(Above Photo: Indianola, Mississippi)

The Delta is an alluvial plain in northwestern Mississippi, below Tennessee. It is bordered by the Mississippi River to the west and the Yazoo River to the east, roughly 60 miles wide and 200 miles long. This flat land was formed by deposits from the Mississippi River and its tributaries over eons. The deep layers of gravel, clay, silt, and soil transported from as far away as the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians are ideal for farming. The Delta is one of the most agriculturally productive regions in the world. In. The. World.

I have done my fair share of traveling through farmland – vegetables in Eastern Washington, fruit and nuts in Northern California, wheat in Kansas, rice and cotton in Southern Louisiana, hay and oats in Vermont, and corn in Tennessee – but the Delta feels older somehow, primeval even, mystical, mythical, and amaranthine. It commands attention, and solemn respect. It is a repository of ancient memory. Not to put too woo-woo a point in it, but traveling the Delta is not merely an activity – it is a spiritual odyssey.

THE LAND OF COTTON

Delta farming with slave labor was already in full swing by the time of the Civil War (somebody had to burn and clear those fields), and following emancipation even more Blacks migrated to the Delta for work. They came to be known as sharecroppers – itinerant farmers. Entire families, Black and White (but mostly Black), worked the cotton fields in exchange for lodging and meager pay tied to productivity, spent on credit at the plantation commissary. There was no getting ahead; you couldn’t even get out from under.

The work was unending and back-breaking, with few rewards, but it was, miraculously, not soul-crushing. Workers sang the old slave “field hollers” in the cotton rows, and spirituals in church on Sundays. It was only a matter of time before a new genre of music emerged, uniquely American, rooted in African rhythms and modern hard times. It was cosmically pre-ordained that the Delta would produce musicians like Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Honeyboy Edwards, Eddie James “Son” House, Jimmy Reed, Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Ike Turner, and Sam Cooke, just to name a few. No one knows who first played the guitar riffs or bent the harmonica just like that, or exactly how the sound became known as “The Blues,” but we do know W.C. Handy published the first 12-bar blues song in 1912.

THE LOWDOWN

Before I take you on my Blues journey, a few caveats. Amenities can be lacking on some portions of the Blues Trail. If you are not Black and it makes you uneasy to be part of a racial minority, this trip may not be for you. If you prefer not to witness blight and abject poverty, go to the B.B. King Museum in Indianola, the Grammy Museum in Cleveland, and Morgan Freeman’s Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale and skip the rest of the itinerary. If piles of who-knows-what, sagging ceilings, beer only, cigarette smoke, graffiti, stains of unknown origin, leaky toilets, water damage, and tarps make you uncomfortable, stay out the authentic juke joints (although they are getting harder to find nowadays anyway). If you are traveling in a motorhome, you may need to get creative and anticipate boondocking for large portions of the trip.

GETTING READY FOR THE BLUES HIGHWAY

In his essay “Where I was Born and Raised: The Delta Land,” David Cohn wrote, “The Mississippi Delta begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis and ends on Catfish Row in Vicksburg.” I opted for the Delta in reverse, north on Highway 61 after visits to Natchez and Jackson, Mississippi; experiences in both towns primed me for immersion in the Delta Blues.

NATCHEZ

In Natchez it was not-so-subtly impressed upon me that Mississippi is not just the name of a state, and The River will not be ignored or underestimated. Arriving at the River View RV park on the Vidalia, Louisiana side, I was immediately reminded of that old Johnny Cash song, “Three Feet High and Risin’.” (How high’s the water, Mama?)

The first three rows of the RV park were under water, and the river wouldn’t crest for four more days.

I kept my eye on a little patch of grass underneath a nearby picnic table, telling myself all would be well as long as it never submerged. The next morning, it was gone. Children fished directly from their trailer, snagging a water moccasin. One morning I was greeted at the front door by a big blue plastic barrel that washed up sometime in the night. I asked the office staff the odds of getting an urgent call from the park to come move the rig right away. They don’t call it The Lazy River for nothing. There would be plenty of warning.

I went around humming Led Zeppelin (by way of Memphis Minnie) for days – “If it don’t stop rainin’, the levee’s gonna break …” The river finally crested, then began to recede, and my fourth row beachfront property left the same way it came in.

On a plantation tour in Natchez I was warmly befriended by guide Cindy, who lives in Ferriday, Louisiana, near Vidalia. She invited me to her home on Lake Concordia on one of her precious few days off during Natchez Spring Pilgrimage, promising a visit to the Delta Music Museum in Ferriday.

