The Dream of the Blues Is Alive in Clarksdale
The Dream of the Blues Is Alive in Clarksdale
High-Octane Corn Whiskey in Mississippi
I find the old Mississippi Delta bluesmen compelling, both their music and their hardscrabble, mysterious lives. Those lives often were filled with drinking, womanizing, and performing at house parties and juke joints for whatever money they could score. Take Robert Johnson: dead at 27 after drinking whiskey, possibly poisoned by a jealous husband. Charley Patton, a little man with a big voice, bore a scar from somebody’s attempt to slit his throat. He married six to eight times before he died at 43. Son House reputedly killed a man and did time at the infamous Parchman Farm, now called Mississippi State Penitentiary.
That’s why I’ve come to Clarksdale, which proclaims itself the birthplace of the blues. Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil here for supernatural guitar prowess. “Father of the Blues” W.C. Handy lived here once, and it’s where “Empress of the Blues” Bessie Smith died.
Clarksdale recreates and celebrates its blues history. The Delta Blues Museum dazzles in an old train depot and several clubs showcase the genre. They are evocative of the past, but I wonder if any authentic juke joints survive in Clarksdale. Red’s Lounge is my best bet. It’s in a squat brick building with slabs of wood and fiberglass slapped haphazardly over doors and windows. Three picnic benches and a smoker hog the sidewalk.
Inside, Red’s is cramped and dark except for the bordello-red neon musical notes clutching the walls. Musicians perform on open-floor space 10 feet from the audience. This, combined with the low ceiling and covered windows, makes me feel like I’m in somebody’s basement. Or a cave.
The crowd, if you can call it that, isn’t what I expected. It consists of 10 mostly white middle-aged people. They could be mistaken for slot machine devotees from the casinos 35 miles away. It’s a far cry from the sweating, whooping couples dancing wantonly to the “devil’s music” that I envisioned.
Owner Red Paden doles out $4 beers at the bar. He’s a burly, blustery man in his 60s, inexplicably wearing sunglasses. The two-man band is comprised of Mark “Muleman” Massey and keyboardist Billy Earheart. Red occasionally banters with them, pumps his fist or boogies briefly.
Muleman is soon joined by a kid on drums, and he invites a visiting Australian guitarist to sit in, too. Muleman is a force: his powerful, earthy voice could make birds fall from the sky. He learned the guitar from the son of a well-known bluesman while both were incarcerated at Parchman. This being the blues, some song lyrics are suggestive, of course. “I don’t feel like sleeping, but I feel like lying down,” Muleman growls.
A jar said to contain high-octane corn whiskey appears in front of Muleman. He invites anybody to come up for a swig, swearing it’s better than Viagra. A 50ish man eagerly does so.
By the end of the band’s second set the room’s vibe has changed. The audience has doubled. Younger people have straggled in. A couple dances slowly and ever more sensuously. They soon leave, to their hotel room, I presume. Maybe it’s contagious, because a middle-aged couple makes out at their table like horny college kids. The corn-whiskey sipper departs with his woman, looking confident. Me? My baby is back in Georgia and I also leave, feeling a bit morose. Still, I’m consoled by one thought: The blues is alive in Clarksdale.