cotton production but also extreme poverty, with land predominantly held by white plantation owners and worked (under brutal conditions) by black sharecroppers. It is also the region known for giving rise to the Delta blues, perhaps the most influential and well-known of blues styles, which frequently documented personal stories and struggles of the black sharecroppers and workers living in the American South in the early 1900s. The Delta blues initially tended to be simple in its playing, with musicians using instruments easily carried like the acoustic guitar or harmonica. In later years, as the sound spread north, it became amplified by artists like Muddy Waters, who came from Mississippi to Chicago, electrifying audiences with a sound the likes of which the blues scene had never before heard. Photographer Lou Bopp has long been inspired by the Delta blues and the music it later influenced (Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Clapton, and so on), and wanted to document the older generation of Delta bluesmen. &amp;quot;I started traveling to the Delta a few years ago in between my commercial and advertising shoots,&amp;quot; Bopp tells Esquire. &amp;quot;I realized that these blues musicians are getting up there in age, and we have already lost so many. I was on a mission to photograph as many as I could within this era. The subjects&amp;#039; stories seem embedded in their skin, scent, hands, stares.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Sadly,&amp;quot; Bopp continues, &amp;quot;nearly half of the subjects that I photographed just a few years ago are now gone. Blues music is an American treasure and Mississippi is one of its original sources. These men, in my opinion, are national treasures.&amp;quot;  The hands of Pat Thomas, bluesman and son of bluesman James Son Thomas. Leland, MS.  Robert &amp;quot;Bilbo&amp;quot; Walker at the old Sarah&amp;#039;s Kitchen. Clarksdale, MS.  RL Boyce at his home in Como, MS.  Harp musician and Mississippian Big George Brock at his home in St. Louis, MO.  LC Ulmer at his home in Ellisville, MS.  Harp player Cadillac John Nolan at the home of Monroe Jones (in background) in Cleveland, MS.  TL Williams at his home in rural Mississippi, near Lexington.  Mr. Johnnie Billington outside his Blues Academy in Lambert, MS.  King Lloyd at his home in Centerville, MS  King Lloyd at his home in Centerville, MS.  Monroe Jones at home in Cleveland, MS.  James &amp;quot;Super Chikan&amp;quot; Johnson in his guitar workshop in Clarksdale, MS.  T Model Ford on his porch in Greenville, MS.  Leo Bud Welch, at a family member&amp;#039;s house near Sabougla, MS.  Pat Thomas at his father James Son Thomas&amp;#039;s grave. Leland, MS.  Rufus Roach in the fields. Tchula, MS. To purchase a print, visit Bopp&amp;#039;s blog. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a31783/lou-bopp-mississippi-bluesmen-photos/>