The little berg of Ferriday produced many musicians, most notably three cousins, showmen all, who excelled in their fields – Mickey Gilley, Jimmy Swaggart, and Jerry Lee Lewis.

As a kid Jerry Lee snuck away to the local juke joint on “The Chitlin’ Circuit,” Haney’s Big House, to hear the bluesmen play. Just listen to him play. Of course he did.

Leaving the museum, Cindy asked if I would like to see Mr. Lewis’s childhood home. I couldn’t believe my ears, or luck. Cindy is friends with Jerry Lee’s niece, Marian, who has been maintaining the home in Ferriday since her mother, Jerry Lee’s sister, died suddenly in 2016. The entire home, from floor to ceiling, hallways to countertops, is Frankie Jean Terrell’s homage to her brother.

I was touched and honored that Marian opened her home to me, as the tours have not been regular since Frankie died.

Back in Natchez, I visited the site of the Rhythm Night Club, where 209 African Americans lost their lives in a 1940 fire, including Chicago bandleader Walter Barnes and nine members of his orchestra.

I paid my respects nearby at the Watkins Street Black Cemetery, the final resting places of many of the victims.

Both Howlin’ Wolf and John Lee Hooker sang about the tragedy, which is now part of Blues history.

JACKSON

If you’re in Jackson on a Monday, don’t miss Blue Monday at Hal & Mal’s. Bass guitarist Abdul Rasheed struck up a conversation as I parked and he was loading in his equipment, eyeing my car and asking, “Are you traveling?”

Inside he introduced me to several people, including King Edward Antoine, before their acoustic set.

80 years young, King Edward is an integral part of Jackson Blues history and is memorialized in two Jackson Blues Trail markers.

I was over the moon to meet such legends.

LEARNIN’ THE BLUES

Mississippi is documenting and preserving the history of the Blues with over 200 blue metal roadside interpretive markers, the first erected in 2006, and more markers are being added all the time. There are many ways to plot your course through the Delta. The Mississippi Blues Trail App is informative and user-friendly.

I relied heavily on two books.

“Eat Drink Delta” by Susan Puckett was essential for locating good food (and interesting people) in the Delta. “Blues Traveling: The Holy Sites of Delta Blues,” written by Steve Cheseborough in 2009, is sorely in need of another edition, but sadly, additional revisions would reduce the book by half; many of the sites and suggested stops are no longer open or operating (which does not necessarily mean they are no longer worthy of a visit; I’ll mention a few).

HIGHWAY 61

Subject of countless Blues songs, title of one of the greatest Bob Dylan albums of all time, I knew when I started this RV life that I would eventually drive Highway 61. Leaving Vicksburg, the four lanes hemmed in by trees transformed instantly into a two-lane scalpel, slicing through great expanses of low, flat, timber-free terrain.

There are no billboards to interrupt the flow. The seemingly endless, unbent highway dares you to let go of the wheel and test your vehicle alignment, as the blacktop dissolves into illusory lakes up ahead.

Carrions litter the shoulders, reminding you that, like the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse in “Raising Arizona,” life is especially hard on the little things.

For every patinaed and peeling church steeple, there are four other structures returning to the earth at glacial speed, except for the shacks and silos and lean-to’s made of corrugated metal and tin, rusted, but not decayed. You get the feeling you’ve been here before, perhaps in a dream, as oddly familiar phrases bounce around your skull. “Born under a bad sign.” “Got my Mojo workin’.” “My middle name is Misery.”

BENTONIA

A refrigerator repair in Jackson got me off to a late start, so I skipped the Bentonia Blue Front Cafe, where bluesman Jimmy “Duck” Holmes holds court and plays guitar daily, sometimes as early as 8:00 a.m.

(Photo: Al Jazeera)

Contrary to the word “Cafe“ in the name, the Blue Front is a juke joint, serving only pickled pigs’ feet, Spam, Cheetos, beer and soda, and vanilla wafers.

(Photo: Jack Owens & Bud Spires, Bentonia Blues, Highway 61 Blues Museum)

Bluesmen Skip James and Jack Owens are from Bentonia (pop. 500), and their trademark eerie, haunting sound of minor key guitar playing and falsetto singing became known as “The Bentonia Blues.”

The Bentonia Blues Fest is the third Saturday in June, and I hope to visit then, someday.

