Copyright 1998 by Violet Turner

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As a young girl I saw Diana Ross play the role of Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues. While a lot of the movie escaped me, the music didn't. I bought the LP and memorized all the lyrics and dialog. Vinyl LPs scratching the way they do, it wasn't long before crackles and pops grooved along with Diana, Billy Dee, and me. 25 years later, at the age of 41, I traveled down the rural roads of Mississippi, past the curve where From Memphis to New Orleans, through Nesbit, Holly Springs, Oxford, Tutwiler, Clarksdale, Quito, Holly Ridge, Avon, Ita Bena, Greenville, and Vicksburg, a visual melody took form. Through stark landscapes and homes in scarred yards, in ancient eyes and in timeless streets, a ruggedly fragile thread of beauty wove itself into a paradoxical tapestry called the blues. The distance I had to travel had less to do with miles than it had to do with lives. As a high school English teacher and daughter of an Italian immigrant, I, and friends, questioned my deep rooted need to explore the south. This was not my first trip, borrowing Paul Simon's words, "To look for America." Four years ago when my daughters were 12 and 10, we made major road trips. We took the northern route to Seattle, drove down the west coast, and returned taking the southern route. Each summer had its variations, but none was as complex as this one. You can't just "go to Mississippi" and find "IT." I used the Internet, blues biographies, and books from Fodor's and SPIN. Then I organized a binder so detailed that it looked like a plan to conquer a medium sized country. In spite of my efforts, it wasn't easy convincing everyone that Mississippi would be the ideal vacation destination. So using a code of democracy similar to the government's, I gave everyone a say and then told them I was glad they agreed with me. I threw in Dollywood and New Orleans as consolation prizes. My daughters were very into music, and once they understood that we would discover the idols of their idols, polite tolerance turned to mild enthusiasm. Like many of our trips, time has enhanced the memories, and neither girl frowned too hard at my plans to return to Mississippi next summer. Understanding a little about Mississippi made me understand a lot about America. Maybe it was the communities that appeared untouched by the past four decades. Or maybe it was the inborn graciousness that made me eager to listen and know more. Part of it was driving through oceans of cotton fields and entering into towns that are not even close to getting past the civil war. A large element was the language. In Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain talked about how educated people grammar-book speech to death, rendering it insipid in our mouths. I was absolutely intoxicated by the stories people told and the words they used to tell them. The eight hours I divided between Mark Bell and David Caldwell were among the fullest I spent in my life. I never tired of the tales and the witty style in which they unfolded. I think part of that was my Italian upbringing. The thick accents and hearty laughs of my grandparents added texture to even the most mundane accountings. Mississippi was also real. The people were unpretentious, eager to share, and earnest. My photos are a tribute to the region of Mississippi known as the Delta, a region that isn't really a delta at all, and to the itinerants who flowed up and down the Mississippi River singing and growling about the gospel, wicked women, whiskey, and cheating men, bending notes and flattening them, in jubilation and despair. Before Mississippi came a brief, but embracing, stay in Memphis. One single day began with a visit to Reverend Al Green's Sunday service. After applauding God, rocking out with the choir, and bathing in the graciousness and glory of the congregation, we headed to Miss Ellen's for lunch. Miss Ellen's is a small soul food restaurant where for five dollars a plate we savored rich, bountiful food and drank pink lemonade so sweet it flowed like molasses. A late afternoon tour of Sun Studio became an evening lesson in rock and roll, as manager Mark Bell spent hours delighting us with anecdotes about his Memphis life and his masterful knowledge of music. It was hard to leave the next morning, but we had big plans in Nesbit, Mississippi! Jerry Lee Lewis's piano-shaped pool.   At the bottom right, that's one of his fine dogs. Nesbit's most outrageous resident is none other than the "Killer" himself, Jerry Lee Lewis. Jerry Lee's house is open for tours. That's the house in which he lives and in which he slept, as Darlene, our guide, whispered, "We have to be quiet back here; that's Jerry's bedroom and he's asleep." A motley collection of unkempt dogs with mange and facial growths scattered at our every step. "Those are the family jewels," she said matter of factly. "That one is Diamond and that one is Ruby and that one, well I forget his name..." The tour of Jerry Lee's house was a surreal contrast to the harder but more pleasant reality of Memphis. The tour included his garage with all of his cars, even the clunkers with stained seats and cigarette burns. Pool toys floated in the piano pool. "The boys were swimming today," Darlene