How Blue can you Get

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The place is almost like a ghost town. Driving up Highway 49 is a drive back through time. It may not be what it looked like in its heyday. But a movie would set it up like this to show a scene of a time gone by.



Plantation fields dominate the area. The Mississippi was a place many African Americans saw as a promise land. A place to work and earn enough money to buy a plot themselves to work on. That time didn’t happen with many working on plantations. Working on cotton fields.



It is a different part of America. Slushy looking still, the swampland was perfect for growing cotton. This is where the blues began. It’s hard sometimes that a music genera I like came from hard slave labour but its true.



The weather was pretty ordinary for this part of the trip and the days became shorter with the sun setting around 530pm. So there were only a few stops to see where artists worked before becoming famous. Those places were just wooden shacks splintering enough to be unliveable. Punished by the elements, as they lay there open to the wind, sun and rain.



We were heading to Clarksdale the official home of the blues. On the way there we stopped off in Indianola for the BB King Museum. My favourite blues artist and the man said to keep the blues alive. I saw him 2 years earlier playing live in Budapest at age 84 and he is still touring.



It goes through his life, which is typical of most early blues artists. Born in a shack to then become a recognised artist. A video to start the museum shows BB revisiting his birthplace, directed on a recording his father made. His father points out landmarks on the land and eventually they get there. An empty field, which is the birthplace of the greatest blues artist.



Church Street was the first port of call in Indianola with gambling halls and bars with live music. Saturday nights were the only nights really the workers had of freedom. From this start up point the main quest for musicians were to get to Memphis and Beale Street.



I wrote down this quote from the museum by Rufus Thomas – “If you could be black for one Saturday night on Beale St. Never would you want to be white again.”



It also goes through the tough times just like the Negro Baseball league in Kansas City. On how as a musician they had to do the ‘Chitlin Circuit’ a circuit that covered venues in the eastern and southern states that negro artists could play at. They also had the Jim Crew Law, which segregated by colour from 1876 to 1965. To compensate they had a guidebook well before Lonely Planet, which covered restaurants, hotels and toilets where black artists and their crew were allowed to use.



BB said on a video how at one gas station he was about to pump into his large bus and the worker at the station said the toilet was broken. He’d reply something like, "Well I’ll just take my $100 and spend it somewhere else then." Something along those lines.



It turned out it was lucky we went to this museum because the next day was a Sunday and the Delta Blues museum was closed that day. I wouldn’t say the day was exciting but once you get a bit of history let the imagination get the best of you. You can grab an element of the past and even more appreciation of the words from these artists.



One of my favourite BB King songs is “Chains and Things.”

Now that I’ve come to the area there’s a bit more of an understanding. Love the lyric, “…I aint got no money to buy a ticket and I don’t feel like walking anymore. These Chains that bind me. I can’t shake or lose these Chains and Things.”



Anyhow that’s in the past, what about the now? Well maybe because of Thanksgiving weekend it’s a bit disappointing. The romance if you can call slaving away on cotton fields is long gone and it looks a poor place. In fact you could transport some parts of Clarksdale to any 3^rd world country and it could fit. Many African American celebs and music stars have bought places here. So a small area has a Clarksdale version of mansions - Just big houses on a larger property. Most of the people living here permanently live in rustic homes to be nice. Mainly worn down shacks.



Morgan Freedman, the actor, Bill Lucket, a businessman and Howard Stovall from the Stovall Plantation, which was home to Muddy Waters, combined to start up a bar called Ground Zero Blues Club. They have kept to the rustic feel of the place and the bar looks like it closed down 40 years ago.



On Delta Avenue it stands on its own next to a pothole filled car park. We enter and it is not busy. The walls and the pool table have names of people who have visited despite the sign saying please don’t write on the pool table.



The band that was playing for the night were excellent if I were anywhere else in the world but I was in Clarksdale so expectations were high so I left pretty disappointed. In fact this word came up quite a bit at this point. So much so that Robert Parish said soon after, “Oh don’t say the ‘D’ word.”