LELAND

“Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues, in the middle of the pouring rain.” Marc Cohn’s song “Walking in Memphis” was on my mind as I parked the rig in Leland and a deluge of biblical proportions began, the streets flowing like rivers in a matter of minutes. I donned my fancy Michael Kors raincoat, complete with hood, running a half block to the Highway 61 Blues Museum; by the time I reached the vestibule the coat was soaked straight through, and I was drenched to the bone. As I stood there peeling the wet material away from my equally wet skin, a smiling face beamed at me through the window. It was Pat Thomas.

I entered the museum, which had sprung a leak in the skylight in the middle of the lobby of what once was the Montgomery Hotel. The nice young man behind the desk took my admission fee and introduced me to Pat, whose father was colossal bluesman, James “Son” Thomas. We talked for a bit and I gave Pat my card, telling him I was traveling in a motorhome.

Pat sang and played classic Blues as I viewed the exhibits, the acoustics delivering the music to the various rooms. “Big Boss Man, don’t you hear me when I call …”

The rain finally let up, so I got while the getting was good, taking photographs of the museum, downtown Leland, and its murals and Blues Trail markers as I returned to the rig.

I didn’t know the powder blue beach cruiser parked in front of the museum belonged to Pat, but as I pulled out of town he bicycled toward the rig in a carefree serpentine pattern, knit cap askew, waving and smiling goodbye.

INDIANOLA

Indian Bayou (in Mississippi, pronounced “Buy-O” like the old Hank Williams song) runs through the middle of Indianola, in cheerfully named Sunflower County. This was the big city for Riley B. King, who played for tips on the corner of Second and Court when he wasn’t chopping cotton or driving a tractor.

Just up the block, The Crown House is still serving Catfish Alison for lunch, and I bought a few frozen meals for later.

B.B.’s presence is pervasive, and it’s no wonder.

He loved Indianola, and its people. Every year he returned for a free concert, called “The Homecoming,” and he never forgot his roots. What a kind, wonderful human being.

The B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center opened in Indianola in 2008. When B.B. passed away in 2015 at the age of 89, he was laid to rest on the grounds.

Attached to the museum is a restored brick building that once housed a cotton gin, where B.B. worked in the 1940’s.

If you need power and water for your rig, Willie’s Last Resort is a stone’s throw away from the B.B. King Museum. Willie’s is nothing more than an old cement slab that once served as the foundation of a building, with some water and electrical hook ups, for 25 bucks a night. Like many things in the Delta, don’t expect much and you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

As a member of Harvest Hosts, I boondocked in the parking lot of the museum, repeating to myself nervously as I backed in, “Don’t hit B.B.’s tour bus; don’t hit B.B.’s tour bus.”

After I toured the museum, an employee asked how I liked it. I burst into tears. “I’m just so sad he’s gone,” I said, and she replied, “Don’t cry. He’ll always be with us.“ B.B. was one of the last real bluesmen who toiled in the Delta – a lost link to the struggles that were the impetus for the music.

I visited Indianola mid-week, when Blue Biscuit across the street was closed, and venerable Juke joint Club Ebony (owned by the museum) is open only for special events.

But, just across the parking lot at the Gin Mill, Tom Bingham (seated at the head of the table in the photo) served a delicious barbecue plate on Wednesday and invited me to a Thursday night jam session with a few of his friends. I felt a bit silly showing up with a ukulele, but we had a lot of fun and I even played a couple of passable tunes with them.

GREENWOOD

Greenwood is a half hour east of Indianola, so I opted to leave Nellie at B.B.’s and take Toad for a day trip. When I saw downtown Greenwood, I was sorry I didn’t plan to stay longer. Greenwood is home to Viking Ranges, whose downtown storefront complete with cooking school revitalized the entire area. The Tallahatchie River of “Ode to Billy Joe” fame joins the Yalobusha, which encircles downtown. Old brick buildings now house coffee shops and boutiques. The Alluvian Hotel is posh, with a spa and fine dining restaurant. If you’re craving mile high meringues, it’s a short walk to the Crystal Grill.

Things are far less fancy across the tracks in Baptist Town, home of Sylvester Hoover, who has lived in Greenwood all his life.

He owns Hoover’s Grocery and Laundry, where neighborhood kids buy bubblegum and adults buy cigarettes.

To the Caucasian, sheltered, privileged, suburban, “wypipo” eye, Baptist Town might appear unsafe.

