While the outside of this former cotton warehouse building looks kind of seedy, a step inside Ground Zero Blues Club reveals a rocking eclectic blues bar featuring live music five nights a week and nicely furbished loft-style rooms of the Delta Cotton Co. for rent upstairs. Actor, hometown hero and co-owner Morgan Freeman is said to visit the Clarksdale, Miss., club frequently. Photo by Kelly Merritt.
By Kelly Merritt and Ginger Stanley
For the Sunday Gazette-Mail
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Music lovers looking for a different and authentic vacation experience might consider a visit to Mississippi to enhance their knowledge and enjoyment of a uniquely American genre of music that ultimately gave birth to rock 'n' roll.
The Mississippi Blues Trail is an assortment of markers, museums and landmarks throughout the Magnolia State, but mostly in the state's fertile Delta region along old U.S. Route 61. The trail "offers an unforgettable journey into blues history, from the street corners and juke joints were musicians played, to the places they called home, to their final resting spots. Travelers are invited to walk where they walked, dance where they danced, and play in the land where it all began," says literature from the Mississippi Travel Commission.
While one could simply read the text of trail markers from the Blues Trail Web site (msbluestrail.org), visiting sites along the trail gives the experience of seeing the land and the conditions that created the blues, feeling the hardship and hearing live blues in the place where the music originated. With more than 100 established sites, the trail offers interest for most anyone from the casual blues listener to the most dedicated fan.
The casual fan might be content to visit the Delta Blues Museum in downtown Clarksdale and enjoy a catfish dinner and concert in the Ground Zero Blues Club next door. Whereas the hardcore blues fans might also invest the windshield time to visit such places as the amazingly remote outpost of Friars Point, where B.B. King's favorite guitarist Robert Nighthawk played, stop at points along the old Peavine Railroad, stay in a refurbished sharecropper's cabin at Hopson Planting Co. and see the gravesite of Charlie Patton, who was a strong influence on blues' primary influencer Robert Johnson.
Although the state of Mississippi isn't a top-of-mind vacation destination for many West Virginians, music lovers might add a couple of days to an already planned trip. Mountaineer football fans heading to Baton Rouge for WVU's 2010 meeting with LSU could easily work in visits along the route, as could Marshall fans following the Herd to Memphis, Southern Miss or Tulane. Be warned, however, that a visit of just a couple of days is likely to inspire the dedicated blues fan to begin scheduling the next trip to see more.
A suggested first stop along the trail is not actually in Mississippi, but a great destination in itself -- Memphis, Tenn. Memphis bills itself as "Home of the Blues, Birthplace of Rock-n-Roll," and it just may be right. Memphis offers plenty for blues aficionados, such as live music at a dozen or so Beale Street clubs, the W.C. Handy home, the Gibson Guitar Factory, the Rock n Soul Museum, Stax Museum of American Soul Music, Sun Studio and, of course, Graceland.
By Kelly Merritt and Ginger Stanley
For the Sunday Gazette-Mail
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Music lovers looking for a different and authentic vacation experience might consider a visit to Mississippi to enhance their knowledge and enjoyment of a uniquely American genre of music that ultimately gave birth to rock 'n' roll.
The Mississippi Blues Trail is an assortment of markers, museums and landmarks throughout the Magnolia State, but mostly in the state's fertile Delta region along old U.S. Route 61. The trail "offers an unforgettable journey into blues history, from the street corners and juke joints were musicians played, to the places they called home, to their final resting spots. Travelers are invited to walk where they walked, dance where they danced, and play in the land where it all began," says literature from the Mississippi Travel Commission.
While one could simply read the text of trail markers from the Blues Trail Web site (msbluestrail.org), visiting sites along the trail gives the experience of seeing the land and the conditions that created the blues, feeling the hardship and hearing live blues in the place where the music originated. With more than 100 established sites, the trail offers interest for most anyone from the casual blues listener to the most dedicated fan.
The casual fan might be content to visit the Delta Blues Museum in downtown Clarksdale and enjoy a catfish dinner and concert in the Ground Zero Blues Club next door. Whereas the hardcore blues fans might also invest the windshield time to visit such places as the amazingly remote outpost of Friars Point, where B.B. King's favorite guitarist Robert Nighthawk played, stop at points along the old Peavine Railroad, stay in a refurbished sharecropper's cabin at Hopson Planting Co. and see the gravesite of Charlie Patton, who was a strong influence on blues' primary influencer Robert Johnson.
