Lane Nichols takes a luxury cruise down the mighty Mississippi River and falls in love with New Orleans jazz music, Delta blues and the deep South.

We board our Viking river cruise ship at the Port of New Orleans. The city is a riotous cauldron of jazz music, Creole-infused food, religion and culture; and the ever-present aroma of sweet Mary Jane. The quaint architecture and rich history of the old French Quarter is intoxicating. Spicy gumbo, seafood jambalaya, traditional biscuit and grits feature on menus. Revellers wander from bar to bar along Bourbon St clutching half-drunk beers. Trees and buildings are decked with purple, green and gold Mardi Gras beads - a symbol of the carnival season representing justice, faith and power.

A jazz band entertains music lovers at the Mahogany Jazz Hall in New Orleans. Photo / Juliette Veber

The sound of trumpet and slide trombone spills from every restaurant. Talented buskers ply their trade on street corners. Burlesque dancers reveal all in tiny jazz clubs where foreign tourists sip expensive cocktails late into the night.

The Viking Mississippi Delta River Cruise Ship moored on the banks of the mighty river dubbed the "American Highway'. Photo / Juliette Veber

Our five-level floating hotel is 143m in length and holds 386 guests and 150 staff. Travelling on the state-of-the-art Viking Mississippi is an experience in sophisticated luxury. The rooms are compact (you’re on a boat!) but beautifully presented and equipped. Each stateroom comes with a private balcony to watch the majestic Mississippi River slip past outside. Ghostly cottonwood and silver maple trees line the endless mud riverbanks, their early autumn branches still bare of leaves.

Autumn trees line the muddy banks of the Mississippi River. Photo / Juliette Veber

A complimentary bottle of champagne and chocolate dipped strawberries greet us as we unpack. Huge freight ships and cargo barges drift by, ferrying commerce up and down the “American Highway”. At night the vista is lit up by massive fuel refineries, coal fired power stations and sugarcane processing factories. We sail beneath giant steel bridges connecting state highways that crisscross the vast countryside of this wonderful but deeply troubled land.

The Viking Mississippi River cruise ship tied up on the great river. Photo / Juliette Veber

If you’re a food lover, you’re in for a treat. The two main eateries are found on the lower level (the Restaurant) and upper deck (the River Cafe). The Restaurant is more formal with a la carte dining. Men are instructed to wear collared shirts and avoid denim pants - an edict I can confirm thankfully wasn’t policed. The dinner menu has a dazzling array of new daily dishes plus tried and true permanent elements. Choose from delicious spicy sausage gumbo, Caesar salad or clam and shrimp chowder to start. For entrees try the blackened red fish with prawn risotto and clams, roasted Halibut with creamed fennel, potato and beurre blanc sauce, or New York steak with garlic butter and fries. If you still have room, there’s an assortment of tempting desserts like classic creme brulee and decadent tiramisu.

The River Cafe is less formal and more buffet-style. Ask the chef to whip up a sushi plate with fresh tuna and scallops. The burly grill man will sear up an Angus beef burger or juicy prawns as you select freshly shucked Maine oysters and succulent smoked salmon from the ice. Attentive wait staff ensure each meal is faultless and your wine glass never empty. There’s a fantastic selection of vino, from delicious Californian Chablis and Syrah, French varietals, through to our own Kim Crawford sauvignon blanc or Perrier-Jouet sparkling wine.

American jazz legend Louis Armstrong was a global superstar and cultural ambassador. Photo / William Gottlieb/Redferns

After dinner New Orleans jazz legend Wendell Brunious plays a tribute set to “Satchmo” Louis Armstrong as guests sip martinis, American whisky or spiced rum Old-Fashioneds. Another night is devoted to Creole swamp music backed by fiddle and accordion. Later in the cruise are celebrations of Memphis and Mississippi Delta blues.

The ship sails during the night and docks at each new destination just before breakfast. Sometimes you wake to bustling riverside towns outside the window. Other times the ship is simply pulled into the shallows somewhere along the riverbank and tied to a tree. Guests can choose from a packed itinerary of daily excursions that celebrate each area’s rich history, culture and cuisine.

An alligator appears above the water during a Cajun swamp experience at Manchac Swamp, Louisiana. Photo / Juliette Veber

In Darrow, Louisiana, we go ‘gator hunting on a backwater bayou. Captain Dustin regales us with tales of Cajun swamp culture in a barely decipherable Southern drawl while feeding marshmallows by hand to native raccoons from our river barge. Hungry alligators - smaller than crocodiles but no less deadly - circle our craft before leaping from the water for a frenzied feed of raw chicken meat. Others eye us suspiciously while warming themselves on the bank in the morning sun. “They’ll tear you up,” Dustin warns.

An alligator snaps up a feed of raw chicken during a Cajun swamp experience at Manchac Swamp, Louisiana. Photo / Juliette Veber

Much of the South’s history is violent and dark. Ever-present is the undercurrent of slavery and the fact much of the region’s wealth was built on the back of exploitation and forced labour. We visit picturesque plantation homes and sprawling gardens where thousands of black slaves once toiled in cotton fields for their rich white masters.

Slaves once toiled for white masters at the Rosedown Plantation at St Francisville, Louisiana. Photo / Juliette Veber

At Natchez, Mississippi we visit the Forks of the Road slave trading site where black men, women and children were once paraded in an open-air sales yard and traded like commodities to the highest bidder. The average life expectancy for slaves was just 37, our guide Judy informs us. “They were literally worked to death.”

