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Blues Pilgrimage

By W. Marc Ricketts

Tune your radio to any station playing popular music. The specific genre is irrelevant, rock, rap, country, doesn’t matter. But if you start tracing the roots of that music, odds are that you will, at some point, arrive in the Mississippi Delta.

A native of Alabama, I knew that one day on a return visit I would make a trek into Mississippi, a little blues pilgrimage so to speak. When I heard about the King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena, Arkansas, I had a time. The trip was set for the second weekend in October.

Jimmy Page and Robert Plant may have chosen to walk to Clarksdale, but we opted for a car. Traveler’s advisory: Driving into Mississippi, the speed limit increases. However, a hidden " welcome to Alabama" State Trooper was lurking just beyond the border for eastbound traffic.

Tupelo, Mississippi was at a good spot for a break, and there’s actually something to do there. (I know, I know, I’m as surprised as anyone.) Though not a bluesman, per se, the power of Elvis Presley as a sociological phenomenon can not be denied. And there are some direct links, of course, like his recording of Big Mama Thornton’s "Hound Dog". The birthplace of the "King" is located in Tupelo.

Signs from highway 78 led us easily to the small park and museum adjacent to the house of Presley’s birth. The museum is $4.00, but it was only 50 cents to see the interior of the small, white cottage where Presley spent the first few years of his life.

Perhaps he would have spent his

entire youth there, but after three years,

his father defaulted on the $180 mortgage.

The house consists of two rooms, and, no,

neither of them has a toilet. Furnishings

include an icebox (not what your granny

calls a refrigerator, but a box that requires

a big block of ice) and some ancient laundry

apparati. The covered picnic tables on the

grounds, I’m guessing, were added later.

Elvis Presley's Birthplace Tupelo, Mississippi

We continued on our quest, and

entered delta country. This is not the land

at the mouth of the Mississippi River, but

the rich, fertile soil farther upstream. Two

words come to mind: flat and cotton. Not

the flat of the Midwest, mind you, where

there’s an occasional pretty barn or silo to

break up the monotony. It’s just cotton, cotton, cotton, cotton, cotton………….

I mean, that has to be a discouraging sight. Even today, with modern harvesting equipment, it appears a daunting task to work these fields. Go back a few decades, when it was picked by hand, or farther back, when those hands had no choice, and it is clear that a person needs a way to cope.

Music was the answer for many as a way to cope, and for others a way to get out. Think about it, the cotton gets loaded onto barges and leaves, you’ve got to figure that some people are going to want out of these hot fields, too. I’ve felt this heat, getting away from it is an idea I understand.

Like early rock and roll, blues was considered the Devil’s music. Perhaps more so back then since the foundation of the blues was the gospel music of the churches. Rev. Gary Davis ("Samson and Delilah") was not permitted to play such heathen rhythms by his wife in his house, ditto for Son House (who taught Robert Johnson). Only songs to the Lord were permitted, not those that celebrate sex and alcohol. And drugs, too, just find the Reefer Songs CD on the Jass label if you don’t believe it.

Getting off track momentarily, Jass also has a CD called The Copulating Blues; Madonna comes off sounding like a nun compared to some of these tunes.

The devil has figured into the blues for a long time. Robert Johnson, legendary composer of, among others, "Crossroads" and "Walkin’ Blues", is said to have made a deal with the devil in exchange for his skills at what is now the junction of Highway 61 and 49 in Clarksdale. These roads also intersect just north of town; if you see nothing when you look around, it’s the wrong crossroads. Johnson is buried in Morgan City, about 80 miles away.

Clarksdale also has a famous birthplace, that of Muddy Waters. Lately, though, it’s been on a tour of various House of Blues clubs, a road trip too bizarre to even comment upon.

The real gem of Clarksdale is the Delta Blues Museum, located upstairs in the public library. Though small, there are many interesting tid-bits of blues history on display. The exhibits range from a Bonnie Raitt slide to one of James Cotton’s harps. An early Lucille guitar from B.B. King is here, clad in a red finish as opposed to the familiar black that he plays now.

The place just seems authentic, like the music itself. Even the steel guitar "like" the one played by Son House is of that era, and not some slicked-up reproduction. More than displays, the museum has a vast archive of books and recordings. Spending a day exploring these reserves would be a treat to any blues fan, but there was living music up the road and across the river in Arkansas.

Helena, Arkansas is a small town where grain is loaded onto barges to flow with the river. It is also the birthplace of Sonny Boy Williamson ("Eyesight to the Blind") and home to the National Guitar Company. Looking around, it is clear that Helena is not a place that would be considered a tourist mecca, and those that do come spend most of their time in the Lady Luck Rhythm and Blues Casino (major sponsor of the festival) beside the bridge in Mississippi. That changes on the second weekend in October.

I’ll be direct and to the point; I have never experienced a concert whose overall atmosphere is as mellow as that found at the King Biscuit Blues Festival (KBBF). And yes, I have seen the Grateful Dead, but remember, I said overall atmosphere. Permit me to elaborate. The festival is free, but signs around the perimeter warn that pets, video, and coolers are not allowed. A security type came up to someone near us and said, "I’m sorry, but coolers aren’t allowed, please put your jacket over it."

Now you understand; we all know that the described exchange above would never occur at the Capital "your business name here" Center. The tone was set for a great day of music by the water. The line-up included local players, nationally known performers, and living legends.

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