When I asked Mr. Hoover about that, he said, “Well, you’re here, and I’m here. How bad could it be?” When pressed, he admitted that his store has been broken into a few times, and he was robbed at gunpoint once in the grocery, but that was a long time ago. If you want to tour Baptist Town, I recommend hiring Mr. Hoover. No one’s going to mess with you when you’re with him.

There is no better guide in the state of Mississippi to talk about Robert Johnson and the crossroads lore than Sylvester Hoover. Robert Johnson used to play on the corner in Baptist Town, across from where Mr. Hoover‘s grocery stands today.

Mr. Hoover knows where the Three Forks Juke Joint in Greenwood once stood, now a muddy field, where legend has it Johnson was poisoned by a jealous lover at age 27 (or maybe her husband, or maybe it was pneumonia, or syphilis), recording only 29 songs in his short life.

Perhaps most importantly, Mr. Hoover personally knew David “Honeyboy” Edwards (1915-2011), who perpetuated the tale of Johnson’s Faustian bargain.

According to Honeyboy, Johnson was a dismal Blues player – couldn’t pick a decent lick. One night Johnson left Baptist Town on foot, telling Honeyboy he had business at the crossroads. He returned about three hours later. The crossroads of Highways 49 and 61 in Clarksdale were not within that walking distance. Neither were the crossroads of Highways 1 and 8 in Rosedale, which some claim to be the fateful spot. Wherever the crossroads, according to Honeyboy, when Johnson returned, he was a phenomenal Blues musician; Robert could hear a song one time and play it perfectly.

It’s no wonder that intersections are an integral part of the story. For itinerant farmers and Blues players, the crossroads were the most likely spot to get a ride out of town. As Johnson wrote, “I went down to the crossroads, tried to flag a ride.“ In addition, African storytelling and oral tradition spoke of demons who dwelled at crossroads, where travelers made fateful decisions on which path to take. Even before the story about Johnson, which Johnson himself advanced, a tale was told in the Delta: If you played guitar at a crossroads, at Midnight a big Black man would appear and tune your guitar for you, transforming you into a virtuoso.

Hoover is a Deacon at the church where Johnson is buried.

Now don’t go getting confused about the three different places in the Delta claiming to be the final resting place of Robert Johnson. That is the handiwork of Steve LaVere, an out-of-town record collector and researcher, who according to Hoover would not listen to the gravedigger’s wife and placed markers at two other locations too. LaVere obtained the rights to Johnson’s music and likeness, some say rather underhandedly, producing the 1990’s CD box set that was so popular. He even sued Mr. Hoover for putting Johnson‘s photo on his Baptist Town welcome sign; Hoover left the sign but obscured Johnson’s face.

“It all worked out for the best,” Mr. Hoover said, referring to LaVere without a hint of humor, or bitterness. “He’s dead now.”

On the ride out to Little Zion Baptist Church, Hoover pointed out other items of interest – the fancy Grand Avenue homes in Greenwood where the 2011 movie “The Help” was filmed; and the Money, Mississippi store where, in 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till briefly met a white woman, culminating in his lynching – the spark that ignited the civil rights movement. The juxtaposition of the two subjects was sickeningly surreal, and I couldn’t bring myself to take a photo of the storefront or the historical marker. It just didn’t seem right, somehow.

Mr. Hoover said that up north in Clarksdale, the old sharecropper shacks were being used as hotel rooms now, and he wasn’t sure how to feel about that. He was a sharecropper himself. In 1971, when 19 tornadoes touched down in the Delta in two days, Mr. Hoover’s family thought it was the end of the world; their shack was blown away. It turned out to be one of the best days of their lives, because they were provided with emergency trailers with inside toilets and running water.

Mr. Hoover is very proud of the Little Zion Baptist Church. It was built in 1873 by free men of color who sharecropped on nearby plantations. Here’s a video of him giving a tour of the church a few years ago.

According to Rosie Eskridge, the gravedigger’s wife, this is Robert Johnson’s true grave, which like so many other Blues greats, went unmarked for years.

CLEVELAND

I departed Indianola the following day for Clarksdale, planning a few stops along the way. In all respects, it was a perfect day. The first stop was Cleveland, named for Grover the President. Cleveland was crowned Smithsonian Magazine’s Number Two Small Town to Visit in 2013. There’s shopping on Cotton Row, and lots to see and do on the campus of Delta State University, official home of The Statesmen, whose unofficial mascot since the 1980’s has been The Fighting Okra (move over, UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs). Fear The Okra!

