Freaking hell, it was cold in Clarksdale when I woke up on this day. And still grey as a tomb, though the sun ended up breaking through the clouds after I got on the road and headed along the very scenic way towards Tennessee and Nashville.
After the same breakfast as yesterday again at the Rest Haven, I steered the Shark up route 6 to route 55 with the plan to stop in Como on the way to Senatobia in order to find the gravesite of Mississippi Fred McDowell. Como's so small it didn't even have a stoplight, but it did have Blues Trail markers for both Fred and fife master Otha Turner. Fred's mentioned that he was buried north of town at Hammond Hill Missionary Baptist Church on Hammond Hill Road, but the young guy at the gas station where I asked didn't know where it was. Just for shits'n'giggles, I decided to head up route 51, which parallels the larger, four lane route 55 up to Senatobia. Went a little ways looking for Hammond Hill Road, but when I crossed into the next county it seemed that I was on the wrong side of the north end of Como. So I decided to turn around and head back to check out the other side of town. Picked a random side road in which to pull a u-turn and, lo and behold, there was a sign for Hammond Hill M.B. Church that wasn't visible from the direction I'd been headed.
That road ended at a T intersection, but there were no more signs specifying a direction to the church. Made another random decision and headed right (The first sign said "keep right", right?). About a mile down, tucked next to a crossroad between pine and sweetgum woods on one side and empty fields on the other, was Hammond Hill M.B., with the cemetery on the hill across the street. I always get a hell of a kick out of such serendipitous discoveries.
Hammond Hill cemetery had many of the same style of home-made headstones I'd seen yesterday at Charley Patton's gravesite, in addition to newer ones on which much more money has obviously been spent.
From Como, the Shark and I headed up to Senatobia, then juked east toward Holly Springs to see if I could find a record shop listed on the Mississippi Music Tourist Sites map-- Aikei Pro's (Pronounced "ecky", as in "ecky thump". Some of you will catch the White Stripes connection...) Stopped first to choke down the worst fried green tomato po'boy in the history of southern cooking (fried green tomatoes should be breaded, not battered), then asked at the lunch counter if they could direct me to the street where the shop was located. The woman who worked there didn't have any idea, and when she asked a local who'd come in to pick up carryout, we were told that the record store had closed. I went back out and drove around anyway, and within five minutes had found both the old town cemetery (of course, I have a built-in radar for these things) and Aikei Pro's. Wondered whether perhaps the woman at the lunch counter was correct, because when I peeked in the door it appeared that there were piles of records and magazines and Lord knows what other sorts of junk leaning up against each other just inside.
It was hard to tell if there were any signs of life inside, though. Started to head back to the car, where a down'n'out local started to pester me for a ride to somewhere, when the door of the shop opened and out squeezed a college-aged white girl and a grizzled little old black man. After she thanked him and wandered off, I squeezed as far in as I could get (which was about one foot), said hello to the grizzled guy and told him I'd heard this was the place to come for good records. He laughed and started talking, and it was an hour before I got myself back into the car. Mr. Caldwell talked to me about how there's no such thing as hill country blues-- That's something created by the white folk because they came along and wanted to be a part of things. All blues are delta blues, no matter whether the musician playing them came from Mississippi or Texas. He went on to describe his experience of coming to Mississippi from Kentucky after serving a handful of years in the army in Europe-- After being called a nigger for the first time in his life and being told to go back where he'd come from, he decided that, no sir, he was going to stay put. In his time in Holly Springs, he's since seen them desegregate the local schools and elect a black mayor. I can't help but think that he had at least a little to do with that. But he also told me that if we went back to the lunch counter that very afternoon and ordered coffee, that he wouldn't be served. I'd like to think that's not true, but we didn't put it to the test. In hindsight, perhaps I should have offered to buy him a cup. He's apparently also pretty famous amongst blues aficionados (he showed me a couple of magazine articles he's been interviewed for), as well as a good friend of Junior Kimbrough. The one thing I could actually see in the shop that I wanted to buy was a record of Junior's up on the wall, but Mr. Caldwell told me that album wasn't for sale for any price. I'm unable to embed the video from this link, but you have to go and watch it in order get a feel for the place and the man-- Portrait of a Record Dealer: Holly Springs, MS - Aikei Pro's. (If the video there doesn't work, go here. Or check the one below that I found when updating/editing this post on 3/13/2017)
Back on the way towards Tennessee, the empty roads I'd become used to began to fill up with more and more traffic. By the time I got to Nashville, it was well after dark, I was hungry, tired, and pissed off at being challenged on the highway by assholes in SUVs. Much as I was looking forward to the plans I had for N'ville, couldn't help but wish I was back down in the Delta at the Shack Up Inn, listening to that cold wind blow outside the windows.
It's a cold, grey day in Clarksdale. I've returned for a more extensive visit than last year's, back again at the Shack Up Inn, but with a different ride. Lucifer the Pony, a black Mustang, has been replaced by a silver Camaro that, with it's wide mouth-like grillwork and side "gills", reminds me of a shark.
