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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Somewhat OT:Clarksdale, standin' at the crossroads
Somewhat OT:Clarksdale, standin' at the crossroads
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Fil
158 posts
Jun 23, 2016
1:07 PM
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Here's a story about Clarksdale, MS.
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21700400-mayor-hometown-blues-man-many-parts-standin-crossroads
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Phil Pennington
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kudzurunner
5996 posts
Jun 24, 2016
4:25 AM
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It's a short but interesting piece. The one line that shows up in every piece of this sort is "....close to the crossroads where, legend has it, Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil." In my forthcoming book, BEYOND THE CROSROADS: THE DEVIL AND THE BLUES TRADITION, I take a hard, deeply researched look at that legend and show how it has no factual basis. Interestingly, the intersection in question didn't exist AS a crossroads during the years when Johnson made his rapid improvement. It's was just a nondescript T-junction that meant nothing to anybody--one of half a dozen such t-junctions on the outermost ring of the urban grid. It wasn't hooked up to Highways 49 and 61; they crossed elsewhere, much closer to what was then the heart of black Clarksdale, one long block from Issaquena Street. It's hard to convey just how unimportant that intersection was--unless you look at Sanborn Fire Insurance maps from the time, as I did, and unless you know the history through which that intersection was transformed into an actual paved crossing of two state highways. By the fall of 1933, Johnson was playing with Johnny Shines in Helena and was an exceptionally good guitarist. Clarksdale's "crossroads" was still a construction zone, and would be for the next two years: a big mess. Highway 49 had been freshly graded and repaved from Tutwiler on up, but the city and state were still arguing about Highway 61. There wasn't any crossroads there.
What IS true, however, is that Johnson could have stood at that location in the fall of 1935 and composed "Cross Road Blues." He didn't encounter the devil or sell his soul there--to get good on guitar, I mean--but he could have been inspired by that freshly completed intersection to write the song. That much is true, although that's not what anybody is arguing.
But of course the song itself doesn't talk about the devil, or selling your soul, or getting great skill on the guitar by trading your soul to the devil. It doesn't mention a "big black man." And of course itt doesn't mention Clarksdale, or any other location. Folks down around Dockery Farms like to claim that RJ's crossroads is the one there, half a mile from the front gate. I've been there; it's an evocative place, alright. Folks in Rosedale like to claim that the real crossroads is up there. (Somehow Clapton's addition of the Rosedale line of "Traveling Riverside Blues" to "Crossroads" is enough evidence for them.") And I've talked to several people who swear that the "real" crossroads is some other specific point in the Delta.
The interesting thing is that that intersection was known as "the crossroads" by Clarksdalians since the early 1940s--not in connection with Johnson, but as a new prime shopping neighborhood. Within six months after the crossroads was completed in 1935, there was a Cross Roads Service Station there; it's listed in the City Directory for 1936.
Johnson learned how to play from Ike Zimmerman in a graveyard across the street from Zimmerman's family home in Beauregard, Miss., about 10 miles south of where RJ grew up. He lived with Ike and his family for almost a year while they studied together. Ike had one notable quality: he didn't take black magic seriously. He'd tease his family about it, though. They all remembered that: his teasing jokes about "the haints" he'd been communing with in the graveyard. "Then we'd all have a big laugh with daddy" is how his daughter put it. They all knew it was a put-on: a ghost story to spook the kids. Johnson learned by studying with a great player who considered him his protege--"Daddy protected Robert" is how Ike's daughter remembered it; "protege" means "the protected one"--and who showed him everything he knew.
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Jun 24, 2016 4:36 AM
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Thievin' Heathen
772 posts
Jun 24, 2016
4:47 AM
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"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend".
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Fil
159 posts
Jun 24, 2016
12:03 PM
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Thanks Kudzu,
The legends, the myths, the history all make it a fascinating story. I've been down to Clarksdale three times in the last few years and have a sense of what the town and region are struggling with, tho would never presume to really understand they difficulties the face. But beautiful music came out of there. By the way, the Tutweiler TCEC has a youth music program that can always use some support (I do) from anyone interested in helping out. It's a great thing.
