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Tina Turner and blues legend Sleepy John Estes' roots in Brownsville, Tennessee

KCBX | By Tom Wilmer
Published May 6, 2017 at 3:27 AM PDT
Tina Turner's old one room school house, and adjacent home of blues legend Sleepy John Estes
Thomas Wilmer

Come along for a stop-off along the Music Highway in Brownsville, midway between Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee. We’ll visit with the town's first elected African-American Mayor, Bill Rawls. Sonia Outlaw-Clark Executive Director of the West Tennessee Delta Heritage Center takes us on a walking tour of the Tina Turner Museum, and adjacent, fabled bluesman, Sleepy John Estes’s cottage where he was rediscovered in the 1970s.  

Brownsville's Mayor Bill Rawls (Right) with correspondent, Tom Wilmer
Credit John Hill
Brownsville's Mayor Bill Rawls (Right) with correspondent, Tom Wilmer
Sonia Outlaw-Clark Executive Director of the West Tennessee Delta Heritage Center points out historic artifacts
Credit Thomas Wilmer
Sonia Outlaw-Clark Executive Director of the West Tennessee Delta Heritage Center points out historic artifacts
Sleepy John Estes' house in Brownsville, Tennessee
Credit Thomas Wilmer
Sleepy John Estes' house in Brownsville, Tennessee

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Tom Wilmer
Tom Wilmer produces on-air content for Issues & Ideas airing over KCBX and is producer and host of the six-time Lowell Thomas award-winning NPR podcast Journeys of Discovery with Tom Wilmer. Recorded live on-location across America and around the world, the podcasts feature the arts, culture, music, nature, history, science, wine & spirits, brewpubs, and the culinary arts--everything from baseball to exploring South Pacific atolls to interviewing the real Santa Claus in the Arctic.
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