DELTA BLUES PILGRIMAGE

Railroad Tracks

Tutwiler, Mississippi

In 1902, W.C. Handy sat just to the left of these tracks on a station platform that no longer exists, and heard a local musician slide a knife on the strings of his guitar and sing about “goin’ where the Southern crosses the Dog” (a reference to the Southern and ‘Yellow Dog’ railroad lines).  Handy gave us our earliest written account of Delta Blues, a music that had clearly been developing as a regional style for some time.

Hot Tamales: The Riverside Hotel

Clarksdale, Mississippi

Robert Johnson extolled the joys of the Delta's hot tamales in his hokum blues They're Red Hot, and the advertisement and atmosphere of this hallway caught my eye.  Backing up on the Sunflower River, The Riverside was the old Negro Hospital where on September 26, 1937, The Empress of the Blues, Bessie Smith bled to death after a car accident.  Frank 'Rat' Ratliff inherited the hotel from his mother.  Its history and the creaky, wooden soul of the place are memorable.  And according to Rat, everyone at The Riverside is family.

Dockery Farms

Dockery, Mississippi

This 10,000-acre plantation on the banks of the Sunflower River between Ruleville and Cleveland had its own church and sawmill and is widely regarded as one of the significant birthplaces of the Delta Blues. Just over 25 miles east-southeast of Rosedale on Highway 8, Dockery Farms is where Son House, Willie Brown, Robert Johnson and Howlin’ Wolf all met and fell under the spell of a first-generation Delta Blues original, Charley Patton.

Full Moon

Friars Point, Mississippi

I lingered in Friars Point through dusk and took this photograph as I was starting back to Clarksdale. Muddy Waters remembered seeing Robert Johnson play to a crowd in front of Hirsberg’s Drug Store in Friars Point sometime in the 1930s. In Travelin' Riverside Blues, Robert sang:

'If your man gets personal,
Want to have your fun,
Just come on back to Friar’s Point, mama,
Barrel house all night long.'

Posted: Levee Road

Friars Point, Mississippi

After years of struggling to control the seasonal flooding of the Mississippi, in 1877 the legislature established the Levee Board to raise funds, build and maintain levees along the river. All the levees are posted land, though some private roads cross them to provide access to the river.

Robert Johnson’s Grave: Little Zion MB Church

Greenwood, Mississippi

The handwritten note reproduced here on the headstone was found in the papers of Carrie Dodds (Spencer) Thompson, one of Julia’s younger children and Robert’s half-sister who remained with their mother when the family was torn apart in 1909. Carrie helped raise her little brother Robert as Julia moved through the labor camps of the Delta.