The weather, though, is just as unsettled as last year. Woke up this morning to the sound of wind whipping around outside the windows of my Cadillac Shack. Broke the night's fast at the Rest Haven restaurant, smoking a cigar while waiting for two eggs sunny-side up with a pork chop, surrounded by good ol' boys who were all also puffing away while waiting for their meals. Smoking in restaurants is enough of a novelty these days, at least where I come from, but is even more exotic before breakfast. Reminded me of my crotchety grandfather who began each day with coffee and a cigarette, which was soon followed up with the first of many Budweisers. But back to Clarksdale-- The topics of conversation among the Rest Haven regulars that morning ranged from deer hunting to ant and roach control. A handful of Japanese tourists then wandered in and squeezed into the booth in front of mine to complete the scenario. William Least-Heat Moon wrote in Blue Highways that the more calendars on the wall in little country restaurants, the greater the guarantee of good food. Rest Haven has only one calendar, but I've now had the same breakfast there three times and the pork chop has been perfect every time. So much for Least-Heat Moon's rule.
Headed into downtown Clarksdale, such as it is, to re-visit the Delta Blues Museum, then stopped in Morgan Freeman's Ground Zero blues club for a post-breakfast Coke and peach cobbler. Perhaps it's ignorance or snobbery on my part, but I just don't think much of Freeman's place. His intentions are good, but it's like Bourbon Street is to New Orleans-- You get only a gloss of the real thing, a touristified version. I'm sure the music booked at Ground Zero is very good, but the atmosphere, with the encouraged graffiti of visitors on every bare bit of wall and ceiling and the studied dilapidation, is just too cheesy for me. And their peach cobbler leaves much to be desired.
While spooning up the gooey, soggy cobbler, I sat and contemplated the scribbles all over the bar and the wall behind it. What is with the need people have to write on walls, anyway? From graffiti to bathroom stalls to places like Ground Zero, where it's encouraged, to the shacks at the Shack Up Inn, where it's specifically not-- Is it some sort of cry for attention? Or perhaps, on a deeper level, a fear of mortality? So many people seem to have the need to be seen, recognized, remembered, even if it's only by anonymous strangers. They need to leave a bit of themselves for eternity, even though their graffiti'd scribbles represent nothing worth being remembered for. Though as I write this, it occurs to me that perhaps it's not all that different from babbling to the anonymous interwebs in some blog...
Braced by breakfast and the double shot of sugar from Coke and cobbler, I mapped a route around the Delta that headed east and then south on 49, east on 8, south on 7, then west on 82 to loop back towards the Mississippi River, north a ways along 1, and then back over to Clarksdale, then queued up the soundtrack for my wanderings-- John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson, Son House, and the White Stripes Live in Mississippi. The last is significant because it was their final show as a band and was, ironically in light of Jack's deep love of Delta blues, the first and only one they ever played in Mississippi, at a venue between Clarksdale and Memphis. John Lee's Boogie Chillun was the band's walk-on music to begin the show, and after a moody, brooding version of Death Letter, Jack very touchingly thanked Son House for letting him finally come home. He ended that last show by saying God bless you to both House and Robert Johnson, and so I felt it was fitting and necessary to include this album in the day's listening.
Stopped at a convenience store outside of Tutwiler for a package of dill pickle-flavored sunflower seeds and couldn't help but compare the real dilapidation of empty store fronts next door to the faux effects at Ground Zero. The faces of a handful of older gentlemen lounging outside matched the buildings, but the freshly mopped floor of the bathroom inside the convenience store was spotless and had just enough of a bleach aroma to smell clean as a sunny day.
I feel alien in places like this, with my fast rental car and my rock'n'roll attire, having slept comfortably the night before in a restored version of the sort of sharecropper's shacks that still line many of the roads down here. What am I documenting when I snap photos around here? I've felt the same thing driving through certain neighborhoods of Baltimore back home. Am I romanticizing a place and people I don't fully understand? My family was pretty poor when I was a kid and I'm far from well off now, so I have some idea of what it's like. But this seems to be a level of poverty I've never experienced anywhere near firsthand. Or is life around here really not as hard-scrabble as I imagine based on appearances? What's the reality? Without living it the way these people do, I'll likely never know, and that leaves me uncomfortable about pulling out the camera in these spots where I find a sort of desperate beauty and picturesqueness.
Heading down South 49W towards the site of the notorious Parchman Farm, you pass a sign that reads "Penitentiary area. Emergency stopping only next 2 miles." And yet there's a Blues Trail marker directly across the road from the prison, which is now the Mississippi State Penitentiary. Of course I pulled over to snap a photo of the sign, then turned my head to look across the street and found a handful of inmates, in their distinctive green and white striped pants, lounging near the gate and watching the crazy tourist who wasn't supposed to stop. One of the more notable inmates of Parchman was Son House, who spent two years there supposedly for killing a man in self-defense, though there is apparently some debate over the accuracy of that story.
Between stops, the Shark and I rolled past the ubiquitous, endless cotton fields of the Delta, which is not as monotonous as you might think. Fallow fields of empty dirt rows alternated with harvested fields bordered with huge rectangular bales of compressed cotton, along which the roads were scattered with loose, dusty white puffs. Occasionally you pass an unharvested field in full bloom and the white of the cotton against the brown of the plant stems creates a silvery shimmer that, on this day, mirrored the grey of the cloudy sky above.
