Route 61 Blues HIghway

Day 11, Friday, 9/18, Route 61 to Clarksdale

Friday was a day of transitions, when we left the warmth of our Maury County Archive friends and the urban landscape of Nashville to head, “Down the Mississippi, down to New Orleans.”  We had tickets to the Mississippi Delta Blues and Heritage Festival in Greenville for Saturday.  So we bypassed Memphis for the moment, and followed the Mississippi River along US Route 61 to Clarksdale, Mississippi, which would be the headquarters for our Delta visit.

From Nashville, we traveled to Clarksdale, MS

We stopped at a gas station convenience store in Hurricane Mills, TN, which sold vanity plates and bumper stickers touting rural pride with more than a soupcon of anti-liberal, anti-government sentiment.  Examples: “Honk if my wages are paying your health care”, “I’m for gun control.  I’m working on my aim”,  “I say Merry Christmas”, “Red neck, blue collar, white trash”.  The last item is accompanied by a Confederate flag. A sign in the store window extols freedom (to guzzle gas? to do as you want?) and seems related:

 Sign in gas station window at Hurricane Mills TN

The strangest example, though, of what you might call the anti-PC movement, was matched sets of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Tom ceramic teapots, spoon holders, and cookie jars.  Here’s Aunt Jemima, complete with her flock of chickens.  You’d be hard-pressed to find such a fine example in Bethesda, Maryland.

Aunt Jemima cookie jar

Soon we were in the hot, flat, dry cotton fields that are today operated by agribusiness with few workers and a high degree of mechanization.   But of course this was not always so.  It is easy for your mind’s eye to envision row after row of slave or later share cropper cotton pickers with long canvas bags and wide brim hats bent to the task.  

Cotton culture along Route 61 in Mississippi

The cotton was ready to pick, and we stopped and tried our hand at plucking four wads from the opening boll.  It came out easily and is as soft and white as store-bought, except for the seeds, which were once extracted by hand.

Bursting cotton boll

By dinner time, we had made it to Tunica, Mississippi, and stopped at the Blue and White Restaurant.  It was crowded, clearly popular.  We were told, “It’s the only place to eat around here!”  We had our first blackened catfish, and it was excellent.  We sat next to some gentlemen who preferred to keep their hats on during dinner.

Fellow diners at the Blue and White Restaurant in Tunica, MS

We arrived late in Clarksdale at a Hampton Inn and hit the sack.

Day 12, Saturday, 9/19, Delta Blues and Heritage Festival

On the road at 10 am, we drove to Greenville to the 38th Mississippi Delta Blues and Heritage Festival.  We had no idea what to expect, other than great music, and we were not disappointed. 

We arrived at the high school and municipal field where the stage, open seating, tents for large gatherings, and food trucks were set up.  We got there at 11:30 am, a half-hour before the music started and were one of the first to set up our chairs and put up the umbrellas everyone needed to mitigate the unrelenting sun and 93 degree weather. We were two of a handful of white faces in the crowd that grew to several hundred.  One of a few times in our lives when we were in the clear minority.  Everyone was, of course, very friendly.  In fact, throughout the South, most everyone exhibits the hospitality and manners for which they are famous.  No one passes you without making eye contact and giving you a friendly greeting.  Once, we even wound up greeting the same person on several aisles during a single visit to the grocery store!  But back to the festival:

 

This last fellow is Kingfish, a 16 year-old prodigy, who we learned is a local boy with many local hopes pinned on his success.  In Mississippi as elsewhere, the blues, R&B, and soul are not popular musical forms among most young blacks.  It’s “old men’s music” to them.  They like hip hop.

Here's a taste of the festival music:

The last act, the headliner, Bobbie Rush, went on at 9:30 pm but we didn’t last that long.  The spirit was willing, but not the hot, tired flesh. We decided to leave around 4 PM and headed back to the shelter of an air conditioned hotel room. 

Day 13, Sunday, 9/20, Our First Day of Rest

Sunday was a day spent doing nothing new, our first in two weeks.  Martin had a sunburn from the day before, and Tammy was worried about how she’d capture the ga-zillion photos she was taking, post some to the web, and help write this blog.  She’d left home with a new laptop and an untested concept of how this would all fit together. The pressure!  It was getting to her.  Plus, this sounded suspiciously like work.

So all day, Tammy sat in the breakfast area of the Hampton Inn with her gear, figuring out a photo and blog “work flow”.  The sweet people at the desk humored her, but must have wondered why this woman from Maryland came all the way to Clarksdale, MS to sit all day working on a computer.  We figured out most of the methodology, and emerged the next day ready to visit Clarksdale.

Days 14 and 15, Monday and Tuesday, 9/21-22, Clarksdale

The Crossroads and Delta Blues. Clarksdale, Mississippi, a town of just 17,962, plays an outsized role in the music that flooded out of the Delta as blues, R&B, and rock and roll.  Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters, Sam Cooke, Howlin' Wolf, Ike Turner, Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker, and many others have called Clarksdale home, as does the current boy wonder, Kingfish. 

