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Yazoo Blues continues the adventures of Junior Ray Loveblood, the racist, trash-talking yarn spinning character from John Pritchard’s first book Junior Ray. Junior Ray is now a semi-retired self-described lawman, now part-time casino guard that boasts “I come from the roughest they is.” As story tellers go, he is part historian, part author of literature as well as a born philosopher as only a small town in the back woods can produce. In many respects he is Jerry Clower meets George Carlin. Junior Ray has all the flavor of the yarn spinner of Jerry Clower with the potty mouth, irreverence and politically incorrectness of George Carlin.

Yazoo Blues continues Junior Ray’s fasciation with history, as he sees himself as becoming part of history in the making. Leaving WWII behind, Junior Ray delves into the Civil War and especially the failed attempt on the part of the Union Soldiers to invade Vicksburg by ship coming through the Yazoo Pass. As the tale was described, “of course the expedition failed as the Delta is too tangled for canoes much less 200 foot ironclads and troop ships”.

When not discussing the Yazoo Pass and history, Junior Ray gives the philosophers attempt as he tells of his friend, Mad Owens, a poet in the making, love sick to the point of insanity over a stripper from Memphis that goes by the name Money Scatters. Of course Junior Ray has his own twist on what love is all about, complete with descriptive lap-dances given to him by his best friend’s grand-daughter, Petunia.

With recipes of Delta cooking and poems for all occasion mixed within each chapter’s philosophical review of the friends and town folk that make up Yazoo, Mississippi. Junior Ray has his own way of discussing the world around him. He describes what so many small, out of the way towns of the South that have their own little Peyton Place. Yazoo Blues keeps the formula of the first book, full of small town, back woods stories full of profanity and humor. Along with uneducated ramblings that find the truth woven in the yarns of the story teller that brings the reader along the way, with laugh out loud success. Junior Ray with his own unique and descriptive prowess keeps the reader turning the page.

See SLR’s review of Junior Ray.