muttered. "Suppose I should have cleaned up this mess." We shuffled through the disheveled yard. Darlene pointed to some burnt up grass. "We tried to put sod there, but it can't grow under a tree." We nodded sympathetically. "See, this is a working home, not like Graceland," she apologized as we walked past the washer rock ‘n' rolling in full spin cycle. "Jerry decorated the house himself," Darlene said, her face beaming with pride, and then she pointed to the central piece of the small dining room: a dish cabinet made entirely out of match sticks and spray painted gold. "Jerry loves all the gifts from his fans. An inmate built that in prison and left it to Jerry in his will." It was late in the day, dusky, and a lazy heat clung to everything as we pulled into Tutwiler. Young black men flirted with the women at the market, and a man sat on a chair outside of an empty fried chicken stand with a huge banner proclaiming, "GRAND OPENING." A police cruiser tediously toured the same pattern of blocks over and over again.   To me, the most captivating structure on the quaint main street was the funeral parlor. Two Mississippi soil covered hearses were parked against a square brick building. The front window was smeared with everyday living, and two restaurant chairs pushed up the limp off-white curtains draped sorrowfully over them. The sign was hand painted. In the parking lot where I stopped to take photos, a torn down sign for the Clarksdale Blues Festival lay on the cracked asphalt. I looked around Tutwiler and realized the makings of those early blues are as alive now as they were then. The blues were in every brick, part of every bit of dirt, visible in every mournful sunset in that little town. Around the corner was the W.C. Handy mural. The train station, long since gone, was where, the story goes, W.C. Handy heard a man playing a slide guitar and singing, "Goin' where the southern cross the dog." Handy later called it, "The weirdest music I had ever heard." Word has it, W.C. picked up a rusty knife, put it to his guitar strings and the blues were born. A lengthy car ride through fields outside Tutwiler led to a slanted, tumbling old church. Kudzu grew up around the windows. The grain of the wood slats transcended a thin white wash. A crude alter and wood-slatted pews gave structure to the stripped interior. You could feel the religion still contained within. The inside floor was missing too many planks to safely venture inside, but I did anyway. My daughters sat outside on the grass and watched the floor boards bend beneath my feet. "Get out of there mom!" they nervously demanded. "Is this spot safe?" "NO! Don't walk there!" "Where?" "Where you're walking! You're gonna come right through! Get out of there mom!"   Outside the old church, there was a smattering of graves on either side, one of which was the grave of Sonny Boy Williamson II. Offerings of blues harmonicas, coins, and a shot glass filled with whiskey honored him. We soon discovered that of all the blues musicians, his plot was the most refined. At first thought, it didn't quite capture a life lived hard, but then there was this irony: all the facts on his tombstone are inaccurate. When Sonny was young, he got in trouble with the law and in order to escape it took his brother's identity. That accounts for so many variations in his birth date. No clear explanation as to why Sonny's name is spelled "Aleck" the way it was said instead of "Alex" the way it was spelled or why his death date is wrong. Sure was a pretty stone that immortalized him all wrong. As we headed back through Tutwiler, the twilight softly illuminated the shack-like homes. A smattering of tattered couches and overstuffed arm chairs adorned brown, dry front yards. Families gathered in an easy camaraderie that demonstrated itself in their lazy but warm group waves as we drove by. Everyone waved, gracious but casual greetings that made me feel as if I'd been traveling that road my entire life. Just before the main street, I passed a house that stood out from any I had seen, anywhere, ever. The Super Nova Man The exterior was a mosaic of lattice work and painted cement and chain link fence all uniformly painted in bright white. On the front steps was a massive black man. Shirtless, his dark skin contrasted his working man's white trousers. He stared out at the street; I just had to hear his story. I reluctantly approached him, but his huge, warm smile welcomed me. "Would you mind if I took your picture?" I asked. He invited us into his yard where we saw "IT," a glowing white and gold car, a mobile sculpture: Preston's Super Nova. "You're an artist!" I exclaimed. The Super Nova "No ma’am. I'm a logger." "But this is art!" I bubbled. "No ma’am it's just something I like to do." I couldn't convince Preston that his car and home were sculptures, the equivalent of which I had seen many times in the Museum of Modern Art. But he was proud enough to pose, and to show me some of the "junk" he collects with a vision to future projects. "I change everything on the car now and then. Just get tired of it. Take it all off and start again." I left Tutwiler feeling richer than when I arrived; there is hidden treasure everywhere in the delta.   