Hitting the Road: Exploring the Birthplace of Blues

Scott: 00:00:00

Welcome to Talk with History. I am your host, Scott, here with my wife and historian, Jen.

Jenn: 00:00:04

Hello.

Scott: 00:00:04

On this podcast, we give you insights to our history Inspired World Travels YouTube channel Journey and examine history through deeper conversations with the curious, the explorers and the history lovers out there.

Now, Jen, I noticed and I forgot to do this on the last podcast, so I have to apologize to Young Bald guy because Young Bald Guy gave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts. He said, wonderful. Been listening since Jen was interviewed. The History Unplugged. So that's another podcast that you were on a little while ago.

I think we've talked about it. So if there's any other listeners from coming from Jen's appearances on other podcasts, please, you know, drop us a review.

We've been getting some more reviews on Spotify as well, so those actually do help. They really do. So we've been getting some more listeners in downloads every month. So we really appreciate that.

Jenn: 00:00:56

Yeah, thank you, young Bald guy.

Scott: 00:01:04

All right, so we're just gonna kind of jump right into things today. So we've done a fair amount of recent content on the.

The kind of the birth of the blues, or what some people would consider the birth of the blues and more specifically the Mississippi Delta and Robert Johnson in that part of the country and the whole kind of history and lore and how the blues became the devil's music.

But today we're going to talk about the locations, if you want to visit some of these historic locations that Robert Johnson came from and was known for.

Jenn: 00:01:40

Yeah. So we're going to be talking about basically Highway 61, the Blues highway, which what I love about the blues is it's such an American genre.

It's an American music. Right. It's growing in this.

They call it the fertile crescent of American music, this Mississippi Delta area where these people have transitioned from enslavement to sharecropping. And the African American experience is being played out through music and song and lyrics.

And it's amazing what Robert Johnson does with the first rock and roll really like notes and that long blues note that he's able to play with the slide on the glass. But you have all these people there who are influencing each other with this music type. And each one is kind of like building on each other.

And Robert Johnson in the Devil's Crossroads becomes this legend of this area because the blues kind of get synonymous with the devil's music. So you get this Devil's Crossroads, you get these legends. And so we wanted to visit these locations. And so this podcast is if you want to visit them.

How do you visit them? Where are you going? And you'll see conflicting things.

When you look online, Devil's Crossroads, you'll see different areas pop up and we'll talk about which the. The four most popular ones where they claim their place in this Devil's Crossroads legend. So just so we understand, the Blues highway is Highway 61.

It runs from Memphis to New Orleans.

Scott: 00:03:20

It's about an hour. We're an hour and a half from us.

Jenn: 00:03:24

Memphis to get to the Blues highway is. But the Blues highway goes all the way from Memphis to New Orleans.

Scott: 00:03:29

Oh, all the way, yeah.

Jenn: 00:03:30

So it's a long highway, and it's synonymous with like, a Route 66. It's kind of like a famous road in American music. And you'll hear blues artists, like, refer to it sometimes and stuff in their songs.

And the Blues Museum is in Clarksdale, which is one of the towns along the Blues Highway. And then it's. It's just a very good way for you to travel to these locations as we talk about.

But along it, you're going to see, like, Greenwood, Leland, where Kermit the Frog is from Vicksburg, Natchez, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans.

So you're hitting those Southern towns along the Mississippi, which is synonymous with the Delta, because the Delta is built by the Mississippi River. Right. It's the Mississippi river that's overflowing into this farmland that's making this soil so fertile.

And so these people are farming this farmland. They're sharecropping this farmland. And so this is why the Blues highway comes, is synonymous with the Delta.

Scott: 00:04:37

And they've. Even one of the markers that we visited, which ended up being Robert Johnson's grave. So we'll talk about that in a little bit. They.

They have like a whole, like, I think of like a Delta blues trail, like a blues trail. And so there's. There's markers, and they've.

They've kind of been very specific about this, like, all along this highway for all of this history and blues that came out of this area.

Jenn: 00:04:59

Yeah. So. And they're all blue. So it's very un. You could follow the blues markers because they're blue historic markers.

Uh, we talk about the origin of the blues.

I want to stress there's no specific date that you can claim for the birth of the blues, because it was so much of this influencing that's happening between people that there's no one moment that it's like, oh, this is where the blues came. It just. It came out of this area from all these different artists who are influencing it.

And the blues note is a bent or flat note that adds a distinct sound. And then there's an influence in Chicago, the Chicago blues. Because we talk about the great migration from this area.

All these blues singers are going to Chicago. So that's another reason why Chicago blues kind of becomes synonymous with the Delta blues.

