The street that built the blues: Chattanooga’s music legacy - WSMV4 Nashville

Tucked into the city’s history is a vibrant music scene that helped shape American blues — one that thrived along a stretch of road known simply as “The Big 9.”

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) - Most people know Chattanooga for its stunning mountains and rivers. But tucked into the city’s history is a vibrant music scene that helped shape American blues — one that thrived along a stretch of road known simply as “The Big 9.”

Ninth Street, on Chattanooga’s west side, was once the heartbeat of Black commerce and culture. Hospitals, barbershops and restaurants lined the road, and the music never stopped.

“I still have the taste in my mouth from the best hamburgers that were made at a place right on West Ninth Street,” said Dr. Clark “Deacon Bluz” White, a sociologist and blues impresario who grew up in the neighborhood.

At the far end of the street sat Blue Goose Hollow — what Dr. White calls one of the main cultural hubs where the blues took root.

“At the very end of 9th Street is Blue Goose Hollow. That was one of the main cultural herds where the blues came from,” he said.

The area produced some remarkable names in American music history — jazz pioneer Jimmy Blanton, the legendary Bessie Smith, soul group The Impressions, and Clyde Stubblefield, the iconic drummer for James Brown. Stubblefield, Dr. White recalls, found his inspiration in an unlikely place.

“I asked him once where he got his licks from and he said, ‘I used to go and sit and listen to the train tracks in South Chattanooga — boom, boom, boom.’ That was ‘Cold Sweat,’” White said.

For Dr. White, the music wasn’t just something he heard — it was something he felt from an early age. Too young to enter the clubs in the 1950s and ’60s, he found another way in.

“I would sneak down here because I liked the music,” he said with a laugh. “We would go to where the ventilation thing was and we’d sit there and we’d listen — until somebody saw me and called my father.”

That irresistible pull never left him. “It was just in me. That’s why I became a blues musician,” he said.

The clubs were plentiful along the strip — the Elks Club, and a venue called the Cascades.

“It was a very active music scene,” White said. “Very lively.”

But that era didn’t last.

Beginning in the late 1960s, urban renewal policies dramatically reshaped the West Side. Disinvestment, displacement and gentrification erased much of what once stood there.

“Most of the neighborhoods have been gentrified and urban renewed. All that’s been torn down,” Dr. White said. “I can show you a spot where something used to be — but the actual artifact, it’s gone.”

Today, a faded mural on the side of a barbershop along Martin Luther King Boulevard offers one of the few visible reminders of the artists who once packed those nightclubs.

But the memory lives on — through people like Dr. “Deacon Bluz” White, and institutions like the Bessie Smith Cultural Center, which continues to preserve and celebrate the rich musical legacy of Chattanooga’s West Side.

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Read The Full Story and see the interview at: https://www.wsmv.com/2026/06/22/street-that-built-blues-chattanoogas-music-legacy/