Clarksdale Mississippi
- virr1969
- Jun 7
- 6 min read
Come on back to Friar's Point, mama, and barrelhouse all night long
Robert Johnson
I was bleeding when I wrote this:
It was later in the evening, more towards the middle end of the night when I made my way over to Red’s. I’d already had too much at my previous stop and struggled to park my motorcycle on the cracked up, lurching with old age sidewalk across the street. I could hear the music calling out a few blocks away, and as I approached the beat up, tear down of a joint the first thing I saw was Red out-front manning his old oil tub smoker. He was finishing off some meat for a customer or two, and probably some dinner for himself.
Inside, an old guy was playing an ancient looking one-string box guitar. It looked to be homemade, although there was a name I couldn’t read on the headstock. His sole accompaniment was a really old Brother on drums, who played a simple, impeccable, rock steady beat. Nothing fancy. Spare. It was no more and no less than an exquisite bottom end backbeat. I was drunk. I was in heaven.
Marcel du Cochon
Red was actually dead when I made my way into Red’s in Clarksdale a week ago. I’m not sure who owns and runs it now. There was a middle-aged guy tending bar, which was not a complicated affair because Red’s offered a choice of three or four beers and nothing else. No wine, no liquor (unless you bought your own)— the primary boast of the selection was a huge Budweiser—not a quart, but more than a big one. But he didn’t act like a guy who owned probably the coolest joint in America. He was just a cool dude who bartended in the coolest joint in America.
I don’ think Red worked especially hard at keeping up the appearances of his bar while he was still alive. It’s a dump like none other than I’ve seen and things don’t go all to hell that fast. And yet I would say it is perfect. The thing about Bookies Club 870 and CBGB was—they were dumps but the acoustics were incredible, and the same can be said for Red’s only with some extra prejudice. The PA is covered in layers of dust, but it sings just fine. The ceiling is falling, and the walls are peeling, and the floor is a wreck. Behind the bar, I don’t think anyone has ever cleaned anything or organized the whatever that has been stacked up and avalanched all over and onto the floor.
There is no cash register, and no credit cards. There are remnants of Christmas 1963 hanging here and there, and dozens of old posters from gigs past at Red’s, where the true masters of the Delta Blues made that old dust covered motherfucking PA sing.
—
As with Hannibal Missouri, I don’t want to make too big of a thing out of Clarksdale. But like Hannibal, I’ve been wanting to go Clarksdale my whole life, or at least since I was 17 years old. That was when I felt like the radio, and rock and roll music, went mainstream to places I didn’t appreciate at the time. My salvation, if you want to call it that, was a chance listen to Elmore James, which in turn opened a whole new horizon. Delta Blues became my passionate exploration. On this trip to the Delta my passionate exploration was manifested. I explored. I learned.
My visit was a tantamount life experience among a life filled with wondrous experiences—I will be thinking thoughtfully about the Mississippi Delta for the rest of my life.
Still, I don’t want to try to make too big of a deal out of Clarksdale, but it is my opinion that it should be preserved, much as Gettysburg, Williamsburg, the Alamo, and Greenfield Village have been preserved. When thinking about the impact that certain places in the United States have had, the depth of their stories, and the longevity of what they represent—The Mississippi Delta is as impactful as any. The music that was birthed there has led directly to a cultural movement that reverberates worldwide to this day. For decades it was relatively contained, but then some kids from London, Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham England gave Delta Blues a listen and interpreted (imitated), as did a few kids from places like Tupelo Mississippi and Ferriday Louisiana.
Some people have helped to preserve Clarksdale. A few rock stars have put some money into it without trying to change things, and the actor Morgan Freeman has opened a juke joint of his own about 20 yards from the Delta Blues Museum. In a sense it’s the class of the Clarksdale music scene, among several legitimate joints that still feature a style of music that has changed the world.
And it’s not just the music, and the music that it spawned that make Delta blues so important historically. The story behind it is as integral to the story of America as any other—slavery, sharecropping, Jim Crow, segregation, racism in general, all contributed to the pain and suffering that the Delta masters sang about. Some may wish it wasn’t true, deny, or ignore it, but some form or another of the issues that made Charlie Patton, Son House, and a host of others weep and moan—are as seethingly current as ever.
Delta blues and the story behind it is as woven into the American fabric of our history as democracy, wars, industrialization, modernization, and our constant search to do better. Be better. Morgan Freeman called his juke joint “Ground Zero,” and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why he did.
—
Clarksdale is the heart of it, but the music that is as American as anything America has ever invented, can really trace itself pretty much along the Mississippi River from Memphis Tennessee down to Natchez Mississippi. I rode the heck out of it on my motorcycle, turning the easily done-in-one-morning, 90-mile drive into a 250 mile all day search. I stumbled upon Lula, and Friar’s Point, and a few other out-of-the-way little villages where folks like Charlie Patton, Son House, and Conway Twitty once rocked and stomped the terra. I drove around looking for Robert Johnson’s grave—all three of them.
And I drove through many four-way crossroads—each one of them looking and feeling like they could have been the one where Robert Johnson sold his soul. I am 69 years-old now, and while living on Maui I learned to feel and hear ghosts. And I talked with one. In the Delta I stopped my motorcycle at a few of the out in the middle of nowhere Mississippi crossroads, and among the wind and the roaring insects, I could feel why among the local culture there are beliefs held about who and what inhabits those crossroads. I didn’t dawdle very long at the crossroads— I felt and I heard, and I didn’t wait around to see what would happen next.
—
The night I went to Red’s in Clarksdale there really was an old guy playing a single string box guitar and he had a metal slide on one of his fingers. He made that single guitar string sing and howl, as articulately as any of the six-string proteges that carry on the blues music tradition. I sat back with my dinosaur-sized Budweiser and was enchanted nearly to joyous trance by the now ancient form of music that is, in fact, as current as ever. The array of sadness and anger-tinged things the old guy sang about, I felt, and we all experience, and have experienced. The old Brother on drums only made the one string-ed guitar master even more prolific!
—
The thing about preserving a place is; in preserving it the declaration is made that whatever importance it ever had, has passed. Along the way, there is a certain level of homogenization of what happened there, along with an attempt to explain the place in ways that often contain bias, or an attempt to cover, or excuse the parts that at least some element of us would rather not see or hear of. Also, all the people that live there are gone, either by force or by attrition.
That is why in my internal debate-dilemma I question whether Clarksdale can or should be preserved in the way that other tantamount places have been preserved. People still live there, although the population is dwindling, and yet one can hear vibrant, original, still as-exciting-as-ever live music at least somewhere in town every single night. There is no nostalgia crooning involved.
Often, there are several juke joints going off, and there are a bunch of music and cultural festivals throughout the year where thousands of aficionados descend upon the area—they are there not to mourn or remember—they are there to have fun. Clarksdale is alive and kicking, and it fucking well rocks!
But king-hell dang it: yet again I sound like a preachy, overly serious, overly opinionated old fuck. So, let’s keep it simple. Might I enthusiastically suggest that if you are a thoughtful student of American history as well as a lover of American-made music, fly over to Memphis, rent a car, and make the drive through Clarksdale, and down to Natchez. See for yourself the wonder of the Mississippi Delta.
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