Journey Through America : The Clarksdale Experience

Any fan of the blues knows the story of the crossroads.  Robert Johnson supposedly an average if not poor guitar player, leaves his hometown for a few months, and comes back with almost miraculous guitar prowess and starts writing and performing a series of blues songs that become classics.  Among them is a song called Crossroads and the story quickly gathers pace that his new found abilities are as a result of a pact he made with the devil at The Crossroads.

Any musical  journey that gets near the Mississippi Delta then has to make the pilgrimage to those crossroads for the obligatory photo. Part of the problem is "what crossroads?" as there are so many crossroads in the Delta and of course there are three popular sites.  With limited time we settled on the accepted wisdom that the crossroads were those of the old Highways 49 and 61 in Clarksdale Mississippi.  So we, well I, decided to add an extra 2-3 hours to our journey from Tupelo to Memphis (and not follow the route that Elvis took as a boy) and head to Clarksdale.

After deliberately disobeying Dolly, our GPS lady to explore the back roads on the Delta we ended up arriving in Clarksdale and finding the crossroads quite late in the afternoon, hungry after not eating all day.  It was a quiet Sunday and things did not look that exciting and promising in Clarksdale after taking the photos.

We followed signs to the Delta Blues Museum (which was closed) and there was a band playing in back yard of the not promising sounding Pink Bar.  We were thirsty and hungry so we stopped for a beer and to listen to some music.  We settled in a mix of local, Dutch and Italian blues fans. Eventually we had a few beers with Steve Kolbus from the band, Steve is a local import who has been playing around town for 18 years. We were particulary taken by his song Shelby Woman about an ex girl friend who ended their relationship by "faking her own death". Nice guy and he helped arrange our accommodation that night. He rang his friend Bubba who came down to the bar gave us a deal on one of his loft apartments and checked us in right there.  The loft turned out to be the best accommodation we had while in the States - complete with some great DVDs about the local blues scene.

Reds By Day

Bubba recommended we check out "Reds" a local land mark and juke joint.   We were given two choices on how to get there one  involved walking down the railway track.  There was no choice really after hearing that.  It really looked exactly as I would hope a juke joint would.  Run down, seedy and you could almost smell the blues coming out (at least something coming out). I can assure you it looks pretty imposing at night.

Watermelon Slim at Reds

What was particularly pleasing was that Watermelon Slim was playing when we got there.  I have been listening to his music for about ten years and he is one of my favourite living and performing bluesmen.

I was beginning to really like Clarksdale.










The next day we drove to Indianolo and visited the BB King Blues Museum and returned to Clarksdale.  It was a fascinating drive past cotton fields, Parchment Farm Prison and some old bayous.  When we got back we  meet Steve again and went to hear the Italian couple we met the previous day play a set (complete with Watermelon Slim dancing) of solid blues (complete with Italian accents) that had a revolving set of locals supporting them.  Another great night.

Ground Zero - by Day

If we had done a bit more research we would have stayed longer in Clarksdale.  We would have checked out Ground Zero - Morgan Freeman's blues club and checked out some of the local blues men.  Sadly it is a passing era as we are losing many of the stalwarts and the last of the bluesmen who started in the fields picking cotton.

Would love to go back and spend more time there.