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FROM MUDDY'S PLACE TO MEMPHIS! PART 1 OF 2
A couple of months back in Cosmik Blues I wrote a love letter to the Mississippi Delta and Memphis. I just got back and these blues destinations returned my flirtations many times over.
The day-job purpose of the trip was to learn about how the Memphis Youth Opportunity program uses music production to reach at-risk youth, and I was very fortunate to take a side trip to some of the blues' most hallowed ground. From the Crossroads to the former Stovall Plantation, or up to Friar's Point, to the legendary Beale Street in Memphis, I'd recommend my itinerary to any blues fan interested in retracing the steps of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, or Pinetop Perkins. Next month, we'll wind up in Memphis, and I'll show you not only the great stuff the City of Memphis Youth Opportunity program is doing with young people in their recording studio, but we'll also learn more about the roots of soul music at the Stax Music Academy and Soulsville, USA.
Before we get up to Memphis, let's spend some time down in the Mississippi Delta. This month, we'll travel to the Delta and experience a landscape largely unchanged since the early days of the blues. Along the way, we'll stop at the Crossroads, shop by a new blues and coffee shop in Clarksdale, and head North to Friars Point. We'll also sample some new blues recorded at several juke joints from a Chicago-based label, Stand On The Ocean Records, for their Lowdown, Dirty Mississippi Delta Blues CD. Next month our travels will take us up Highway 61 to Beale Street, home to one of the hottest blues scenes around.
I'd read plenty of stories about the Crossroads legend, the one where Robert Johnson traded his soul late at night at the intersection of Highway 49 and Highway 61 in exchange for the ability to play guitar. His young wife had died in childbirth, and the legend says that he invoked the Devil to avenge this tragedy. Today the Crossroads are marked with criss-crossed baby-blue Gibsons about 15 feet above street level on a busy streetcorner in Clarksdale. While Clarksdale boasts few industries or destinations aside from local culture or the blues there's no shortage of good barbeque, great blues, and friendly and welcoming people.
Walking around Clarksdale early one Sunday morning I was pleasantly surprised to find Cat Head, an eclectic store that features Delta blues, folk art from local Coahoma County artists, and strong, hot free coffee. Owners Roger and Jennifer Stolle left their corporate jobs in St. Louis earlier this year and decided to follow their blues dreams. They set up shop across the street from the studios of WROX, the home of the late Early Wright's "Soul Man" radio show that spanned more than a half-century. Both Roger and Jennifer have an encyclopedic knowledge of not only their considerable blues CD holdings but also day trips around the Delta for blues fans. As I shopped for another version of Elmore James doing "Dust My Broom" Roger played the latest Fat Possum release of local bluesman T-Model Ford, Bad Man. T-Model released his first CD just shy of his 75th birthday a few years ago and he can play frets around bluesmen and blueswomen a fraction of his age. Clicking on www.cathead.biz will transport you to Roger and Jennifer's shop, the next best thing to sharing blues stories over a hot cup of coffee.
While the Delta Blues Museum has reconstructed Muddy Waters' boyhood cabin his memorial on the former Stovall Plantation on the outskirts of Clarksdale can be hard to find. I stopped by the Stovall Store and asked for directions. There are no signs pointing to Muddy's memorial, but duck hunters at the store said that I should take the first dirt road about a mile up the road apiece.
After a few wrong turns, one that landed me straight into a fenced graveyard of early settlers or slaves smack-dab in a cotton field, I found a stone marker commemorating Muddy Water's cabin. Historians have debated the exact location of the cabin where musicologist Alan Lomax first recorded Muddy, but I didn't care. I was a blues pilgrim in the fields where Muddy most likely walked. The plaque's inscription has inspired me ever since I discovered Muddy in the 70's for the first time.
