"I Believe in the Delta"

Rambling across blues country with one tour guide, one poet, two mules

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One crisp autumn day, I was paying my respects to Mississippi singer and guitarist John Hurt. Sunbursts refracted across the high pines, and then the sudden bray of a mule echoed across the cemetery. Cutting the second bray short, I answered the phone: Stan Street, friend and owner of the Hambone Art Gallery, asked, “Are you in Clarksdale yet? We’re going out, so we may not be here when you get into town.”

Longtime readers of Country Roads will know Clarksdale. Nestled in the Yazoo-Mississippi River Delta (or simply “the Delta”), the city has become an interesting case study in revitalization over the last few decades. Every April, during the annual Juke Joint Festival, downtown Clarksdale becomes an entrepot for music, art, and general revelry.

[Read these stories about Clarksdale: "Standing at the Crossroads—In Clarksdale, the Delta blues meet Southern hospitality" and "The Traveler's Hotel—Hospitality and the arts, the secret to creative placemaking"] 

Clarksdale is just one of the several small towns to dot this alluvial plain. To the untrained eye, the farms, swamps, and Double Quick convenience stores hint at monotony. But this is a rich cultural landscape, an area deeply affected by human activities harmonious, destructive, symbiotic.

For visitors like myself, the Delta extends its welcome over and over again. For others, like my friend and co-author, Marshall Blevins, it becomes home. For both of us, the Delta provides a canvas against our linked but distinct explorations of the quintessentially southern Mule. We became friends because we both recognize just how historically under-appreciated the mule (yes, the animal) is. I bring its history to light through lectures, presentations, and fact-checked articles; Marshall taps into emotional dimensions, and beautifully explores our own humanity via the humble Mule through painting and the written word. Though we share a muse, and Southern accents, Marshall and I tend to operate on different frequencies. Marshall is the artist, and I am the tour guide and historian. And for this adventure, there is not a Mule in sight.

I believe in the Delta, and then I believe in the South, and then I believe in humankind; the only way to the Delta is by highway road, or route, and it is twined together with pock-marked dirt roads or sweet country lanes that pass pristine pecan orchards and infinite fields of crops that reach forever towards the horizon.

A Soul Place

Some say the Delta is a soul place—people feel a mythical connection to the perplexing landscape the first moment they cross the Yazoo River, as though they should have been there all along.

I have cruised north the direct ways, but prefer crisscrossing across the Magnolia State, weaving through byways, highways, direct paths, and out-of-the-way. From Baton Rouge, it’s a straight shot up The Blues Highway, U.S. 61. For three days, Marshall and I moseyed around the upper Delta, popping into small towns along backroads.

The first time I made the voyage to the Delta, I had never seen so much land before, the sky rivals Montana but no one believes this until they see it. I had never seen so much green in the heat of high July, everything looked like spring, it was so glad.

The Route

I always say that the 61 highway is exactly as long or as short as you need it to be. If you have something on your mind, you can pick any direction and drive, and it’ll last until you sort your troubles out, or sing them out. If you’re glad and happy, it runs quick and fast to carry you home with a smile on your face.

U.S. Highway 61 is the direct route to the Delta from Baton Rouge. Vicksburg is the gateway. Once you cross the Yazoo River, everything flattens. Historically speaking, the Delta once featured dense forests and swamps, with intermittent Native American mounds. By the 19th century, Americans cleared people and ancient cypress to make way for cotton, which reigned as king for over a century marked by enslavement, and then by sharecropping. Nitta Yuma on Highway 61 is a tactile reminder of this tenure. The town features the classic essentials of a small Delta town—a commissary, church, railroad station, post office, and a smattering of docks and corn cribs.

The old 61 highway was built out of farmland and wound meanderingly around towards the commissaries and farm stores of the landowners, gave them an incentive to sell the land to the highway men, and living near it I can feel the ghosts and sometimes go out running, driving, just to see it all. Once, driving home from visiting Memphis Minnie’s grave there in Walls, Mississippi—yes, up 61—I went back home on Old 61 and stopped clear in the middle of the highway and got a water out of my trunk, and there was no one to honk or slam on their brakes because there very rarely is anyone to meet you when you go to explore the Delta, to go find what is calling you, to fuss you about sharing the road.