The 28,000-square-foot Grammy Museum opened in Spring 2016 and celebrates Mississippi as the birthplace of America’s music. It is the first Grammy Museum outside Los Angeles.

At the Delta Center for Culture and Learning are detailed plaster faces of bluesmen, alive and dead, created by blind artist Sharon McConnell, who regards her work as “3-D Photographs.”

Just east of town stands the remains of Dockery Plantation, where at one time over 400 families sharecropped 25,000 acres of cotton.

Bluesman Charley Patton (1891-1934) lived and worked at Dockery off and on for at least three decades. Toward the river and next to a performance stage, there is this sign,

a mighty big claim with a strategically placed question mark. B.B. King was so tactful when referring to Dockery, vaguely stating, “You might say this is where it all started.”

While at the gas station watching the Annenberg Foundation-funded video, I met Executive Director of the Dockery Farm Foundation, Bill Lester, who pulled up in a truck, electric drill in hand, off to repair something or other. It is obvious that Dockery is Lester’s labor of love, and standing at Dockery felt mighty special to me. Efforts to preserve it are admirable.

Just north of Cleveland, in Merigold, perched on the edge of a freshly-plowed field, is the sharecopper’s shack turned Po Monkey’s Juke Joint (1961), shut since the 2016 death of William Seaberry, Po Monkey himself.

While the Blues is no longer played there, it is an iconic reminder of the poverty, resourcefulness, joy of spirit, and creativity found in the Delta.

ROSEDALE

“Going down to Rosedale, take my rider by my side. You can still barrelhouse baby, by the riverside.”

— Robert Johnson, “Travelin’ Riverside Blues”

Eric Clapton and Cream added this verse, also written by Robert Johnson, to their hit “Crossroads,” a Rock and Roll reimagining of Johnson’s “Cross Road Blues.” Little else draws a Blues Pilgrim to Rosedale, except tamales. Wait. Tamales?

Tamales are ubiquitous in the Delta. As Robert Johnson sang in double entendre, “Hot tamales, and they’re red hot, yes she got ‘em for sale.” Entire books are dedicated to Delta tamales.

The back of this Blues Trail marker outside The White Front Cafe and Joe’s Tamale Place in Rosedale explains it all.

(The tamales at Joe’s were delicious, $2.50 for a bunch of four!)

CLARKSDALE

I went to Clarksdale for a weekend and stayed for a week. I dubbed it “The Clarksdale Vortex.” “Stay one more day and see Christone play acoustic!” “You should come to the house show – don’t go yet!” “The weather is so crappy today – are you sure you want to leave?” Like Michael Corleone, just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in. Forgive me if I wax poetic, but Clarksdale made quite a lasting impression on me.

At the Crossroads of Highways 61 and 49, the two major Delta thoroughfares, is Clarksdale, population 16,000 and dwindling. Kroger recently closed its grocery store there, and the only place to get fresh fruits and vegetables in a town full of farmland is Wal-Mart.

Modernization and mechanization of cotton farming began in Clarksdale, so in a sort of poetic irony the town responsible for the happy demise of the sharecropping society that birthed the Blues is also the town doing the most to promote and preserve the genre.

Southerners emerge from the womb with nicknames, but it’s a whole other level in Clarksdale. Big A, Kingfish, Dollar Bill, Watermelon Slim, Super Chikan, Iceman, Chilly Billy – like your appendix, you don’t need one, but it doesn’t hurt. Eccentricities are celebrated, up to a point. The town Tourism Director just got fired for taking bribes. No one minded a bit about a recent transplant to town who is a tad mental, but that largesse evaporated when he threatened two different people with a shotgun.

At Hopson Plantation, you will not meet a nicer or more fascinating group of people. Clarksdale native Robert Birdsong tends bar and bestows deep Delta knowledge, armed with albums of photos he took himself over decades, brimming over with anecdotes about Pinetop Perkins and other bluesmen, giving directions to little known, out-of-the-way locations and grave sites that even GPS can’t find. Engaging in good, unhurried conversation is like breathing to him.

One of my favorite memories of the entire trip was my first night in Clarksdale, at the Hopson Commissary, sipping a Jack and Coke, listening to Robert and other locals debate (intelligently) where and when the Blues took root.

