Blues Trail - February 14 - 16, 2014

 Friday, February 14 - My friend Elizabeth planned a weekend trip to Clarksdale, Mississippi as a birthday surprise for her husband Bill, who is a huge blues fan.  She invited us to join them.  They drove west from Atlanta, and we drove south from Memphis.  We planned to rendezvous in Clarksdale around 5 p.m.  Rain was pouring down when we left Memphis.  We thought it an auspicious start to a blues weekend.




Elizabeth had reserved a two-bedroom cabin at the Shack-Up Inn just outside Clarksdale.  This place is a wild conglomeration of old buildings - an old gin, some sharecropper cabins, etc. - fixed up with enough modern amenities to be reasonably comfortable.  The buildings are grouped around a common yard, with picnic tables and park benches scattered around.  The cabins are named for blues artists or blues themes.

Our cabin was called "Legends."   It was a typical southern "shotgun"-style cabin - one room wide, three rooms long, with entrances at both ends.  Joel and I arrived about 3:30 p.m., got the key from the office inside the gin building, and drove around to the cabin.  We parked our truck so that Bill could not easily see our Tennessee license plates when he arrived, as Elizabeth had kept both the destination and our joining them a secret from him.  We unlocked the door and stepped right into the cabin's rear bedroom.  The center room was divided into a kitchen and bathroom.  The front room held a bed, a sofa and chair whose better days were long ago, and a TV that offered nothing but blues music.  Pictures of blues artists decorated the walls. 

Nearly every wall and door surface in every room was covered with graffiti of past visitors (we added our own names and the date to a bedroom door).  The floors were creaky, and the walls shook with every step.  Our bed had been leveled with a stack of magazines and phone books under one leg. 





 



 

But the cabin was warm, and the sheets and the bathroom were clean.  There was a coffee pot (with coffee and fixin's), a dorm-sized refrigerator, and a microwave.  We stashed our luggage out of sight, started a pot of coffee, set out a loaf of banana nut bread that we'd brought from home, and then high-tailed it to the gin lobby so as not to detract from Bill's initial cabin experience when he and Elizabeth arrived.  We bought ourselves a beer in the lobby and browsed the gift shop.  About 45 minutes later, our friends arrived and joined us in the lobby.  Bill was still in shock.  ;)

 

"The Crossroads" in Clarksdale

Not wanting to waste a minute of our blues vacation, we piled into our truck and headed straight for the Ground Zero Blues Club to eat supper and listen to some blues.  A band called "Sweet Tea Jubilee" was the act that night.  We ate hamburgers (they were really, really good!) and fries, had a couple of drinks, and listened to the band's first set (they were good, too!).  But we'd all gotten up early that morning, and Elizabeth and Bill were tired after their long drive, so when the band took a break, we headed back to our cabin for the night.

 

Ground Zero Blues Club by day

 

Saturday, February 15 - Road Trip Day - We got up pretty early this morning, drank some coffee, ate banana nut bread and pound cake, and talked about what to do.  Elizabeth had made a list of attractions in a reasonable radius.  Since Bill was the honoree of this trip, he picked our destinations this day.  He loves tamales, so we decided to make it a blues trail/tamale trail day.  After a late breakfast in Clarksdale, we drove out to Ms. Ervin's house for two dozen of her amazing, delicious tamales, then we drove across the river to Helena, Arkansas to sample Pasquale's tamales.  While in town, we toured the Delta Museum, the site of the King Biscuit radio show.

 

On the way back to Clarksdale, we hunted up the place were Muddy Waters' cabin used to sit (the cabin, itself, is now inside the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale). 

 

Muddy Waters

A cool tree in the Mississippi delta





 

After our road trip, we went back to the cabin for a while.  Bill's sister and brother-in-law, Rosemarie and Al, were driving down from Memphis, and we planned to go out to dinner and then go to Red's juke joint to listen to some blues.  We'd heard that they served bbq ribs at Red's, and that sounded fine to us.  When they arrived, Bill showed them around the place, then we all headed for Red's. 

 

If we had not heard good things about Red's, we might not have been brave enough to go in.  Glitz and glamour, it ain't.  The lounge was about the size of our cabin.  There was a bar along one wall, and a tiny stage on the opposite wall.  It was drafty, and there were portable electric heaters all around the room.  There were a couple of comfy recliners at one end of the stage, and a couple of tables with stools at the opposite end.  The place was pretty well packed.  We paid our cover charge and scanned the room for a place to land.  At the far end of the room, there was laughter from a group of men huddled around a laptop computer.  We asked the guy at the door what was going on.  He said they were doing an interview with a Hollywood producer who was interested in doing a reality show about Delta blues clubs.  We threaded our way through the crowd and went to the back of the room where we could hear what was going on.  Several people in the crowd - the club owner, the deejay, and some of the "regulars" were giving their take on life in Clarksdale and what blues music meant to them.  They even interviewed Al!

 

When the interview was over, the music started.  The featured artist was a 15-year-old guitarist named Chris "Kingfish" Ingram.  (He, too, had given an interview.)  This kid was freakin' INCREDIBLE.  Look for him on YouTube; he's going places, if he plays his cards right.

 

I kept looking around, wondering where the ribs were. 

 

When the first set ended, Rosemarie and Al said goodbye and headed back to Memphis.  The rest of us grouped up and decided to go look for something to eat.  When we stepped outside, Red was grilling ribs on a large grill on the sidewalk.  They were done, and he was offering samples, hot off the grill.  We could not resist.  They  were delicious.  Red offered us more, but we hated to be pigs.  We walked back to our truck licking our fingers.

Unfortunately, most every restaurant in Clarksdale was closed by the time we left Red's.  We had to break our travel pact (no eating at chain restaurants) to get something to eat.  We hit the drive-thru window at Burger King and took the burgers back to the cabin.  We ate our burgers standing up in the "kitchen," then everybody hit the sack.

 

Sunday, February 16 -
 



We got the blu-uuuues...
OHHHHHH, we got the blu-uuuuues....
We got them early Sunday morning'
Cain't get no hot biscuits blu-uuuuuues.

Fo' sho'.

Evidently, they don't eat breakfast in Clarksdale.  At least, they don't eat it in restaurants.

After a leisurely early morning of Bloody Marys on the back porch, we went into town in search of breakfast.  We wanted a sit-down breakfast at a place where the biscuits were hot and a waitress kept the coffee coming.  We went north.  We went south.  We went east.  We went west. 

We found no such place in Clarksdale. 

We looked for breakfast for so long that it got to be lunch-time, and we pulled in to a bbq restaurant called "Abe's" and had ribs and barbeque with baked beans and slaw. 



Heisenberg

After that big brunch, we stood outside in the sunshine, trying to decide what to do next.  When Bill said it would suit him to go back to the cabin and chillaxe with a cigar on the back porch and maybe take a nap, we seconded, thirded, and fourthed the motion.  Back at the cabin, we had a photo shoot, then sat outside in the sunshine at a picnic table outside our cabin.  Eventually, we moved inside, fired up the computer (there was a wi-fi connection) and watched a couple episodes of "Breaking Bad." 

Although we could've stayed another night, Joel and I were missing did our bed.  About 4 p.m., we packed it up and came home. 

Grabbed a pizza on the way home.  Came in, put on the house pants, and settled down to watch "Downton Abbey." 

We had a great time, but it's good to be home.