Scott: 00:05:53

And even one of the things we talked about our previous podcast, we. We talked about Sinners, the movie, and kind of a lot of the history behind that. And we touched on. On this topic a little bit.

't like, start in the. In the: 1930

I think the distinctive sound started becoming more popular and the music started becoming more popular in the 30s. But it. The blues had been been played and been around for. For a while. And they even talk about in the movie.

And this is a real life person, I think his name was Charlie Patton.

Jenn: 00:06:31

Charlie Patton.

Scott: 00:06:32

Charlie Patton. And that's again another spot that with a blues marker that mentions his name. We'll talk about here in just a second.

So the blues had been around for quite some time and obviously born out of kind of different cultures. Right. But it was. It was so kind of interesting as we've really. We've been kind of doing this little bit of history. It's not.

This isn't normal for us to kind of stay in one very specific area and one topic for such a long time. So I've been learning more and more about it.

And it's been really interesting seeing kind of all the various history and the names and kind of how it all built up. And Robert Johnson kind of ended up being one of those focal points.

Jenn: 00:07:11

Yeah. And like Scott said, it really starts to be recorded in the early 30s and on into the late 30s.

That's when they start to make their first cuts of this sound. So it's that first recording of blues music that kind of gets synonymous with or.

But like Scott said, it had been around for at least three decades before they start to even record it. So who's Robert Johnson? Just so we have a quick background. We already did a podcast about him, but he's considered one of the fathers of the blues.

The birth of the blues. The first rock and roller, first one to play rock and roll note. Because he could play that long blues note. Two hands sounded like four hands.

ounded like two. He's born in: 1911

sessions. These are Landmark: 1936

Um, and the Rock and Roll hall of Fame describes him as the first ever rock star.

Scott: 00:08:32

And, and there's.

There's an interesting thing, and I don't know if we mentioned it in our videos, but one of the things that I remember reading about his recording sessions, Robert Johnson's recording sessions, is these two recording sessions.

He basically sat down and if I remember correctly, and if you're listening or if you're watching, please correct me in the comments or shoot us an email. But I think he recorded all the songs that he did essentially in one take, like he did. One day he sat down and did a recording session. Bam.

That was it. He did. Like, who, you know, dozens and dozens of songs.

The next recording session, a couple years, one year or one year later, same thing, knocks it out all in one day. Which is if you know music at all, that's unheard of. It's, it's. It's really crazy. And speaks to his talent.

Jenn: 00:09:19

Oh, yeah. And how much. He probably had been playing that and doing that. So it just becomes more easy.

So the legend of Robert Johnson, this legend of the Rob, the Devil's Crossroads. Because very little was known outside of his.

is that Robert Johnson in the: 1930

And her and the baby are buried before Robert Johnson even learns of her death. And from that, he falls away from the normalcies of life. He falls away from a more conventional life and starts to play music.

And he finds himself at Docherty Dockery Plantation, which is their blue sign, says Birthplace of the Blues, question mark.

antation kind of lifestyle is: 2000

Scott: 00:10:37

Community.

Jenn: 00:10:37

It's community. And you're paid in their money and their commissary, where you use their money on the porch Friday nights, Saturday nights.

The owner wanted the people to have a good time and be happy where they were. So he encouraged blues singers to come and play at his plantation porch.

son finds himself here in mid-: 1930

Now, there's different crossroads that have gained popularity, but essentially what happens is he walks away past midnight and goes to the crossroads after midnight, sits in the middle, plays guitar until the devil approaches a dark man. And the dark man reaches out for the guitar. And by Charlie, by Robert Johnson handing it back to him. Handing it to him.

He tunes it, plays it and hands it back. And by Robert Johnson taking it back. Now he can play it just like the devil, which is, you know, he's mastered the guitar.

nd come from? It's because in: 1932

From the time he's laughed off the stage at Docherty to the time he walks into the juke joint in Clarksdale, a year and a half, he has mastered the guitar.

And the people there who know him, who've heard about him, who saw him, who heard the stories, say, how else could he have done that besides selling his soul to the devil.

Scott: 00:12:37

In the locations themselves?

And if you guys want to go to locations, we'll mention the addresses here, you know, but also we'll have links to a Google Maps link to any of these locations that we're. We're talking about, especially the ones Dockery Farms and the actual Devil's Crossroads and Clarksdale. But the.

If you want to go visit Dockery Farms is actually pretty cool because not only does it have kind of the whole set up there of the old plantation, but there's an old cotton gin there. And so you can actually go in and it's like they, they turn this cotton gin into kind of like a public open museum.