Unfortunately, I got so caught up in the joy of moving fast on un-trafficked backroads that I missed the turn to the church where Mississippi John Hurt is buried outside of Avalon. Wanted to also find Robert Johnson's gravesite (the official one, according to the Mississippi Music Tourist Sites map I was using as a reference), but drove around Greenwood without finding the right road.
Looked for something to eat while in Greenwood, too, but there appeared to be nothing except the usual fast food and chain restaurants. Until I got to the edge of town and caught sight of a little shack with smoke pouring out of the side of the building and a bunch of cars out front. Turned out to be the Rib Shack, of which Johnny Edwards is head chief (according to his business card). I ordered a pulled pork sandwich with cole slaw and a side of baked beans. Would have sat right there in the car to eat it, but felt I was providing a bit too much entertainment for the locals. One gentleman asked if I was from around there. When I said no, he confirmed that he didn't think so, 'cause he didn't think he'd seen a Camaro around town. When my food was ready, I headed down the road and found an empty public park, where I sat and had a very windy picnic of gloriously succulent pork. If you ever find yourself in Greenwood, MS, be sure to look around for Johnny's shack.
One pilgrimage site I did manage to find was the gravesite of Charley Patton, in a sad excuse for a cemetery next to Hicks Cotton Gin outside of Holly Ridge. Just a scrubby field scattered with graves, many with nothing but a small, plain white cross, some unmarked at all, and a few collapsed to the point that you'd fall in if you weren't watching where you were walking. Most touching of all, for a reason I can't define, were the plain concrete slabs that had name and dates of birth and death scratched in by hand, like the way people scratch their names into freshly poured concrete on a sidewalk. There was something very caring about those headstones, despite the bleak simplicity of them.
Wandered about for a bit, but the place was so disorganized that I couldn't find what I'd come for right off. The wind began to push me back toward the car, but then a good ol' boy wandered over from the gin and asked if I was "looking for Charley". The way he asked-- not "was I looking for Charley Patton", but "looking for Charley"-- was so disarming I couldn't help but smile. He pointed me in the right direction and walked with me a bit, asking where I was from, then headed back over to work while I trudged the rest of the way through the dusty grass to the spot. Stood there looking at the headstone and accompanying empty bourbon bottle and tried to imagine the slight, ornery man with the growling voice and flamboyant playing style. Patton was one of the first precursors to today's modern rock stars, though few of those rock stars probably realize it. I couldn't help but wonder how Charley might've felt if he'd had any clue that people like me would make pilgrimages to his grave in the heart of the Delta, eighty years and more after his death.
Ended the day back at Ground Zero for some passable electrified blues. Decent stuff, but not as moving as Johnson's or House's acoustic blues or as mesmerizing as Hooker's groove or Patton's growl. And certainly not as gut-wrenching as any version of the blues from the White Stripes, but decent enough for an evening's diversion. Fell asleep worn out from hours of driving, listening again to the wind blowing around the edges of the windows of the shack.
But perhaps I should just switch gears right now before I become too maudlin over all this...
After four days of cloudy and/or rainy skies, I stepped onto the balcony outside my hotel room to find the last day of our trip had dawned with breaking clouds and hints of sun. Cruel irony, or Tennessee wanting to send me home with a smile? Didn't matter. Either way, I wasn't ready to leave. But the morning called for two separate trips to the airport to drop off my traveling companions, so departure was staring me in the face.
After dropping off the friend who met us Thursday night, Lyle and I swung back around to some of the spots we'd visited in Nashville for shots of Lucifer the Pony under the suddenly gorgeous blue sky (a few of which were included in yesterday's post). Then, when we couldn't think of anywhere else to go or anything else to do in the limited time we had, Lyle very graciously suggested that I just drop her off early at the airport so that I could go ahead and get on the road back to Memphis, where I had to return Lucifer and catch my own flight.
Having that extra time allowed me to pull out the map and figure out a route of back-roads to take instead of just getting back onto Interstate 40. There were several roads I could've taken out of Nashville in order to end up on rural lanes but, just for shits'n'giggles, I chose the one that would take me down through Franklin, where Jack White supposedly lives. Yeah, brand me a fan-girl if you want, but I don't know his address so I wasn't looking to stalk the man. I had heard that Franklin is a historic town, so that was also a draw. Anyone who's followed my blog for a while has probably noticed how much time I spend in such places in MD and WV as Shepherdstown, Frederick, Hancock, and Cumberland. What I didn't expect was how rich Franklin seems to be. There was one big gated house after another along the road down, a couple of strip shopping centers, a marker for an old Civil War cemetery, and then bam!, a "historic" downtown full of Starbuck's, fancy boutiques, and SUV's. The place immediately reminded me of Middleburg, VA, except that the roads in and out of Middleburg are lined with horse farms and I saw nothing of the sort in the vicinity of Franklin. I cruised through briefly, looking to see if there was anywhere besides Starbuck's to stop for a snack, but the yuppie factor began to turn my stomach so I pointed Lucifer back out of town and we went on our way. For a moment I winced at the idea of Jack in the midst of such an environment, but then I remembered his house full of taxidermied animals and felt better.
