Blues Highway Road Trip by Donna F Orchard

“The blues kept me on the road; it was always leading me somewhere. That’s what the blues is, it’s a leading thing, something on your mind that keeps you moving.”
David “Honeyboy” Edwards

I don’t know what all the head bobbing is about when Bobby “Blue” Bland steps onto the main stage at the Shedhead Blues Festival, in Ocean Springs, MS. I’m there to get a report for the local paper. His guitar is the hypnotic droning of a single cord, long and hard. Soon, I’m a head bobber too and on the final cord we bow to one of the last great Mississippi bluesmen. In my mind I start to move north on Highway 61 to make that road trip I’ve put off for years even while living close.

The Blues trail strings travelers along this historic highway all the way from Vicksburg to Beale Street in Memphis. Blues music cuts a wide swath through Mississippi. I begin to follow some of the 100 Blues Trail Markers as they take me down back roads. I pass White Station, Potts Camp, and Foxfire Ranch where I see about 100 motor cycles side-by-side out front of the farmhouse. There’s music tonight, but I’ve decided to mush on to Greenville. A station attendant who offers to pump my gas asks why I’m on the road. “I’m on the hunt for the blues.”

He says, “You know why Mississippi sings the blues?  We lost.”

I know to arrive early Thursday night, at seven at the Walnut Street Blues Bar in Greenville. Danny, the owner, tells me that’s when the working people come for the music.

A warm and friendly crowd of blacks and whites gathers at the bar to greet their neighbors, drink beer, and catch up on the news in Greenville. To the left of the bar the John Horton band tunes up in front of a bigger than life picture of Elvis and an antique Coca Cola sign. They’re on blues time and don’t start playing for another hour.

Horton is a big man who wears a flowered Hawaiian shirt and a Panama hat. He sings and is lead guitar. Like his father, Big Walter Horton, he plays the “dirty blues” made famous by Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson. Also, like his father, he drives a bulldozer by day. “I’m pretty good at playing music, he said, but I’m like my daddy, the best when it comes to driving a bulldozer.”

Tom (Wildcat) Collins plays bass, a red guitar slung on his hip. I recognize him from a picture at a Blues museum earlier in the day. Anthony Sherrod is on drums. I take a back table, obviously a visitor. But soon I’m weaving onto the dance floor while loving the music. The minute the band has a break, a few guys out in the crowd leave their BBQ ribs and take to the stage. Seems that Horton has a rhythm band  traveling with him, musicians in their own right. We don’t miss a beat.

The Highway 61 Blues Museum is five miles down the road from Greenville in Leland. Murals cover the store front, images that capture the excitement of the ‘30s during cotton’s heyday. The museum honors local bluesman James “Son” Thomas with a Trail Marker. He’s gone like so many of the traditional blues musicians, old timers, with the exception of  Bobby “Blue” Bland, Wildcat Collins and of course BB King. Fans wonder if the blues will survive without them.

When I open the door to the museum Pat Thomas welcomes me with a big smile. He plays guitar and is a folk sculptor like his famous father. “Son” Thomas, is said to have had a calm sincerity and an easy style. Pat has it too. At first I don’t hear the quiet, mournful serenade when I move from room to room viewing photos and paintings. Then, I’m drawn back to sit on some dusty steps in front of Pat and listen.

“I have lots more stuff at my house,” Pat says. “Here’s my number.” We take a picture in the warmth of a hug and I get another move on my mind, a trip back to Pat’s.

Robert Johnson was a name that came up in many conversations as I traced the path of blues clubs and blues museums. The Depression changed the blues from the early Delta blues style of Charley Patton, Son House, and John Hurt. Like any other art form, the blues is dynamic and grows and evolves.

Johnson was the first to develop a style in the 30s by listening to sounds he heard on the radio and phonograph by artists around the country. His sensual lyrics and untimely death gave rise to the rumor that he made a deal with the devil at the crossroads. There is a belief that you shouldn’t sing the “dirty” blues on Saturday night and sing church songs on Sunday morning. The early musicians said they sang the blues—to get rid of the blues.