There's a sign over top and you walk in, you can press a button and like this narration will start. And you're just walking around inside of like a super old school cotton gin. It was actually really neat.

We didn't feature it too much in the video because it didn't really fit with the story. But if you want to go visit the location, you go to Dockery Farms, which is just down the way from the actual Devil's Crossroads.

Well, the supposed Devil's crossroads, yes.

Jenn: 00:13:34

So Dockery Farms is where you probably want to start. If you're going to start at Clarksdale, that's the intersection of 61 and 49, head south and it's 49 west, and 278 is Dockerty Farms.

And that's where you're going to want to start because this is where the story starts, right? And so from here, this is where it gets kind of dicey about which one is the Devil's Crossroads.

And it's funny because people are like, well, this is the real one. And I'm like, is that the real one where the devil actually met him?

So there's some that are kind of more plausible and there's some that are just kind of. They claim it because it's popular to claim it, but we don't really think that's what happened to Robert Johnson.

Scott: 00:14:16

We're trying to deal, in fact.

Jenn: 00:14:18

So we'll tell you what we really think, what really happens. Robert Johnson. But we're going to tell you how to get to these three crossroads.

If you're thinking of visiting the Devil's Crossroads, the one that has the most validity is right off of Docherty Farm.

So if you imagine Robert Johnson's left off the porch, he walks towards the railroad, he's walking towards the Mississippi, he's walking towards Cleveland, Mississippi. And he passes a church on his left. And he gets to the first crossroads, and that's Lusk Road and Walker Road.

And that's where we film most of our footage from because they're too dirt roads in the middle of nowhere. And it leads yourself to feel that eerie feeling if you were there at midnight.

It has a pretty big crossroads space that you could actually sit and you could see if you were alone and making a deal with the occult. Like, this could be a place where someone could visit you in the fog, in the night.

Scott: 00:15:12

And, and, and it was fun to go visit, like in. And obviously I'll. I'll link our video down below, but, you know, I brought the drone out because we're out smack in the middle of nowhere, right?

It, it really. There's nothing much around.

There's this old Dockery farm, which isn't really a thing anymore other than just kind of, I think, kept up by the area, by people in the area, because they know it's still a tourist draw.

Jenn: 00:15:33

It's very historic, too. I mean, plantation life, this sharecropping life was a very historic part of the Delta after enslavement.

And it's very neat to see how African Americans were sustained in this kind of farming lifestyle. And so they have a gin, an old cotton gin that you can see See how it worked and how big it was.

Scott: 00:15:54

They have like a video that you can play in there. You just go in and you press the button. It'll play like a little video.

And you know, as long as you're not climbing on the old rusty equipment, you just staying on the path, it's pretty safe.

Jenn: 00:16:03

It's pretty cool. I definitely recommend it. So that's the. I say the more legit crossroads. When you see people go visit the crossroads, that's like the more legit one.

Now there's Rosedale Crossroads, which from Cleveland, if he were to get on the train. So Dockery is right outside of Cleveland, Mississippi. If he were to get on the train, Rosedale takes you to the Mississippi River. It would take you.

So if he's trying to get away. Right. That would take you by train to the river. So Rosedale also claims a crossroads there. Their crossroads is paved.

It's the intersection of Highway 1 and 8. They have a blue sign.

And its reputation kind of gathers strength because when Eric Clapton recorded Traveling the Crossroad Blues, which was a Robert Johnson song, he. He injects Rosedale in there. So it's not originally was not part of the song. He puts it in there. But.

But if you can imagine, he's walking dejected from. Doherty gets on the train and that's the first crossroads he will hit. Like I said, there's a blue sign there and it's paved, but it's 8 and 1.

Now south of there is the Beulah crossroads. And you're probably like, really? All these crossroads now, we.

Scott: 00:17:24

We only visited the one in our. In our video. So these other two, Rosedale and Beulah. We did. We didn't get a chance to go to.

Jenn: 00:17:30

ght be famous if you know the: 1986

Scott: 00:17:35

Yeah. With Ralph Macchio.

Jenn: 00:17:37

Without Macchio.

Scott: 00:17:38

So hold on. I just watched the, like the guitar battle scene. Look it up on YouTube. I'll put a link down to it. Look down to it. The guitar.

Like he's like battling some other guitarist. It's amazing. It's so much fun. I need to watch that movie.

Jenn: 00:17:53

So that's the assumption. He's again traveling from Dougherty Plantation. He's walking west towards the Mississippi and towards the railroad.

And instead of going to Rosedale, he goes a little south. And that's from the movie. It's another two dirt roads that meet in a crossroad. It's a little bit more rural. It has like an old dead tree.