(Photo of James Butler: BBN)

Hopson owners James Butler and his wife Cathy exude southern grace, and graciousness. There’s always time to sit down for a chat, or to have a beer as the dogs play together. They are busy but never rushed, making introductions, telling stories, and listening to you tell a few of your own. Hearing James describe the cotton and soybeans in bloom compels you to return and see it for yourself.

James and several business partners have created something truly special just a few miles from downtown Clarksdale on Highway 49: Hopson Plantation, the Shack Up Inn, and Shacksdale.

This community of shacks, seed houses, grain silos, and other farm structures has been reborn into an event destination, hotel, bars, and music venues. These are the old sharecropper shacks Sylvester Hoover in Greenwood wasn’t sure about, and I hope he sees for himself; the whole place is fun and full of life, respectful of history without taking itself seriously. (I was able to park Nellie there, but for now they aren’t making RV parking a “thang.” There are RV spots in town at the Coahoma County Expo Center. Remember – have less than stellar expectations.)

A grand social experiment is afoot in downtown Clarksdale, where locals and transplants, Blacks and Whites, are coming together over love of music and community. Some say it all began about 17 years ago, when Morgan Freeman partnered with a local attorney to open Ground Zero, a Blues club (and another place – a fancy restaurant which has since closed – Clarksdale just isn’t a fancy restaurant kind of town).

Ground Zero opened a couple of years after the Delta Blues Museum next door, housed in the old Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Train Depot.

A museum highlight for me was seeing the shack Muddy Waters lived in for over 30 years, as I had just visited Stovall Plantation, where it once stood.

Muddy worked as a tractor driver at Stovall, about 10 miles from Clarksdale, and recorded his first records for folklorist Alan Lomax there in 1941 and 1942.

Clarksdale is the opposite of the Field of Dreams: If they come, they will build it. The Rock and Blues Museum, originally located in the Netherlands, was relocated to the Delta along with its Dutch founder in 2006. A woman from Portland, Oregon staffs the museum. New York artist and musician Stan Street runs the Hambone Gallery and Hopeless Case Bar. Roger Stolle, Ohio transplant and Buddy Holly doppelganger, operates Cat Head Delta Blues and Folk Art, the go-to for everything music-related in Clarksdale, and sponsor of the Juke Joint Festival each April.

A couple of New Zealanders opened Levon‘s, a restaurant and music venue. Robin Colonas, a Seattle Merchant Marine, reopened the old Roxy Theatre, without a roof, because you can just do that sort of thing in Clarksdale.

It is now a kick-ass open air music venue and bar. These Ex-Pats (perhaps considered Carpetbaggers by some) love Clarksdale, its people, and the music. Their enthusiasm is palpable.

That’s not to say that locals are out of the picture. The Riverside Hotel, where Ike Turner first played “Rocket 88” and Bessie Smith died of injuries sustained in an auto accident, is still locally owned.

Rat died a couple of years ago, but his daughter still runs the place. Red Paden operates one of last truly authentic juke joints in Mississippi.

There’s Abe’s Barbecue, since 1924,

and Rest Haven Restaurant, since 1960,

both owned by Lebanese immigrants. (At Rest Haven I noshed on kibbe and cabbage rolls, in the Mississippi Delta, while Trump droned on Fox News about the threat of immigration).

Delta natives, writers, and entrepreneurs Billy and Madge Howell operate B & B’s, guest houses, and Delta Bohemian Tours, which is a hands down, no joke, must-do when in Clarksdale.

Billy is a southern gentleman, renaissance man, and raconteur. He is just as likely to quote Faulkner as Howlin’ Wolf, and the tour includes all the Tennessee Williams sites too. (I would like to return for the Tennessee Williams festival in October.) Take his three-hour tour if you have the time.

There is live music in Clarksdale seven nights a week, most of it Blues, from large venues like Ground Zero to restaurants and bars, and one of the last great juke joints: Red’s.

“Backed by the river, fronted by the grave,” as the T-shirt says, Red’s is not the sanitized, sterilized music venue you’ll get elsewhere. The struggle to remain authentic is real; on many nights, the only Black people in the place are Red, the bartender, and the musicians. On my first night, when Memphis transplant Lucius Spiller played, the entire place was swarmed by underage White kids dropped off by charter bus.

On another evening, when Anthony “Big A“ Sherrod performed, he took a poll of the audience; most of the crowd was from England, especially Liverpool; Germany; and Columbia.

