For more than 50 years, musicians on Beale Street have been playing what became known as the Memphis blues.

Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee is known as the home of the blues, a style of music that emerged from African Americans who sang while working in the fields.   For more than half a century, musicians have been playing blues music on the famous street.  While Beale Street was an African-American neighborhood with music clubs, shops and restaurants, in the 1960s it became rundown and people left.  

But in the 1980s, a section of the street was renovated and  business returned. More than four million people come to Beale Street each year to hear some of the world's best blues musicians. VOA's Deborah Block has the story.