What should actually make me wince is thoughts of that sort. I've written before about my issues with "yuppies", but those issues really don't make much sense. Jack White's weirder tendencies are one of the things I find appealing about him, yet I look down my nose at more "normal" folks such as those strolling the streets of Franklin just because they strike me as superficial. Is this a result of the treatment I received in high school, when I was one of only three punk rockers in the entire town and was endlessly harassed by school mates and even by people on the street? Shouldn't I have grown beyond it by now? What is it that makes me so judgmental of people who are probably perfectly nice, but with whom I find it difficult to relate?
Another instance that again brought these thoughts to mind occurred at a convenience store at the intersection of routes 100 & 412-- I pulled in to snap a photo of a wildflower field across the way, then decided to take advantage of the facilities in the store. When I turned the car around to pull it into a parking space, I realized that everyone pumping gas or passing through the parking lot was staring at Lucifer and me. What must I have looked like, a lone woman stepping out of a jet black Mustang, wearing a t-shirt depicting a flaming baby carriage? I walked in and was immediately addressed by a good ol' boy sitting near the window, who asked if I was looking for the bathroom. When I answered in the affirmative, he informed me that it was broken and had been for several days. I made a comment to the effect that that must make things difficult for the folks who work there. His buddy across the table laughed and said, "Nah, we just go around back". I started to ask what they did if they had to do more than take a leak, but then thought twice about it and instead wandered over to the snack aisle, feeling every eye on me as I went. Heading back out to the parking lot, there was more staring from the area of the gas pumps. So I decided to give them the show they seemed to be waiting for and goosed the gas pedal as I pulled out of the lot, making Lucifer roar as she sped down the road.
Just what was so intriguing to these otherwise perfectly friendly folks? Was it the car? Something about my appearance? Or just the fact that I wasn't one of them, that I was somehow different? We're all the same underneath our surface differences, but it can't be denied that it's those differences that make things interesting. Yes, it's good to remember that we're all composed of the same sort of genetic code, all were born of a mother, all have the same basic needs in life. This is necessary to retain respect for our fellow human beings. On the surface, though, it's our different interests, habits, beliefs, and styles of dress that prevent the world from being one big homogeneous, boring blur. The issue comes in how we treat others because of those differences. Where is the line drawn between mild scorn at someone's yuppie tendencies or outlandish appearance, and scathing hatred over the color of their skin or religious beliefs? At what point does fixation on those differences prevent us from remembering what relates us?
Despite the lapse in Franklin, I've carried things away from this trip that may very well nudge me to be more accepting than I currently am. This theme of looking beyond otherness has been so much on my mind the last several days, and it's something that I think I will now always relate to blues music. One of the moments that most struck me in reading Land Where the Blues Began is Alan Lomax's description of being hauled in to a police station in Tunica County, Mississippi, after being found in a country grocery store recording a performance by Son House and a handful of other black musicians. When asked the names of the men he was with, he began by naming "Mister Son House..." Lomax wrote:
... I knew I'd made a mistake before the words were out of my mouth. The sheriff's red face turned beet color. His eyes narrowed to pinpoints.
That a white man in the Delta region in the 1940's could have run the risk of being jailed, perhaps even roughed up, for referring to a black man as "Mister" is hard to conceive in this day. That the black man in question is now revered by white people as one of the founders of blues music just makes the situation even more astounding. But it serves as a potent reminder that there's no telling what people have to offer, that judging by surface differences can cause us to overlook qualities that we might actually admire and enjoy.
Speaking of Mister House, perhaps it's time to once again shift the gears of this post, this time back to the music that inspired this trip. As mentioned, House is considered by many to be the "father of the Delta blues" and his music was apparently a wake-up call for a young Jack White. In It Might Get Loud, Jack talks about House's Grinnin' In Your Face being his favorite song-
I can fully understand Jack's appreciation of this song and have come to share it. I ended up singing it several times along with Mr. House as Lucifer ate up the miles along route 412.
As Jack describes, it's the simplicity of the performance that gives it it's power-- Nothing but that moving voice and the straightforward message that it delivers. And, despite the difference of Jack's distorted and amplified playing, it's very easy to hear House's influence in his music, especially much of his singing.
Ironically, Jack doesn't consider himself a singer. In an interview earlier this year, he stated that he doesn't feel he can carry a tune, doesn't have a good vibrato, and that he's more concerned with finding the character of a song and voicing that. In his view, this distinction makes him more of a vocalist than a singer. At the time I read this article, I'd recently picked up the second White Stripes album, De Stijl, which is full of beautifully tender vocals, so my knee-jerk reaction was to disagree with his self-assessment.
