Crossroads Blues

"I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees
I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees
Asked the Lord above 'Have mercy, now save poor Bob, if you please'...

You can run, you can run, tell my friend Willie Brown
You can run, you can run, tell my friend Willie Brown
That I got the crossroad blues this mornin', Lord, babe, I'm sinkin' down..."

-Robert Johnson

"O, I wish I was in the land of cotton
Good times there are not forgotten..."

-traditional

I originally wanted to stop in Clarksdale, Mississippi, because I heard that both Sam Cooke and Ike Turner were born there, and I figured there'd be some sort of monument. There was quite a bit more in this little town than I expected, though, and not much of it had to do with Sam or Ike. It mostly had to do with the Delta blues, and it turns out Clarksdale is an epicenter of sorts.

First things first, though. Above is a shot of our first glimpse of the King. No, not that King, silly. We're talking the King in 1840. King Cotton. In a huge field along side of Rte. 61 heading south along the Mississippi. We saw no people picking it really, just big machines. Below, you'll see Abe's BBQ, which Matt refused to stop at, I think because I'd already had barbecue twice that day or something...



Clarksdale is a washed-out, decrepit-looking town, but you can imagine how it must have been full of workers a long time ago, and perhaps sort of thriving, but if you know anything about the blues, you know that most of the people around here are black, and that things only thrived for the white man.




One thing I never really understood, however, even after being there, is why this area is called the Mississippi Delta. What people mean when they say that is the northeastern part of the state around Clarksdale, Rosedale, and a couple of other cities that you'll hear made mention of in Robert Johnson tunes, an area made moist by something called the alluvial plain of the Mississippi River. The delta of the Mississippi itself, is located, as everyone knows, in New Orleans. It confuses me. Hurts my head. Here's a sculpture of a dead lady:



Okay, that was random. Sorry about that. The point is, that sculpture is made out of clay taken from the bottom of the Yazoo River, which is part of the alluvial plain. That's an alluvial dead lady. She is relevant because she was sculpted by this frightening-looking mad-dog of a man:



His name was James "Son" Thomas, a singer, guitarist, folk-artist, and lastly but not leastly, gravedigger from the area. The placard on this display, which we found in the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, mentioned that this happy fellow sculpted lots of shit out of alluvial clay, including fish, birds, and "other animals native to the Mississippi Delta," but didn't actually show any of them. It was a little bit more about the dead gal.

Clarksdale is also home to Muddy Waters, the man who's got his mojo workin', and who basically invented the modern blues. He used to have a house in Clarksdale, but it got blown away by a tornado, and now it lives, re-built, inside the museum, next to the crazy guy who sculpts dead fish out of clay.

Here is a guitar that Muddy Waters sold to the owner of a brothel in New Orleans so he could have money to skip town after he knifed somebody in a jook-joint scuffle (that's a good song title, no? "Jook Joint Scuffle"? Somebody write that number...).



And here is the guitar that ZZ Top made out of a board from Muddy's blown-away house...



Yeah...



Here is "blues alley" behind the museum. Full of "Delta Entertainment". Sorta gave me the blues.



A jook joint. Somebody probably getting knifed in there right now.



And to close out, a photo of me at the crossroads (feeling blue, naturally) of Rtes 61 and 49, where around 1930 or so, Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in return for his uncanny ability to play the guitar, sing incredible songs about love, loss, and death, and run and hide from the crazy dead-guy clay-sculptor of Clarksdale.



There was so much more at this museum and the town and along the roads of the Delta, but I don't have the time or photos to properly explain it all. You should all go check it out for yourselves.

-Robbie