Robben Ford Discussion

[AndyR]

Greetings all, long time no talk!

This is somewhat belated, but here is an email I sent to a few online friends after a visit to Clarksdale, MS:


So my brother and sister and me decided to gang up and visit my other sister and husband and their 22 year-old son, in Clarksdale, MS. They have just relocated there from Gainesville, FL, as my bro-in-law has taken a new position as an ENT surgeon at the regional medical center there.

Does Clarksdale sound familiar? Well I think you guys probably heard the Clapton song “Crossroads.” It actually a song by Mississippi bluesman Robert Johnson, where he makes tries to hitch a ride at the crossroads of US61 and US49…at Clarksdale, MS !!!

To the point, Clarksdale is the birthplace of the Mississippi Delta Blues, and many notable blues players hail from this area (plus a bunch you never heard of.) Folks like Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Charlie Musselwhite, Son House, Sam Cooke, Ike Turner, Johnny and Edgar Winter, etc., etc… (author/playwrite Tennessee Williams is also from Clarksdale.)

See: http://www.clarksdale.com/

Our visit happened to coincide with the 25th Annual Sunflower River Blues and Gospel Festivel: http://sunflowerfest.org

We got to see headline act Bobby Rush on Friday, and then Charlie Musselwhite and top act Robert Plant (of Led Zepplin fame) on Saturday night. Plus a *bunch* of awesome local blues artists. Our favorite was James “Super Chikan” Johnson: http://superchikan.com/

He is a great guitarist and a totally awesome singer, and if you check his website you can see that he makes guitars out of gas cans, cigar boxes and ceiling fans, and they’re real works of art!

There’s a bunch of real-deal blues clubs and juke joints in the area. They even have a “Juke Joint Festival.” You can read about some of the venues here: http://www.jukejointfestival.com/index.php

One club we went to is the Ground Zero Blues Club: http://www.groundzerobluesclub.com/

As you can see from the website, actor and Clarksdale resident Morgan Freeman is one of the owners. Check out the photo galleries to get a feel for the ambience of the place.

A lot of the blues came from the cotton plantations in the area (we saw lots of cotton growing.) Another cool place is the Hopson Plantation: http://www.shackupinn.com/

They have taken several of the sharecroppers’ shacks and turned them into guest houses; much of the plantation remains intact. Check out the “Reservations” section to see the shacks themselves.

There are also lots of cool art shops and museums in town. The Delta Blues Museum contains the recronstructed wood shack where Muddy Waters lived when he was a sharecropper, and lots of other real neat historic stuff: http://www.deltabluesmuseum.org/

The Cat Head store is an eclectic emporium with all kinds of stuff: http://www.cathead.biz/CatHead/Home.html. My sister bought me a Cat Head guitar pick, lol! I also saw a neat, tambourine-like instrument made out of a broom handle with bottle caps nailed to it; I’m saving up my bottle caps so I can make one myself!

Then there is the Hambone Gallery: http://www.stanstreet.com/index.html. DJ, check out the prices this guy is getting for his artwork…you can do just as good, right??? lol!

We also went to a cool little music store that was packed to the gills with old guitars and amps, my brother is on the lookout for old amps, and right next door was an art shop where we stopped and talked to the female owner/artist, but the name of the place escapes me.

Well, that is about all I saw (isn’t that enough?) and I just scratched the surface!!!

There is lots of good, greasy food (ribs, barbcue, etc.) but I stayed away from that mostly. I did have some great fish tacos at a place called the Oxford Inn.

Clarksdale is about 60 miles south of Memphis, TN, another great music town…which I will need to visit on my next trip!

I hope y’all are doing great!

:-)

-Andy

[PaulG]

Wow! Thanks for the travelog of Clarksdale, Andy!! I had no idea it was this alive! I somehow pictured myself there someday, to see 'the crossroads', and maybe a few tombstones, but nothing more. Sounds like I might get run over these days. What a great roadtrip!

[frank0936]

We went there a couple of years ago for a long weekend and stayed in the Cadillac Shack at the Shackup Inn. We had a lot of fun. Just for the record there are several places that claim the honor of being "The Crossroads", but there is a little barbecue joint at the crossroads in Clarksdale. The menu states that Robert Johnson used to come to the back door and get a sandwich after he had finished playing for the night.

Whether it's the "real" Crossroads, and whether the story is real or imagined, it's a fun place to visit, and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the history of the Blues.

As a companion piece to the crossroads story, there's at least 4 places that claim to be Robert Johnson's final resting place!
Frank

[Buffaloe]

[frank0936]

There's also a couple of other places near Clarksdale that claim to be the original location. At least one of the early stories just said it was "a crossroads". Later tradition held it to be the 49/61 crossroads, but the original supposedly was out in the country away from any towns.

The more likely story is that Robert learned a lot of what he played from Ike Zimmer - a bluesman from Alabama - that Robert traveled with for a while. Robert also never played just Blues. He played whatever people wanted to hear. He supposedly had a photographic memory when it came to music. It's said he could hear a song once and then play it from memory. I'd love to have that talent!
Frank