Blues Traveling

So the sign is a bit crooked. It's not easy to take photos while going 70mph.

I'm back in Memphis tonight after another day on the road, about half of which was on the famous Hwy 61. If you have to ask, don't bother.

Anyway. I had around a dozen spots I wanted to visit along the Mississippi Delta, which I had carefully picked from hundreds that I could have seen. After the last couple of days' exhaustion, however, I cut it down to just a few. I planned to visit all 3 graves supposedly belonging to inventor of the Blues, Robert Johnson, but instead went only the one in Greenwood, most likely to include the man himself. While I was alone in a little graveyard amidst the cotton fields, it was clear lots of others had made the same trip. The headstone had lots of little tokens, from flowers and coins to drumsticks. I didn't leave anything behind; I just took a moment, and went on my way.

Next stop was Indianola, home of BB King -- at least for the few days a year that he's not on the road. I had planned to take a quick break there on the way to the Blues Museum in Leland, but instead stopped into the BB King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center. After perusing the exhibit, I continued on through Leland, spotted a Johnny Winter Blues Marker, but didn't see much reason to stop.

From there, I turned north toward Clarksdale, birthplace of the blues. In addition to its many other musical landmarks, it claims the legendary crossroads where Robert Johnson traded his soul to the devil in return for the ability to invent Blues music. What locals now call The Crossroads is actually the point where Highways 61 and 49 merge, not so much the dusty intersection where ol' Bob fell down on his knees. Chuck Klosterman did a great deal of research and thought he managed to find the "real" spot out in the country, but I don't have that much time, and I'm not writing a book, so I just went to Abe's Bar-B-Q at the Crossroads and had a nice pork sandwich.

I intended to go next to Helena, Arkansas, to the home of Sonny Boy Williamson, but I was road weary, and it was still 80 miles to Memphis without the detour, so I scratched that off the itinerary and went straight through back to Tennessee.

It's funny, I have a couple of guides leading down the Blues Trail, and they occasionally offer good songs for your road trip soundtrack. I always kind of shook my head and thought, I would never listen to that; it would be kind of like wearing the T-shirt of the band you're going to see. Who wants to be that guy? But at the last minute, I grabbed a couple of those CDs anyway, and I'm glad I did. Leaving Tupelo yesterday, I really did want to listen to Elvis. And racking up the miles on country roads, passing through one small dilapidated town after another put me in the mood to listen to the Blues. Of course, hearing Sonny Boy on the record made it harder to skip Helena, but it was still the right musical accompaniment.

I'm now relaxing with a bit of dinner and deciding what to do with my last day tomorrow. There's a lot to see here in Memphis, so I know it will be a full day, whatever I do.