Chasin' the Blues.....Away

Written on Nov 24 from home, Ann Arbor, MI

Today I’m beginning to post photos and write a series of stories specifically about the historic blues highway and the blues site markers and museums I visited the past three weeks. I will continue this blog for a few weeks until all stories and photos have been shared; then I will conclude it and move on to other things, hopefully equally as fun, but I seriously question that! I’m happy to have the opportunity to extend my travels a bit by continuing to tell the yet untold stories of the last three weeks.

In addition to the photos I’m posting today to accompany the new story (A Blues Cruise), I’m posting a few more photos to the gallery that correspond with a previously written story entitled Foggy Brain, the one about getting detoured through the back hills of Kentucky.

This being Thanksgiving week, I want to express my gratitude to the friends and family who shared this trip in such a unique way with me; you know who you are. Some of you emailed, some commented on the blog, some were silent travel companions. According to the website there were about 1200 visits to Chasin’ The Blues…..Away. The overview says there were approximately two views per visit, so I know I had a lot of company in what often felt like a solitary experience. There were folks who totally surprised me by being there, enthusiastically, every mile of the way, genuinely interested in the subject of blues history and music in general, but equally involved in sharing the excitement of my personal journey. I want to say a heartfelt thank you and I wish y’all a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.

Thankfully,
Helen

Written on Nov 20 in Dayton, OH

I have driven mile after mile after mile the past three weeks chasing down the blues, and boy did I find it, alive and well, in Clarksdale, Mississippi the night I discovered the Stacy Mitchhart Band. What a thrill to watch this blues man and his musicians perform live on stage, and sometimes off, as they are prone to spontaneously meandering off the stage and through the club, stopping by each person to give what feels like a performance played especially for you by Stacy and his horn players as they slowly, rhythmically snake their way through the room from person to person. If you come hungry to hear the blues, this band is a feast, and you will leave completely satisfied.

I was in Clarksdale MS, on two different occasions on this road trip. I went to Ground Zero Blues Club both times. For your information, Ground Zero broadcasts live blues online most week ends, so check their website at http://groundzerobluesclub.com/ to see who you might catch playing there.

I discovered Stacy's band, based out of Nashville, TN, on my second visit to Ground Zero. I got what I came for that night, my friends. As I said in an earlier blog, they were well worth the long trip south! When I got back to my room at the Clark House B & B, I looked at the band’s website and discovered, much to my amazement, that they were scheduled to be at Gilly’s Jazz Club in Dayton, OH on November 19. It was easily possible that I could pass through Dayton that night. I could not believe my luck.

I arrived at Gilly’s about 7:30 Thursday night, got a front table, ordered my drink and took out a book to read until show time. (My thoughful daughter had given me two books for this trip, collections of short stories written by women who travel alone.) As I sat engrossed in my book, there arose a flurry of excitement about me. I looked up to discover a bat whizzing at a high rate of speed, creating terror in some, humor in others. We watched it zoom back and forth from one wall to the other. Club employees opened doors in an effort to entice it into the darkness of the night, but the bat didn’t get the message. By this time, many of us were out of our seats, poised to flee. Within a short time we had become quite a cohesive group of bar buddies, chatting like old friends about what the management ought to do, venting our deepest feelings about bats, in short, creating an instantaneous support group. An announcement came over the PA that they were going to turn up the house lights to encourage the bat’s exit. At the front of the room band members curiously peeked from back stage to see the show that was clearly upstaging the anticipation we had all previously felt a short time ago about seeing them perform.

I was chatting with a woman beside me when suddenly a waitress, an African American woman who looked to be about my age, a previously cool, laid back person who had brought me my drink fifteen minutes earlier, came flying across the room as the bat darted her direction. Arms open wide, she threw them around me, we screamed and laughed simultaneously, hid our faces in each other’s necks holding tight to one another, and jumped up and down. It was an experience!! In conclusion of the bat tale, they never did get the thing out the door, it simply disappeared long enough that we began to feel comfortable about returning to our seats, and it was not seen the rest of the evening.

