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Blues Cruise
On the trail of America's first roots music to see if and how it survives
By Eric Snider
Page 2 of 6
In the middle of it all are the musicians, an odd juxtaposition of African-American elders, revered as the last of a dying breed, and white wannabes. The older black men seem to appreciate these white kids, in part because black youth have largely ignored, even disdained, the blues.
Collectively, Mississippi's better blues artists hope to land occasional overseas tours, maybe cut and sell a few records, score regular local/regional gigs and get paid fairly.
But that's tough without a sizeable local audience and with blues-hungry pilgrims not yet coming in droves. These musicians have heard how a thriving tourist economy built on the blues can spur a trickle-down effect. They just hope the trickle reaches them.
A prevailing theme emerged during our trek: What will happen when the current crop of elders -- Paul Wine Jones, Big Jack Johnson, T-Model Ford, R.L. Burnside, Eddie Cusic, Tommy Hollis, Elmo Williams, Hezekiah Early and others -- die off? The answers were contradictory. On one hand, we heard that the blues will never die ("it cain't dah"). But when probed, musicians find the blues in a worrisome state. Virtually no one, not the elders or the experts, sees a viable crop of new talent emerging. (Fat Possum's Johnson said on the phone before we left for Mississippi, "We scoured all the backwoods at one point but sort of gave up. If you find anyone, let me know.")
Even so, most everyone agrees that the blues in Mississippi has perked up in the last five years. It's less clear what the idiom will become over the next couple of decades. Will it turn into a moldy museum piece practiced by revivalists, or will it somehow find a thrust of new creative energy?
From what we saw, the latter seems unlikely, but one also gets the sense that the blues simply cannot become fossilized in one of its earliest hotbeds.
We spent most of our time in the Delta, a leaf-shaped region in the northwest part of the state, about 200 miles long and 85 miles wide, flat as a workbench and blessed with dark, alluvial soil. Cotton country. Also soybean and rice country. The Delta population is roughly half-black and half-white. It's one of the poorest areas of the United States.
The Delta is where blues legends such as Charley Patton, Son House, Robert Johnson and scores of others roamed from town to town, plantation to plantation, playing for tips and drink and fast women. It's where Muddy Waters learned his art before going north to Chicago.
These days, the blues legacy in the Delta can be hard to detect. At the junction of state Highways 61 and 49, just outside of downtown Clarksdale, stands a sign marking The Crossroads. Blues myth says this is where Robert Johnson struck a deal with the devil and walked away with extraordinary musical prowess. The sign juts upward, across from a Church's Chicken. Downtown sits the Delta Blues Museum, a modest affair with photos and memorabilia, but no interactive music; it draws about 1,500 visitors a month.
We decided to bivouac in Clarksdale. From there we shot out to other Delta towns including Rosedale, Greenville, Cleveland and Indianola, and east to the hill country of Oxford (home of the University of Mississippi), Water Valley and Holly Springs.
During the day, in crisp, sunny weather, the Delta is inviting, draped with large tracts of brilliant green, even in early March, and pocked with dilapidated stores and truly weird stuff -- like a used car lot with perhaps a hundred junkers submerged in water. At night, the Delta takes on a more intimidating aura. Outside of towns, the roads turn black, headlights forging a narrow tunnel. Simple bends can leave you guessing which way to turn until the last second (one time we had to screech on the brakes). Road kill -- possums, mostly, and some dogs -- makes the scene even creepier.
Before reaching the Delta, we flew into New Orleans, picked up the rental car and drove three hours north to Jackson, Mississippi's state capital. We ended up at the 930 Blues Cafe, a converted wooden house on a residential street. Upstairs, a tight band was cooking, loosening the crowd for bawdy chanteuse Jackie Bell. Later, I sat in the Deville with Ironing Board Sam, just after he'd finished an amiable solo set of blues and R&B standards on a borrowed electric piano. Sam played "Georgia," and then played it again three songs later after someone tossed a buck into his tip jar, a scuffed-up beer pitcher.
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