Meet Me At The Crossroads

Clarksdale, Friars Point, Rosedale, Rolling Fork, Dockery Farms, Greenville, Leland, Tutwiler, Itta Bena. 

If the names mean nothing it doesn’t really matter. These are the places where Blues, Rock’n’roll, R&B, Soul, Jazz, Hip Hop and any other style of post-classical music you can genre-up (yes Happy Hardcore and Nosebleed Techno, you too) were gestated and painfully born under boiling Southern skies. I’m not the person to do the history lesson, there are many mighty works on the subject (see tips) and I just want to drive through the Mississippi Delta and suck it in. We don’t care if we’re two more white road-trippers having our pictures taken at ‘The Crossroads’ in Clarksdale or Rosedale (these are two supposed sites of Robert Johnson’s bargain with the devil) – at least we’re here. The local economy needs us we’re told.

We are also on Hwy 61; and for lovers of mid-to-late 20th century popular music, that is pretty close to dying and going to heaven. The road is gentle and beautiful, it rains the usual heavy rain and driving through the heartland of where people were bought and sold, chained and beaten, raped and murdered is disturbingly calm. We only count our lucky stars every five seconds or so…

The cotton fields are now soya and there are no slaves around – there’s nobody around – just huge flat, fertile fields with large machines doing what people once did. After short and brutal bursts of rain comes 85 degree sun. They can grow anything down here.

We stop at Rosedale, the setting for one of Robert Johnson’s finest recordings – English rock behemoth Led Zeppelin came here after they re-worked his ‘Travelling Riverside Blues’ – it is also deserted except for a guy on a bike. I take his picture.

Lunch is taken at McDonalds in Greenville. Two old black guys interrupt the interesting fare by shouting at each other for the duration about who owes who money, it does not get resolved so we retire to the car and keep heading south.
Birthplaces ticked-off: Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, BB King, Son House. The nice couple in the big car are standing by a bug-infested pool of water in the Rolling Fork Motel car park, hoping Muddy Waters has appreciated the pilgrimage.
The road is now so lush and charming we watch through the glass in silence, it is Sunday and Vicksburg is extremely Sunday, just piped music coming out of the bushes on Washington Street. I kid you not, Kenny G Lite. 

We chose to drive The Delta on a Sunday – thought it would be unique, we didn’t go to The Rev Al Green’s service back up the road because we thought we’d look like twats turning up.

Eventually make it to our mansion in Natchez and it really is a mansion. An old plantation house named The Monmouth Mansion. There are black guys in waistcoats serving us – our liberal guilt kicks in of course – but the beer is fabulous and the rain has begun. Heavier than the delta and more intense, ducks waddle around the courtyards and the Spanish moss drips off the cartoon-sized Oak and Cypress trees. Our room is as we’d expect in our slave mansion, a four poster and sepia pictures of serious men in top hats looking at horses and railways. Dinner is the full Gone With The Wind.

We wander the grounds with sturdy umbrellas and envy the ducks.