Category Archives: music travel

Finding more blues outside the Mississippi Delta

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If ever there was a pretty Southern town, it has to be Natchez, Mississippi. So, we parked ourselves there for three days, worked in the library, walked the streets and stopped in for coffee often at the excellent Steampunk Coffee Roasters. Next door is the historic blues club the historic blues club named Smoot’s Grocery. Smoot’s has received a top-to-bottom renovation and is a beautiful space for parties, get-togethers or live music. Well worth checking out if you find yourself in Natchez.


Our schedule included a “break week” when we were taking some down time on the Mississippi Gulf Cost, catching up on blues-related reading, working on the book structure and starting some chapter work. All accomplished while we stayed at Gulf Islands National Seashore near the pretty town of Ocean Springs. While there we crossed paths with a get together of about two-dozen Roadtreks and we were quickly welcomed into the fold. Thanks y’all! Looking forward to the next time.

Back to work and starting the drive northward. Our first stop was in historic Meridian (the home of The Father of Country Music, Jimmy Rogers) where we had a fascinating hour interviewing Hartley Peavey, the founder of Peavey Electronics. As a teenager he started building amps at his parents place and he is now head of a worldwide corporation producing quality musical sound systems and instruments.

On to the small town of West Point, considered the home of Howlin’ Wolf. There’s a blues marker, a small but very good museum and a very cool downtown mural.

Just a bit further into the northeast corner of Mississippi – we stopped at Tupelo. Tupelo is the hometown of Elvis Presley. He was born there and lived in East Tupelo with his parents until he was 13 years old and they moved to Memphis. They’ve done a beautiful job at the Elvis Birthplace Museum, the self-guided driving tour, at Johnnie’s Drive-In (where they have preserved an Elvis booth where he’d hang out with friends and order an RC cola and burger) and at the Tupelo Hardware, the spot his mother bought him his first guitar. Probably the best $7.75 she ever spent!

More blues than one can reasonably pack into a week!

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Here’s one of the biggest things to know about the blues and the Mississippi Delta … in this part of the state, the blues are everywhere. Many people only associate Clarksdale with the blues but there are actually many other communities with at least as rich and deep a blues pedigree as the town where Highways 49 and 61 cross.

We camped overnight at The Blue Biscuit – an Indianola restaurant and blues bar right across the road from the B.B. King Museum. Thanks to Trish – the Blue Biscuit’s friendly and welcoming owner! Then, the next morning, we drove east to Greenwood, a town with a complicated blues and civil rights history. On the way we drove into the countryside near Blue Lake to look for the birthplace marker for B.B. King, stopped at Holly Ridge to pay our respects at the grave marker for Charley Patton and detoured slightly to find the marker in Moorhead for “Where the Southern Cross the Yellow Dog” (*look that one up for a real slice of blues authenticity!).

One of the highlights of our travels has been the half-day tour of Greenwood and the blues with the personable and very knowledgeable Sylvester Hoover who runs Delta Blues Legend Tours. Sylvester took us through Baptist Town, to all three claimed gravesites of Robert Johnson (including the one accepted as the actual site at Little Zion MB Church in the countryside) and Three Forks (the site where Robert Johnson was – supposedly – poisoned). We also crossed the Tallahatchie River, the site of the Bobbie Gentry song.

In a non-blues related side trip, Sylvester took us to Bryant’s Grocery in Money, MS, to the remains of the grocery store related to the Emmett Till  story – the event they say helped spark the entire civil rights movement. It was sobering.

Overnight we camped at the quirky, unique Tallahatchie Flats – old sharecropper shacks on the outside, renovated on the inside.

The next day we attended the Sunday morning service at Little Zion MB Church and soaked up the emotional and powerful music of the gospel church choir. We’d been invited by Sylvester and his lovely wife Mary, who is one of the choir directors.

After Greenwood, we spent several days hopping to more blues sites — Bentonia (home to the Blue Front Cafe), Jackson (where we went to Hal and Mal’s to hear King Edward – Craig subbed in on bass with the pre-show band), Hazlehurst (Robert Johnson’s birthplace and home to the Mississippi Music Hall of Fame), across the Mississippi River to Ferriday, LA and the Delta Music Museum.

We settled for several days in beautiful Natchez, MS – at the height of the cotton era, this small town was home to half the millionaires in America. We’ll write more about Natchez in the next post, as there is lots to talk about there. We made new friends, drank some of the best coffee ever (Steampunk Coffee Roasters), went to a community literary talk, dined by the Mississippi River and walked the streets of this lovely town. More on all that next time.

Been busy crisscrossing the Delta

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We’ve been busy.

Digging deep into the noteworthy spots that tell the story of the Delta blues. We stood by the tracks in Tutwiler where W.C. Handy first heard the strains of that “new” strange form of music called the blues – the seminal event that took the blues from porch front and field songs to something that was written and marketed.
At the excellent Railroad Heritage Museum in the pretty town of Cleveland we learned how the railroad up and down the Mississippi spread the blues outward from the Delta.

