REWIND III: STILL IN REVERSE

April/May, 2021

Time for us to skedaddle our way from Austin and surrounds, 370 miles or so to and after a short stop through Texarkana on our way 275 miles to Memphis. A lot is planned once we get there…

Texarkana my seem like an unexciting place, but what could be bad about a town that belongs to 2 states – that’s right, you’re in Texas when on the west side of town and in Arkansas when east.

And here’s a great fact about Texarkana… It is the home of Pulitzer Prize winning American composer Scott Joplin…yeah the guy who is considered the father of ragtime music and composer of “The Entertainer.”

Texarkana turned out to be a decent place to take a needed rest stop on our adventure, and allowed us to have respite to take care of those necessary humdrum things like laundry and food shopping.

We’re not sure what we expected with our plans for staying at the Tom Sawyer RV Park in West Memphis, Arkansas. Our campsite was maybe 50 yards to the west bank of the Mississippi River, and we were able to watch the tugboats pushing barges up and down river, the occasional paddlewheel go by, and the sun rise over the River. We had wondered why the RV Park’s website contained a disclaimer denying refunds if we had to evacuate due to flooding. Being so close we could just imagine how quickly a heavy lasting rain upriver would raise the water level high enough to spill over the banks and flood the entire area!

Setting up we both started sweating and wondering why since it wasn’t any more strenuous that any other time we had set-up in more than 3 years. Oh yeah – we had been staying in the dry arid drought of Arizona and had forgotten what humidity was all about! Welcome back to the middle of the Country.

During our last visit we were deeply moved by the Civil Rights Museum and the site of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, enjoyed thoroughly the History of Blues Museum and Biel Street, and found Central BBQ to be Lockhart, Texas east. Brian had wanted to head south into Mississippi and follow some of the Blues Trail, but a stop for BBQ was mandatory.

For the initiated, the Mississippi Blues Trail tells the tale of the origins, the people and the places associated with the genre of music known as The Blues. The Oxford Dictionary defines The Blues as: “melancholic music of black American folk origin, typically in a twelve-bar sequence, developed in the rural southern US toward the end of the 19th century.” And then further adds: “As Black Americans migrated to the cities urban blues gave rise to rhythm and blues and rock and roll.” What a legacy! The Mississippi Delta became known as the birthplace of the blues, and produced a majority of the artists and performers whose names we know.

Clarksdale, Mississippi is the center of the Mississippi Delta and our first destination on this journey. Out of Memphis it’s a short 70 miles or so south on Highway 61 to Clarksdale. (Highway 61? Oh – solved a question Brian’s had for perhaps 50 years. Bob Dylan was paying respect). Along the we passed the Highway 61 Blues Museum and had to stop at this facsimile juke joint.

Just for the record a juke joint is slang for a place that features music, dancing, gambling, and drinking. It’s origins belong to the southeastern US Black American culture.

Myth has it that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil and the blues were born. The Crossroads are at the junction of Highways 61 and 49 in Clarksdale and commemorate that bargain.

;djacent to The Crossroads and founded in 1924 is Abe’s BBQ. While Robert Johnson’s bargain with the devil may be a myth, the restaurant boasts as fact that its founder, Abraham Davis, did indeed surrender his soul for the recipe to the “famous” come back sauce. A small bbq pork sandwich, bbq beef plate and tamale plate (!!) later we were ready for further adventures…our meal was excellent and inexpensive, but bring cash; no credit cards are accepted.

Less than a mile from The Crossroads is The Delta Blues Museum. The history of Delta Blues was laid out before us with exhibits giving in-depth information about contributors, artists, and growth of the blues within a historical timeline (sorry-no Jake and Elwood). Jammed-packed with memorabilia including musical instruments, performers’ costumes, and musical scores, and the recordings of landmark tunes heightened our enjoyment of the museum.

Photos were discouraged, but Brian couldn’t help himself…

he 469 miles of the Blues Trail is broken up into 5 regions, and there are more than 200 stops. We chose to spend our time in the Delta, and “wisely” chose which of the 100 stops to put on our list. We had such fun hunting ’em down.

About 60 miles south of Clarksdale is Indianola, the burial site of and museum commemorating the life of B.B. King. Riley B. King was born in 1925 near the town of Itta Bena, Mississippi. He was shuttled between his mother’s home and his grandmother’s residence as a child, his father having left the family when he was very young. The youth put in long days working as a sharecropper and devoutly sang the Lord’s praises at church before moving to Indianola in 1943. Discharged honorably from service in World War II he settled in Memphis, Tennessee. Working as a disc jockey he was dubbed “the Beale Street Blues Boy;” the nickname was shortened to “B.B.” B.B. King cut his first record in 1949, and he spent the next several decades recording and touring, playing more than 300 shows a year, and setting a record of 74 recordings on the Billboard charts. According to biography.com, “…he introduced a sophisticated style of solo guitar playing, mixing in fluid string bending, shimmering vibrato and staccato picking that influenced many later blues electric guitar players.”

We had the good fortune to be joined by our daughter Elyssa and son-in-law Ben in 2005 to hear an 80-year young B.B. King play at Musikfest in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.  

So the blues gave rise to rhythm and blues which gave rise to rock and roll? Wonder if there’s anyone else who might have been born in Mississippi that influenced the world of entertainment as much, if not more, than B.B. King? Well, a 100-mile trip southeast from Memphis down Highway 22 would bring us into the heart of Tupelo. That’s right – the birthplace of Elvis Aaron Presley.

We were able to visit the museum that described his early life, and then take guided tours through the house where Elvis was born and lived as a youngster and teen, and through the Assembly of God Church where Elvis would go with his family to worship and where, through gospel music, his singing in public began.

Elvis, B.B. King, and the others whose plaques we enjoyed finding and documenting in this blog experienced poverty and discrimination to some degree throughout their lives. Barbara and I would be remiss to not comment on the continuing issue of poverty faced by people of color in Mississippi. In our travels we did observe the “have not” side of life, which was almost 100% inhabited by people of color.

From Scott Joplin to Elvis and B.B. King…so much of our time was spent exploring the roots of one of the genres of music we love, and paying homage to and expressing an appreciation for the entertainers, artists and performers, poets, producers, and dreamers of what might be. Thanks…

Barbara and Brian

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.“ – Henry David Thoreau