The main highlight was when Parish made a pathetic half arsed attempt to hide himself videoing two Arkansas couples talking in their hillbilly manner. They spotted it a mile away saying something to him as I was saying, “That is so obvious.”



They invite us over and one of them about 50 says she can do this trick with her tongue. She shows us and she can twist her tongue in a full circle. They are pretty pissed and when she finished we had to look all impressed.



She pretty much straightaway identified that with this tongue movement she is capable of giving excellent head. Repulsed at the same time as shocked she continued. “Yes I have a lot of experience giving head.”



We moved back to our seats and whilst eating our meal I asked Robert how much would I have to pay for you to go up to the 50 year old and say, “Okay lets go I want to see how good it is. Lets go to the toilet.” He said “Not much probably about $50.” He knew I only had $45 so he didn’t do it. Okay that last part was a lie there. The figure was probably about 10K. But since there was no guarantee of finding out that he did it properly we were left talking in hypotheticals for kicks.



When the band played, lets just point out here this was one of my must see things in America for me, One of the males from Arkansas goes up and dances half way through the first song with one of the women. The ‘50 year old great blowjob lady’ joins them. Fine whatever but they stood right in front of the band so I couldn’t see the guitar being played. The other thing too was that the guy was wearing a loose camouflage shirt despite his massive gut and boobs. I will forever remember that guy’s large body move up and down with arms swinging and that lady talking about how she gives good head… Man, how blue can you get?



We continued onto Memphis and the weather was just terrible and we pregame ready for a night to make up for Clarksdale’s disappointment. One of our great pregame efforts and we were primed for Beale Street.



And incredibly music didn’t want to show up again. There was music on but no one was out. Half the bars were closed and the cold was so bad that I pulled a back muscle just trying to shiver for warmth.



We stayed at the Memphis Hotel 6, which used a tampon to cover up a gap in the wall. A drunken guy at reception was having a few words to the receptionist whilst we waited for the taxi. After having a go at me for just standing there to keep warm whilst the taxi came. He continued, “This place (Memphis) has lost all heart.” And if Sunday had anything to go by he was about right.



We woke up the next morning ready to do all the must sees and move on. First stop was Sun Studios and despite its around $12 fee for two rooms its worth it especially when you consider how many artists had come here and where rock n roll began. The guide was extremely enthusiastic as was one visitor who within the first sentence goes “WHAT’S YOUR NAME?... WHAT’S YOUR NAME?’ The guide “Please no talking over me. I will tell you my name at the end.”



I have a few songs from Sun Studios in my ipod so knowing a bit of history and putting faces to names was a bit of a kick for me. The studio is on a half corner on a main intersection about a mile and a bit from Beale Street. The tour goes through Elvis’ beginnings and the Million Dollar Quartet and others. How the song Bear Cat the first hit under the label Sun Studios got sued for copyright as it was a rebuttal to the song Hound Dog, stealing the identical tune.



They have an ‘x’ that marks the spot where Elvis stood during his recordings and they allow you to use the mike to fake sing and a photo with an original mike. For music enthusiasts it’s a must for others you’ll come out more the wiser.



We then drove to Graceland’s and grabbed ourselves KFC and a free park as Graceland’s charge like $10 to park. That should have been a warning of things to come, as the tour is $31. Now sure it would be nice to see how a rich person over indulges on fame but I was like, “Come on Priscilla $31! Are you kidding yourself?” I stood there near the ticket booth and thought, “You know what I really don’t like many of Elvis’ songs, I hate his movies. Gosh I use to hate Sundays at about 1pm when his crap came on before the footy. So why should I give $31 of my hard earned?” Instead we took photos from the front gates, which have many fans who wrote their names on it and headed off to Little Rock Arkansas.

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Comments

[Home and Away]

We just drove by Graceland
it was too tacky and expensive. However, your blog brought back a great memory. Linda and I attended a Johnny Cash concert in Boblingen, Germany in the early 1980's. Following intermission his concert was crashed by Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins. They had a great jam session for the rest of the evening. The only one missing was Elvis, but he had passed away although there were rumors that he was there...probably just in spirit.