Untutored Yanks like me are sometimes abashed to apprentice that the abundant Mississippi River Delta extends all the way up to Memphis, Tennessee.But the access of Mississippi—both the river and the state—is apparent in the Bluff City.Dig into about any important Memphis abnormality or personality—blues-tinged or not—and you’re accountable to acquisition Mississippi roots.
“Memphis is the basic of the Delta, and we’re on the spine—Highway 61,” the dejection historian and filmmaker Robert Gordon told me over cafeteria one day on the south ancillary of Memphis.“All anchorage in the Delta advance to 61, and 61 leads to Memphis.”
So it came to me one bleary-eyed Saturday night that to accept Memphis at all, I would charge to adventure further south.At the moment, I was in a midtown Memphis juke joint, raptly affectionate a adolescent dejection accompanist called Ms.Nickki, who had told me she was from Holly Springs, Mississippi, breadth her ancestors had aloft horses and accomplished her to sing in church.
On Sunday morning, I anticipation I’d alpha out at the Full Actuality Tabernacle Church, breadth allegorical Memphis body accompanist the Rev.Al Green sometimes leads the service.But afresh I consulted with my accommodating hosts Tom and Sandy Franck, who run the absorbing Talbot Heirs Guesthouse in city-limits Memphis.They recommended the actuality account at Aboriginal Baptist Beale Street Abbey adapted nearby.
When I accustomed at the celebrated church, though, I apparent that already every 5 weeks they switched the Sunday academy affair with the capital service, and this was that week—so I had just absent the service.It was a above disappointment, but what could I do? Move on to the day’s primary mission: a day cruise through the Delta.
I jumped in my busy Mustang, put the top down, acquainted the radio to a actuality base at the top end of the AM dial, and acicular south against Highway 61.Destination: Clarksdale, Mississippi, the actual cradle of the blues.It’s where—at the capital of Highways 61 and 49—legend says bluesman Robert Johnson awash his body to the devil to accretion his talent.It’s breadth Bessie Smith died (not in Memphis, as Edward Albee seems to accept believed).It’s breadth the Delta Dejection Building lives.And it’s alone 80 afar down the road.
Within 15 minutes, I was casual men in overalls affairs humongous watermelons off an old flatbed truck.You see billboards adorable Memphians down to the Tunica, Mississippi, casinos for the slots and craps action.A restaurant ad promised 48-ounce steaks—the appellation “doggie bag” seemed al of a sudden inadequate.Pretty soon, I was in the Magnolia State, abatement by rice and affection fields that continued off to the horizon.The clay looked clumsily affluent to my amateurish eyes.
En route, I couldn’t abide a quick detour into Tunica’s bank emporia, allotment the Horseshoe Casino because it looked beneath all-encompassing and because it sits next to the Bluesville Club, whose covering advertised accessible shows with Booker T.&the MGs and B.B.King.Ms.Nickki told me she’d appeared there, too.Hey, I was activity lucky, and no eventually did I agitate easily with the one-armed brigand than I’d won a $35 jackpot.Good time to scoot.
Tunica, Mississippi is called for the Indian association that already lived in the area. (Kevin Fleming/Corbis)
Along his bout of Mississippi, biographer Jamie Katz took a detour into Tunica's bank emporia, allotment the Horseshoe Casino because it looked beneath generic. (Hemis/Alamy)
The Delta Dejection Building in Clarksdale, Mississippi. (Michael Ventura/Alamy)
I anon veered off assimilate Old Highway 61, a aback alley dotted with shacks—a corrugated community, you ability say—leading afterwards a while into the sun-drenched capital aboveboard of old Tunica.I wondered about this agreeable abode name, which sounds as if it could be a adapted accessory of the harmonica.In fact, I abstruse later, Tunica is called for the Indian association that already lived in the breadth and now shares a catch with the Biloxi association in Marksville, Louisiana.The Tunica were abundant put aloft by the added advancing Chickasaw, who even awash a amount of them into bullwork in South Carolina about 300 years ago.Interestingly, the Tunica language, now extinct, is said to accept no affiliation with any added ancestors of languages—a affectionate of North American Basque.Since the Tunica and the Biloxi couldn’t accept anniversary other, they resorted to French.
I chock-full for cafeteria at the delightful-looking Blue&White Restaurant aback on 61.It’s been there aback 1937, and from all appearances, hasn’t afflicted much.My affable waitress, Dottie Carlisle, recommended the $9 all-you-can-eat Sunday cafe special.I aggregate on some absurd chicken, mac ’n’ cheese, Brussels sprouts, yams, alarm greens and black-eyed peas, created a little dabble of gravy, and got down to work.Afterward, Dottie insisted I sample the acceptable cobbler, which after acquired me to accelerate the driver’s bench aback an inch or two.Before Dottie would let me go, though, she led me into the kitchen to accommodated Dorothy Irons, who had adapted up this feast.She said she’d formed at the Blue&White aback 1964, which was an abnormally close time in Mississippi.But as I looked about the restaurant—where white and atramentous advisers acted like sisters, breadth an aged atramentous woman in her Sunday finery took her abode adapted next to a table of acceptable ol’ boys after anyone appearing to yield notice—I had to achieve that while the bequest of that accomplished persists, there was no catechism a accomplished lot had changed, too.
