Mississippi - Day 22 - to Clarksdale (Blues Museum) and Greenville

Delta Village Mobile Home and RV Park, Leland
Wednesday, 22 January 2020

today's route

As you can see from the map, I drove across most of MS and down close to half of it, stopping partway along in Clarksdale to visit the Delta Blues Museum.

Along the drive
At 9:00 on Wednesday mornings on MS Public Broadcasting, there's a program called Fix It 101, with a local amateur handyman and a professional contractor answering people's questions about home repairs.  Today I learned that before a slab foundation is poured, after the ground is prepared for the pouring, termite treatment is spread across the whole area the foundation will go on.  It's got a green color added to make it easy for the building inspectors to see that the treatment's been spread.  The reason for it is that termites can work their way through the concrete slab and cause trouble with the rest of the building.  Did you know this?  It would never have occurred to me to be possible.

I also heard that MS's DeSoto County has just declared itself a safe haven for Second Amendment rights.  This is the Mississippi county that's immediately south of Memphis, and I'm sure it makes Memphis a little nervous.  They wanted to use the word "sanctuary" but decided it would sound too much like they were encouraging illegal aliens so they went with "safe haven."  They were inspired to act by the Virginia legislature considering new laws that: (1) require universal background checks on gun sales, (2) limit people to 1 handgun purchase per month, and (3) allow localities to ban guns in certain public areas.  In DeSoto County, as in other places that have passed similar measures, they see VA's measures as being a step away from confiscating guns.  I heard this news as I was driving through DeSoto County and was glad my visit here would be brief; universal possession of firearms doesn't make me feel safe.

I passed through Senatobia ("The 5 Star City") and Looxahoma.  MS has lots of towns with names like these.

I passed a sign saying I was in the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area.  Having no idea what that sign meant, I looked it up and wish I'd known about it before I came to the area.  This website says it's one of 49 such sites designated by Congress to preserve the landscape, culture and history of the region.   http://www.msdeltaheritage.com

you can see the blue water even in the distance

The part of the MS landscape I'm seeing here looks like it has a really bad drainage problem.  I'd heard that the soil in the Delta is particularly fertile, which means to me it drains water well enough to keep plants healthy.  If that's the case, then either the soil has changed or they've had way way too much rain, because there's standing water everywhere, particularly in the crop fields.  I saw several crop fields that were actually covered by a lake of standing rainwater.  At first I thought there really was a pond there, until I saw rows of crops disappearing into a large pond of water.

looks like a lake in the middle of the fields, right?

I passed acres and acres of crop fields, which I'm guessing will mostly have cotton in them, and I saw a lot of cotton still on the plants here and there.

I saw a fairly sudden shift from the hill country of the northeastern part to flat flat land in the northwest.  I'm assuming it's flat because of the Mississippi River.

I passed a row of largish brick houses all built at the same time.  Only one had a big fenced front yard - and that's the only one where the yard was inches deep in rainwater.  I guess the other yards sloped down to that one, but it almost looked like a fenced-in lake.

I spent all day dodging various critters: a squirrel that froze in my lane; a buzzard that didn't want to move; people crossing the road to their mailboxes; a Great Blue Heron that flew up out of a roadside pond and into the roadway; several dogs.  At one spot 2 dogs crossed the road and one of them stopped in my lane and looked back where he'd come from and I was really glad I'd slowed down far enough away to not have to screech my tires for him.

I must have passed by a town called Little Texas (wasn't there one in Alabama too?) because I saw the Little Texas Baptist Church.

I passed one of those irrigation systems that rolls around crop fields to spread water (clearly unnecessary right now) and this one was lying on its side.  It was an unusually long one so I passed maybe 20 legs with wheels sticking up into the air, like a centipede lying on its side.

Clarksdale

what's at the crossroads (online photo)

Of course I had to go by the Blues Crossroads, the place that commemorates the myth that legendary blues guitarist Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his talent.  If so, the Devil didn't wait very long for payback because Johnson died at the incredibly young age of 27, possibly by poisoning in connection with the affair he was having.   Here's some explanation.   https://clarkhouse.info/crossroads

I'd intended to stop at Hicks Famous Hot Tamales on the way to the blues museum - hot tamales seem to be a big deal in the MS Delta so I thought I should try them - but the directions Google gave me took me to a deserted building, so I went on.

Those same directions next insisted I go down 2nd Street, and maybe there is a 2nd Street somewhere in Clarksdale, but it's sure not where Google said it would be.  There's a 1st St. and a 3rd St. but I promise there's no 2nd St. anywhere in that neighborhood.  So I had to drive around a bit trying to figure out how to get where I wanted to go.

Delta Blues Museum

Delta Blues Museum

front of sign

It was a cold gray windy day when we were there so I had a hard time making myself give the dogs a reasonable amount of walking time.

The museum charges seniors $8 admission, and I guess I'd describe it more as a hall of fame than an explanation for the Blues music, which was what I'd been hoping for.  And they too insisted on no photos, so I was stuck taking pages of notes.

back of sign

Fortunately they did provide some background for where the Blues came from and what distinguishes it.  After the Civil War, this part of the country had rich land that sold for low prices; it produced a valuable crop that had a ready market; it had easy access to transportation via the Mississippi River; it was a pre-industrial area of the country with jobs not only in agriculture, but also in timber and in levee-building.  As a result of these conditions, newly freed blacks poured into the area in overwhelming numbers.  But the white landowners continued to dominate the area and imposed a rigid segregation between blacks and whites.

In addition to this segregation, the Delta wasn't on anybody's way to anywhere and few people traveled through the area from other parts of the country.  It became culturally isolated and the music it developed was uniquely its own.  It was free of the outside influences that blacks living in - say - Chicago might experience.  For instance, outside the Delta, African traditions were becoming passé, while in this area those traditions were kept alive.

