Beep! Beep! Passing Through – October 18-19, 2010

There’s a reason it’s taken me two weeks to organize our trip home from NOLA; writer’s block – I couldn’t figure out how to summarize it all, how to wrap it all in a neat little package and round it off with a pink (or should it have been “blue?”) ribbon.

CB loading all the accoutrements of our blues trip (most of it stuff for me, I'm afraid - oxygen to throne chair). Loading and unloading is truly a herculean task.

One last shot of the palm trees outside our New Orleans Motel 6. Macho use of my 20X Canon point-and-shoot.

‘Twas a Monday morning in New Orleans. Oh yes it was.  (Doo wop! Doo wop!) The sun shone brightly as we fired up the GPS and found our way to Interstate 10, our exit route.

Such beauty! So fragile! Sadly, political gridlock has insured New Orleans is no less protected against a Katrina than it was the last time!

I-59: Back in Mississippi, south of Hattiesburg. Don drove almost the entire trip because he would be, by his own admission, a most discontented, discombobulated and vexatious "passenger."

This, then, is the part where I confess a grievous senior moment/misstep/screwup as trip navigator. I missed Hattiesburg, Mississippi, one of the few places which can truthfully proclaim it was one of the delivery rooms where blues gave birth to rock and roll!

Damn!

It was in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in 1929 that Blind Roosevelt Graves and his brother Uaroy (sic) Graves recorded “Crazy About My Baby,” described by Wikipedia as “a rhythmic country blues with small group accompaniment.” Seven years later (1936), the Graves Brothers joined blues piano virtuoso Cooney Vaughn as The Mississippi Jook Band to record “Barbecue Bust” and “Dangerous Woman,” also considered to be among the earliest rock and roll songs. (I think most, if not all, of these songs are available at Amazon.com.)

(from Wikipedia) “In July 1936 they (the Graves brothers) were located by talent broker H. C. Speir, who arranged for them to record in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, according to some sources at the train station although Speir later told Wardlow that the recordings took place in a temporary studio in the Hotel Hattiesburg at Mobile Street and Pine Street. For the session they were joined by local piano player Cooney Vaughn, who performed weekly on radio station WCOC in Meridian prior to World War II. The trio were billed on record as the Mississippi Jook Band. In all, they recorded four tracks at Hattiesburg for the American Record Company – “Barbecue Bust”, “Hittin’ The Bottle Stomp”, “Dangerous Woman” and “Skippy Whippy”. According to the Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, these ‘…featured fully formed rock & roll guitar riffs and a stomping rock & roll beat’.”

Don, that there are two, count em, two Mississippi Blues Trail markers in Hattiesburg. One commemmorates the Mississippi Jook Band; the second the Hi-Hat Club which was a major stop on the “Chitlin’ Circuit.”

The Hi-Hat is described by Mississippi tourism folks:

The Hi-Hat Club, which was built at this site in the 1950s, was once an important stop on the “chitlin circuit” for African American blues and soul performers. B. B. King, James Brown, Otis Redding, Ike & Tina Turner, and many others played to packed houses here. Owner Milton Barnes (1915-2005), one of Mississippi’s most successful African American entrepreneurs, also owned Barnes Cleaners, the Hattiesburg Black Sox baseball team, and several other night spots in addition to his own contracting business.

The Hi-Hat Club flourished during the heyday of the “chitlin circuit,” when most of the touring venues for the nation’s top blues, R & B, and soul performers were large African American nightclubs and dance halls. The Hi-Hat, one of the largest clubs in Mississippi, often drew crowds of eight to nine hundred, sometimes in excess of a thousand. As economics and audiences changed, the role of clubs like the Hi-Hat declined as the bigger shows gravitated to auditoriums and arenas, and by 1994 the Hi-Hat had closed its doors.

I did not, however, miss, farther up on I-59, Meridian, Mississippi, the purported birthplace of Jimmie Rodgers, the "Singing Brakeman," whose music reached way out beyond boundaries of the blues and country music. Jimmie was "discovered" when he auditioned in Bristol, Tennessee, for a New York record producer (Ralph Peer of Victor Talking Machine Company) in 1927, and opened the door to the treasury. The Carter family recorded for the first time during that same audition session.

Train commemorating the "Singing Brakeman" at his birthplace memorial, finding which was not easy and most likely would have been impossible without a lot of help from friendly neighbors - we were two blocks away and had no idea where it was.

A. Rodgers BBQ. 803 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard, Meridian, MS. Between Jimmie Rodgers' memorials, a most satisfying repast of pulled pork barbecue, beans and potato salad. A. Rodgers (any relation to Jimmie? or only in spirit?) shore can cook! Don says we've gotta go there again next time we're in the neighborhood.

Meridian’s tourist industry has put on the dog for Jimmie Rodgers nostalgia seekers. The marker (above) commemorating Meridian as his birthplace, also includes a museum (closed on Mondays, which it was when we were there) and a big train engine. The second marker commemorates Jimmies contributions to the blues; it is located in “The Singing Brakeman Park” which also features a real train. Who could resist the attraction to hoboes and trainmen and blues yodeling, not to mention a life cut short by the dreaded tuberculosis! I’m surprised we could find our way through the teeming crowds of tourists on that October day (we saw no other touristy looking folk at either site).

 

The 2nd Jimmie Rodgers plaque we ran upon, this at the "Singing Brakeman" Park on Front Street. Be sure to have specific directions before you jump in; both parks proved to be difficult for us to locate.

Meridian's old Union Station forms the backdrop of the "Singing Brakeman Park. I'm still torn between bitch-slapping myself for being pulled in by the blues tourist industry and gratitude for the opportunities I've had in recent years to follow some trails and to imagine the origins and lives of a lot of very special entertainers, most of whom, I venture to guess, considered themselves pretty ordinary and grateful for a chance to make their music and get away from the dawn-to-dusk back-breaking work on the plantation, if only for a little while. Many of them returned to public obscurity once rock and roll, their own musical child, got into the driver's seat of popular music. Many of them were then chased down and brought back, not unlike specimens in a zoo, for us to watch and listen to and enjoy without a whole lot of regard for their emotional and ethical integrity. Like I said, on one hand I'm kind of ashamed that I've got my face stuck tight against the bars of the entertainment cage on which they have been and continue to be displayed, or very glad I've had time to double my enjoyment of their music and to vastly increase my understanding of the plight of peoples desperately singing their way out of hell.

Alabama Welcome Station

Another night; another Motel 6 in Decatur Alabama, then home to Cincinnati then home to Lathrup Village MI!