Holly Springs is home to both AIKEI PRO'S record shop and Graceland Too. Over the past 40 years Paul MacCleoud's passion for Elvis evolved into Graceland Too. When we arrived, Paul spoke rapidly through oddly chipped and ill fitting dentures that, because they kept slipping down, caused little specks of white foam to gather in the corners of his mouth. His first story was how his wife of 23 years said, "It's either me or all this Elvis stuff." "I said," he retold the story, "Hmmmm, let me think. See you!" His son, Elvis Aaron Presley MacCleoud, apparently agreed with his father. Together they keep Graceland Too open 24 hours a day. Regardless of what time you arrive, they will give a tour. Trying to decipher what Paul said was unnecessary, and probably impossible, but his enthusiasm and kind heartedness weren't obscured by his lack of clarity: "Nobody should have to die at 42, and no child should ever have to have cancer. That's why I take donations now, to give to the children with cancer." His stream of consciousness was a series of directionless tributaries, each fascinating in its own right, regardless. The highlight of the tour was when Paul started up the turntable, motioned my daughters to get close to him, and charmingly crooned "Don't Be Cruel." "You gotta see this! he beamed, tapping my daughter's arm. "Watch this!" She stood beside him wide eyed as he gave one climatic precision pelvic thrust, followed by a kingly leg shake.   As we were leaving, Paul asked in a furtive voice, "Could you do me a really big favor? My son is in New York, meeting with those folks at the Hard Rock Cafe, and I can't leave the house. Do you think you could buy me a gallon of milk?" He offered us the money, but we treated and even threw in a few sandwiches. In thanks, he skipped the three tour requirement and made us lifetime members of Graceland Too, with a promise of an official membership card to come.   David Caldwell, a gentleman in his 70s, owns AIKEI PRO'S. This shack-like shop was tucked into a boarded up building. The street was alive with folks: a woman in a skin tight orange mini skirt with matching fringed top swayed beside the road. Whenever a car playing music passed by, she lifted her arms and waved, revealing, through cut-out arm holes in the fringed orange top, her breasts sagging down her belly. A man named The Colonel flashed his gold tooth smile and asked me to let him wash the car for five bucks. As we entered AIKEI a furnace blast of air belted us. "Sorry I ain't got no air conditioning," David Caldwell apologized without us having to say a word. "I'm 73 years old, don't believe in air conditioning." The shop was piled high with radio guts and piled-high impossible paths, but still, Mr. Caldwell's cluttered cavern of a shop provided a respite from the outside carnival of souls. He moved to Holly Springs before the Civil Rights Movement. An activist, he saw the black voting rate go from 14 people to 75 percent of all the people. His dream was to see "it" change in his lifetime. I asked him if his dream had been fulfilled. '"It has," he said. "From 14 people to 75 percent. Our sheriff is black, our mayor is black. It has changed." "Cigarettes?" a voice called from behind the mounds of circuitry. Mr. Caldwell tossed the pack and a quarter was dropped into a can to cover two single cigarettes. "Teach me about the blues," I asked. He began to file nimbly through hundreds of brown wrapped 45s. "I have a record player here somewhere, would play it for you, but I can't find it. If you don't like 'em, you mail em back and I'll be glad to give you your money." I assured him they would be well worth the two dollars. "A lot of folks don't care much for a blues musician until hisself is dead," Mr. Caldwell informed us. "Then they start talking all abouts how they heard him years ago and then get theirselves all attached to it. The vultures, that's what I call them, the vultures who didn't care nothing while theys was alive, but want a part of hisself when they's dead." David Caldwell reading an old King Biscuit Blues Festival program His words were dark and deep, and more than a few times he had to wipe away tears as he told the story of the blues musicians who died from one Helena festival to the next one. "What about Elvis?" I asked. "Did you ever meet him?" "Why sure!" Mr. Caldwell smiled and said. "Elvis were a skinny white boy who used to drive by here in a raggedy car. Sad part is, he ended up being what everyone told him he was instead of the real blues musicians who were exactly what they were." "What about Sonny Boy Williamson II? What did you think about him?" "He was a good musician who put himself out in the front and got the white people to pay for him." "So there were just as many good musicians who didn't know how to play the game?" "Sonny Boy do what he had to do." I wondered what he thought about the modern day chroniclers of the south, like William Faulkner, whose Rowan Oak I had visited in nearby Oxford. "He wasn't a bad man, but he only wanted to write about us for the rich folks." Our discussion turned harder, more serious. Integration. Education. The blues. "You have to feel the blues like blacks do in order to be able to play them," Mr. Caldwell said earnestly. For a glimpse of a moment, I think I did. Mark Bell and David Caldwell both burrowed into a part of my psyche, maybe even my soul. So many different perspectives