Clarksdale, Mississippi - John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters and Ike Turner all had the blues in their blood and came from the northwestern part of the US state of Mississippi. The region is called the Mississippi Delta, a flat landscape full of cotton plantations and poverty that attracts few tourists from Europe. The Mississippi River is hidden behind high levees here, and there does not seem to be much else to see. But music lovers flock to small cities in the region like Clarksdale and Greenwood, where their blues idols once lived. A new Mississippi Blues Trail aims to boost blues tourism in the state.
At first glance the intersection of Highways 49 and 61 in Clarksdale seems no different than many others in the United States. There is a tyre dealer, a furniture store, a liquor store and a fast-food restaurant. Over the asphalt, traffic lights sway in the wind.
But in the middle of the intersection is a sign made of interlocking guitars that marks the "Crossroads," said to be the site where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil for the ability to play the blues like no other.
Might the legend be true? A gifted musician, Johnson died young in 1938. As for the devil, he does not show his face in Clarksdale nowadays, although there are still plenty of "poor souls" that he could take.
"Clarksdale and its environs is the poorest region in the poorest state in the USA," said Panny Mayfield, a local blues photographer, adding, "It's hard to find good people who want to work here."
The city is surrounded by cotton and corn fields dotted with chapels of the Missionary Baptist Church. The workers used to go to Clarksdale at the weekends for entertainment, and the city is still a good place for that. High points of the schedule of events are two blues festivals in April and August.
The Mississippi Blues Commission has installed a number of historical markers in and around Clarksdale, part of a Blues Trail that it is setting up throughout the state. There were 43 markers in all by the end of September.
"By the end of 2009, there will be 140. That's how many we now have money for," noted Luther Brown, a member of the commission and associate dean at Delta State University, in Cleveland, Mississippi.
Every marker tells a story, some involving a blues musician, others involving a certain event. "One, for example, recalls the 1927 Mississippi River Flood, which killed a lot of people here," Brown said. "About 25 blues songs were written about it."
The blues festivals are not the only times you can hear live music in Clarksdale. Guitars and drums get a workout in bars and cafes all over the city. One of the best-known meeting places is the Ground Zero nightclub. The name has nothing to do with the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, in New York City.
"The club had the name before that," said co-owner Bill Luckett. "The definition of 'ground zero' is 'a place where something begins.' And you can definitely say that about Clarksdale and the blues."
The heirs of Muddy Waters have names like Big Jack Johnson, Robert Belfour, and Super Chikan and the Fighting Cooks. They regularly perform in Clarksdale clubs such as Red's Lounge and Messenger's.
If you want to learn more about the history of Delta blues, visit the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale. The exhibits include the remains of the cabin where Muddy Waters spent his childhood. The building stood on the edge of a plantation near Clarksdale and was hit by a tornado in 1987. Another exhibit is the "Muddywood" guitar, which ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons crafted from one of the cabin's timbers.
The city of Cleveland lies south of Clarksdale on Highway 61 just east of which lies the former cotton plantation community of Dockery Farms. Many experts say it is the true birthplace of the blues.
"About 2,500 people used to live here," remarked William Lester, director of the Dockery Farms Foundation. "In the evening, 400 to 500 people gathered outside the wooden houses and listened to the musicians. Life was hard in the 1920s. There was no other entertainment then."
Dockery Farms, too, has a historical marker on the Blues Trail.
What about Robert Johnson, the bluesman who supposedly sold his soul to the devil? The Blues Trail leads to him as well. Johnson is buried in the cemetery of the Little Zion Church, just north of the city of Greenwood.
The gravesite is "the most frequently visited blues attraction in the entire city," said Paige Hunt, executive director of the Greenwood Convention and Visitor's Bureau.
On a recent day, the grave was decorated with colourful pearl necklaces; a bottle of gin stood beside the gravestone. "Blues lovers bring that here," Hunt remarked. Booze-ups at the gravesite are said to be common - no wonder, really, if the devil has anything to do with it.
Internet: www.memphistravel.com, www.msbluestrail.org, www.clarksdaletourism.com, www.greenwoodms.org.