The new 61 highway runs pretty well parallel to the old one in parts, but not always, it’s more practical, straightforward, some four lane and some two lane and all captivating, if you’ll just let it.

Roadside Cuisine

While plenty can be seen from and around Highway 61, it can stretch for miles without a store, bathroom, or restaurant. Speaking of food, it should be noted that this soul place ain’t for everyone. If you have dietary restrictions, pre-pack some groceries and plan meals. Vegetarian and gluten-free options are limited.

Puppies playing in front of a clean-washed-blue trailer, the parents in the sun, last time I was through here, I helped a turtle across the road, never mind that it was too late, the gas station empty and the sign said “Stop! Make sure your pants are pulled up before entering,” and “No Profanity,” and “Hot Lunch Hamburgers and Catfish,” and I went in with Charlotte because the signs were hand-painted and looked sweet.

And I was looking at the shelves, which were sparse and dusty, and the clerk shouted, “Bare as a mothafucka huh? Waiting on the truck!” And I laughed because of course and waited for Charlotte to come out of the bathroom, picked up a water and an energy drink, joking with her about if she wanted a road beer or not, her exclaiming it’s way too early, and the clerk said, “no it ain’t!” And lifted his bud from behind the register, and we laughed because of course.

She got a breakfast sandwich, and a Leflore County maintenance department man came in, with his name on his clean dark blue jumper, and everyone smiling at each other, and he wanted to know if my hat was from the Crossroads Gin, then said, “Oh, no, it’s that musician.”

I never even seen a pickled ham hock in a jar before, floating there next to pickled eggs, pink. I asked the clerk for one, because I don’t want to knock a thing before I try it—last year I found out I really don’t like chicken livers after all—and the man in the jumper said, “Well you are a real country girl,” and the clerk said, “Are you sure? Do you see how expensive they are?” And they were 4.95 but for 4.95, I was glad to hear the hard labor man call me country,

The hock barely came out of the jar it was so big, and he put it in a wax paper bag, then a white paper bag, and we were back on the road towards Greenwood.

The pink long pickled skin sliding off and vinegary, the dog Wilbur wouldn’t touch it, the texture too much for me to handle, then the stink on my fingers, the meat the same, quickly giving up and Wilbur sitting as far away from it as possible, pressed against the door and letting me know I was directly responsible for the assault on his senses.

If pickled hocks are beyond your comfort zone, take the detour from 61 to Greenville. The original Doe’s Eat Place is worth the visit for readers who frequent the one in Baton Rouge. Started as a honky-tonk venue in 1941 by Dominick “Big Doe” Signa and his wife, Mamie, Doe’s has been integrated from its early days, when a local white doctor would come in for steaks between house calls, then word got around. It’s still housed in the original small, delightfully-ramshackle building, allowing you to acquaint yourself with the neighboring table. Though not as prosperous as it used to be, the old downtown stretch features interesting pockets of nightlife.

To the Crossroads

Captivated by each Delta town, the ones by the river, the old port cities, the lonesome and shuttered up ones that still hold tamale shacks, the ones way up the road that are in their revival, the ones in-between with fine dining, the ones that set up Christmas lights all along their creek, making the holidays seem real again, all of the small tucked away museums, all of the unexpected things.

North of Greenville, Highway 1 runs nearly parallel to the Mississippi River. The unincorporated community of Scott disappears as quickly as the road sign. Almost a century ago, the heavy spring rains and a swollen Mississippi River became too much for the levees in Mound Bayou, just west of Scott. When the levees failed here and across the river in Arkansas City, so began the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. Eventually, dark waters inundated over 27,000 square miles in seven states, killing hundreds of humans, livestock, and wildlife. This destruction led to the 1928 Flood Control Act, officially authorizing the U.S. Corps of Engineers to come up with solutions, built by men and mules from prisons and cotton plantations.