A few months and a whole lotta bootleg live shows later, however, I think can understand his distinction. In live situations, he does seem to lose a certain amount of control over his singing compared to studio performances. But he's so obviously moved by the music he plays and that comes through in his delivery to affect the audience. The performance in this video is the finest example I've found yet of this. Son House's Death Letter was a staple of White Stripes shows over the years, and Jack often combined it with a segue into Grinnin' In Your Face. In this instance, his pitch and enunciation are all over the place during Death Letter, but the moment he slings his guitar around behind his back and stands at the front of the stage with nothing but a microphone, belting out Grinnin', his voice suddenly takes on a depth and power that are riveting--
I finally got back onto the interstate near the town of Jackson and realized I was cutting it close to return the Pony and make my flight. So I floored it and barreled down 40 in a manner that would have had Lyle punching the ceiling of the car over in the passenger seat. Had to stop long enough for one last batch of photos, though, which got me to the gate just 10 minutes before my flight. I can't help but think that I may've been subconsciously trying to miss it and stick around for just one more day...
We began our one full day in Nashville under rainy skies. The day was set to be another busy one, with plans to include a tour of United Record Pressing, lunch at Arnold's Country Kitchen, and a visit to Third Man Records. The evening was yet to be decided, but with the Americana Music Festival still going on, how could it not include music?
First stop was URP, which is down a couple of blocks and around the corner from the historic city cemetery I found on my last trip to Nashville. Like anyone else of my generation, I grew up on vinyl records and then moved on to cassette tapes, then to cds, and now listen to a fair amount of digitally conveyed music in mp3 form. The compactness of today's formats provides a convenience that vinyl just ain't got. Can't lug a turntable on the subway, after all, and there's little I love more than flying along a curvy country road with the car stereo blaring my favorite tunes. But you really can't be a true fan of Jack White without becoming at least a little curious about vinyl's place in today's music, so I recently went out and bought a record player and a few platters. And, being that I've been on this journey of exploration since getting into Jack, there was no way I could pass up the opportunity to learn how records are made while in Nashville.
The tour began with a reminder of yesterday's topical issue, when we were ushered into the upstairs "Motown Suite", a fully equipped apartment created in the 60's for visiting black musicians and record execs who found themselves barred from Nashville hotels. It's a pretty sweet suite, maintained in its original 60's style--
Photo not mine, I snagged it from the URP website
Back downstairs, we got into the nitty-gritty of album production as we were led through every single step of the process. URP is one of only a handful of pressing plants left in the U.S., as a large percentage of pressing these days is apparently done in the Czech Republic. But URP is not only conveniently located to Third Man, it also fits perfectly into Jack White's ethos-- that of quality work done with traditional methods, much by hand. And they really do everything, not only creating the record master from its lacquer and then pressing it to vinyl, but also printing the record labels in-house. They even have a machine shop in the building where they can build any part necessary to repair the specialized pressing machines. And I was very surprised to see that once the records are pressed, they're sleeved completely by hand. I had fully expected to see yet another decades-old, monstrous machine doing this bit. Instead, there was one woman swiftly and efficiently inspecting each album before whisking it first into its sleeve and then its jacket. She can apparently do hundreds a day. Amazing stuff, and seeing the process honestly did give me a burgeoning appreciation for vinyl.
Watch The Dead Weather watching the production of one of their singles:
Leaving URP in a pouring rainstorm, we headed directly to Arnold's Country Kitchen and queued up in a line that stretched out the front door. I said it before and I'll say it again, the food here is. so. damned. good. This time I had room not only for meat'n'two (side dishes, that is) accompanied by corn bread, but also for dessert: a Chess pie that had me practically moaning in pleasure. Fortunately for my table-mates and all the folks crowded in around us, I was able to restrain myself. But take my word for it, a trip to Nashville is just not complete without a meal at Arnold's.
Lucifer the Pony at Arnold's. Photo taken the following day, when the parking lot was empty and the sky wasn't pissing down rain.
After lunch, we swung around the block to visit Jack's place-- Third Man Records in Nashville is the physical embodiment of a record label that apparently began in his Detroit living room almost a decade ago. But, as seems to be typical of Jack, the idea mushroomed once he began working on it. The place includes the offices of the label, a performance/recording space that doubles as a photography/video recording studio, a dark room for developing said photos, a distribution center, and a jaw-dropping little shop up front that's filled with White Stripes memorabilia and assorted taxidermied water fowl. Having shopped in the shop and attended a show in the performance space around back, I don't know how the hell he fit all of that into the building. It just does not seem big enough. There must be trick walls or subterranean chambers or something. Jack's Magic Hall of Mirrors and Music.
In the shop, I picked up an album of the Dex Romweber Duo's "Third Man Live" performance from earlier this year along with both Raconteurs albums, then stepped outside to smoke a Djarum while my traveling companions completed their purchases. It was a peaceful moment, standing on Jack's front stoop, watching what was left of the rain dripping from the eaves and listening to the tones of a wind chime hanging on the porch of the methadone clinic next door. I could've easily hung out there all day, just soaking up the atmosphere from those black bricks.
Lucifer the Pony at TMR. Photo again taken the next day, without the rain.