So it looks a little Bit more eerie. But that's like again from the movie, a lonesome place around that general area where these three kind of crossroads claim.

Because of being laughed off of the porch of Docherty Plantation. So they're all kind of triangulate around that. The famous crossroads in Clarksdale where people take their photographs.

And it has the two guitars because it's the.

s back into the juke joint in: 1932

But it wouldn't be the place that he actually had met the devil because it's not close to where the story goes. He was laughed off of the. The porch of the plantation.

Scott: 00:19:15

Yeah. And that. That is one of the locations that we visited in Clarksdale. And that was actually relatively easy to find.

I think there's like a little barbecue place that's. That's right there. And then just down the way, right. Is the Ground Zero Blues Club. And this one I thought was really cool.

I was really bummed it wasn't open because I would love to have gone in there. I don't know if our kids would have been allowed in because it looks pretty dirty. But it looks super cool.

And this Ground Zero Blues Club is owned by Morgan Freeman, or at least he's one of the owners. And it looks like it's only open certain times. You have to look it up. So if you're interested in going. But they still play like legit blues.

They have little mini festivals there and all that stuff. So if you want to work that into it, check it out ahead of time to make sure you know when the hours are.

Because they're not open even like five days a week. It's like four days a week. You know, sometimes on the weekend it's. It's. It's got weird hours. So make sure you check that ahead of time.

Jenn: 00:20:09

Yeah, it's. It's like a juke joint. It's going to be like Wednesday nights, Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night.

It's kind of like that, like where people would be listening to blues at night. I think it's open more during the tourist seasons. It has murals of Robert Johnson on the outside.

Scott: 00:20:24

Yeah, it's neat.

Jenn: 00:20:24

Of an old juke joint in the Bayute. Like what that would look like. But it's super neat. And even if you Just get to sit on the porch like we did in the video.

It's super, like, historically, you know, historical and stuff. You feel like you're in the. Immersed in the Delta blues. So it's super cool to go there.

So I'll give some historical fact of what really happened to Robert Johnson, and then we'll talk about visiting his grave.

Like, we actually went to the location of his more legitimate grave because there's three sites of his that claim his grave site, and we went to the one that has the most primary source documentation. But they do believe that Robert Johnson was laughed off of the porch. We do. They do believe that did happen.

But he makes it back down to where he was born in Hazelhurst, Mississippi. And when he gets back to his birthplace, he befriends an Ike Zimmerman, who is also a guitarist. And Ike Zimmerman really takes him under his wing.

He lives with him for over a year. And Iken and Robert go to the Beauregard Cemetery, which is the cemetery outside of Hazlehurst, Mississippi.

And they play guitar on the tombstones from like midnight to three in the morning every night because no one bothers them. And Ike will tell him, make a mistake, no one will care.

Scott: 00:21:51

Yeah. So the legend kind of is another. Some more seasoning to that legend.

Jenn: 00:21:56

Yeah, it gets that supernatural story because it's a cemetery.

Scott: 00:22:01

Right.

Jenn: 00:22:01

And they're playing to these tombstones after midnight. And they do this all year, which, if you live in Mississippi, in the Delta, a cemetery at midnight is cooler, temperature wise.

Scott: 00:22:13

I understand why they do it at night time instead of during the day.

Jenn: 00:22:16

Yeah. So it makes sense. It makes sense. And Ike Zimmerman eventually will find the Lord and be born again and move to California.

And he kind of, I wouldn't say rejects his musical background, but he doesn't talk about it that much. And so that's why he doesn't claim this. This tie to Robert Johnson and his. His part in making Robert Johnson the guitarist that he was.

le a year and a half later in: 1932

So if you want to go to those sites, the. The. The cemetery is still there for you. And I think there is one tombstone that really claims to be the Robert Johnson one that he sat on.

What's neat, though, is going to when we went to visit his grave.

Scott: 00:23:15

That was neat one, because it's another stop on this kind of blues trail. So there's a historic marker there with Robert Johnson's name. It's blue. I'll put a picture up of it. But also there's a little church right there.

And then it's a legitimate cemetery. Gravestones and stuff like that. But it's right in this super historic area. Right. Like we've done Emmett Till content a long time ago.

And it's not far from Money, Mississippi, which is where a lot of Emmett Till stuff happened. You know, not far from Greenwood, which is big. You know, for a period of time, I was considered the cotton capital of the world. So it was.

It was neat to be in this area. And then here is this blues legend, the first face you see if you walk into the Rock and Roll hall of Fame, as you mentioned earlier.

And here's this guy's grave.