It’s from this cultural landscape that the roots of American music grew. Whether or not you listen to the blues or to country music, each has its own trail of historic markers through the Delta—guideposts worth following. The Country Music Trail is relatively new, but you can tip your hat and say “Hello Darlin’” to Conway Twitty’s marker in his hometown of Friar’s Point. I first stumbled upon the Mississippi Blues Trail in 2010 and immediately became intrigued with the navy-colored markers, often located in a downtown strip or near relics of a train station. It encouraged me to learn more about the music that grew out of this unfamiliar landscape.

Mississippi Fred McDowell singing, “That 61 highway is the longest road I know, she runs from New York City down the Gulf of Mexico.”

Genesis stories about the blues vary, the most famous of them meeting at the crossroads of Routes 49 and 61 where they say Robert Johnson sold his soul to become the most skillful of guitar players. But no one can deny the influence of Johnson’s idol Charley Patton, who lived, worked, and played music at Dockery Plantation, located on Highway 8 just outside of Cleveland. According to Google Maps, “the real crossroads” are located down a dirt road across from Dockery.

Looking at the map and all of the roads, we couldn’t even decide which way to go, looped around looking at the railroads and the crossroads and the enlightenment. Graveyards with targets and hand-carved graves, little homes, windows and all, circled x’s, wishes granted, crosses, blooming in heaven, old oaks, water come up, Wilbur out chasing into the woods and coming back, bridge is out.

We were down the road from Dockery, and I could almost see Robert Johnson walking down the dirt road beneath the stars with the lights of old plantation flickering behind him, Charley Patton echoing like the devil himself into the dark, Johnson scared, determined, fed-up.

Depending who you ask, the crossroads can also be found in Rosedale, Clarksdale, between some catfish farms in Belzoni, or across the river in Arkansas. The mysticism of the crossroads is almost as old as human civilization. In modern day Mississippi, it mostly goes back to Johnson’s musical prowess, his legacy, life, and death continuing to captivate scholars and blues fans alike. The narrative of the devil’s role in it all has since shifted; it arguably delegitimizes Johnson’s prodigal abilities and influence on American music. But still, good storytelling is good for tourism.

[Read more from Charlotte Jones, here: "A Mule Fit for a King: Remembering When Mules pulled the Mardi Gras Parades" and "Bring Forth the Fiery, Untamed Steeds: The Lost Mule Market District of New Orleans"]

There is a stand of crosses there heading into Clarksdale, and they look to be painted fresh every year, but they stand slanted, leaning into the sunrise and away from the sunset, and that’s the thing about Clarksdale, it’s all at a tilt, a fun house if you just blink hard and try to have a good time.

And if you go to Abe’s, you’ll find the crossroads, where old 61 and 49 meet, and there’s some blues guitars up there in the sky and it’s awful pretty. If you talk to anybody local, they have their own idea about where the “real” crossroads was, or if Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in a graveyard, or by the river, or maybe he just learned from another bluesman, lost to history.

In Haitian Voudoun and its cousins, however, there is Papa Legba, Spirit of the Crossroads. He opens doors, if you do it the right way. And in Hoodoo or Rootwork practices, crossroads magic is common, because where any two roads meet, all of the energy that passes through is powerful. Imagine the energy of 61, imagine the energy of the River Road. Any crossroads will do.

I always say that the 61 highway is exactly as long or as short as you need it to be. If you have something on your mind, you can pick any direction and drive, and it’ll last until you sort your troubles out, or sing them out. If you’re glad and happy, it runs quick and fast to carry you home with a smile on your face.

And if you stay in the Shack Up Inn, there’s one shack where someone scrawled “how many crossroads does someone have in life,” and that used to make me mad for some reason, like it was a trite way to talk about it, like it was a dumb thing to say, but the more I thought about it over the years, the more it became a question, the more I wanted my answer, and to me, well, we are always at a crossroads. We always get to choose where we are going, and at what velocity, and with what song.