The mythic crossroads at Route 61 and Route 49 is in Clarksdale. There, it is said, the bluesman Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for mastery of the blues.  Though he died at 27  and enjoyed little public recognition or financial success in his lifetime, he is now recognized as a master of the Mississippi Delta blues style and is credited by many rock musicians as an important influence; Eric Clapton has called Johnson, "the most important blues singer that ever lived." Cream’s arguably best hard rock song ever, “Crossroads”, is based on Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads”.  See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsB_cGdgPTo. 

 

Guitarist Robert Johnson memorialized on an outside wall of the
Delta Blues Alley club in Clarksdale, MS.

"The Crossroads", the intersection of Routes 61 and 49 in Clarksdale, MS, where according to legend, 

guitarist Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for mastery of the blues.

Today Clarkdale is the undisputed capital of Delta Blues preservation and revival.  The passenger depot of the defunct Illinois Central Railroad station has been turned into the Delta Blues Museum, Morgan Freedman has started Ground Zero, a funky but polished music venue and restaurant, and a helpful Mississippi Blues Trail app for your cell phone directs you to over 150 Blues Highway markers and points of interest, a calendar of events, music venues, videos, and musician histories. The growth of the Sunflower River Blues Festival (August) and Juke Joint Festival (April) has provided an economic boost to the city.

But all this can be read in a tour guide.  Our own Clarksdale stay scratched the surface of a quirkier, more quixotic, more interesting, yet more desperate place.  

The Cats Head. We started Monday morning, at the Cat Head Delta Blues and Folk Art, Inc.(http://www.cathead.biz/CatHead/Home.html) owned and operated by Roger Stolle who is dedicated to revitalizing community through Blues heritage.

Roger Stolle owns the Cat Head, unofficial headquarters for Delta Blues

Roger moved to Clarksdale in 2002, an enthuastic transplant (escapee?) from an urban life in marketing.  He chatted with us for a good hour about his music and folk art collections, efforts to put together festivals and every-night music in Clarksdale, and participation in civil affairs. We had to ask, "How have you been received here by locals?" as the town is 80 per cent black and most everyone is from families who've been here for generations.  He laughed, and conceded that some are skeptical, especially of the notion that a bit of blues tourism can provide the kind of money and jobs the town desperately needs.  He said that one lady asked him point blank, "Why did you move to hell?"  But this is a man in love--with the blues--and he and others like him make this a vital place.  

Roger gave us tons of tips for our visit.  We bought some books and a CD and admired the folk art.  This beautiful doll, for example, was made by a local, and clearly didn't connote a put-down of black people.  Maybe we misjudged the "Aunt Jemina" cookie jar?  Race is complicated.

Doll from Roger Stoll's Cat Head store

Blues & Rock Museum. Our next stop was the Blues & Rock Museum Collection (http://www.blues2rock.com/Blues2Rock/index.html) again, a quirky venue owned by a transplant, this time, from the Netherlands.  According to a museum video, he collected so much American music memorabilia--mostly from the 1920's through the 1970's--that his wife could barely breath in their house.  They didn't think they would draw enough interest for a museum in the Netherlands, so they decided to find an appropriate American town in which to share the collection.  

The museum's motto is “Blues is the roots, everything else is the fruits” and emphasizes the music's Mississippi and specifically Clarksdale roots, highlighting contributions of Eddy Boyd, Little Junior Parker, Sam Cooke, Ike Turner, John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters, as well as early rockers like Elvis Presley, Bo Diddley, Andy Anderson and Conway Twitty.

Ike Turner is often credited with the first rock 'n' roll record, "Rocket 88"

They also have a nostalgic (for us) collection of "psychedelic" posters from the 1960s and a rare Beatles dress:

John, Paul, George and Ringo adorn 1960s dress

Like everything in Clarksdale, the Blues & Rock was an intimate spot, where we got to know the two folks taking our $5 donation.  One was a Jamaican lady, who had spent most of her life in New York City, and followed her husband's passion to come down to Clarksdale when he retired to work with Habitat for Humanity.  Another soul drawn to something special about the place. The other guide was a lovely older white gentleman who had grown up in Clarksdale, been a wedding photographer, and grew lyrical when remembering working at the old Greyhound station, which still stands downtown, but has no function.

We wandered around downtown Clarksdale, both Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning.  It is a mix of lovely old buildings...

 ...wall art...

... more or less viable commerce...

...and sheer dilapidation,...

Bluesberry Cafe. Monday night we went to the Bluesberry cafe, a juke joint music run by an Italian and his daughter. Monday night is spaghetti, so that's had we had! (So much for lo-carb.) The small audience was about 50/50 locals and tourists. We sat with a Presbyterian minister and his wife, who were in transit from serving a congregation in upstate New York, to one in Phoenix, AZ. The wife was not yet happy about this development, but was a good sport. We also got friendly with three harmonica students of varying ages from England, Wales, and South Africa. They were going to be taking a week-long blues harmonica class offered at Hopson's Plantation by the harmonica player we heard that evening. They were in seventh heaven. There was also a Japanese group at a nearby table. Most of the tourists we encountered, in fact, were not American, but were from outside the country.