I've wondered a few times what the folks at the clinic and nearby homeless mission think of the goings on at TMR, what with all the fanatics who begin lining up in the wee hours of the morning whenever a new record is released or a show or some other special promotion takes place. The recent performance by Conan O'Brien had folks showing up 24 hours in advance and lining up around two sides of a city block. At one point while I was lounging against the wall next to the door, a guy walking across the street yelled over, "Hey, what is that place?" I called back, "It's a record label". He said, "Ohhh, a record company", and continued on his way as if that explained everything. If the guy's around this coming Friday, he's in for a treat-- Jack's latest trick is sure to draw one of TMR's biggest crowds yet when its limited number is offered for sale:
The man is a mad freaking genius and, in a perverse way, I envy the hell out of the homeless folks who get to hang out near his crazy laboratory.
From one mad genius to another-- We followed up our visit to Jack's colorful world by wandering through an exhibit of Dale Chihuly's work at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. I've been a fan of his work for a few years after being enchanted by the ceiling of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. Like the music created by TMR and URP, Chihuly's art requires hands-on, traditional techniques that are fascinating to watch. Intricately simple, delicate and bold, composed of the most incredible colors, the finished pieces are only slightly more amazing than the creative process itself.
The day ended with another visit to Mercy Lounge, then hanging out in Lyle's hotel room listening to Captain Beefheart and Two Star Tabernacle (featuring a very young Jack White, stealing the show already). Three trips to this city and I feel that I've still barely seen any of it. Perhaps one day I'll be able to go back and get outside of that few-block radius to experience more of what Nashville has to offer. For now, though, it would seem that all roads lead to TMR. And that's sure as hell not a bad thing.
Today was a full day, so this is going to be a full blog. Started fairly early, grabbing a quick breakfast in the hotel lobby then wandering across the street to sit in Confederate Park on the Memphis bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River. Only in a place like Memphis could you find such contrary memorials as a statue commemorating Jefferson Davis as a "true patriot" and the National Civil Rights Museum, built in and around the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated-- One dedicated to a cause that oppressed people, the other to a cause that freed them but that still has a ways to go in ensuring full equality.
After breakfast, Lyle and I headed to Sun Studio, the famed recording studio where Sam Philips had a hand in launching the careers of musicians such as Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Philips, like John and Alan Lomax, recognized something in the blues-inspired music of Southern black culture and felt compelled to shove it in the face of the masses. Without him, that skinny little white boy with a curled up smile might never have recorded Arthur Crudup's That's All Right in such an engaging style, changing the world of music forever.
In the days leading up to this trip, I'd begun reading Alan Lomax's Land Where the Blues Began. Jack White said that when you begin to explore rock'n'roll, "you're on a freight train headed straight for the blues". Lomax's book takes that train even further, digging into the sources of the blues, going all the way back to Africa and up through the music of the levee camps and prisons of the Delta in the early part of the 20th century. It's striking that the blues are a music born of rage and pain of the sort that very few white people have ever experienced, yet it was men like Lomax, Philips, and Elvis who integrated this music by filtering it through the more popular white styles of the day.
This idea of integration of races and music was a recurring theme through this trip. Land Where the Blues Began is also a powerful sociological and historical tract, describing first hand encounters with race relations in the Delta area. As a U.S. Civil War "buff", the treatment of blacks over the course of this country's history is no surprise to me. I've read the autobiography of Frederick Douglass and other books on the subject, but Lomax's book and our visit later in the afternoon to the Civil Rights Museum brought the situation home. And it was astounding to stand next to Martin Luther King, Jr's motel room in the preserved section of the Lorraine Motel, looking out the window at the spot on the balcony where he was shot, only blocks from the blues joints of Beale Street. It's very interesting to be in a place like Memphis, where music inspired by black culture is celebrated on Beale and elsewhere, yet where the people have been so reviled, oppressed, and exploited. Lyle and I talked briefly, as we stood transfixed before some of the exhibits in the museum, about how easily all of that horror could happen again. If the wrong person were to gain enough influence, it would be all too easy to imagine such outrageous violence directed towards the present day population of Muslims in this country. It gave me a chill to think of it, standing there watching footage of people being attacked by police dogs and bowled over by water cannons in Birmingham, Alabama, less than 50 years ago.
After the sobering experience of the museum, we again hit the road, this time heading all the way to Nashville. Interstate 40 was crawling with as many cops as it was when I drove it back in April, but they were fortunately all heading the opposite direction on the other side of the highway. We got to Nashville in time to pick up a third compatriot, doll ourselves up, and head over to Mercy Lounge to meet yet another friend (who took all of the photos below) for a highly anticipated show that was part of the Americana Music Festival-- Wanda Jackson and the Dex Romweber Duo. Wanda, who is no longer the hot mama portrayed in that linked video but who still puts on a rocking show, was presented earlier in the evening with a 2010 Americana Lifetime Achievement Award by none other than Jack White, who recently produced her upcoming album, The Party Ain't Over. And Dex Romweber has been a tremendous influence on Jack's music, specifically within the context of The White Stripes. So you can understand my anticipation of this show. With both artists having such a strong connection to Jack, and with the venue being a block away from Third Man Records, who knows? Perhaps he'd even be there.
The show was opened by alternative country singer, Dale Watson, who I was surprised to enjoy as much as I did. Great voice, great look, and a great guitar covered in quarters.
