The Delta Blues

We left Houston yesterday morning and drove across southern Louisiana headed toward the Mississippi Delta. About halfway through Louisiana, I-10 crosses the great Atchafalya Swamp, North America’s largest swamp wilderness. The highway actually crosses it on stilts. We left the highway at this point, headed up a state route that was a barely one-lane wide gravel road. It was strange because there was a parallel road about 50 feet away and about 20 feet higher, up on a levee--but it was marked Private, No Trespassing. We crossed the Mississippi on a ferry, drove through the oldest town in Louisiana (St. Francisville), drove up part of the Natchez Parkway, and arrived in Vicksburg, MS.
Today we met Mr. Tater. We were touring the Delta Blues Museum and he was there. No, we didn’t know him, we had never heard of Mr. Tater before today but we met him, he showed us his picture on the wall (there was a photo show of Delta Blues life) and we bought one of his CDs. He is well known in Blues circles for playing the single string guitar called the didly-bo, does a lot of local shows, and opens for more famous acts.
When we entered the Delta Blues Museum, there were two women at the desk. We asked if there was some sort of blues performance going on tonight. They said “No, because it’s Tuesday and it’s off season, there isn’t anything going on.” We jokingly said, “Well then I guess you’ll have to sing for us.” One of the women pointed to the other and said, “She can sing.” And she did. She gave us a great solo blues performance, simply because we asked. Clarksdale, Mississippi is that kind of town. A place where cotton was king until the early 1940s when the a machine was invented, right here in Clarksdale, to pick the cotton. This started one of the US’s greatest internal migrations as unemployed cotton pickers fled to Midwest cities like Detroit and Chicago to find jobs in the factories, taking their music with them. Held together by a history of Delta Blues, Clarksdale is a town where everybody knows everybody in the town. We had hoped to go to a place to hear some blues performed but nothing was open tonight so we simply treasured the serendipitous experience we had, ate a little BBQ pork & beef, and called it a great day.