Then in 1914, the city of Clarksdale instituted a curfew targeted at blacks - no alcohol, gambling or noise after the curfew time.  So blacks just moved their parties out of the city, either to a black-owned home or to the laborers' section of a plantation, further intensifying the isolation. 

Little of this music was recorded or even written down for decades.  In 1941-42, John Work, music director at Fisk Univ. (Nashville) and Alan Lomax, folklorist at the Library of Congress, met after learning they were both - separately - studying Delta music and culture; they became the first interracial field study in MS, recording many classic artists like Muddy Waters.

The museum gave brief profiles for a long list of Blues musicians: Johnnie Billington, RL Burnside, "Little" Milton Campbell, Gus Cannon, Sam Carr, Sam Chatmon, Eddie "The Chief" Clearwater, Sam Cook, Cedell Davis, EB Davis, David "Honeyboy" Edwards, WC Handy, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Jimmy "Duck" Holmes, Eddie "Son" House, Robert Johnson, Paul "Wine" Jones, BB King, Charlie Musselwhite, Samuel Joseph Myers, Don Nix, Charley Patton, Joe Willie "Pinetop" Perkins, Otis Rush, Koko Taylor, James "Son" Thomas, Big Mama Thornton, Artie "Blues Boy" White, "Big Joe" Williams, Johnny Winter and more.

They had a lot of information about Muddy Waters (born McKinley Morganfield) and a long quote, some of which went:

You don't have to have a white face to be a gentleman and up to date with what you're doing.  You can be ... any color, but you've got to carry yourself in a way that people know that you're it.  They might say I can't play or can't sing, but damn it, they'll say I'm a gentleman.  

I'm an intelligent blues singer.  People should hear the pure blues - the blues we used to have when we had no money.

This Wikipedia site gives a lot of information about the Blues that wasn't in the museum.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Blues   On the other hand, the museum has several videos playing in different areas at the same time that tell stories about what life was like for some of the folks who started the Blues back before the turn of the 20th century, so there're a lot of stories, a lot of local culture, and a lot of really good music.  They even had an exhibit about King Biscuit Time, the longest running daily radio show in history, that pioneered black radio and created and spread the reputations of black musicians.

I was glad I went though, as I said, it was a struggle for me to understand a lot of what they were talking about, since I have little history with this music.  But to me, it's like Bluegrass in that it's often a pure expression of a time and place.  Two people who came in when I did and left when I did were foreigners and were speaking maybe Polish?  Some language that sounds a little like Russian but wasn't.  I thought how amazing it is that the Blues can reach around the world.

Over to the Great River Road
I was cautious about driving this road because of the predictions of mild flooding along the river south of here, but there was no sign saying "Road Closed," so I kept going and the road was open all the way to Greenville.

I continued to pass huge crop fields, with some being dead brown and others a brilliant green.  I drove miles and miles on straight flat roadway, passing acres and acres of straight flat fields.

Most of the way I was following the levee along the river, though the river flowed sometimes nearer and others farther from the road.  I saw cows grazing right on the side of one section of levee.

I passed a sign for Bunge North America Hurricane Point and remembered that the National Weather Service warnings of imminent flooding included a note that one of the Bunge shipping yards or docks or something has been mildly flooded for the last week.

I saw chinaberry trees and an acre of white birds that I think were gulls and a huge flock of Red-winged Blackbirds.

I passed a house with a front yard that was completely outlined with dozens of old discarded tricycles.  I passed a tractor with a flat tire - for some reason I didn't think those tires went flat.

I passed Gunnison - A Small Town With A Bright Future.  I went through the fairly sizable town of Rosedale, where most houses had many windows and likely great cross-ventilation, having all been built long before air conditioning was invented.  Rosedale is the home of the Great River Road State Park, that is now open only for day use because its campground was under 6' of water during the terrible MS River flooding in 2011.

The forecast rain was starting up at this point, making me hope the Greenville area wasn't going to be dealing with flooding this year.

I suddenly discovered a desperate need to pull off the road because Dexter had vomited on both Gracie and the dog bed she was lying on.  Fortunately, less than a mile away I came across the Visitor Center for Winterville Mounds and spent 20 minutes or so using up a lot of patience and paper towels trying to clean up the mess on both the dog and the bed.

By the time I could notice where I was, it seemed too late to pay the site a visit.  It's only 8 miles north of Greenville, though, and I hope I'm able to get back over here before leaving the area.  There were originally 23 mounds, and almost half of them have been leveled in farming and road building.  The site still has 12, though, one of them as tall as a 5-story building and among the 10 tallest in the US.  They're thought to date back as far as 1000 AD.  For more information, here's a link about them.   http://www.mdah.ms.gov/winterville-mounds

I passed a sign saying Greenville is a Certified Mississippi Team City but have no idea what that's about.

I passed a billboard advertising Dickey's "Legit. Texas. Barbecue."

I passed a motel called the Country Inn, with a sign saying it's a place "for nicer people."

All along Route 1, which is what I'd been driving since Clarksdale, I saw the levee lining the Mississippi River.  I was reminded that I'd heard it called the Great Wall of Mississippi because of being higher and longer than the Great Wall of China.  In fact, some think it might be the biggest thing man ever made.  It was built in response to the devastating flood of 1927, intended to reduce future flooding; unfortunately, it seems to have increased flooding.  This Wikipedia article is pretty interesting and includes not just information about the levee but also about the stunning discrimination shown to the black residents of the area and the odd political results of these events.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Great-Mississippi-Flood-of-1927

And then I turned inland a few miles east of Greenville to the town of Leland, where I have reservations for a few nights.