Photo by Jeremy Richerson
He was followed by Wanda, who was sprightly and sassy and I hope to hell I have as much vitality when I reach her age. The woman's voice seems, if anything, even stronger than it was in her early rockabilly days. Lyle noticed that there were several very young folks at the front of the audience near us who sang along with every song in Wanda's set. I couldn't help but wonder if they'd gotten into her music because of her connection with Jack. He talked in a recent article about how there are no "tastemakers" in the music biz in this country anymore, such as DJ's who promoted local acts on the air. He ironically makes it sound as if he doesn't realize how he himself is filling that role with what he's doing at Third Man.
Photo by Jeremy Richerson
And he was indeed there that night. I caught a split-second glimpse of him over by the sound board during Wanda's set, grinning as he leaned over to talk to someone. When he stood back up, though, he disappeared behind a support beam at the side of the stage and I saw no more. Still very cool to know he was there, having a good time and enjoying two fellow artists with whom he's been so involved.
The evening was capped off by Dex and his sister, Sara. I was very surprised at how much of the crowd disappeared before the Duo hit the stage. They put on one hell of a show. I could hear immediately what elements of Dex's music had been absorbed by Jack into the Stripes-- much of the guitar style, the sparseness of only guitar and drums, the rawness, the passionate, abandoned delivery. It's all there, and as he did with the blues, Jack's now led me in another direction and I will be listening to a lot of Dex Romweber in the near future. Dex's music is incredibly overlooked, though I couldn't help but feel that perhaps that's the way he likes it.
Began the day in Mississippi by rolling up the legs of my jeans and walking barefoot through the wet grass from my Cadillac Shack (pictured below) to Lyle's Tinth Shack.
Our plan was to visit the Delta Blues Museum in downtown Clarksdale and eat tamales at Hick's, then head back up to Memphis to check into our hotel there and hopefully collect Lyle's wayfaring luggage. Accordingly, we piled into the Pony, which Lyle christened "Lucifer" after the pony in Bob Dylan's song as covered by The Dead Weather (we certainly had no plans to shoot our Pony).
I had a pony, her name was Lucifer
I had a pony, her name was Lucifer
She broke her leg and she needed shooting
I swear it hurt me more than it hurted her
Sometimes I wonder what's going on with Miss X
Sometimes I wonder what's going on with Miss X
She got such a sweet disposition
I never know what the poor girl's gonna do to me next
Everybody say you're usin' voodoo, your feet walk by themselves
Everybody say you're usin' voodoo, I seen your feet walk by themselves
Oh, baby, that god you're prayin' to
Is gonna give ya back what you're wishin' on someone else
Come over here pony, I wanna climb up one time on you
Come over here pony, I wanna climb up one time on you
Well, you're so nasty and you're so bad
But I love you, yes I do
Clarksdale's a fairly bleak place, with a history as rich as the local Delta soil but way too many empty store fronts to make it a truly going concern. Even Morgan Freeman's Ground Zero Blues Club has apparently failed to make it the successful destination that it could, and perhaps should, be. It's still a necessary visit for anyone looking to understand the blues. The Delta Blues Museum is basically one room in the old train depot, filled with photos, instruments, costumes, and information about the musicians that put this place on the map. The largest exhibit focuses on Muddy Waters and includes a portion of the shack where he was living when discovered by John and Alan Lomax.
We wandered from there to Cat Head, Inc, then over to the town cemetery which is unlike any other I've visited. I've seen a lot of cemeteries in my time, but never one quite so stark. It's obviously maintained, but only at a bare minimum. The crabgrass is mowed, but the dry mowings are left piled at the base of the headstones. And there are no other plantings aside from decades-old trees. Many family plots are completely bare dirt, not even graced with crabgrass. A favorite motif was apparently what I call the "bathtub" style of grave marker, in which the area above the casket is marked with a marble rim that would have been filled with flowering plants and greenery. The sight of so many of these markers in one place indicates that the Clarksdale cemetery must have been beautiful at one time, very different from the poor place it is now.
Lyle and I decided that we weren't yet getting a good feel for the blues, so we climbed into Lucifer and headed for Tutwiler, which is where W.C. Handy supposedly heard the first true blues but which is now more known for the nearby prison (and traditional quilts made by local women). This is no surprise. A bunch of small homes and an empty downtown in the middle of vast, flat cotton fields, Tutwiler appears even more rundown and decrepit than Clarksdale.
At the time, I think we were too busy looking and talking and taking photos to be able to sink into the moment and feel what was around us. Thinking back as I write this, though, it's clear that we were surrounded by the atmosphere that birthed the blues. It's easy now to imagine W.C. Handy in that lonesome train station all those years ago, waking up to the sound of that unidentified musician with his knife sliding on the frets of his guitar and his song of "goin' where the Southern meets the Dog".
Back up in Memphis, Lyle was finally reunited with her luggage. We cleaned up a bit and drove down to Beale Street, where we ate ribs and more tamales, then wandered down the block and listened to local street musicians including Big Jerry, from whom Lyle had to buy a cd before he broke her heart (go to that link and buy some of his music, he's good).
Afterward, I re-lived the experiences of my April trip by dragging Lyle past Minglewood Hall (where I first experienced The Dead Weather), C.K.'s 24-hour coffeehouse, and the cemetery behind the Piggly-Wiggly. Settling into bed in the Sleep Inn later on, I found myself missing the less homogeneous but much more comfortable Cadillac Shack out in the middle of those dark cotton fields in the Delta.