Today the traditional blues exists alongside hill country blues, afrissippi, hip hop, honky tonk, boogie woogie, and Appalachian.

Alvin Youngblood Hart, a young musician, did his part to keep the

traditional blues alive with a sound track for the movie Brother Where Art Thou in 2000.  

I hear along the way not to miss the BB King Museum in Indianola, a few miles off Hwy. 61. In the $16,000,000 museum there’s not only a large collection of BB King memorabilia, but a history of the blues and photographs not seen elsewhere. At eighty-four King still returns to his hometown each year for a June concert on the lawn at the museum.

It’s not surprising to find that it is BB King who brought the Mississippi blues national and even international attention. A young man, he strayed from the music of the old timers and the images of sharecropping and social conditions that created the blues. Singing the blues with a pop sound in the 60’s, King found himself an outsider. He described it as “like being black twice.”

I stay for dinner across the street with Harlon and Trish, owners of the Blue Biscuit, and decide where to head next. They suggest Clarksdale.

From the early days of Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson to today, Clarksdale, Mississippi, is the place to go to find the soul blues, home to the Delta Blues Museum. The Riverside Hotel was host to Count Bassie, Ray Charles, James Brown, and Ike Turner.

Johnson heard recordings of field hands in Clarksdale near Hopson’s Commissary on  Pixley Road. I stay in the Shack Up Inn, a B&B (bed and beer) in back of the Commissary. Sharecropper shacks are renovated with modern conveniences to welcome visitors. I get two bedrooms, bath, a common area and a sitting porch for less than $100.00.  Blues lyrics painted on inside doors and walls add to the charm. It’s a favorite stop for Europeans.

Morgan Freeman, the actor, took a special interest in his hometown of Clarksdale in 2001 and opened Ground Zero. Designed after an old juke joint there’s a huge bar running front to back, graffiti on the walls, Christmas lights strung from the ceilng, pool tables, and a blues stage. You can count on music there  Friday and Saturday nights.

When I get to club the band is more jazz than blues this particular night. “Go right over the railroad tracks to Red’s.” somebody suggests, “if you want a real juke joint.”

Pitch dark with no moon out, I find myself riding round and round, no lights to guide me to the club. Finally, I see a boarded up building with “REDS” scrawled on a door in small letters.

Red is the big man behind the bar in dark glasses. When I offer my debit card for a Coors Light, Red turns his back and waves me off, not a word. I should have known to bring cash. I prop up at the bar and get the feeling the music is all that matters.

A musician sits on a chair with a microphone in the middle of the room, Bill Homans, Watermelon Slim. I take one look at him and know I’m in the right place. “Keep your lamp trimmed and burning.” Alone in his own bubble, there’s a painful look on his drooping face as his eyes roll to the ceiling at the end of each verse.

Slim plays a left-hand slide on a right-hand guitar flat on his lap. “When I was singing in church at six,” he said, “I realized I could sing harmony. By nine I was performing.”

A sad, melancholy feeling hangs over the crowd when he stops. I can’t believe two hours has gone by. I leave Reds that night with a refrain in my head.

When I get home, I’m surprised when Slim’s agent gives me his number, I call to get the lyrics to that song I’ve been humming. He answers in his distinctive deep, raspy, guttural voice. “This is Slim.”

“I know. There’s no doubt!”

When time comes at midnight

And old death comes trippin’ in your row

You’re gonna need somebody on your bond.

 

“I’ve been singing this one all my life.” he says, then sings each verse—a special moment.

The beginning of the Blues, as the story goes, was in 1903.  W.C. Handy, a composer and musician, observed Henry Sloan, a hobo at the Tutwiler train station playing the old blues with a knife for a slide.   He fell in love with the sound and is credited with getting it out into the world. Handy described it as “the weirdest music I ever heard.”