At Dockery Farms we interviewed the director (a genuinely nice fellow), toured the property and really came to appreciate why this spot was where first generation bluesmen like Charley Patton birthed a new music form (the next day we took a bumpy dirt road to the rural cemetery at Holly Ridge where Patton is buried).
We toured the new Grammy Museum | Mississippi – the celebrity angle does not interest us much but there is a great display on the blues of the Delta and Mississippi musicians.
In Greenville, we walked the levee, spent time at the small, but fascinating, 1927 Flood Museum to bone up on what was one of the defining events that shaped America – the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. If you don’t know about it, read up – it’s an amazing, heartbreaking history and will be a big part of our book.
Finally, in Indianola it was B.B. King and all B.B. King – one of the best blues museums around, his gravesite onsite and a guided visit to Club Ebony, a local nightclub associated with B.B. that specialized in the blues of the Delta.

Clarksdale: At The Crossroads of the blues

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Almost three days exploring Clarksdale, the Mississippi town that is home to the legendary Crossroads, the spot where Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil in return for mastering the guitar.

We’ve been in juke joints, standing in cotton fields, walked the streets of Clarksdale (a very historic town that has been hard hit by economic and social downturns) and eaten in local BBQ places. The local blues book store has invited us back to do a book signing in spring 2018!

We’ve spent time with a lot of very cool people – passionate and knowledgeable about Mississippi and the blues – listened to music and, of course, Craig got to take to the stage to play blues with Josh “Razorblade” Stewart (Living Blues magazine has profiled him). They call him “Razorblade” because he dresses sharp as a razor.

It’s been a whirlwind of interviews, juke joints, local museums and a slew of historic markers along the Mississippi Blues Trail.


Hopping states (in search of blues sites)

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Today we woke up in Clarksdale – the town in the Delta most associated with the blues.

Yesterday we hopped across three states – from Memphis, Tennessee south into Mississippi with a stop at the excellent Gateway to the Blues Museum in Tunica (thanks Webster for giving us the tour!). More stops at blues markers along the way – including the Abbay & Leatherman Plantation where Robert Johnson spent his childhood and barbecue at the Hollywood Cafe, immortalized in Marc Cohn’s song Walking in Memphis.
Then across the bridge over the Mississippi River into Helena, Arkansas, a small town that has seen hard times but in the 1930s and 1040s was a hotbed of blues music and culture. Robert Johnson lived and played there, as did Sonny Boy Williamson II and Howlin’ Wolf. In Helena (home of The King Biscuit Blues Festival – considered one of the world’s best) we toured the Delta Cultural Center, from which KFFA 1360 broadcasts a noontime blues show (“the longest running blues show in the world” – since 1941). Then, back over the Mississippi River and the short drive to Clarksdale, MS.

 

More Memphis Music

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We spent the day touring and interviewing at three important Memphis music museums – all of them excellent – Sun Studio (where Sam Phillips first recorded Elvis Presley), STAX (home of the soul giants like Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Isaac Hayes, The Staple Singers and Aretha Franklin) and a return visit to finish up some photos at the excellent Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum. Then we ducked across the street so Craig could fondle the guitars at the Gibson Factory (no purchases made).

Tomorrow … onwards to the Mississippi Delta and Clarksdale. Can hardly wait.

In the meantime, thanks Memphis. You’ve been great to us!

From the land of the blues …

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We’re on a long research trip, gathering material for our upcoming travel book on the roots of the blues. 
Rather than detailed blog posts, we’re going to post photos and video bits to show you what we have to do to put a book together. Each photo will have a line or two to tell you what it’s about.

It all starts with checklists, phone calls, tons of emails and – eventually – a massive spreadsheet that details each day of interviews, museum stops, etc.

We leave …

Once out of the snow, Craig really, really, really needs to wash the salt and grime off the Roadtrek … 

In tiny Holly Springs, Mississippi we interviewed local blues collector, 90-year-old David Caldwell. His shop is stuffed with 91,000 records (no CDs here) and is so full that you cannot actually go inside. Mr. Caldwell remembers when B.B. King used to play at a Holly Springs venue for a whopping five cent entry fee. 

Memphis welcomed us with open arms – we toured Beale Street, the Center for Southern Folklore, the Lorraine Motel, the W.C. Handy home, the Blues Hall of Fame and the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum.

Rigby finally gets her own star … 

 

Checklists & The Big Pack

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In a few days we will be on the road.

The Big Pack has begun and we have several checklists to follow: Pack the van, pack the dog, pack the people, pack the food, outfit the small kitchen and – no small task – pack the research materials, interview spreadsheets, maps and our portable office. It’s amazing that we get it all into the Roadtrek!

Our plan is to post snippets plus photos and video clips from the road so you can follow how we are researching and putting together our book project. We are on the final research push for a travel book on the roots of blues music. 

We thought it might be fun to post bits and pieces here – kind of a behind-the-scenes look at how the research for a music-themed book comes together.

