Jazz is definitely more NOLA than Blues...but blues is the music of the Arkansas and Mississippi Delta...Helena, Arkansas if you're looking for a small town with a huge blues culture.
This is low key reminding me of a paper a classmate wrote about the history of barbecue. He remarked that there are many many different versions and flavors scattered across the region, and all of them will claim theirs is the original.
At the Institute for Southern Studies of the University of South Carolina there is (or at least used to be; it's been a few decades) a GIANT map of the USA with all of the different barbecue regions mapped out on it. Wonderful way to kill some time perusing its details.
I would choose Memphis, as it's the most purely blues city of the five. Chicago is known for lots of things, New Orleans is known for jazz, Kansas City is known for what they call barbecue, and St. Louis is known for being terrible. Memphis is Oops All Blues
Ah, it’s got to be St Louis, lots more hard times there now. New Orleans is the big tourist / foodie / Mardi Gras destination but St Louis is still singing the blues.
I’m thinking Memphis, but also an out of the way town in Mississippi, where they can sit around a fire drinking cheap whiskey and exchanging guitar licks.
I'm gonna be controversial and say somewhere in Europe, because a) that's where the biggest fanbase is, and b) They would be less likely to be shot by police for playing without a permit.
NOLA or Clarksdale, Mississippi. Clarksdale is the home of the Delta Blues, natch, but in the end, if the dead are coming back to life, they're gonna meet in NOLA, I think -- continental crossroads, and a city that's used to the dead rising.
I thought of Chicago and New Orleans, but the easy answer is that all the Chicago guys would want to go to New Orleans and none of the New Orleans guys would want to go anywhere else.
OTOH, I chose New Orleans for magic and the Cities in LA. I do think that rural America has a huge claim to one of the slots--and the Crossroads might want to stake that claim.
My brain says Memphis or New Orleans, but there and so many different places historically significant to the genre that I dunno there would be just one place
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Above ground tombs make easy transfer points between the living and dead
Otherwise, San Francisco. Just because I miss living there.
On the other, I have a feeling Kansas City should also be included somehow?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chicago_blues_musicians
Cities of the Dead would make great places to create a crypt-kicker group.
St. Louis was once royal blues. . . . Hummm.