on the same era, each accurate. There must be some absolutes, but I've yet to figure out what they are, and so, as sure as the summer heat soaked into me, so too did these men's stories. Mississippi John Hurt is buried in Avalon. After asking a woman in Grenada where Avalon was, she answered, "I think that's the place where the road widens a little." She was right. We wound up a gravel road to a thickly rutted dirt road to an easy-to-miss path through the woods. There, haphazardly strewn along a narrow path, were a smattering of graves, many unidentifiable because the rain had long ago obliterated the names on the paper markers. Toward the end of the path, we found Hurt's grave. Aged logs formed a rough rectangle off of his head stone, which was adorned with a bullet casing, some coins, and a faded necklace of Mardi Gras beads. A spray of sunlight showered through a filter of thick summer leaves, and the ground was rich with mulch. There was a sacred silence to this shrouded burial ground. Of all the graves we saw on our trip, this was the most difficult to find and the most neglected. It was also the most peaceful. From there, we went to Quito, just south of Ita Bena, in search of Robert Johnson's three possible graves. Back and forth we traversed the road, missing whatever turn it was that would take us there. At long last, I found a gas station and queried a toothless, gold draped, straw hatted, gentleman. "How do I get to Robert Johnson's grave?" He smiled slowly but easily. "You looking for Bobby Johnson? He right up the road two miles. You know this is where the blues began....." "Oh, I know," I said, thanking him with a nod and a wave. When I found the neat and proper church and the matching tombstone, I was rather disappointed. So much story behind this man, such a nondescript marker. But then, it was one of three. No one knows for sure where Robert Johnson is buried. No one knows for sure how he died. Was it poison from the hand of a jealous husband whose wife strayed Bobby's way? And did he really meet the devil at midnight and for the price of his soul, hand the devil his guitar to tune so that he would play the blues better than all men? Too many unanswered questions continue for Bobby Johnson to ever rest in peace. Charley Patton's grave was probably the most representative of the lives of those early bluesmen. His head stone was recently donated by John Fogerty, even though Patton died in the late 30s. The carved, rutted cemetery was a mosaic of strewn artificial flowers and mounds of dirt clods with paper markers. It sat beside a cotton gin's truck garage. A lone dog, whose mange appeared to have peeled the fur right off him, watched like Cerberus at the darkened gates. So many of these final "resting" places are reminiscent of the lives they memorialize. They are troubled grounds, the antithesis of Elvis's grave or Faulkner's. Names are wrong, dates are wrong, the earth is shredded by the elements, neglect, and doubt. The faces of the folks outside Mr. Caldwell's music store, Mr. Caldwell's face, Preston's face, still haunt me. There were ghosts everywhere I turned in Mississippi, many still living. Dockery Farms was our next stop. The famous sign made me gasp. It was the photo I'd seen so many times before. There before me was the embodiment of the blues. Beside the dirt road which turned into a driveway was a dense ivy protecting the foundation of what was once the Dockery commissary. On those broken pieces of brick, Henry Sloan taught Charley Patton to play the blues. It was there that the likes of Howlin' Wolf, Son House, and Robert Johnson joined in. A pretty young girl in a sports car sent the gravel flying as she raced out of the drive and disappeared into the surrounding cotton fields. A Dockery descendent I assumed. She zoomed in and out several times, her car filling and emptying of friends, all oblivious to our awed stares at a cluster of ivy and a singular chimney consumed in kudzu. My friend, Ricky Stevens, a partner in Three Kids Music, a blues management company, described that very spot as, "the place where Charley Patton told Robert Johnson to ‘quit that noise before all the peoples leave.'" Ricky went to school with the descendants and relatives of Charley Patton and Pops Staples. Raised in the very heart of blues country, I thought maybe Ricky could help me to understand the blues. "Perhaps the key to understanding the blues," he said, "is not to try to study the music but the people who influenced the musicians. The people who everyday touched their lives and made them Bluesmen." "Who are these people?" I asked. "The everyday people of the Delta. Listen to the songs and you will hear that they are not about the heroes or the politicians or the "Great Men." They are songs about the everyday people of the world. The blues are about taking a feeling and making it heard, not only in the words but in the delivery of the music. I just know that the blues are not something to be taught. They must be felt and understood on a very personal level." To that end, maybe I always knew the blues more than I realized. Brought to my own crossroads, I determined that, like most of life, the blues are beautiful and the blues are ugly, always at exactly the same time.

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