"Muddy Waters was the most famous of all Chicago bluesmen, but his roots lie deep in the rich Mississippi soil from which he took his nickname. From the age of three until he journeyed to Chicago in 1943, Muddy Waters (born McKinley Morganfield) occupied a sharecropper's shack
at this site on Stovall Plantation. Discovered and recorded here in 1941 by musicologist Alan Lomax, Muddy embarked on a career that would pioneer the development of electric blues and change the course of popular music forever. With legends like The Rolling Stones (whose name came from a Muddy song), The Beatles, Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, and Jimi Hendrix acknowledging his influence, his position as a godfather of rock is secure. As his friend and protégé Eric Clapton said, 'Muddy Waters' music changed my life, and whether you know it or not, and like it or not, it probably changed yours, too.'"
Blues Hall of Fame, 1981 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,1987
As I left Clarksdale I turned up Lowdown, Dirty Mississippi Delta Blues on Stand On the Ocean Records and rolled the windows down. The disc features local players recorded at juke joints like Walnut Street Bail Shop and the Sandbar Lounge in nearby Greenville, and Blues Station and Ground Zero, both in Clarksdale. The cotton fields, at just the right angle, looked like fields of snow in the distance from Highway 61.
Click on over to my CD review of this Delta blues sampler and you'll see why it's been in my CD more often than not.
After Clarksdale I took a slight detour to Friars Point. I'd read about how Muddy used to play fish frys at night and how, a generation earlier, Robert Johnson played outside a corner store to the dismay and chagrin of the owners. After all, this was a very segregated South. After a few more wrong turns I noticed a mauve-colored building just down the street from the North Delta Museum. I stopped in for a cold drink to ask for directions, and learned more about Robert Johnson's legacy from Mr. Robert Hersberg than any textbook could offer. Hersberg's grandmother told him stories about young Robert, who used to play right outside the store on an old, hand-hewn bench. The elder Hersbergs asked Robert to take his music away from the doorway - not for racial reasons, but for more practical reasons several decades ahead of their time. Robert was drawing a crowd and the crowd blocked customers' entry to the store, according to Hersberg. He's got a framed full-page news story about his "Wal-Mart of Friars Point" in the back of the store, and after squeezing by the hunting bibs, winter clothes, children's toys, and other necessities, that article was right: from Afro-Sheen to hip waders, this store has it all. Hersberg was like many people I met on my blues pilgrimage: welcoming, unhurried, and genuinely concerned that an out-of-town boy like me felt at home.
[Pinetop Perkins]
There you have it. a rather personal tour of the Delta that I'd recommend to anyone who wants to walk where Muddy, Robert, Pinetop, and countless other bluesmen, walked.
Click back next month when we'll hit Beale Street, check in with Soulsville USA, and have "rib tips 'til payday" at Issac Hayes' restaurant where food, music, and passion reign supreme, courtesy of one of Memphis' own native sons.
A Short List of Mississippi Blues Must-Do's:
Blues Aplenty in Coahoma County: Check out Clarksdale and greater Coahoma County for blues landmarks like the Hopson Plantation, the Tutwiler Arts Project, and the Sunflower River Blues Festival, among other great links: www.clarksdale.com/tourcomm
Delta Blues Museum: Learn more about this year's King Biscuit Blues Festival featuring Sonny Landreth, Ike Turner, Sam Carr, Otis Taylor, Bob Margolin, and others. Don't forget to see Muddy Waters' cabin, the displays honoring Son House and Robert Johnson, and the Women of the Blues. Click on www.deltabluesmuseum.org. The museum is across the street from the Ground Zero Blues Club, www.groundzerobluesclub.com.
Shack Up Inn: For a true sharecroppers' shack experience, stay in one of the refurbished (read: indoor plumbing, heating) shacks not far from the Crossroads, www.shackupinn.com. When I return to the Delta, I hope to get Pinetop's shack.
North Delta Museum, Friar's Point: The North Delta Museum is located in Friar's Point near the Hersberg's Store. This "Wal-Mart of Friars Point" has everything, and one of the true highlights of my trip was listening to Mr. Robert Hersberg, a genial host who is a wealth of information on the blues, particularly Robert Johnson.
(C) 2002 - Eric Steiner