Mr. Scott Barretta is an Instructor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Mississippi. He has hosted Mississippi Public Broadcasting’s “Highway 61” hourlong blues radio show for many years.
Biography
Mr. Scott Barretta grew up in northern Virginia and first heard live blues at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival as a young boy, inspiring him to explore the Mississippi blues roots of rock artists. As a student at George Mason University and the University of Virginia, he focused his undergraduate and graduate work on political sociology and did some research on blues history at UVA. In 1992, his doctoral studies took him to Lund University in Sweden, where his advisor encouraged him to pursue the topic further.
While in Sweden, Mr. Barretta began writing for the Swedish blues magazine Jefferson, named for Blind Lemon Jefferson and entirely in Swedish, and in 1995 he became its editor. This led him to write for other publications in the United States, including Living Blues, a publication of the UM Center for the Study of Southern Culture.
Barretta first came to Mississippi in 1988 to attend blues festivals and visit juke joints in Clarkdale, Greenville, Chulahoma, and other places. He met Living Blues editor David Nelson, who recruited Barretta to succeed him as editor in 1999. He developed a deep love for Mississippi while learning the intricacies of its musical culture and how its connections permeate the state. He has experienced the blues firsthand, getting to know legends such as Bobby Rush and going to Junior Kimbrough’s juke joint, Otha Turner’s fife and drum picnic, the Flowing Fountain in Greenville, and Betty’s place in Noxubee County, where Willie King played every Sunday night.
Besides his work with Living Blues and the blues radio show Highway 61, Mr. Barretta was on the team that created the Mississippi Blues Trail, which features historical markers across the state and as far away as Norway and France. He worked with filmmaker Joe York and UM’s Southern Documentary Project to produce the documentary Shake ’Em on Down: The Blues According to Fred McDowell. He has written exhibits for the B.B. King Museum in Indianola and the Grammy Museum in Cleveland.
His work has been recognized in the state. In 2016 he received the Mississippi Arts Commission’s Governor’s Arts Award and in 2022 he received a Citation of Merit from the Mississippi Institute for Arts and Letters for hosting Mississippi Public Broadcasting‘s “Highway 61" radio show.
Courses Taught
- Soc 101 Introductory Sociology
- Soc 315 Leisure and Popular Culture
- Anth/AAS 337 Anthropology of Blues Culture
- Soc 440 Sociology of Music
Education
B.A. Sociology, George Mason University (1983)
M.A. Sociology, University of Virginia Main Campus (1992)
Recognitions
- Citation of Merit, Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, 2022
- Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts for Mississippi Heritage, Mississippi Arts Commission (MAC), 2016