So I went back to Tennessee. The trip(s) in April/May were just too good, I'd been thinking about the place ever since, especially as I've kept in touch with some of the people I met there the first time around. And, because my infatuation with Jack White has not only continued, it's expanded to encompass the blues music that inspires him and that I first began exploring on my earlier trip. Memphis and the Delta area of Mississippi are the cradle of the blues and I wanted to go to the source, get a feeling for the place this music came from. I've been reading about the blues, but words-- dates and names and anecdotes and such-- can only convey so much. So I picked a week, talked it up to a compatriot (my buddy, Lyle, who got me into the Dead Weather performance at Third Man Records back in May), and planned an itinerary. To allow the most time possible to see and do, I decided to fly in this time and rent a car there-- A Ford Mustang, of course. What else would I drive on a road trip if finances allowed? Lyle and I put together a thoroughly blues-oriented expedition that would begin in Memphis, swing down for a side-trip to Clarksdale, Mississippi, back up to Memphis, then over to Nashville.
I got to Memphis with no problems, but Lyle was not so lucky. The first of her two flights ended up diverted by Hurricane Hermine, leaving her first stuck on the tarmac in Austin, Texas, then finally arriving in Houston and having to scramble for a connection to Memphis. As she was going through all of that, I had the task of wrangling our Pony. I almost came to blows with another woman when the rental company gave it to both of us as the same time. But I got it, a sleek black beauty with beige interior and a 6-cd changer on which I planned to rotate Jack, Son House, Blind Willie McTell, and Robert Johnson, with a little bit of Black Keys thrown in.
Once the Pony was saddled up, I headed in to Memphis to find a way to occupy the hours until I had to head back to the airport to pick up Lyle. I ended up on Beale Street, where I perused the aisles of A. Schwab's, once an honest-to-goodness five-and-dime, now a combination five$-and-dime$ and museum. The bins contained everything from open leg underwear (that's what the sign said, I swear it), to cowboy hats, Memphis souvenir mugs, and voodoo candles. They also had a pretty fantastic selection of blues cds, so I picked up a couple of compilations, adding Leadbelly, Blind Willie Johnson, Charley Patton and others to the week's musical assortment.
A few doors up from Schwab's was Tater Red's rock'n'roll clothing/etc. I walked in and immediately recognized the White Stripes' Effect and Cause coming over the sound system. I grinned big and picked out a kitschy little voodoo doll to hang from the rearview mirror of the Pony as a mascot. Landed next in Blues City Cafe for the first of what would be many sweet iced teas consumed over the course of the week.
It felt so good to be back in Memphis, even on touristified Beale Street, but I kept also getting twinges of guilt for enjoying myself while Lyle was stuck somewhere on an airplane. After a while, I headed back to the airport and her flight finally arrived, but sans luggage. She was promised that it would make it into town the following day and be delivered to the hotel we'd booked in Memphis for the next night, so we hit the road for Clarksdale. Our destination was the Shack Up Inn, a place I'd read about and been intrigued by in It Still Moves. Before getting there, though, we made a stop at the Blue & White Cafe, where Lyle had her first taste of fried catfish and I had a B.L.T. made with fried green tomatoes. And my second sweet tea of the day. Having been born & raised in Virginia, sweet tea is one element of Southern culture that I embrace with gusto.
Arriving in Clarksdale, we got turned around while hunting for the Shack Up Inn in the dark and instead ended up at the famed "crossroads". I use quotations because there is some debate as to whether the intersection of routes 49 & 61 is indeed the place where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange for miraculous guitar-playing skill (Lyle insists it actually occurred in Rosedale, but we didn't have time to drive that far), and because the atmosphere of the place gives anything but an impression of dark magic. The spot is marked with a cheesy pair of crossed blue guitars and is surrounded by a Church's Fried Chicken, a donut shop, and a beer & wine store. Though perhaps that's fitting. The blues originated in African-American culture, which since the days of slavery has apparently been nothing if not resilient and adaptable. Blues is based in a feeling, one that can exist regardless of the setting or atmosphere in which it's experienced. And who knows, perhaps Robert Johnson wished that there had been a beer'n'such shop there while he waited alone in the night for the devil to appear.
We finally found the Shack Up and collected our keys from the lobby mailbox. We had no idea what to expect and arriving in the pitch dark left us clueless until we actually walked in the door of Lyle's Tinth Shack. The place is great. The shacks are beautifully restored, retaining a wonderfully rustic feel while being completely clean, cozy, and convenient. Lyle, stoic Brit that she is, settled in with a bottle of wine while I steered the Pony back around to my Cadillac Shack. The day came to a close on the front porch, where I sat in the dark smoking and listening to a soft rain fall on the metal roof of the nearby converted cotton gin.
All images and text herein (excepting song lyrics, quoted material, and otherwise attributed images) are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. Feel free to use my words or photos, but please link back to the post from which you pulled them. Like anyone else, I find it gratifying to be acknowledged for my work. Thank you.
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