It's Time for the King Bisquit Flour Hour!

Let's see......time to play catch up. 

Loved Memphis.  Beale St., music - everywhere. 

We went to Graceland, Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee.  Paid our respects to Elvis.  It was awesome and moving.  Tour was great - we loved it.  Could feel Elvis all around us - made him more real.  However, there were no sightings. 

There was a riverboat tour on the Mississippi and finished the afternoon with a walk down the street where  Martin Luther King led his last march that took him to the Lorraine Hotel.  This is now the site of the National Civil Rights Museum.  Although we didn't go into the museum, the site where he was assassinated was sobering. 

Monday AM we were on the road again, this time to Helena, Arkansas.  The main street is like a trip back in time.  They were preparing for a big blues festival this coming weekend - expecting 100,000 people!  In this little town!!!  Some festival goers were already arriving and beginning to set up campsites around the area.  There are big headliners expected - BB King, Dr. John, Taj Mahal.  And - the concert is free!  Making plans to get back for next years' festivities.  Memphis, Helena, Clarksdale.  Yeah baby!

While in Helena we paid a visit to the King Bisquit Flour Hour Blues Show.  This show has been on the radio for the past 60 years with the same dj.  He had great stories to tell about Riley (aka BB King) and some of the old blues singers.  We sat with another couple from Woodstock, NY.  He told everyone he had visitors that day, read our names off, asked us questions on the air and then had me read an advertisement.  It was wicked fun! 

Moving along........back across the Mississippi and on the road through the Delta once again.  Stops were made at Dockery Farm which is thought to be the birthplace of the blues and a place where Charlie Patton played on a regular basis, and then the old site of the Peavine Railroad.  The Peavine is the vehicle with which many of the early blues dudes and dudettes moved around the Delta. 

The Delta is a flat, open, desolate place.  But, having experienced it, we now understand how the Blues was born.  I heard someone say in a video the other day while at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale that the blues was the reward for the sacrifices the people made after toiling so hard out in the fields.  We've seen those cotton fields.  Can't even imagine.....

I don't think P and I will ever listen to the Blues again without having an "attitude".  There is something rich, deep and emotionally moving about being here.   We have met  people - like Mary Shephard at the BBKing Museum who was the queen of the jukes, or the woman sitting around the campfire at Tallahatchie Flats who went to Chico State (P's alma mater), or the woman in the shop in Helena who told us Bill Clinton stories (she knew him), or Sunshine Bob at the radio show.............  At times it has been deeply moving and humbling.  Feeling the struggle of the southern blacks and what they have endured - and continue to endure - although it is better - but only a little.  Hearing stories from the waitress in a restaurant in Greenwood about how she lives in a town where blacks are not welcome, and sends her children to a private school (as most whites do) because public schools are black schools.  Standing in front of where Martin Luther King was shot.  Coming out of BB King's museum tour and feeling so emotional about his story that I sat with Mary Shepard and cried.  People here - black and white - have welcomed us, been friendly and kind.  And don't forget - we are clearly northerners.  They still flying the Confederate flag.

I dare say that our time here will stay with us for a very long time.  No regrets about this trip - except maybe that it would have been nice to have one more day in Memphis!

And ok - can't leave the Delta without saying that, although our cholesterol levels may be up or we have added a pound or two, we freakin' love that barbecue!!!!!!!!  Everyday I've been grateful that I was not a vegetarian at this moment in time!

Today is a rest day in Vicksburg.........tomorrow IT'S ON TO LAFAYETTE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Peace, Love and Barbecue
(now I know why Marcia Ball sings this song!)

Barbecue is becoming a religious experience

On the move today. Destination Clarksdale - and Abe's barbecue. Now we thought this trip was about music. Yeah right. P is on to the tamales. My thing is the barbecue. Good thing neither of us is a vegetarian.

Will be looking to detox after this trip.

We left Greenwood learning that Robert Johnson probably expired in one of the neighboring cabins. Some previous travellers had sightings of people who were not paying visitors. I laid awake all night. Good thing we ht the road.

We are happy to be in Clarke

standin at the crossroads of rts 49 and 61. Visited the Delta Blues Museum. Tonight music at Ground Zero Blues Club and this wicked funky place called Red's. We feel like our trip so far this week has laid the groundwork to appreciate the music. The blues has taken on a new meaning. It has become way more than just music.

P is feeling much better today. We found coffee!

Tomorrow we have a date with Elvis! It's on to Memphis and Beale St.

Peace, Love and Elvis Presley