Blues Traveling: The Holy Sites of Delta Blues, Third Edition

Chapter 3: Down Highway 61 [Includes Image Plate]

55 To get there: Memphis’s Third Street becomes Highway 61. From downtown Memphis, head south on Third Street. From Memphis International Airport, take I-240 west toward downtown; after 2 miles switch to I-55 north, and then, after another 11⁄2 miles, take the Highway 61 south exit. 61 Highway is the longest road I know She run from New York City down to the Gulf of Mexico Thus sang Mississippi Fred McDowell. Other versions put the starting point in Detroit and have it end at the border of New Mexico. Actually, it extends past Duluth, Minnesota, up to Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, and down to New Orleans. Highway 61 runs the full length of the Mississippi Delta, Memphis to Vicksburg , passing through or near most major towns. Big Joe Williams and Howlin’ Wolf sang of the other main Delta highway: “I’m going to get up in the morning, hit Highway 49.” Since most bluesmen were rambling types, their songs often mention 49, 61, or 51, which skirts the Delta’s east border and connects Jackson to Memphis. chapter 3 DOWN HIGHWAY 61 Highway 61 Highway 61—“Highway 61, here I am. Get my picture taken by the highway sign. Walk in the footsteps of the great blues players. Maybe sneak into a field and pick some cotton.” Except then you get on it and it’s a regular four-lane highway. Sure would be dangerous to try to stop, much less walk. Here’s a tip: get off Highway 61 and onto Old Highway 61. It’s right nearby, just to the west. Old 61 is really the road they’re singing about in all those songs (or an even older version of it, since it has been realigned several times over the years). And it is still there. Traffic is slower. It has stop signs and dogs crossing the road. And there are shotgun shacks, abandoned cotton gins and working ones, and old churches with little cemeteries beside them. There are homes and cotton fields and horses and all manner of life that you will not see on the quicker, safer new Highway 61. So, if you are really in a hurry—or if it’s late at night, foggy, or your driving is impaired for any reason—stay on the modern four-lane Highway 61. But otherwise , try Old 61 for at least part of the trip. • Memphis Minnie’s Grave To get there: Take the Walls exit from highway 61 and go through the town and continue past it on Old Highway 61. Proceed 2 miles to an intersection with a sign reading “Church.” The sign refers to a church different from the one you are seeking, but turn right at that intersection anyway, onto Norfolk Road. Follow Norfolk for less than a mile, until you see New Hope M. B. Church on the right, with a cemetery before it. There is a state blues marker at the site. Minnie’s grave has the tallest stone in the small cemetery. After parking in the church lot, walk parallel to the road you came up, in the direction you came from, until you get to that tall stone. Two pink roses, with green leaves, are painted into the angled top of the stone, which stands about four feet tall. Commissioned by the Mount Zion Foundation, it also features a photo of Minnie and reads: Down Highway 61 56 Old Highway 61 Walls Lizzie “Kid” Douglas Lawlers AKA Memphis Minnie June 3, 1897 Aug. 6, 1973 The back of the stone features this lengthy, philosophical inscription : The hundreds of sides Minnie recorded are the perfect material to teach us about the blues. For the blues are at once general and particular, speaking for millions but in a highly singular, individual voice. Listening to Minnie’s songs, we hear her fantasies, her dreams, her desires, but we hear them as if they were our own. One of the few female singer-guitarists in blues, and one of the very best blues guitarists of either gender, Lizzie “Memphis Minnie ” Douglas was born in Algiers, Louisiana, in 1897, and moved to a farm near Walls with her family around 1904. By the time she was in her teens, she was slipping off to Memphis to play on the street around Handy Park. When she started recording in 1929, at age thirty-two, Kid Douglas became Memphis...