Legendary bluesman Sam Chatmon (1899 – 1983) would never fly to concerts. If he couldn’t go by car or bus, he didn’t go. When asked why, he explained:

It ain’t that I’m scared of flying. It’s just that if I’m up there and it’s somebody else’s time to go … I don’t want to have to ride down with’em.

You have to let that one sink in for a minute.

Chatmon was from Hollandale, once a vibrant hub of the blues in the Mississippi Delta, on Hwy 61 about 20 miles from my wife’s home south of Inverness.

[Many thanks to the article “Sittin’ on top of the world,” by Hank Burdine in the May/June 2012 issue of Delta Magazine, pp. 38-40.]