Delta Blues (and Grays) – SE Tennessee and Mississippi

Our tour of “music meccas” continued with a day in Memphis. First stop was to a BBQ joint right by the Lorraine Hotel (where MLK was assassinated). A heart-heavy-making place in which we did not dwell by visiting the adjacent Civil Rights Museum, having budgeted time only for one tour – the Stax Museum. It was a good bookend for our upcoming visit to Muscle Shoals, another color-blind, hit-making soul & blues music studio fueled by a killer house band, Booker T and the MGs. 

Onward south along the Mississippi River to Clarksdale, “a ditty-wah-ditty city which is always alright.” A happy accident in our itinerary planning resulted in an extra day there. The commercial real estate in Clarksdale, like Memphis, is probably 50% (or more) derelict, so it has the feel of a ghost town haunted by talented musicians keeping the music alive 365 days a year, mostly for European tourists. The places we visited were cluttered with junk, but the music was more than alright. 

We stayed on the property of the Stovall Store and Gin Company, a wrecked vestige of a sharecropper hamlet and cotton ginning operation on a former plantation.

You can imagine our delight when touring the quaint, labor-of-love Delta Blues Museum when we learned that Muddy Waters had worked and lived at Stovall and had been discovered and recorded by Smithsonian Folkways researchers (Lomax and Wolf) close to where we camped. They had come looking for Robert Johnson only to find out he had died. Locals said to head up to Stovall and ask for Muddy. When these two guys (one white, one black) in a fancy car showed up asking for him, Muddy’s first thought was they were there to bust his side-business making moonshine. Apparently, he relaxed when he saw the recording rig in the trunk of their car. They paid him $20 and (after repeated requests) sent him a copy of his record, which inspired him to give up plowing cotton fields and (and moonshining) to become a full-time musician. Muddy Waters took the train north from Clarksdale (from the depot now housing the museum) and went on to ignite the Chicago electric blues scene.

We ended our last night in Clarksdale with a set at the Bluesberry Café that epitomized everything that was soulful, quirky and authentic about the place. “Guitar Frenchie” from Nimes, France was rather loquacious, telling stories between numbers that were at least as long as the songs. We warmed to the authenticity of his tales of moving to the UK to learn English, then on to Los Angeles where in brief order he was playing guitar in Shooter Jennings’ band and getting assistance from Shooter’s parents – Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter – to obtain a work visa. A cast of quirky older folks milled about, including a guy who grabbed the mic to assure us that France has the fewest fat people in the world (Frenchie’s rejoinder: until the American fast food arrived). We figured he might be the owner, or he might be a local character that the owners indulge. When the band asked, “Slim, if we do a song in E, can you join us?” He fished about 5 harmonicas out of his pocket and affirmed he could jump in. This was “Watermelon Slim” (he has a Wikipedia page). He blew through three numbers with them before returning to bussing tables and yelling at guests (he was a little deaf).

All those great blues folks of yore headed north, but we headed farther south to Vicksburg. Along the way, we stopped for a picnic breakfast at Winterville Mounds, among the tallest vestiges of elaborate Mississippian (pre-Columbian Native American) settlements. It was a peaceful and rather mystical spot that we literally stumbled across. 

With fierce storms inbound the next day, upon arriving we prioritized our main objective in Vicksburg and cycled through the Civil War battlefield, stopping for audio tour narratives. What emerged was a deeper understanding of siege warfare. There were 13 fortifications along the ridge overlooking the river, and Grant’s troops dug elaborate “approaches” to, and eventually under, each of them (leveraging their coal-mining experts from West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky), ultimately provoking surrender on July 4, 1863, the day after the Battle of Gettysburg. 

There is much more to the story, and we heard much of it visiting a museum in town the next day via a passionately delivered briefing by a former Vicksburg Battlefield historian/guide pointing to a 70s-era diorama. We have greatly appreciated the quirky museums on this journey – this one housed not only the diorama but also an enormous collection of model train sets, military uniforms, warship models, and Coca-Cola bottles/memorabilia – turns out soda bottling was invented in Vicksburg!

We rounded out the time in Vicksburg with some reflections about what we’ve been seeing, and about this trip. Paul observed, “It seems like nothing is discarded in the [deep] south. Not possessions, not memories, not mementos, not trash.”  And while it can be bewildering to see so much junk and so many dilapidated structures, we also enjoyed many delightful human interactions. From the kindly gentlemen farmer/bicyclists from across the river in Louisiana with whom we chatted in the battlefield parking lot as they finished their ride and we prepared for ours (advice, perspective, funny anecdotes) to the fellow travelers at the lovely Vicksburg BnB (Oak Hall, for showers and creature comforts), we have been delighted over and over again. We love this meandering, encountering and exploring life.

Onward up the Natchez Trace Trail to Muscle Shoals and then to Cloudland Canyons (NW Georgia). Suggestions and comments warmly welcomed. The registration step is solely to keep out bots and trolls.