Mississippi at last

We continued south into Mississippi, the most southerly part of our road trip, driving through Sledge, birth place of Charlie Pride, and Tutwiler, where W C Handy first heard the Blues. The area around the murals near the train tracks is as derelict as ever. The same can be said of Clarksdale, where we visited next, although there are a few bars and restaurants there catering for blues tourists. After a quick look around the town, with its many blues markers, we went to Red's Juke joint, which has survived unchanged despite the death of its eponymous owner last year. The Blues artist performing was Terry 'Harmonica' Bean, who does some good hill country blues.

Next day we headed to the Delta Blues Museum which has some fine blues photographs and Muddy Waters' cabin. The Clarksdale Caravan Music Festival is on so we watched a bit of Randy Cohen and Big A Sherrod playing outside the Cathead store and much enjoyed Stan Street and Guitar Frenchie at the Hambone Gallery. The evening was one to remember and a real highlight of the trip. First we went to the Bluesberry Cafe to see Watermelon Slim. He's a colourful character who plays slide guitar and harmonica and has a strong gritty voice which he puts to good use on a variety of mostly blues material including

'Baby Scratch My Back' and 'Highway 61'. From there we went on to the Hambone again to watch singer/guitarist Johnny Rawls. This proved to be the gig of the trip so far and one of the best I've been to in years. He's an excellent guitarist with a soulful voice as he showed on songs such as 'Stoop Down Baby' and 'Stand By Me', but as the first of two sets went on it became more of an R and B Revue. There were songs by his daughter Destini, including 'I'd Rather Be Blind' and 'Chain Of Fools'. There were also songs from a couple of other excellent female blues singers including one who did a raunchy 'Get Your Black Draws On'. And he was joined on stage by guitarist Dave Keller from Vermont, blues Music Award artist harmonica player Bob Corritore, renowned bluesman John Primer and fellow blues man Billy Price who joined with Johnny on 'Can I Change Your Mind'. Johnny himself was great on southen soul songs such as 'Stroking' and 'Red Cadillac', the title of his 2008 album, which brought the house down and closed both sets. Brilliant stuff which I thoroughly enjoyed.