Road trip down U.S. Hwy 61 in Mississippi brings blues legends to life

Photo By Chuck Cannon | The B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center, Indianola, Miss.  

FORT POLK, LA, UNITED STATES

08.31.2018

Story by Chuck Cannon 

Fort Johnson Public Affairs Office

FORT POLK, La. — In today’s fast-paced world, most people eschew the family car for a less time-consuming plane ride, especially for more distant trips. For the most part, you’re more rested when you arrive at your destination and you have more time to spend with who or what you were visiting.
However, when you take to the air instead of the road, you often miss little treasures that can be gleaned along the route.
My wife Susan and I recently visited our son, Justin, and his wife, Duaa, in Dearborn, Michigan. We drove, turning the nearly 1,200-mile trip into a three-day adventure – both ways. We stayed in West Memphis, Arkansas and Indianapolis, Indiana during our trek, both coming and going. We also stopped to “smell the roses” as we passed through the nation’s midsection.
While there were several highlights on our trip, the icing on the cake came on our return trip traveling the Mississippi Blues Highway from Memphis, Tennessee, to Greenville, Mississippi. While that wasn’t the entire length of the highway, it was a good representation of why Mississippi is considered the birthplace of the blues.
We made plans to visit the highway on our way to Dearborn when we saw an exit off of Interstate 55 north of Jackson, Mississippi, for the B.B. King Museum in Indianola, Mississippi. As Susan and I are both fans of the blues, we thought that might be an interesting stop on our way home — provided we weren’t exhausted from the travel.
As we crossed the Mississippi River in Memphis headed to our hotel in West Memphis, I saw an exit for U.S. Hwy 61 — the Blues Highway. We decided that would be the way we would head home on the last leg of our homeward trip.
Once we crossed from Tennessee into Mississippi on U.S. Hwy 61, we began to see signs highlighting stops along the Blues Highway. To see everything along the route would take a month of Sundays since the highway runs the full length of Mississippi from the Bay of St. Louis on the Gulf Coast to the Tennessee border, but we were able to visit a good representation on our day-long jaunt.
The first stop was at the Gateway to the Blues Museum in Tunica, Mississippi. We were able to see guitars used by such blues greats as Big Joe Williams, Charlie Musselwhite and Mississippi Fred McDowell. We secured a trail map and began our exploration of the highway.
Next up was Clarksdale, Mississippi and the home of the Delta Blues Museum, a must see for any blues or history fan. A complete history, to include recordings, instruments, clothing and vehicles belonging to blues greats — from its roots until today — can be found, as well as a gift shop that sells everything blues.
The town of Clarksdale is also home to two other blues museums — Rock and Blues Museum and Cat Head Delta Blues and Folk Art Museum.
Additionally, Clarksdale boasts 15 blues markers throughout its city limits, highlighting the youthful haunts of such blues and rock stars as Ike Turner, Sam Cooke, Big Jack Johnson, Muddy Waters’ house and W.C. Handy. And any trip to Clarksdale would not be complete without checking out the crossroads with three guitars mounted on a pole that supposedly marks the spot where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil to become a great guitarist.
However, there are those who say the “real” crossroads is a nondescript spot in Rosedale, a few miles south of Clarksdale. We spent the better part of an hour looking for it, finally locating it with confirmation from a local law enforcement officer.
From Rosedale, we headed to Indianola, Mississippi and the B.B. King Museum and gravesite. The grave is a fitting tribute to a blues giant and the museum offers visitors a look at King’s life from his childhood to his death.
By this time it was getting pretty late in the day and we still had quite a trek to make it to our home in Rosepine, Louisiana. We crossed the Mississippi River into Arkansas at Greenville, and then headed home, with a promise to one day return and visit portions of the highway we missed.
For more information about the blues highway and sites related to the blues in visit www.msbluestrail.org.

• Date Taken: 08.31.2018
• Date Posted: 08.31.2018 15:34
• Story ID: 291187
• Location: FORT POLK, LA, US