Various Artists – Gulf of Mexico Blues

I first thought of putting together this compilation when I was listening to The Band’s second album, and more specifically the song ‘Up On Cripple Creek’. In the lyrics, the narrator talks of places he ends to travel passed to visit Big Mama. One of these is the Gulf of Mexico. It got me thinking about which other songs referred to that location and the history of its name, mostly due to the actions of a certain president of the United States of America. Let me explain. The Gulf of Mexico is a an area of 810 nautical miles, bordering North and Central America. The native peoples of the region referred to the expanse of water was ‘Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl’, or the House of Chalchiuhtlicue, the Aztec God of the Sea. The European explorers of the 1400s, which included Amerigo Vespucci, were the first from the Old World to navigate the region. Early maps showed the area to be either unnamed, Sea of the North, Gulf of Cortes, Gulf of Florida, Yucatan Sea and the Gulf of Spain amongst other…