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Feeling blue? Travel south for a cure
Explore the legendary Mississippi Delta — birthplace of the blues
 Justin M. Morton / AP The headstone of blues guitarist Robert Johnson in the Mississippi Delta. |
MORGAN CITY, Miss. - Legendary bluesman Robert Johnson's death has been linked to a jealous husband, the supernatural and pneumonia. So it's unsurprising that there are three separate graves bearing his name in the rural Mississippi Delta. I'm looking for one of those graves now during a drive through towns like Greenwood and Itta Bena.
I eventually find the monument at the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church on a desolate stretch of road. The text on one side of the grave, taken from a famous Johnson blues number, reads: "You may bury my body by the highway side." A photo of Johnson — one of two known to exist — shows the guitarist with pensive face cradling a guitar. The attention would probably astound Johnson, a traveling musician who only recorded twice and didn't live to see his 30th birthday. Johnson's graves were among numerous sites I visited on a road trip through rural Mississippi to visit the birthplace of the blues.
I arrive in Clarksdale after a daylong drive through Oklahoma and Arkansas, passing the famed "Crossroads" of blues legend as I enter town. The Crossroads have a special place in blues mythology as the location where aspiring musicians sold their soul to the Devil in exchange for musical prowess. A bluesman could wait at a crossroads at dark for the Devil, who would take the musician's guitar, tune it, and hand it back. The musicians could then play any song they wanted.
When blues artists referred to the Crossroads, they were likely talking about any number of backroads intersections, but the story has stuck to the intersection of Highways 61 and 49 in Clarksdale.
The story is usually associated with Robert Johnson, who hints at the diabolical on songs like "Hellhound on My Trail." But the myth of a Crossroads deal would be better attached to guitarist Tommy Johnson, who boasted about a backroads pact with a shadowy apparition. The Crossroads don't seem as menacing now with a kitschy sign of interlocking guitars marking the spot. But they are a sign that what matters here is the music — and your ability to play it well.
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I then head to Ground Zero, a blues club owned by actor Morgan Freeman and his business partners. The club, with beat-up sofas on the front porch and graffiti and old blues posters adorning the walls inside, aims to recreate the feeling of an authentic juke joint, although it is probably more upscale. On this Saturday night, Little Howlin' Wolf belts blues classics like "Spoonful" and "Bright Lights Big City" in a gravely voice, backed by an ace harmonica player and band.
My room for the night is a renovated sharecropper's cabin at the Shack-Up Inn at the old Hopson Plantation. The inside of the "Cadillac Shack" is covered with old blues posters and memorabilia.
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