The Blues Route, USA
[You can click on any picture for a better view]
The Blues Route follows the Mississippi between New Orleans and Memphis, otherwise known as Route 61. The idea for travelling the Blues Route came from my erstwhile music partner, Dan Ahern, who had himself been to the New Orleans Jazz Festival and encouraged me to do the same. So in April 2003 I found myself heading for New Orleans, arriving three days before the start of the festival in order to explore a bit of the New Orleans surroundings, specifically the famous bayous.
The bayous proved to be an immensely difficult area to explore because of the endless waterways and poorly signposted roads. I got lost all the time! But the living conditions leave alot to be desired, with endless trailer trash sites giving the impression of fairly entrenched poverty.
I did manage to stumble across the Tabasco Sauce Factory, the only place in the world that Tabasco is made. It's on Avery Island, where all the chillis are also grown. The chillis are pulped, mixed with salt, and matured for three years in used Jack Daniels barrels.
After two days of exploring the disappointing bayous it was time to hit the Jazz Festival. From Thursday to Sunday,
11:00 to 19:00, with no less than ten stages going at a time, it was a staggering feast of music of all types.
Luckily the weather was fine and warm and one could either walk around from stage to stage or just sit
near your favourite stage. The highlight for me was seeing Keb' Mo' (in the Blues Tent below).
I also saw Bob Dylan, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Dr John, Joe Cocker, and tens of unknowns!
It was on the courtesy bus going to the festival one afternoon that I met Lucy and Melissa, two ladies from
Boston who would prove to be useful friends. It was they who told me about the Memphis Blues Festival.
I was staying on Canal St about three blocks away from the French Quarter where all the action was. In particular, Bourbon Street was a riot of bars and clubs with the street absolutely jam-packed at night. Every venue had live music, mostly rock bands, and entrance cost a beer, which at $5 was damn expensive. The balconies were also crowded with people who would offer girls in the street below a necklace of cheap beads if they would show their boobs, and lots did! [Unfortunately, I didn't want to risk my camera at night so the pictures below were taken on a Sunday morning.]
I left New Orleans on Monday morning and headed up the Mississippi River on Route 61 aiming for Memphis. Passing Vicksburg you enter the Mississippi Delta which is as flat as a pancake and cotton from one horizon to the next. And this is where the real blues territory lies. Cleveland and Clarksdale (remember the Monkees?) both have blues museums and are relatively modern. But the towns in between, like Rolling Fork and Yazoo City are not so great.
Clarksdale claims to be the home of the famous Crossroads (actually Cross Road Blues), a song written by Robert Johnson in 1936 describing his pact with the devil. This is where Route 61 crosses Route 49.
I stopped off in Indianola where BB King began his music career (he was purported to have been born in nearby Itta Bena). I got chatting to two black guys in a cafe and they told me BB King plays every year just down the road in a place called Club Ebony. I wandered down (it was late morning) and who should be sweeping the front porch but the owner Mary Shepard. She invited me in and told me all about the old days when she used to sing in BB's band right here. She gave me two original posters and signed them and told me to hang them on my wall. That's what I did and that's where they are!
I arrived in Memphis on Friday lunchtime and checked into the Radisson Hotel in downtown Memphis, where Lucy and Melissa were also staying.Whilst our main goal was the Blues Festival, we also did quite a bit of sightseeing: the Martin Luther King Museum, Sun Records studio, the Gibson Guitar factory and of course... Graceland.
We took the full guided tour which included traipsing through the mansion, viewing the family graves, checking out the Lisa Marie airplane, having our photographs taken and all the usual nonsense.
Then for the rest it was the Blues Festival and Beale Street (in fact Beale Street runs directly to the festival ground). I spent a good deal of time in BB King's Blues Club, which, needless to say, presented some amazing blues bands, fronted largely by black women. When we weren't in the club we were watching the bands playing down at the festival. Like New Orleans, there was no seating and one could wander freely between the four stages. I saw Booker T & the MG's, Joe Cocker (again!), Jonny Lang, Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow, Steve Winwood, Jerry Lee Lewis, and best of all and the last show on Sunday night: ZZ Top, who were sensational!
Monday morning I left Memphis heading for Nashville. The weather was grim and the radio was broadcasting tornado warnings. Driving past Jackson I saw a lot of damage; trees down, billboards destoyed. Eventually it became so dark and stormy that I pulled into a truck stop to wait it out. There were a number of other people waiting it out in the restaurant and the TV showed the tornado going past about 10km away. Eventually we decided it was safe to leave and an hour later I was in Nashville.
I had come to Nashville specifically to tout my album Shooting The Breeze. I headed for Music Row and started knocking on doors and by luck found myself in a seminar at ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers) hosted by a vice-president. After the seminar he offered to listen to my CD and gave me some badly needed advice: go home and do it properly. Which I did with Beverly Rinkwest and a professional band resulting, 18 months later, in Silent Moments.
I really wasn't enjoying my trip anymore so I booked standby on an SAA flight leaving the next day. I tooled it down to Atlanta, hung around the airport all morning and didn't get on the flight. Now I was really pissed off. My original return flight was booked for the Sunday, three days away. What to do?
It was spring and I needed to see the sea and the nearest beach was in Savannah, Georgia, not too far away. Savannah is a very pretty historic city lying about 35km from the coast on the Savannah River. I spent most of the time hanging out at the beach, which wasn't too bad and the water was warm.
My trip had lasted just on three weeks and it was time to go home. I drove back to Atlanta and
caught the Sunday morning flight home. Looking back it was a bit of a disaster: I
only met two people (Lucy and Melissa) and spent only three days with them in Memphis. I heard lots of
music and saw some big names, but I guess doing it on one's own is not so much fun.
24 April 2020