Ambassador of the Blues: Performing Diaspora with Memphis Slim in Europe

On 24 February 1988, the blues singer and pianist Peter Chatman, alias “Memphis Slim,” died in Paris; he was 72 years old.² In the weeks that followed, music periodicals on both sides of the Atlantic offered tributes to one of America’s leading postwar blues artists.³ These eulogies charted Slim’s early career in his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, as well as his move to Chicago around 1939 where he became an active “race” records artist. Tributes noted the pianist’s early postwar chart hits, such as “Messin’ Around” and “Blue and Lonesome”