Jenn: 00:23:58

Yeah, it's like in the middle of American history. Right. Because we've done Emmett Till and Bryant Grocery, and it was right down the same road as Bryant Grocery. It's on the same road. It was just.

It blew my mind. So it's 15 miles outside of Greenwood. And we even looked up the address. It's like Main road.

Scott: 00:24:22

Yeah, it's like main. Main street, which. I don't know how it's called Main street, because it's. It's kind of like a country highway.

Jenn: 00:24:28

Yeah, it's. It's very interesting, but I think. What is that street? It's. It's lafleur County. So it's Little Zion. Little Zion Missionary Baptist Church.

There it is. So if you're visiting, I mean, it's right along the little Tallahatchie river, like it is in this heart of, like you said, the cap.

The cotton capital of the world. You get the ode to Billy Joe from the Tallahatchie Bridge. It's right there.

And then you're getting Emmett Till, where he walks into Bryant Grocery, which is right down the road. And we went to this church, and it was the one place we went to that other visitors were there to see Robert Johnson.

Scott: 00:25:07

There was probably like three or four cars that pulled up.

Jenn: 00:25:10

Nobody pulled up while we were at the. The crossroads at the dirt roads. No one pulled up when we were at the plantation, but people pulled up to visit Robert Johnson's grave.

Scott: 00:25:19

Yeah, I. I was surprised. And. And I can't kind of say this enough because it's in the middle of nowhere. I mean, it's. It's not too far outside of Greenwood.

And Greenwood's, like, that's smaller city, but there's not much in Greenwood. Right. And.

And this one couple that came up, I mean, they were on some, like, big old road trip that they were doing, and they went out of their way to come and visit Robert Johnson's grave.

Jenn: 00:25:44

Yes. And so he had been playing for a few weeks at a juke joint. It's called Three Forks. It was outside of Greenwood, Mississippi.

And the theory is that he made a jealous husband mad. He was flirting with a married woman.

Scott: 00:25:57

He.

Jenn: 00:25:57

He made the husband mad that the husband poisoned his whiskey. And the whiskey label had been opened like the seal was broken. And a friend warned him that, hey, that seal is broken. I wouldn't drink that.

But he spent $7 for his bottle of whiskey, and he was going to drink it. And, I mean, he gets agony, pain, stomach pain, and he drinks this on August 13th. He dies August 16th. So three days.

And of the three possible burial locations, this one has research from a sister. People have claimed to have been there when the grave was dug. And he was buried under a pecan tree in the cemetery there.

So a marker has been put in place for where they believe that's close by. And you can tell people make like a mecca to him because there's shot glasses where people would drink shots, beer cans, beer cans, guitar picks.

People come out there and play for him. And we left an American flag because of his impact on American history.

But you could tell people go out there to pay homage to Robert Johnson and his impact on the blues and American history. So if you're looking for any of these locations, these are the ones that are really synonymous with Robert Johnson, Devil's Crossroads, and.

And the birth of the Delta Blues. But there's so much more out there for you if you want to go along the blues highway and see all of these other musical influencers.

Scott: 00:27:24

Yeah, it was. It was super fun.

And, you know, I'd call it family friendly because you're just kind of visiting these kind of random spots, you know, and you're not in the middle of any big city or anything like that. But again, we'll have, you know, links to Google Maps, you know, so I actually save the locations for all of the locations that we go to.

I save them in a Google Maps. If you click on the link, it'll show you kind of all of these locations saved together. So you can. You can click on that.

You can watch our video if you want to check it out. And if you don't have the chance to travel out there. Like, we actually videoed from all of. From the majority of these locations.

And that was actually one of my. One of my favorite videos that we've made in quite some time. Really, really fun. You know, it's just such a fun story.

So we encourage you to kind of get out there to go see it because that's what we do here on Walk With History and then on Talk with History, we tell you, hopefully you're listening to this podcast on your way to the Devil's Crossroads.

Jenn: 00:28:16

Yeah.

Scott: 00:28:17

So we hope you guys enjoy that and I guess we'll talk to you next time.

Jenn: 00:28:20

Yeah. Thank you.

Scott: 00:28:26

This has been a Walk with History production. Talk With History is created and hosted by me, Scott Benny. Episode researched by Jennifer Benny.

Check out the show notes for links and references mentioned in this episode. Talk with History is supported by our fans@thehistoryroadtrip.com our eternal thanks go out to those providing funding to help keep us going.

Thank you to Doug McLiberty, Larry Myers, Patrick Benny, Gale Cooper, Christy Coates, and Calvin Gifford. Make sure you hit that follow button in that podcast player and we'll talk to you next.