Part 6: Mississippi Delta Antebellum Blues

While I’ve discovered a new-found appreciation of Elvis – who we blast out of the speakers as we leave Memphis – I’ll never become a Bob Dylan fan. However there’s still a thrill as we drive straight onto Highway 61, made even more famous by Dylan’s album of the same name… revisited. This Great River Road, which runs for 1400 miles from the city of Wyoming, Minnesota to New Orleans, becomes iconic as it travels through the Mississippi Delta, and in the early 20th century, travelling musicians took the Blues along its route, giving birth to musical legends along the way.

The Delta Blues eventually travelled north and became popular in cities like Chicago, as southern cotton-harvesting African-Americans, recently released from slavery, lost their jobs and migrated in search of work. But it’s in the Mississippi Delta that the Blues Trail is kept alive, and once we’ve crossed the stateline from Tennessee into Mississippi, the vast open farming country, full of giant crop-spraying machinery, enormous tractors and even airplanes dusting fields with pesticides flying above, stretches out before us with signs to historic places in the history of the blues regularly signposted.

We drive past towns such as Tunica, the evocatively named Moon Landing and the downright bizarrely monikered Pride Of The Pond Catfish; all the while the long road disappearing into the heat-hazed vanishing point on the horizon, whilst trucks rumble past us in the opposite direction. After a couple of hours we turn off onto the small, twisting country road, Highway 49, just before Clarksdale, in search of the infamous railroad crossing where devilish bluesman Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil, in return for his musical talent.

There’s much debate as to where this spot actually was, but with the help of Google Maps we pull up at a tree in the middle of nowhere, next to a railroad crossing, with not a marker to be seen. It definitely has the feel of somewhere that, at the stroke of midnight, the devil might make his transaction, although it’s closer to midday and the heat of the sun is at its most hellish.

A few snapshots taken we drive the next couple of miles into the fabled town of Clarksdale, where on a central roundabout, helpfully named Devils Crossing, there’s a big tacky sign commemorating the event and a diner called Abe’s Bar-B-Q, decorated with local news-stories about Highway 61, the history of the Blues and Robert Johnson. We pop in for a bathroom break and a cup of coffee, and in an example of true Southern hospitality, the owners tell us to help ourselves from the filter-pot and don’t charge us a dime.

On we drive, stopping at a supermarket in Cleveland for some take-out lunch, which proves challenging in such a meat-heavy place, and past the town of Leland which has a huge water tower proclaiming it to be the Birthplace of Kermit the Frog! As we wind ever further through the floodplains of the Mississippi, past little churches and big barns, trailer shacks and glinting grain silos, the power of the river becomes evident with submerged fields and flooded houses dotting the sides of the road.

It’s mid-afternoon by the time we arrive at Vicksburg, a place synonymous with the American Civil War. In 1863, the siege of Vicksburg, a strategically important town held by the Southern Confederate Army, lasted 47 days, with the residents forced to dig bunkers and caves to escape the shelling. The prolonged battle proved to be a pivotal moment in the war, leading to victory for the Unionists, under Abraham Lincoln, and the end of the war, and ultimately slavery across the southern USA.

To commemorate this historic siege the Vicksburg National Military Park was created in 1899 and is a remarkable and vast place, with hundreds of statues, memorials and buildings on display. Visitors drive along its 16 miles of road, stopping at scenes of terrible battles where over 17,000 troops died, including more than 4000 black slaves who were given freedom once they’d signed up with the Unionist forces.

The Illinois Mausoleum and the salvaged wreck of the USS Cairo are particularly impressive, but it’s the quiet spots where mounds of long-forgotten fortifications are now covered in grass, and the endless rows of crosses in the graveyards that linger longest in the memory.

We spend the best part of two hours exploring the site, before getting back in the jeep and crossing The Big Black River, driving through Little Bayou Pierre where every other building is a church and entering Port Gibson, which is where we start to see the grand Antebellum homes that merchants and plantation owners, rich on the profits of slavery, built.

It’s 6.30pm when we finally reach our resting place for the night, the town on Natchez on the banks of the Mississippi, voted America’s Best Small City for a Weekend Break by Conde Nast Traveler magazine. We’re staying at The Guest House – one of the beautiful Antebellum buildings that make the town so famous – and are given the Ullman Room, all opulent furniture and heavily brocaded furnishings.

With evening fast approaching we decide to take a walk through the town to see the sights. It’s an historic part of the USA, dating back just over 300 years to when it was first settled by the French in 1716 The oldest continuous settlement on the Mississippi river it started to boom under British control from 1763 to 1779, when the Spanish took over and established it as the capital of the Old South. Some of the most historic buildings in Natchez date back to Spanish control, but the grandest are the houses of the cotton traders and plantation owners from the 19th Century, when for a time it was home to half of the millionaires in the US.

Now a sleepy but cute town it retains a peaceful charm, with the gorgeous old buildings now boasting antique shops, bars and restaurants. With the sun setting we head for dinner at the Kings Tavern, which is the oldest building in Natchez, and full of characters, not least the bar staff who make a mean cocktail. They also have a vegan menu which we make the most of, ordering tasty flatbreads with delicious toppings, before heading back to our chintzy room for the night.