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Phil Pennington
Last Edited by Fil on Jun 24, 2016 12:04 PM
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MarioMS
118 posts
Jun 26, 2016
12:34 AM
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Hi Adam,
good the see that you are going to bring out a new book.
The story of the Crossroads and the Soul-to-Devil-thing was always a mystery since the 2 Robert Johnson Vinyls saw the light of day. But it was just a commercial thing, although there is a story behind the "Crossroads" which goes back to hundreds of years, goes back to Africa and other countries. But it has nothing to do with Robert Johnson.
One question Adam: I saw on your website of Center for the Study that you have published a couple of Articles. Do I have any chance to read them? Are you thinking of creating a collection in form of a book?
Thanks
Recent Publications
review of Yoknapatawpha Blues: Faulkner’s Fiction and Southern Roots Music, by Tim A. Ryan, The Southern Register (Fall 2015): 23-25.
“’I Got a Big White Fella From Memphis Made a Deal With Me’: Black Men, White Boys, and the Anxieties of Blues Postmodernity in Walter Hill’s Crossroads,” Arkansas Review 46.2 (Summer/August 2015): 85-104.
“Creating and Consuming ‘Hill Country Harmonica’: Promoting the Blues and Forging Beloved Community in the Contemporary South,” Creating and Consuming the U.S. South, ed. Martyn Bone, Brian Ward, and William Link (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2015), 139-157.
“Heaven and Hell Parties: Ministers, Bluesmen, and Black Youth in the Mississippi Delta, 1920-1942,” Arkansas Review 41.3 (Winter/December 2010): 186-203.
“Playing Chicken With the Train: Cowboy Troy’s Hick-Hop and the Transracial Country West,” Southern Cultures 16.4 (Winter 2010): 41-70. A longer version of the essay was published in a volume entitled Hidden In the Mix: African American Country Music Traditions, ed. Diane Pecknold (Duke University Press, 2013), 234-262.
“Ain’t No Burnin’ Hell: Southern Religion and the Devil’s Music,” Arkansas Review 41.2 (August 2010): 83-98.
review of Disturbing the Peace: Black Culture and the Police Power After Slavery, by Bryan Wagner, African American Review 43.4 (Winter 2009): 770-772.
“Plaintive Reiterations and Meaningless Strains: Faulkner’s Blues Understandings,” in Faulkner’s Inheritance: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, 2005, ed. Joseph R. Urgo and Ann J. Abadie (University Press of Mississippi, 2007): 53-81.
“Where Is The Love? Racial Wounds, Racial Healing, and Blues Communities,” Southern Cultures 12.4 (Winter 2006): 33-54. Reprinted in Southern Cultures: The Fifteenth Anniversary Reader, 1993-2008 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008)
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kudzurunner
5997 posts
Jun 26, 2016
7:01 AM
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Mario, you've outed me as a scholar! Thanks for asking about republication. The following articles will be part of my devil/blues book:
“’I Got a Big White Fella From Memphis Made a Deal With Me’: Black Men, White Boys, and the Anxieties of Blues Postmodernity in Walter Hill’s Crossroads,” Arkansas Review 46.2 (Summer/August 2015): 85-104.
“Heaven and Hell Parties: Ministers, Bluesmen, and Black Youth in the Mississippi Delta, 1920-1942,” Arkansas Review 41.3 (Winter/December 2010): 186-203.
“Ain’t No Burnin’ Hell: Southern Religion and the Devil’s Music,” Arkansas Review 41.2 (August 2010): 83-98.
The first article will be part of the long fifth chapter that also talks a lot about Robert Johnson, Clarksdale, and crossroads folklore.
The other two articles together form most of Ch. 1.
One other article, a shortened version of Ch. 2, was published in "Popular Music and Society."
I'd like to bring the other articles and reviews together at some point in book form.
Right now I'm working on a new book that is a series of twelve essays called "Blues Talk," based on those twelve lectures I did from the front seat of my car a few years back.
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