Heading back to the Mississippi Delta (and escaping the Canadian snow!)

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Big news at our end. The past year was a bit of a roller coaster for most people – for us it included buying a new(er) Roadtrek that we are in love with as well as working on book ideas.

Our first big road trip was the one that delved deep into the roots of American music. Our goal is to write a travel guidebook about exploring the roots of a unique style of American-born music, the blues (publication date: 2018).

So, we are back on the road for a month this winter, tidying up the bits and pieces of research for the book. Our travels will take us through Memphis, zig-zagging all across Mississippi, into Louisiana and ending at Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

MS Blues collage

While we’re gone, we’ll be blogging from the road – just for the fun of it – because there are some very cool stops we’ll be making, including . . .

  • The birthplace of Robert Johnson and the church where he sang in the choir.
  • Interviews with David Hood (one of the original Swampers in Muscle Shoals), Clarksdale author and blues enthusiast Roger Stolle, blues players including Jimmy “Duck” Holmes and King Edward, Rick Hall (founder of Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals) and Jerry Phillips (son of the late Sam Phillips, the man who discovered Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis).
  • If there’s a blues museum in Mississippi, we’re stopping in.
  • Touring the recently-opened 3614 Jackson Highway in Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. The last time we were there it was still boarded up and the revived studio space was just an idea.

    • So, we’re packing up the van, washing the dog, unfolding our maps (and plugging in the GPS) and soon we’ll be off. If you have any ideas for what sorts of things you’d like to learn about the blues please let us know!

    WARNING: “Guitar porn” below

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    Just when we were beginning to think Iowa was nothing but corn fields, we crossed into South Dakota (more corn but also enormous fields of bright yellow sunflowers) and stopped in the college town of Vermillion.

    Had never even heard of Vermillion. Another surprise – who would have thought that it’s home to a world-class collection of instruments at the National Music Museum (NMM)? The billboard coming into town was a clue: “Les Paul, More Stradivarius.”

    WARNING: Guitar porn below!

    NMM9
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    Set aside the sheer beauty of this massive collection: 13,000 instruments are in the archive; just 1/3 are rotated out on display at any one time.

    There are many one-off instruments – experiments tried and abandoned because too expensive to produce or too specialized for the market of its day. Over the years, the NMM has acquired numerous instruments from various musical icons – Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash – and it’s just very cool to gaze upon the guitar on which Dylan wrote “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” or on which Johnny Cash performed at Folsom Prison.

    What’s clear is the dual influences of art and commerce on the progress of western culture.

    We were knocked out by the tendency of instrument makers to consistently push the limits of their craft to perfect, innovate, improve and modify their designs. There was more than just art happening – there was the necessary money-making part of the equation. The instrument makers needed to satisfy their existing customers and grow their customer base.

    Each designer pushing his own talents into new territory and challenging his peers to do the same. This seems like the grand energy that propels this art and commerce linkage: it’s not enough to make one lovely, ringing tenor banjo if you’re Orville Gibson. The world is going to beat a path to your door – if it’s any good – and you’re going to have to incorporate the design and artistic suggestions of your clients if you want to sell to them.

    For one thing, you have to recoup your costs of production. But what good is it if all you do is recoup your costs? How are you going to make the next one if you don’t turn a modest profit?

    The result is a virtuous circle that is on full display from exhibit to exhibit, through handcrafted Violas da Gamba from the 16th century to the Golden Age (before World War II) of Martin acoustic guitars.

    Memories of Craig’s high school band days came roaring back (Jo … not so much!). The brass band section, particularly some of the designs by the C.G. Conn company of Elkhart, Indiana. Who didn’t play on a Conn instrument? These were simply fascinating as they tried to create instruments that produced more than one timbre for orchestras and players looking to enlarge the palette of sonic possibilities at their fingertips.

    A terrific feature of the NMM is the iPod and headphone audio tour. You can listen to the instrument inside a glass case along with a short commentary on its features, design and manufacture.

    We needed a couple of hours (and could have stayed longer). Get the iPod and headphones. They are included with admission and more than worth it. Wander through the exhibit rooms full of instruments you erroneously think you have no interest in.

    NMM8

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    Highlights:

    • BB King’s Black Gibson ES-355 (Lucille)
    • 5 Stradivari instruments
    • Gibson Guitar Style 03 (1902) made by Orville Gibson
    • Mint condition D-28 Martin (1941)
    • One of Stevie Wonder’s Hohner Blues harps
    • Trumpet used as a prop in the film Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
    • Martin D-35 used by Elvis Presley (1976-77)
    • The Fred, Gretsch – Chet Atkins electric guitar
    • Martin D-28 used by Johnny Cash for the last 30 years of his life
    • Kay guitar played by Muddy Waters
    • Very rare Jacob Stainer violin in mint condition (1668)
    • Theremin – the world’s first electronic musical instrument NMM1

    National Music Museum, on the University of South Dakota campus. www.nmmusd.org/

    www.travelsouthdakota.com 

    www.visittheusa.ca