Although the state of Mississippi isn't a top-of-mind vacation destination for many West Virginians, music lovers might add a couple of days to an already planned trip. Mountaineer football fans heading to Baton Rouge for WVU's 2010 meeting with LSU could easily work in visits along the route, as could Marshall fans following the Herd to Memphis, Southern Miss or Tulane. Be warned, however, that a visit of just a couple of days is likely to inspire the dedicated blues fan to begin scheduling the next trip to see more.
A suggested first stop along the trail is not actually in Mississippi, but a great destination in itself -- Memphis, Tenn. Memphis bills itself as "Home of the Blues, Birthplace of Rock-n-Roll," and it just may be right. Memphis offers plenty for blues aficionados, such as live music at a dozen or so Beale Street clubs, the W.C. Handy home, the Gibson Guitar Factory, the Rock n Soul Museum, Stax Museum of American Soul Music, Sun Studio and, of course, Graceland.
Then travel south toward Tunica, where a spouse not interested in blues can be dropped off for a few days at the casinos while the blues fans in the party continue on down to Friars Point, Rosedale, Leland, Greenville and numerous other sites. Any traveler with a love for the blues won't want to miss the cities of Clarksdale and Indianola.
At Clarksdale, the blues fan will find:
Muddy Waters' home site a few miles north of town. The building is no longer there, but the sight of the wide open cotton fields helps one understand the feel of life for an aspiring young musician stuck in the role of cotton-plantation tractor driver. The Crossroads. Again, not much to see other than a lighted sign, but the legendary location made famous by Robert Johnson's alleged alliance with the devil is a place any blues fan should visit. Downtown, featuring a marker for Sam Cooke, the Riverside Hotel and numerous small museums and record stores. Delta Blues Museum, an eclectic collection of memorabilia, including Muddy Waters' log cabin, a 'Muddywood' guitar commissioned by ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, old album covers and other fascinating items. More is on the way as the museum plans a $10 million expansion. The Ground Zero Blues Club, a refurbished cotton warehouse featuring lunch, dinner and live blues music five nights a week. Stay upstairs in one of the nicely equipped rooms of Delta Cotton Co. Have a wholesome breakfast down the street at Delta Amusement Cafe. Hopson Plantation, where blues pianist Pinetop Perkins drove a tractor and helped research new technology that allowed for mechanization of cotton farming and forever changed the economics and daily life in the Delta region. Get a partial feel for what a sharecropper may have felt by staying overnight in a restored sharecropper's cabin. Shack Up Inn cabins are refurbished to include indoor plumbing, electricity and running water, niceties the old sharecroppers didn't have. Indianola boasts of:
B.B. King's favorite corner, where as a 17-year-old, the future "King of the Blues" would play for the black crowds along Church Street on Saturday nights before playing in the church choir on Sunday mornings. B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center, which is as much a museum of life during sharecropping days in the Mississippi Delta region as it is of B.B. King. It helps one understand the conditions and culture of the Delta and how people who lived in those conditions would grow to sing the blues. Through headsets and interactive displays, museum visitors can hear samples of gospel and blues pioneers, blues techniques such as note bending and call and response, as well as a captivating "Roots of Rock-n-Roll" display that allows visitors to compare songs of their favorite modern artists with the original blues compositions. Music fans should allow plenty of time for this remarkable museum. Another site that devoted blues fans will enjoy is the Robert Johnson grave in the Little Zion Missionary Baptist Church cemetery outside of Greenwood. Johnson's headstone under a graceful pecan tree about 80 yards from the Tallahatchie River is easily visible thanks to the collection of offerings provided by blues pilgrims. On a recent November day, Johnson's headstone sported beer cans, whiskey bottles, beads, flowers, a nickel, a pair of sunglasses, an unsmoked cigarette and a guitar pick.
Also worth visiting is Dockery Farms, a large plantation that, like many, became a sort of self-sufficient city housing up to 400 tenant families. Here, laborers and tenants gathered on evenings and weekends and played, danced, drank, gambled and influenced one another. If there is one place that could have "birthed the blues," Dockery Plantation is believed to be it.
Travelers might consider visiting the trail during one of the many blues festivals that occur throughout the year, such as the Crossroads Blues & Heritage Festival at Rosedale the second weekend in May (www.rosedaleblues.com), the B.B. King Homecoming Festival in June (www.indianolamstourism.org) or the Sunflower River Blues and Gospel Festival in Clarksdale the second weekend in August (www.sunflowerfest.org), among many others.
Potential Blues Trail travelers have plenty of sources to learn more to plan their trip. Start with www.msbluestrail.org. Also try www.visitmississippi.org or call 866-SEE-MISS (733-6477).
Kelly Merritt of South Charleston may be e-mailed at EKMerr...@suddenlink.net.
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