BLUES TOUR OF THE SOUTH

NOTE: Our original tour was taken on our way back from New Orleans to Kentucky in May of 2001. We have since revisited the Clarksdale and Helena areas for the King Biscuit Blues Festival in October 2002. Updates from this later visit appear as bold-type NOTEs embedded in the text.

New Orleans and Points North

We start our tour in the French Quarter of New Orleans, which of course has numerous venues for traditional jazz, blues, and zydeco. These can usually be heard, and even seen, from outside. Sometimes the musicians leave the stage a take a little stroll in the street to see how they are sounding outside and to try to draw in some customers. Tap dancers and street musicians perform for tips in the French Quarter streets. And if you leave the Quarter, you can find another unusual musical venue or two.

Near the edge of the Quarter on Rampart Street, is Louis Armstrong Park, which contains the infamous Congo Square (and its monstrous Hanging Tree -- which is just what it sounds like) where early forms of African-American music and dance were performed by early French Quarter residents such as the voodoo queen Marie Laveau, who (perhaps) lies in the nearby Saint Louis Cemetery #1. Voodoo rituals played an important role in the development of today's music, and are still practiced today, whether for entertainment or as a serious religion. The voodoo influence is evident in the tendency to turn the above-ground tombs into shrines, as is done here at the tomb of Marie Laveau, a tradition that is carried on as far north as Walls, Mississippi, just south of Memphis, as evidenced by the offerings and tributes (coins and even a harmonica) at the gravesite of blues singer-guitarist Memphis Minnie, who exerted an important influence on the modern blues.

Clarksdale, Mississippi

Somewhere in between New Orleans and Memphis lies Clarksdale, Mississippi, near the intersection of the blues' two most famous highways. Is this the crossroads to which Robert Johnson referred? Not likely. But it would have been easy for his "old evil spirit" to "catch a Greyhound bus and ride" here. You could also catch the train here, in those days, and ride to Chicago, as Muddy Waters did. All that remains of Muddy's house now resides in the Delta Blues Museum, which unfortunately allows no photography inside, but if you travel out of town to the old Stovall Plantation, you can find part of the foundation where the house used to stand. If you look out past the trees that once surrounded the house, you see the fields where Muddy used to drive a tractor for 22 1/2 cents an hour. The turnrow or dirt road you see here is where the cultivating equipment turns around between fields.

NOTE: On our return visit to the museum, I was able to get photos of Muddy's cabin, which is really just the central structure around which the rest of the house was built. It contains a lifesize wax figure of Muddy, with guitar. Other exhibits include B.B. King's original Lucille, and the sign from the Three Forks grocery and juke joint, where Robert Johnson was poisoned to death.

Back in Clarksdale, Muddy is memorialized, along with John Lee Hooker and Bessie Smith, in this outdoor mural. Across the street from the mural is Sarah's Kitchen, where local blues bands still perform, if somewhat irregularly. If you can manage to catch Sarah's open and get inside when she is cooking, you are in for a real treat -- and her downhome meals (she used to cook for the Clarksdale jail) only cost a fraction of what they would in New Orleans.

Helena, Arkansas

A few miles west of Clarksdale, across the Mississippi River, lies Helena, Arkansas, where Sonny Boy Williamson and (later) Robert Nighthawk once hosted "King Biscuit Time," the nation's first live blues radio show, on KFFA-AM 1360. The original trailer from which Sonny Boy (No. 2) and his cohorts played in parking lots and gas stations sits in this West Helena field beside the KFFA office and transmitter. NOTE: For the King Biscuit Festival, the trailer was brought to town and parked on Cherry Street.

Back in Helena proper, "King Biscuit Time" is still broadcast daily from this studio by "Sunshine" Sonny Payne, the show's host since 1954. NOTE: On our return visit, Sonny actually interviewed me on the air. (That's Greg Martin of the Kentucky Headhunters looking over my shoulder.) The audio of this program can be found at the King Biscuit Time website. My interview takes place in the second half of the program. Nowadays Sonny mostly just spins records, but there are several reminders of the days when the show was live on site, such as these showbills and this set of drums that Peck Curtis played on the show. Other Arkansas musicians, such as jump-blues king Louis Jordan, are also memorialized. NOTE: During the King Biscuit Festival, we took a sidetrip to Jordan's boyhood home in nearby Brinkley, Arkansas. At least there is a marker to memorialize the location, but the house itself has fallen into shameful disrepair.

Outside of Helena is the Magnolia Cemetery, where Robert Nighthawk and his onetime bandmate, harp man Frank Frost, are buried. (On this particular day, the cemetery was closed.) NOTE: During a side trip from the King Biscuit Festival, on a soggy October day, we found the cemetery open, and after slogging around muddy gravesites for several minutes, I found the gravestones of Frost and Nighthawk. The two men are not really buried side by side, but since no one knows the exact location of Nighthawk's grave, this seems as good a place as any to put his marker.

Memphis

NOTE: Our original tour included no photos from Memphis, because the Memphis-in-May traffic prevented us from getting close to anything interesting, blues-wise. On our return visit, however, we did stop in long enough to visit Sun Studios, where Sam Phillips first recorded the likes of Howlin' Wolf and Elvis Presley. Parts of both the exterior and the interior of this historic site have been kept pretty much as they appeared in the 1950s.

Of course, we couldn't leave town without partaking of some of Memphis' famous barbecue. It was great!

Brownsville, Tennessee

In the parking lot of the Brownsville Historical Center is the late Sleepy John Estes' house. If you go inside this two-room shotgun shack, you can see Sleepy John's bedroom. Note the suspenders hanging on the wall and the chamber pot on the floor. (The house has no plumbing.)

Inside the Historical Center are several interesting exhibits. One is on Peetie Wheatstraw, who billed himself as "The Devil's Son-in-Law" and "The High Sheriff from Hell." The display includes two accounts of Peetie's death, one from a newspaper, and one from Down Beat magazine. There is also a mural depicting Sleepy John Estes along with harp player Hammie Nixon and blues mandolin man Yank Rachell, as well as some of Yank's clothes and one of his mandolins.

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