Last Month's Travels - The Delta

The Delta



Greenwood, Mississippi home of Bobby Gentry...


(Hey Martha...sounds like she's eatin' dinner at noon...how could that be?)

among others...like the fella playin' guitar on this..



Hubert Sumlin playin one of the greatest lines of g'itar in the history of electricity.* It's also the home of Guitar Slim, and if you've never heard The Things That I Used To Do...you can find it on this blog. Flimsy Cups has ranked it at #9 on the all time list of Blues Songs.

You reckon anybody still plays the g'itar in Greenwood?

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Of course, when people think of the Delta...Clarkesdale is probably the first place that comes to mind. It's the home of the Delta Blues...the Blues that most people are familiar with. Robert Johnson and all that...the Crossroads are at Clarkesdale.

More importantly, to me, it's the home of Cat Head Records...maybe the best record store in the state.



There was nothing 12 bar about the rythmic clang he was beating out of that old guitar. Cat Head has much more of Hill Country feel to it than Delta...afterall Hill Country blues is still alive and kicking. Besides Clarkesdale has always been more than Delta Blues...Sam Cooke's from there, Ike Turner, and John Lee Hooker. He learned to play from his uncle that had a one chord style very similar to what you find in the Hills.

Can't forget Tunica.**



And we can't leave the Delta without some of this...



These are the same fields that fed Liverpool when textiles were employing around 4 million Britons. If Eric Hobsbawm is to be believed (always a cautious proposition...even when he's not going out on a limb) this was the fuel for the engine that ran the British Empire in it's first phases.

Or this...



* Howlin' Wolfe is actually from around West Point in the Columbus area...south of Tupelo and not far from where Tennessee Williams was born.

**The pictures of Cat Head and Tunica were taken last year, but better than anything I got on my last trip.