The Delta After Dark - Two Towns, Two Juke Joints and Very Little Luck

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Suggested Listening for this Entry: R.L. Burnside's CD Too Bad Jim. T-Model Ford's CDs Pee Wee Get Your Gun and Jack Daniel Time.

Suggested Food and Drink for this Entry: A candy bar and a large soda from any country convienence store or gas station that is open late. You'll understand as you read further.

After finding Red's, and without anything immediate to do, we got back in the SUV and headed north on highway 61. We thought four hours or so was a lot of time to kill doing nothing just to check out the Po' Monkey or Red's. Plus, the Po' Monkey was another 35 miles away from Memphis, which we planned on returning to that night. As we headed out of Clarksdale, it dawned on me there were several places in the area where we could kill some time. They were called casinos. So, the new plan was to play a little blackjack, then head south again to Merigold in search of the Po' Monkey and the blues. After some time at the Po' Monkey, we'd start back towards Memphis with a stop at Red's. It sounded like one hell of a plan and we had some fall back options with Ground Zero and the Depot Blues Club in Clarksdale.

Up highway 61 we went, thinking we needed to go 25 miles to Tunica where there were several caisnos to get our blackjack fix. But, not too far out of Clarksdale, we saw a sign for the Isle of Capri casino about 10 miles to the west of highway 61, so we made the turn. A short while later, the three of us were at a $5 table. Each one of us played for varying amounts of time, but we all came away winners. In a couple of hours I won $85. Ips and The Player had left the table quite a while earlier than me in search of a bar with a TV showing the Va. Tech game. I kept playing until it was time for us to venture south again. A little after eight, we took off for Merigold and the Po' Monkey.

Information we had seen in the Cat Head during the day said the Po' Monkey was one of the last true juke joints around. The Cat Head also sold a great black & white photo of the Po' Monkey and it looked to be everything we thought it would be. Our only real concern was finding it once we got to Merigold. As I drove south , we listened the T-Model Ford's latest CD, Jack Daniel Time, that I had bought at Cat Head and The Player stayed glued to his Blackberry in order to get updates on the Va. Tech game (not that I gave a rat's a** about it). There were no signs anywhere along 61 for the Po' Monkey, but that wasn't a surprise. Plus, it was so dark we would have eaily missed them if there had been any.

We turned off 61 and went into Merigold hoping to find some sign of the Po' Monkey or to at least find someplace where we could get directions. (Unbelievable three guys would ask for directions, I know.) We found the one business open in Merigold at nine p.m. on a Saturday night, a gas station / convienence store. Ips went in to ask directions.

The directions from the store clerk were to go back to highway 61, cross over it and make a sharp and immediate left onto a dirt road. Then, follow the dirt road until we saw the Po' Monkey on the left. Simple enough, right?

Well, a couple of miles down that dirt road got us nothing but a dust covered vehicle. We made several turns, taking a giant lap around a good chunk of suburban Merigiold, better known as cotton field after cotton field. After getting nowhere, we made our way back to 61 and tried again to no avail. It was time to go back to the store and ask directions again (gasp).

We pulled up again and Ips and I went in to ask the clerk for directions. She went over them again and they seemed to be the same as the last time. Maybe she didn't want us dropping in on their (not so) secrect piece of blues heaven. While we were going over the directions, a customer walked in. He was a tall, thin, middle aged black guy with a goatee who acted as if he was a Po' Monkey regular when the store clerk asked him to help her with the directions. He was able to give us clarified directions, depsite the fact he'd been partying a little himself. He walked out of the store with us while telling me he knew the owner of the Po' Monkey. I was expecting him to ask for ride out there until he said "Tell Bill (the owner) I said hello. Then pull out your d*ck and piss on a table for me". Suddenly, I really began to wonder what we were getting ourselves into.

With that advice on how we should annouce our arrival at the Po' Monkey, we set off again. We came to a different dirt road where we needed to turn left and this time we saw a sign pointing us toward the Po' Monkey. We were in business.

A couple of minutes later, we came upon several cars parked along the road. But, imagine our horror as we drove closer to find the crowd congregated outside the bar consisted of.........20-something white kids!!! I felt I was in some parallel universe as we parked and got out. We walked back to the Po' Monkey to find every guy outside dressed in jeans, a button down oxford and a baseball cap. All the girls were in shorts or jean skirts. And, everyone was drinking from red plastic cups. As Ips said, it was like we rolled up on an Ole Miss frat party. Hell, at that point I was half expecting to see Eli Manning doing a beer bong while co-eds hung all over him.