The Delta has been perpetually at a crossroads, of growth, of change, of moving forward, and of the dire opposite. It has been a deep spring, a strong river, of creativity—famous authors, musicians, actors, and painters all call the Delta home. To see it all by car is to catch some of the magic left behind by centuries dwelling in myth, love, pain. The fields themselves are always at a crossroads; planting, growth, harvest, rest. Always changing.

To Baptist Town

In Greenwood, Marshall and I looked for where Johnson died and inaugurated The 27 Club.

Sky-high crosses, gas stations, the sleeping winter land, down through clean old Greenwood, the bookstore, the heron mural, people out on the streets, the spotless glass windows of the Viking buildings, over the railroad track to Baptist Town.

I live outside of history most of the time, I never want to know too much, usually. Knowing only that Robert Johnson probably played most of the Delta, knowing only that most blues musicians probably did, knowing that the jukes of the past are beyond knowing, past being ghosts, only myth, all of the musicians that never made it, all of the day laborers and sharecroppers and lovers lost even to black and white photographs, gone.

So I didn’t know anything about Baptist Town, or where Robert Johnson lived or died outside of he got poisoned, and apparently, it was here, Baptist Town.

Instead, and much to our benefit, we met Sylvester Hoover, the proprietor of the Hoover Grocery, the Back in the Day Museum, and Delta Blues Legends Tours.

There’s been some lonesome nights there in the Delta where I felt like I might just drive in the darkness forever on the lost highway, into another realm. Maybe I have.

You could smell something good frying somewhere, and there were some men with their dogs and the hood popped on a Ford truck, and paintings on the buildings, and a laundromat.

Robert Johnson bought his Prince Albert Tobacco here, painted by local artist Ricky Ferguson, and there’s B.B. King, and a running rabbit, and it was a good day to be standing under a blue sky and sun in January in the Delta, and Mr. Hoover came out from the laundromat to meet us.

The museum, in a shotgun house virtually left untouched since its construction, does not gloss over the hardscrabble of Black life on the storied land. Artifacts and Mr. Hoover’s knowledge reiterates human struggles from sharecropping to white supremacy, natural and man-made disasters, to the Civil Rights Movement. If you ask, Mr. Hoover will also take you on a tour of important historical sites in the area; this includes a visit to the nearby town of Money, where the brutal murder of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till has reverberated across the United States for almost seventy years.

[Read more from Marshall Blevins, here: "Wanna Get Lost, Wanna Get Found: Rediscovering childhood wonder at Twelve Oaks Artist Residency" ] 

And he tells us about the block, and there’s locals inside, and it seemed like we might could stay all day, and like maybe we should pay him for the free tour we already got, the shack museum he showed us, everyone leaving town that left their old things, to see how people used to live, the reason how come everyone had the blues, the light shining like heaven into the shack door, wooden floors, wooden ceiling.

“He used to write his songs on bags his tobacco came in, pinned them to the walls, saying ‘I wrote this one, and Susan wrote that one, and the Devil wrote this one over here, and I guess I’ll sing that tonight.’”

He said the blues is the same as the songs they sing on Sundays, and he lilts out sweetly, “My God loves me, he knows just what I need, my God is good to me,” then he smiles a little and says, “My girl loves me, she knows just what I need, she is good to me.”

Between Money and Greenwood, there is the Mount Zion Baptist Missionary Church cemetery where Robert Johnson is buried. His tombstone is a makeshift shrine for blues fans on their own pilgrimages. Most journeys in and around the Mississippi Delta should involve graveside visits, even if you don’t know those buried.

Evident by the turn rows that encroached graves outside of Schlater, cemeteries remind that the Delta has always been sacred ground for its inhabitants, regardless of their earthly or economic planes. But there’s also life. So much life.

There’s been some lonesome nights there in the Delta where I felt like I might just drive in the darkness forever on the lost highway, into another realm. Maybe I have.

This is only a glimpse. The best we recommend is to take your time, give it a chance, and talk to the folks you meet along the way. Most importantly, when they talk, listen. 

Read more of Charlotte Jones's work at charlottejones10.com and Marshall Blevins's work at churchgoinmule.com.