One afternoon I headed out for a little day tripping. Outside Clarksdale is Friar’s Point,

home of country music star, Harold Lloyd Jenkins, aka Conway Twitty.

The town also has some interesting Civil War history. Friar’s Point may sound familiar, because bluesman Robert Knighthawk sang the “Friar’s Point Blues.”

I went to Friar’s Point to see Hirsberg’s Drug Store, where blues musicians including Nighthawk, Robert Johnson and Johnny Shines used to play in the 1930’s.

In fact, Muddy Waters heard Robert Johnson play on a bench outside Hirsberg’s. What a colossal moment of Blues cross-pollination, worthy of a visit, even though there is so little left to see.

I continued on to Tutwiler, another monumental site in music history that is disintegrating as we speak. Bandleader W.C. Handy was waiting for a train at the Tutwiler railway station around 1902, when he heard a man playing slide guitar with a knife and singing “Goin’ where the Southern cross the Dog.” In his 1941 autobiography “Father of the Blues,” Handy described “A lean, loose-jointed negro… plunking a guitar beside me… As he played he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in the manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars.” He called it, “The weirdest music I had ever heard.” “The tune did stay in my mind.”

As the sign says, Handy later published an adaptation of this song as “Yellow Dog Blues,” and became known as “The Father of the Blues” after he based many of his popular orchestrations on the sounds he heard in the Delta.

The Tutwiler train station is long gone, but the platform remains, overlooking fading murals by Cristen Barnard.

Following Robert Birdsong’s directions, I left the train platform and edged along field after field to the grave of great Blues harmonica player, Aleck Miller, better known as Sonny Boy Williamson. Whitfield Church no longer stands, but the cemetery remains.

Sonny Boy’s grave was unmarked until 1980, when Lillian McMurray of Trumpet Records erected a stone.

I got back to Hopson and thanked Robert for his directions, informing him that the grave was overgrown and littered by large tree limbs.

He nodded, making a mental note to get out there and tidy up.

TUNICA

I felt the Delta loosening its grip as I pulled into Tunica, land of casinos, a stone’s throw to Memphis. I parked the rig in a $20-per-night RV park at Sam’s Town Casino, near Abby and Letterman Plantation, where Robert Johnson worked off and on for ten years.

Marc Cohn’s “Walking in Memphis” sprang to mind again, but this time for an even better reason; I had dinner at the Hollywood Cafe, where according to Cohn, “Miss Muriel plays piano every Friday at the Hollywood.”

While there was no music that night, they served up a mean basket of deep fried catfish, shrimp and frog legs, with so many dipping sauces that even a sauce maven like me couldn’t object.

Up Highway 61 in Walls, Mississippi, I visited the grave of Memphis Minnie.

She was born Lizzie “Kid” Douglas in 1897 and is considered to be the best female blues singer of all time. She received her first guitar in 1905 as a Christmas present and was among the first 20 performers inducted into the Hall of Fame in the inaugural W.C. Handy awards in 1980.

For over 20 years this was the marker on her grave at the New Hope M.B. Church, until Bonnie Raitt placed a tombstone in the 1990’s.

The Gateway to the Blues Museum in Tunica is housed in an 1895 train depot strategically located on the new Highway 61, enticing visitors heading south into Mississippi from Memphis. It was modern and informative, with a particularly well-stocked gift shop.

Leaving Tunica, I turned Nellie north. Sixteen miles away lay Memphis and beyond, beckoning with a siren song to keep moving and make that next discovery.

EPILOGUE

A pilgrimage is defined as “a journey, especially a long one, made to some sacred place as an act of religious devotion.” I made my pilgrimage to the Mississippi Delta, and it was transformative. My time there chasing the Blues is one of the best experiences I have had on the road. I will cherish it, and no doubt I will return.

I leave you with these words from Robert Joyner of the St. Louis Post dispatch from July 4, 2005:

“Still, my thoughts are fixed on the Mississippian puzzle. The state has given the world so much grief and yet so much joy. For every KKK member who sings of Dixie and separatism, there must be 10 Mississippi-born musicians whose creations appeal to our common humanity. In fact, Mississippi is the birthplace of some of the world’s happiest musicians, even if they’ve since been claimed by Nashville, Cleveland and Branson, Missouri. Like an old bluesman, Mississippi in an uphill battle. The state is trying to get past its terrible history of repression; perhaps one path to rebirth and redemption lies through its diverse contributions to music.”