As part of our driving holiday up the Mississippi, we stopped for a couple of nights in Clarksdale, one of the more well-known crossroads and an excellent base to explore the delta blues region.
One of the many crossroads where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil. We bought breakfast and did some laundry. The Delta Blues Museum sits in the nightclub area near the centre of town and is an excellent introduction to the blues.
Dockery Farm, where Charlie Patton worked and played, and it's quite possible Johnson passed through here and was taught or influenced by Patton.(No connection with the museum, but interesting nonetheless)
The displays range from the days of slavery to the current music scene, with plenty to listen to and instruments to fetish. There’s old cars, and bits of Muddy Waters’ shack from when he was a share cropper, along with gold discs and photos of those who became stars and others who didn’t. It was at once sobering and inspiring and I left with a couple of books and bunch of music to chase up when I came home.
A more convincing crossroads - this one is near Dockery Farm and has a graveyard in one corner. This place felt eerie.While in the area we also managed to find three graves of Robert Johnson, and as many crossroads where he sold his soul to the devil.
Robert Johnson's resting place?What we observed was that probably none of the graves were authentic, despite the protestations of the old guy at one graveyard who obviously made a meagre living by showing folks to the ‘actual grave of Robert Johnson’ in the hope of a tip. Looking at the other graves from the early 20th century the commonality was their simplicity. Many were just rocks or slabs with names and dates misspelled and inexpertly carved. The working poor of the 1930s had little formal education and no money to waste on the ostentation demanded of local councils to mark important sites. What was especially depressing was that we found graves from the recent past that were no more sophisticated than those of 100 years before in the same graveyards. I gave the guy $10 and retreated to the car, to drive back to a highway and on to Memphis.
Another nominee.
The third grave site, and the one where I gave the guy a tip.
A gravestone in the same graveyard, which if appears to be from this century, if it was really carved 13 years after 1989.
It must be interesting to explore that area as it is the root of a lot of modern music. The days of slavery and segregation are not that long ago and I expect traces still linger. Maybe bits of Robert Johnson are buried in different places. He is a mysterious character.
I'd be surprised if Johnson's body is in any of the graveyards we visited. He was an itinerant coloured musician poisoned in a bar (and even that may be apocryphal), so while he may have had friends in the area, would they have paid t mark or record his grave?
I regret not visiting the blues joints we found in various small towns, but there was a definite feeling of isolation and rejection of tourists.
I've never been there, but I imagine you can feel the history in the air. Johnson is indeed such a mysterious historical figure- so much lore
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It was an amazing trip, and we enjoyed it immensely. As you say, there's so many legends around Johnson that it becomes more about the myths than the facts.
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