Jonesborough, TN 30 May 2014

Founded in 1779, seventeen years before Tennessee became a state, Jonesborough is the oldest town in Tennessee.  We wandered into it on the advice of our neighbors in the campground.  What a neat place!!!

This lovely county courthouse dominates the downtown area.

Just down the street is the Chester Inn.  Now a museum, it has hosted Andrew Johnson, Andrew Jackson, James Knox Polk and John Sevier, the first Governor of Tennessee.

In many ways, Jonesborough was a microcosm of 19th century Tennessee, indeed, 19th century America.  Where else would you find a church with separate slave seating just down the street from..... 

 this house.  The Manumission Intelligencer and The Abolitionist were published here.  These were the first periodicals published in the United States devoted exclusively to the abolition of slavery .

We arrived here around noon, so our first order of business was food.  Fortunately, Main Street Restaurant was only a few steps away. 

Lunch was fabulous, and the coconut cream pie with which we topped off our lunch was even better.

The International Storytelling Center is here.  In October, it hosts the National Storytelling Festival.  We missed that, but we did have the opportunity to attend a performance by the storyteller-in-residence while we were there. 

Spencer Bohren was that story-teller.  He sang and played each of these instruments in the process of telling the story of how an ancient African melody became Down the Dirt Road Blues, later Dark Road Blues, a blues/bluegrass/rock/folk-rock standard.  Along the way, he demonstrated the vocal and instrumental techniques, most prominently the Memphis Shuffle (guitar players will know what we're talking about) employed by artists, ranging from Charlie Patton, who first recorded it,  to Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan, who recorded later versions.  Along the way, he also told the story-within-the story of the rise of Beale Street in Memphis. Fabulous!!

After the performance, I asked Spencer if I could take a photograph of him for our blog.  He insisted that this beautiful lady was more worthy. It was hard to disagree.