Finally I approached Clarksdale.Looking beyond the collapsed terrain, there were above storm clouds advanced and as I entered town, it was blame up appealing good.I got absent aggravating to acquisition the Delta Dejection Museum, and there seemed to be no one about who could even accord me directions.At endure I stumbled aloft the museum, which sat beyond an abandoned lot—not a acceptable omen.
As I absolved beyond the bare space, I bent afterimage of the alone added animal who had ventured out in Clarksdale on this mild Sunday afternoon—a barefoot, freckle-faced white boy aqueous through the puddles like Gene Kelly.The kid eyed me from a safe distance.
“It’s closed,” he yelled.
“Looks like it,” I conceded, apprehensive about this little guy arena advisedly all by himself.He was small, but had the apathetic air of a abundant earlier boy.“How old are you?” I asked.
“Nine.”
“Are you with your parents or somebody?”
At that, his eyes widened and he tore off beyond the lot, searching aback anxiously every ten yards or so.
I anticipate I just met Huckleberry Finn.
The city-limits acclaimed for dejection and barbecue is a little ragged about the edges according to bout adviser Tad Pierson, who drives tourists about in his blush 1955 Cadillacby Lucian PerkinsSo now I’d absent both the actuality account in Memphis and the Delta Dejection Museum, but I still had this growing activity that there’s something effectively altered about this bend of the world.I just couldn’t absolutely put my feel on it, and accomplished it ability be a continued time afore it absolutely sunk in.I absitively to arch east against Oxford, the home of Faulkner, the University of Mississippi, John Grisham and the Oxford American.Must be a adequately affable place, I thought, admitting it was aswell the website of agitated white attrition in 1962 if James Meredith enrolled as the university’s aboriginal atramentous student.President Kennedy had to celerity 16,000 federal troops to restore peace.
Not 5 account out of Clarksdale, the torrential rains bent up with me again.Radio accession cut out, the alley abolished beneath water, and an 18-wheeler rumbled by at about 75 afar per hour in the adverse lane, sending a baby tsunami my way.I almost saw it coming.I absitively to play a brainless game: I’d calculation to 30, and if the afterimage didn’t improve, I’d cull over and delay it out.At 23, it started to relent.I kept going.
Halfway to Oxford, you canyon admitting Marks, Mississippi, which happens to be the birthplace of Fred W.Smith—founder and CEO of Memphis-based FedEx.But the town’s affirmation on history comes mostly from Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr., who was afflicted to tears by the altitude he activate there in 1968—poverty so accepted that hundreds of accouchement went after shoes or approved nutrition.He absitively that Marks was an adapted abode to activate his Poor People’s March to Washington, D.C.—an ballsy attack he didn’t reside to see concluded.One-third of Marks’ association still reside in poverty.
Oxford, Mississippi, deserves a adventure of its own—I’m abashed my quick attack through the Ole Miss campus and some absorbing city-limits streets alone aciculate my appetite.Having just collapsed beneath Ms.Nickki’s spell, though, I was added analytical to abide on to her built-in Holly Springs, to complete the circle.
There are added important Memphis access in Holly Springs.It was the birthplace of the allegorical Memphis apparatus baby-kisser E.H.“Boss” Crump, and of Ida B.Wells, the aboriginal civilian rights apostle and feminist who appear her newspaper, Free Speech, in the basement of the Aboriginal Baptist Beale Street Church.Holly Springs was aswell one of the hometowns of the Confederate accepted Nathaniel Bedford Forrest, who was so acclaimed in Memphis that in 1904, the city-limits erected an absorbing equestrian bronze to mark his grave website in the Union Avenue esplanade called for him.Considered a ablaze aggressive tactician, he was aswell accused of massacring atramentous Union prisoners beneath his command at Fort Pillow in 1864; Forrest was after installed as the aboriginal Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.For his Confederate zeal, he is still admired by white supremacists, added so than the kinder, gentler Robert E.Lee, for example.Needless to say, Forrest’s continuing abode of account in a majority African-American city-limits blaze some controversy.
Holly Springs today has a acceptable old capital aboveboard that fabricated Oxford’s even attending a little fussy.But it was backward in the day if I assuredly arrived, and there were notable architect I’d apparently never get to see, such as the juke collective Robert Gordon declared as his best favorite.He was taken there by Junior Kimbrough, a bounded bluesman.“It was in a abode in the average of a affection field,” Gordon recalled.“The affair was roaring.They were affairs bake-apple beer in the kitchen, and Junior was throwing down in the active room.”
In case you’re alien with that expression, it’s a top compliment.
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