In shock, we walked past a band comprised of four white guys playing "college music" on the back of a flat bed and up the steps and into the Po' Monkey. The crowd, or lack thereof, was a handful of 20-somethings standing around eating. WTF?!??!?! The three of us looked at each other and headed out the door and back to the SUV. The entire time, five minutes or so, no one paid a lick of attention to us. Thus, the great Po' Monkey mystery was born. At least we had Red's and a couple of other bars back in Clarksdale to fall back on.

Back up 61 we went, still trying to figure out what we had just witnessed and holding out hope for an evening with the blues. We had seen a sign on Red's door earlier in the say annoucing tonight's acts as Cadillac John and a one man band named Bill Abel.

Forty-five minutes later, we were parking down the street from Red's. Opening the door to Red's we started to feel a little better. Cadillac John was singing away as the one man band, Bill Abel, was playing behind him getting help from a bass player. The three musicians had a good groove going. The layout and decor of Red's was very much what I expected; small, very dark with beer signs and music posters covering the walls. In a few places on the walls, lighted musical notes were hung. The bar was along the back wall and the band was set up on the floor along the front wall. In what space was left, were some rickety tables and chairs and random pieces of living room furniture.

We paid our five dollar covers and squeezed in, all the time looking for a seat. Yes, a seat. There was no dancing or grooving to the band going on. "Why is that?", you ask? Because the audience was very...attentive and academic in their behavior. They were...oh hell, let me say it in politically incorrect terms......the audience was almost all white. If not for the fact I had found a seat on an old sofa that had probably come out of a trailer somewhere, I would have felt like I was in an audience at the Kennedy Center. Ips and The Player found seats at a round table near me. Accross the table from them, and further away from the band, sat Mrs. Cadillac John.

After a couple of songs, another lady at the table asked Ips to move to the side a little because he was blocking Mrs. Cadillac John's view. Ips politely moved, although in whole scheme of things, it didn't matter because Cadillac John took a break shortly thereafter with the bass player packing up and heading out the door. We were left with the one man band, which wouldn't have been a bad thing, if he had actually performed songs. Instead, his performance consisted primarily of playing the same guitar riff repeatedly. Occasionally, he uttered some inaudible lyrics. After listening to a few "songs" that all sounded the same, I was ready to go in search of options three and four.

We hopped in the SUV and drove the minute or two it took to get back into downtown Clarksdale. After parking, we headed to the old railroad right of way thru town, where according to our map, a couple of more clubs were located. We walked a couple of blocks to the Depot Blues Club where we heard the sounds of a female vocalist as we approached. The problem? The singer was singing "I Will Surive" thru a karaoke machine!

We ventured onward, this time finding a soul food place. We were all getting hungry, so maybe there was a silver lining. Not to be, they had run out of most everything.

This left us with our final option, the Ground Zero Blues club. Ground Zero is co-owned by Morgan Freeman and is where Bobby Rush recorded his live performance DVD a few years back (a must have for anyone who enjoys modern blues and Southern Soul). Earlier in the day, Ips and I had joked how if we heard a certain song on this trip to Clarksdale, we knew we had hit rock bottom. We walked into Ground Zero to the sounds of, you guessed it, "Sweet Home Alabama". It was time to head back to Memphis.

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Some follow up notes on Clarksdale:
Although we struck out in hearing the blues, it really seems as if it was just a case of bad timing. Upon returning home and doing some research on the internet, I found that most every other weekend throughout the fall, a blues festival of some type was being held somewhere in the northern Delta. And, I found that many of the clubs have live music only on non-weekend nights. It also became apparent we were hindered by the fact the owner of Cat Head was out of town, seeing he is considered the go to person when it comes music in and around Clarksdale.

As to the Po' Monkey mystery, Ips found an article partially solving it. The article can be found here:

But, the article does not explain how we happened to come upon the Ole Miss Frat Party.

I obviously did not get a photo of the Po' Monkey because it was night. But, you can see a photo of it by Annie Leibovitz, one of the all time great photographers, here:

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Photos

Red's Blues Club
This looked promising.

The Boys Outside of Red's
T-Minus Four Hours

Eighth Note
inside Red's

Ground Zero....
...our last hope.