Highway 61, known as the blues highway, runs through Mississippi communities with deep blues, R&B, and gospel roots, and Alligator shares strongly in that musical legacy. Performers born or raised around Alligator include blues guitarists George "G. P." Jackson and Robert "Bilbo" Walker, singer Johnny Drummer, born Thessex Johns, and the gospel and R&B group the Kelly Brothers. Robert Johnson also lived in this area in 1930, when he was recorded in the Bolivar County census with his wife Virginia, his half-sister Bessie Hines, and her husband Granville; after Virginia died in childbirth that year, he left and went on to create recordings in 1936-37 that became foundational to later blues and rock music. Alligator, once a bustling business center, had entertainment spots in town as well as nearby juke joints, plantation house parties, and storefronts where musicians played while traveling among surrounding Bolivar-Coahoma County communities including Duncan, Shelby, New Africa, and Clarksdale. George "G. P." Jackson, influenced by Johnson, later moved to Tunica County, then to Kansas City in 1951, where he worked as an auto mechanic by day and played blues at night, performing current hits and older Delta blues and later recording and touring in the U.S. and Europe. Robert "Bilbo" Walker, born in the New Africa area in 1937, grew up hearing acoustic blues around Alligator, developed an entertaining juke joint style that blended deep Delta blues with a rock 'n' roll edge, and continued returning home to perform and farm even after stays in Chicago and Bakersfield, California. Johnny Drummer, born in Alligator in 1938, came from a local musical family, later performed in Chicago as a sideman and bandleader, and became a fixture in South Side blues clubs, known especially for soulful singing. The Kelly Brothers, who sang with Drummer in Alligator's Pleasant Valley Church before moving to Chicago, recorded both gospel and rhythm and blues, sometimes under the name the King Pins.