The bat was long forgotten once Stacy took the stage, his performance was as good or better than the one I saw in Clarksdale a week earlier. If you have cable tv’s documentary channel, watch for a documentary about him entitled Nashvegas Blues Stacy Mitchart: An unscripted documentary following the life and times of one of Nashville’s most unique talents. It is currently being broadcast across the country. Stacy is an incredible musician and a master showman. His mastery of the guitar and of the blues genre is an exhilarating experience. His band, consisting of a sax, trumpet, keyboards, drums and bass player, is equally talented. You can learn more about this group on their website; http://www.stacymitchhart.com/Home-0.aspx

I purchased two cd’s. Of the two, Gotta Get The Feeling Back Again is my favorite because those songs have that hard driving, gut wrenching blues sound that makes your toes curl. The other cd I bought is too R&B/pop sounding for my taste. However, there is one cut on the second cd (entitled Grown Ass Man) that is my favorite cut on either cd. It is Stacy’s solo rendition of Amazing Grace played on a resonator guitar. You can’t get any more Mississippi Delta blues than this song is. If I could technically put it on this blog for you to listen to as you read my words, I would; it is the soundtrack for all I have experienced and felt the past three weeks as I slowly made my way through the history of the blues traveling down Highway 61. You can download his Amazing Grace on I-Tunes, look for the cd listed as Grown A*s Man (they respectfully don’t use profanity on I-Tunes). You can also download his other blues cd I mentioned earlier (no profanity in that title) from I-Tunes, or you can purchase the cd from Amazon.com. Either purchase is an authentic expression of the blues by a real blues man.

I have reversed the placement of blog titles so that when they are listed, you are better able to identify which stories you have read and which you haven't. I hope this will make reading this blog better for you.

I still can't get photos in the gallery to come up chronologically so you'll just have to scroll through to find the ones that correspond with which blog. I put the number in each blog so you will know how many photos to look for for each story.

By the time I get home, I just may have this website figured out!

Thanks for hanging in there with me.

Helen

Written on Thursday Nov19 in Dayton, OH
(7 Photos in Photo Gallery)

Leland Mississippi lays claim to one Hwy 61 Blues Museum, the grave of James “Son” Thomas (whose headstone was paid for by John Fogerty of Clearwater Revival fame), a handful of downtown building blues murals ……….AND Leland is the birthplace of Kermit the Frog. That’s right; Kermit was a delta blues baby, conceived and born in this place far far away from his eventual fame and fortune.

Jim Hensen was born in Mississippi, spent part of his childhood playing on the banks of Deer Creek which separates his elementary school, where children still attend classes, from the Jim Hensen Delta Boyhood Exhibit Museum in Leland. When I saw the museum listed among the historic sites in Mississippi, for reasons I still do not understand, I got very excited and decided this was something I definitely wanted to see. How could one not want to see the environment that nurtured and inspired the genius that Jim Hensen was?

Leland is located down one of the many long desolate crossroads that make up the Mississippi Delta. Since this was my first day driving in this kind of terrain, I was spooked about turning Box4Dog off of Rt 61 to go down what looked to be a seldom traveled road to nowhere. I tell you, I have never felt so alone as driving through the cotton fields of the delta. Do you remember the final scene in the movie Cast Away where Tom Hanks stood in the middle of nowhere at a crossroads trying to decide which direction to take? And then a woman came by in a pick up trick, stopped, gave him directions, then drove off down a long empty road? That scene best describes the roads I traveled for days tracking down many of the historic blues sites I wanted to see. After a few days of this I became comfortable with isolation, but that first day was unnerving and that was the day I had to decide whether or not to take that crossroad to find Kermit.

I did take that crossroad, and when I got to my destination, I found myself sitting in front of a much smaller structure than I had expected. I was greeted inside by a woman named Dot Turk. Dot is a the perfect hostess for Kermit’s place, she greets visitors with a big smile and much enthusiasm, can’t wait to tell you the stories behind the world’s favorite frog. Dot said Jim was always interested in puppets, but his enthusiasm exploded when television was born because he felt it was a perfect medium for puppetry. But, he felt that the puppet was not the exact body for his imaginary friends, and neither was the marionette. And so he combined the two and called it a muppet. The museum has an original prototype of Kermit sewn from the cloth of his mother’s old green coat, but Jim would only allow it to be displayed in the museum if they would display it with the Kermit we all know and love, and so they did. (Photo of these two is in blog photo gallery).

Dot was full of stories, I enjoyed her company in the short time I was there. After so many hours alone on the road, I was ready to make a friend! She told me that one day she was taking a little boy around the museum and she pointed to the school across the creek, told the boy that Jim had gone to school right over there. The little boy got all excited and said, “Oh, that is great because Kermit could jump out of the water and play with Jim during his recess”.