Stage at the Bluesberry Cafe

Here's sampling of the music from the Bluesberry cafe. The heavily tattooed, practically bald, ear studded girl dancing seems to be a local. We get the definite sense that Clarksdale attracts a quirky mix from various parts. A southern, Northern Exposure of sorts.

Hopson Plantation. Tuesday we hang out again in downtown Clarksdale, then headed out to Hopson Plantation a few miles south.  We had been hoping to get a tour by one Robert Birdsong, 662-645-606, who came highly recommended, but never seemed to return our phone calls or emails.  It turned out that he was busy bar tending and setting up school fire drills with the local fire department.  He finally said, sure, come on down and join a few Brits he had in tow.  OK, we said. 

Robert Birdsong tells a good tale at Hopson's Plantation Commissary

Our "tour" wound up being a 3 hour jarbone session at the "Commissary", a massive juke joint and bar that used to be the company store on a 5000 acres Hopson cotton plantation farmed by 100 tenant farm families. It is an eclectic mix of farm equipment, antiques and junk, where weekends, holidays and festivals feature music and weekdays a quieter mix of visitors and locals at the bar.

Decor at Hopson's Plantation Commissary

We had a couple of beers, listening to Robert, and talking primarily with a plumber from Yorkshire and a local who owns a truck stop with "best breakfast in town". Robert entertained us with stories prompted by pouring over his well-worn picture album of Indian mounds, conquistador drawings, early settlers, maps and scenes of pre-WWII Clarkesdale, Clarksdale in the civil rights era including its heros, and the many, many, bluesmen he has known. Towards the back of the mammoth album were faded pictures of his own boys in football regalia and more recent shots of grandchildren.

We talked about Mississippi history, the effects of the Civil War and other light subjects

We got to examine the long stiff canvas sacks in which you collect picked cotton in the field before calling out that you need a mule to come drag that one off and give you another. Robert said most pickers could pick between 200 and 300 lbs. a day. We got to examine some untreated cotton and try to pick the seeds out by hand. We got a lesson in grading cotton by color, fiber strength and fiber length.

We learned that the Hopson plantation predates the Civil War (know here simply as, "The War"). As on other farms, when slavery was abolished, many black families stayed and the system of tenant farming arose. Blacks gained some independence but were often at a disadvantage in negotiations with white planters. Historian Nicholas Lemann writes "segregation strengthened the grip of the sharecropper system by ensuring that most blacks would have no arena of opportunity in life except for the cotton fields". In 1935 Hopson plantation began the changeover to become, in 1944, the first completely mechanized cotton operations in the world. Thus even this livelihood was cut off from most blacks. Many migrated north to the cities.

Today, the Shackupinn http://www.shackupinn.com/ on the property, offers the experience of staying in an old tenant farmer shack, visiting old farm equipment and buildings, and best of all, participating in workshops like the week-long harmonica class being taken by some of the folks we had met at the Bluesberry cafe in Clarksdale.

Robert was a wealth of knowledge. He was gracious, entertaining, and passionate about the people of the Mississippi Delta. Nonetheless, there was a reluctance we'd seen before to look the many negatives of the institution of slavery in the eye, or ascribe any good that might have come from the Civil War and its aftermath. Not that he seemed anything but sympathetic and friendly to African Americans. He seemed to imply that they, too, were victims of the overwhelming upheaval of the Civil War era, and emphasized stories of courage, initiative, and cooperation between blacks and whites. Robert was not the first to point out that slaves in Union states (for example in Maryland) were not freed by the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, but only by the 13th Amendment in 1865. To him, the Emancipation Proclamation was Lincoln's cynical manipulation of the slaves to undermine the Southern cause.

Tammy was reading Confederates in the Attic, by Tony Horowitz, as we went through Mississippi. It sheds entertaining light on the resentment towards central government and the romance of a lost cause that not only linger, but seem resurgent today.

Tammy read another excellent book while traveling, The Half Has Not Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, by Edward E. Baptist. It relentlessly follows the money trail of the cotton textile industry through the mid 19th century, as it gave birth to the first wave of the industrial revolution, helped invent ready credit, spurred overnight fortunes, and devastated the lives of the forced migrant slave laborers it depended on.

Clearly, slavery's legacy is still felt in the Delta. As are various economic blows over the years from farm mechanization, migration out of the area, and the rise of the interstate that bypassed Clarksdale. Although 80% of people in Clarksdale are black, we only met a veneer of blacks who seemed to be employed, even in the blues tourism.

Paul Theroux's recent NYT opinion piece, "The Hypocrisy of Helping the Poor", http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-hypocrisy-of-helping-the-poor.html wonders how as a nation we can offshore work, helping to impoverish Americans such as we saw in Clarksdale, while making money off foreign labor and helping alleviate foreign poverty.

On the porch in Clarksdale