In 1994 I was invited to perform at the Kenlake Blues festival in Kentucky. I accepted the invitation and resolved to book some other gigs to make the trip more financially feasible. I really wanted to visit the Delta region which had spawned so many artists that had and continue to inspire me.

Performing solo enables you to be more flexible and keep expenses down. I took three guitars with me as I flew to Nashville. I carried on-board my National Triolian and Martin D-35 and checked my Gibson Les Paul which was in a rugged case.

My first gig was opening for Johnny Neel at Third and Lindsley, a club in Nashville still operating at that address. Neel is a talented singer, songwriter and player who's an alum of the Allman Brothers Band. I played a set and was joined by an old songwriting buddy, Mark Kurasz, who blew some harp on my final numbers.

After the show I was distressed to discover that someone had hit my parked rental car leaving both a large dent and the accident scene. To keep my costs down, I had passed on the optional collision damage and was fairly freaking out at the potential cost of the repair. I called the police to file a formal accident report. The officer who showed up was a large, unfriendly man and the frothy soda bottle he kept beside him didn't contain Dr. Pepper or Moxie but instead served as a spittoon for his chaw.

After the report was concluded, I put my guitars in the trunk of the rental car. After unsuccessfully attempting to close the trunk several times I took a closer look and realized I had been slamming the large semi-circular hinge inside the trunk down upon my D-35 which, for ease of travel the first and last time, was in a gig bag rather than its hardshell case. I put a couple of fine cracks in the spruce top and was sick over it. The instrument's gorgeous sound remained unaffected, however, and it would be repaired by master luthier Frank Lucchesi upon my return home.

My harp-playing friend informed me that the gold card I used had insurance that would take care of the rental car's damage. Things were looking up. I met with a publisher the next day who hooked me up with another artist who was also playing the Kenlake festival with the Excello Records Revue. I drove to Kentucky Lake which proved to be a pretty area although very hot. My performance went over very well and I sold some CDs and met some nice folks. There I saw a horse fly on the side of a tree that was so large I thought it was one of those joke rubber bugs. There are lots of horses in Kentucky.

I next drove to Memphis to begin my pilgrimage and arrived there late in the day. I watched the ducks walk through the lobby of the Peabody Hotel and ate good barbecue at B.B. King's club while listening to the blues of the late, great Little Jimmy King (an older brother of Eric Gales.) Afterwards, I strolled down Beale Street and enjoyed the street performers. At the hotel a fire alarm went off in the middle of the night and all the guests had to wait on the sidewalk outside before getting the okay to go back to our rooms.

I had to leave Memphis by noon the next day to make my gig the following night at the City Grocery in Oxford, Mississippi. I had to choose between visiting Sun Studios or Graceland as I only had the morning. The decision was easy for me. I visited Sun and paid my respects to one of the most important recording studios in the history of popular music. Sam Phillips owned the Memphis Recording Service and recorded amazing artists such as Howlin' Wolf and B.B. King for record labels like Modern, R.P.M. and Chess in the early 1950's. In 1951, Phillips recorded the song "Rocket 88" by Jackie Brenston (the singing sax player in Ike Turner's band) which is often cited as the first rock and roll record. Phillips went on to discover and record Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Charlie Rich among others in the mid-1950s for his own Sun Records label. Being in Sun Studios was like being in a shrine, a holy place for me. The tour guide was a visitor from Poland who was living his dream. His reverence more than made up for any difficulty in understanding his thick accent.

I drove down to Oxford, MS, home of Ole Miss (University of Mississippi) to stay with the friend of a friend who was a professor there. I had heard about southern hospitality but I must say I was moved by the graciousness of this southern gentleman who opened up his house to a complete stranger based on our mutual friend's recommendation.

Occurrences like this facilitate life on the road and help an artist of humble means save money. The aforementioned friend also helped get me a P.A. system for my gig and introduced me to Dick Waterman, blues scholar and manager of many important re-discoveries like Son House and Skip James in the 1960's as well as developing the early career of Bonnie Raitt. Having dinner with Waterman was a memorable experience for this blues maven.

The next day, I drove to Clarksdale to visit the Delta Blues Museum. Among the many blues lore items on display was a section of the cabin in which Muddy Waters was born as well as the "Muddywood" guitar that ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons had made from it. John Lee Hooker was from Clarksdale. Along with Hooker, Waters and Elvis, a short list of Mississippi artists would also include Charlie Patton, Son House, Robert Johnson, Howlin' Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, Elmore James, B.B. King, Albert King, Jimmy Reed, Bo Diddley, Otis Rush and Magic Sam! I could go on and on.

I left Clarksdale and drove up Highway 61 to where it intersects with Highway 49 and the two merge for a time. That's a famous crossroads. I had never seen land so flat or so much cotton before. A dramatic thunder storm rolled in that was the color of a huge bruise. It was all the more impressive because of the big sky. I'm from the Northeast where the trees and rolling hills could never permit such an expansive view of the sky from horizon to horizon. I drove across the mighty Mississippi River to Helena and West Helena in Arkansas. Sonny Boy Williamson (Alex Miller) did a famous radio show out of West Helena on station KFFA starting in 1941, and the local scene with its raucous music and night life eclipsed that of Memphis which then had a curfew.

I still play blues-based music and have contributed fifteen biographies of bluesmen to The African American National Biography recently published by Oxford University Press. It was an honor to research the lives and music of these magnificent artists and I am grateful I had the chance to travel some of the same roads that they did when our country was more dangerous and far less hospitable to men like them.

I'll see you down that blues highway,
Mark Nomad

Bookmark this article with:

          

Stumble It!     Share on Facebook      Delicious