One thing Dot didn’t necessarily enjoy was getting her picture taken. We joked about how difficult it is in this season of our lives to be photographed; I could totally relate to her anxiety. She may not have been real comfortable with the idea of my taking her picture, but she was much too nice of a person to refuse my request.

I would never have imagined Jim Hensen living in this setting. We attach what we know to a person and assume that is who they are. I have only known him as we all knew him from our childhood, a creative genius to be sure, but mostly as a celebrity and cultural icon. It seemed to fit perfectly that he would come from a beautiful peaceful place like Leland in a time when there was plenty of space in childhood for creativity to flourish.

Written Thursday, Nov 19 in Lexington, KY
(6 Photos in Photo Gallery)

The title of this blog is actually the title of a very old book written more than a century ago. I’m borrowing the phrase to describe a Louisiana composer and pianist, Kenny Kleinpeter, whom I met last week. You are going to love this story.

A number of years ago, while busying myself around the house, music from my television stopped me dead in my tracks. The song was broadcast over cable television’s “Soundscapes” which plays meditative “new age” music. I picked up the remote and hit rewind, listened to the piece in its entirety again – and again. Then I ordered the cd.

When the disc, Spirits of Highland, arrived, my involvement with this music went to a whole other level. The story behind these compositions is extraordinary, each piece was inspired by a human being who lived and died long ago, who is now interred in Baton Rouge’s historic Highland Cemetery which sat at the edge of a busy urban neighborhood in disrepair and disregard until recent years, when a small band of dedicated folks began to invest energy and money into restoring and preserving this hallowed space. The cd liner contained a brief lovingly detailed story about the life of each person. After reading about these people and listening to Kenny’s musical interpretation of their lives, I felt I knew who they were and what they felt. And I felt that our lives, even after all this time, are not so different in the ways of most importance. I cared about these people, though I had never set foot where they lived or are buried, and though our lives are centuries apart.

I was so touched by what this musician had created, and why, that I sent an email to him, expressing as much; I feel a responsibility to let artists know the impact their work has had in the world. He responded gratefully. I wrote back, told him if I ever made it to Louisiana, I hoped I would be able to see him perform live somewhere and he said to let him know if that day came.

Many years later that day did come. When I decided to make this road trip, I contacted him to inquire about performance dates. He was not currently performing. But he gave me his phone number and graciously said if I did come, to call and he would give me a private concert in his home as well as a tour of the Highland cemetery, which was the inspiration for the cd which brought my attention to his music.

So a week ago today my friend Jeanne and I drove to Baton Rouge LA to meet Kenny. What an honor. Together we walked around the small Highland Cemetery, learning about the lives of the people buried there and about the preservation work currently being undertaken to find and restore many of the markers and stones. We heard about extensive research being done in association with scientists and archeologist involved in this mission. It is phenomenal what this man knows and the extent he has gone to honor the people and the history of this cemetery.

Kenny is particularly fond of a woman buried there named Mary Catherine. His cd liner says “Mary Catherine had to surrender at least four of her children and her husband to Highland”. They were lost to “the fever” which was spread by mosquitoes in the bayou. After a life of many hardships and heartaches, Mary Catherine was buried along side a row of grave stones, but her grave has no stone, simply a gathering of red bricks submerged just beneath the surface of the earth. Kenny can tell you chapter by chapter of her life and why she was buried in this way. He has written about her, “She is one of the few people that I’ve loved but never met”.

Pulling into his driveway last week, I wondered what this man whom I discovered via a music satellite station would be like, I’d had little correspondence with him, could make few assumptions. I also wondered if my friend thought I was nuts, dragging her to Baton Rouge to meet a stranger that I knew two things about, 1) he is a musician 2) he is intensely focused on caring for the dead. One could make some very negative assumptions based on that data, but one would be very wrong if they did. What a gentleman he was; a knowledgeable, articulate, sensitive gentle soul who gave freely of his time and energy. When you spend a little time with him you understand how he could write the exquisite music he writes.

After our walk through the cemetery we went into his home where he performed three pieces for us on a beautiful grand piano which dominated a lovely room with windows overlooking Highland Cemetery, a small, intimate piece of historic land kept well under this man’s loving care. As he played I listened and looked out the window thinking, what a wonder this life is for such beautiful unique experiences to occur. It was one of those moments!

Helen