Exhibits
Ace Atkins
Troy, Alabama native Ace Atkins attended Auburn University, where he majored in screenplay writing and played football. After graduation, Ace worked as a crime reporter for The Tampa Tribune (1996 - 2001), where his seven-part article “Tampa Confidential,” on an unsolved 1956 Tampa murder case, earned him nominations for the Pulitzer Prize and the Livingston Award in journalism. While still at The Tribune, Atkins wrote his first two novels Crossroad Blues (1998) and Leavin’ Trunk Blues (2000). He completed his third book Dark End of the Street (2002) and released Dirty South in March, 2004. Ace now resides in Oxford, Mississippi, where he is a part-time teacher in the School of Journalism at the University of Mississippi.
Atkins’ books are part of his Nick Travers series of blues thriller/suspense mysteries. As an ex-football player turned harmonica playing blues historian, the protagonist Nick Travers is loosely based on Atkins’ own life. Travers’ musicological fieldwork, mystery of a different sort, places him into very real life mystery situations replete with murder, robbery, and deception. In Crossroad Blues, a search for previously unknown Robert Johnson recordings pulls Travers into a much larger mystery seeking to uncover the truth behind the death of history’s greatest blues legend. With the exception of Chicago’s South Side in Leavin’ Trunk Blues, almost all the action in Atkins’ books is split between New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta. Atkins’ numerous forays, solo and with blues record collector Gayle Dean Wardlow (Chasin’ that Devil Music, 1998), contribute to his vivid descriptions of place. A cast of colorful, well-developed characters, reminiscent of those found in the works of Carl Hiaasen, is one of the strongest elements in the Nick Travers books.
Robert Johnson
No figure in blues or perhaps popular music has been the subject of as much mystery, lore, and legend as blues singer/guitarist Robert Johnson (1911 – 1938). The Faustian story of Johnson gaining musical prowess by selling his soul to the devil at the crossroads (the intersection of Highways 49 and 61) has made its way thoroughly into popular consciousness and culture. The story goes that a young Robert Johnson attempted to play a set while Son House was taking a break. His guitar playing was so bad, he was laughed out of the club. He disappeared for a year, returned, and left everyone astounded by his guitar abilities. Thus arose the legend that Johnson made a deal with the devil. Johnson’s songs “Crossroad Blues,” “Hellhound on my Trail,” and “Me and the Devil Blues” helped to fuel this imaginative fire. After dying a sudden and tragic death in 1938, rumors continued: was he poisoned by a jealous husband or lover, or had the devil come to claim his own?
Details in the search for Robert Johnson’s death certificate as well as the discovery of a previously unseen second side to the certificate can be found in Gayle Dean Wardlow’s Chasin’ that Devil Music, 1998.