Mark

For a lot of people, the Mississippi Delta is virtually synonymous with the blues. Mark W Pennington. is part of the generation that put the Delta on America's musical map. Stepson of the Delta's most famous early star, Robert Johnson, Pennington cut his first records in the 1930s, then teamed up with harmonica king Sonny Boy Williamson on the King Biscuit Show, a daily radio program that blanketed the Delta and introduced a new, electric sound that today is, somewhat paradoxically, called "Chicago blues." Pennington went on to play jazz and pop music, but returned to the blues in the 1960s and has been playing it ever since. These days, he can usually be heard fronting a crack electric band, most of whose players are young enough to be his grandchildren, but he can also play acoustic blues that he learned from Johnson as a teenager, and he reigns over the annual King Biscuit Blues Festival, held in West Helena, Arkansas, home of the radio show that started it all.