Slave auction poster - Natchez Museum-African American Culture, Natchez Mississippi. Photo / Lane Nichols

We are welcomed to the town’s Zion Church where we learn about the evolution of African American music and are treated to joyous Gospel song. My wife and I then visit the city’s Museum of African American History and Culture to learn more about the South’s past. Old photographs depict life in the fields, dilapidated slave shacks and the origins of Delta blues. Black authors like Richard Wright record the emancipation of an enslaved people and the violent birth of the civil rights movement during segregation, lynchings and the KKK. The museum’s curator tells me they try not to focus solely on the region’s dark history but also celebrate the progress of black America in the aftermath of centuries of cruelty. “It’s about how we adapt.”

Vicksburg National Military Park in Vicksburg, Mississippi is the site of one of the American Civil War's bloodiest battles. More than 19,000 soldiers lost their lives in a brutal 47-day siege. Photo / Juliette Veber

The next day we moor at Vicksburg, the scene of one of the Civil War’s bloodiest battles. We board a coach and head to the Vicksburg National Military Park – a sprawling series of war monuments set on the very fields where 19,000 Union and Confederate soldiers laid down their lives during a horrific 47-day siege. Starved, thirsty and exhausted after constant bombardment from Union canon fire, the Confederate forces eventually surrendered on July 4, 1863. The area is now home to the nation’s second-biggest military cemetery after Arlington. More than 17,000 graves attest to a war that pitted American against American, brother against brother. About 13,000 of those graves belong to “unknown” fallen soldiers.

A blues musician live in concert at Greenville, Mississippi. Photo / Juliette Veber

Greenville, Mississippi is all about the blues. This universally loved music genre originated on the slave ships and in the plantation fields, and was later crafted in the “coloured” blues bars of Beale St in Memphis. We attend a show by local blues artist Steve Azar at the Jake and Freda Stein Hall. We dine on Southern soul food - corn-wrapped tamales, pulled pork, “hush puppies”, sweet tea and moonshine. We then head to the B.B. King Museum in the great man’s hometown of Indianola. Two hours is not sufficient to soak in the music and his place in American history and blues folklore.

Legend B.B. King honed his skills as a blues musician on Beale St in Memphis, Tennessee. Photo / Dean Purcell

As we pull out of Greenville, African American children fly kites on the giant concrete levy – its great walls built high to protect the township after the devastating 1927 Mississippi floods. Dinner is lobster and Chateaubriand, served with oyster gratin and French onion soup. We sip Champagne and watch a blood moon rising in the cloudless evening sky – the Mississippi Delta shining like a national guitar.

The ship’s final stop is Memphis, Tennessee. We pack our belongings and disembark the vessel which has been our home for the last seven nights. As we board a coach for the downtown Westin Hotel, the skies darken and a violent electrical storm breaks out complete with forked lightning.

A photo of the King, Elvis Presley, on display at Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee.

After dropping our bags we turn rock ‘n’ roll pilgrims to the great Elvis Presley, visiting Graceland and the resting place of the King. The house itself is an incredible time capsule of the 1950s and ’60s, while the nearby Elvis museum is a celebration of the man’s life and his imprint on popular culture and so many artists that followed in his footsteps.

Elvis Presley's stage costumes on display at the Graceland Elvis Presley museum in Memphis, Tennessee. Photo / Juliette Veber

That night we dine at the beautiful Itta Bena Restaurant on Beale St. The elegant dining room is dimly lit with blue hues and the gentle notes of jazz. The food is impeccable. I choose Cajun Abita shrimp followed by braised short ribs with garlic mash, asparagus, and wild mushroom merlot sauce. After dinner we are whisked downstairs to the fabled B.B. King Blues Club for front row balcony seats, Margarita cocktails and late night dancing to the greatest house band you will ever hear.

It’s the same club where King and his early blues contemporaries honed their craft in the 1940s, forging a sound that is credited as the precursor to rock ‘n’ roll.

The fabled Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee helped launch the careers of countless music heroes, including Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. Photo / Juliette Veber

The next day we journey to the legendary Sun Studio which cut iconic recordings of beloved artists such as Presley, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis. We stand in the spot where countless performers laid down their first-ever recordings - songs that would alter history and charter an electrifying new direction in music. Many of the instruments and microphones they used are still there.

The Stax Museum of American Soul Music is no less impressive, delving into the “Soulsville USA” studio’s links to the soul revolution of the 1960s and 70s, featuring global superstars like Isaac Hayes and Otis Redding.

Lorraine Motel, Memphis, Tennessee - site of the assassination of civil rights campaigner Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Photo / Juliette Veber

We dine at ribs and wings joint Central BBQ before visiting a shrine to the late Dr Martin Luther King Jr. The civil rights campaigner was shot dead on the balcony outside room 306 at the Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968. The motel was then one of the city’s only establishments that allowed black lodgers. It is no longer in use, but its rooms, neon signs and balcony facades remain preserved in time. A civil rights museum has opened on the site in Dr King’s memory. The window where the assassin fired his fatal shot is still visible on the neighbouring brick building.

The good time Western Swingers band plays country music at Robert's Western World on Broadway in Nashville, Tennessee. Photo / Juliette Veber

The next morning we bus northeast to Nashville for two final nights in the home of country music. Steel guitar and fiddle blasts from every bar along the fabled Broadway strip. Women wear cowboy boots and men Stetson felt hats. After dinner at Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint we head to Robert’s Western World for live music from the good time Western Swingers. Charlie Pride, Dolly Parton and Waylon Jennings form the insatiable new soundtrack to our travels.

Finally and reluctantly, it’s time to head to the airport. The memories may eventually fade but a part of the South is now embedded in our souls.

“Y’all come back now.”

Checklist

New Orleans to Memphis on Viking Cruise’s Mississippi Delta Explorer

GETTING THERE

Fly from Auckland to New Orleans with a stopover in LAX or Houston with Delta or Air New Zealand and United Airlines.

DETAILS

For more information on Viking Cruises, visit vikingcruises.com.au.