Warning: I am still off-topic as the holiday continues. McComb – crimes against the blues
After picking up our rented car, we said au revoir to New Orleans and set off on the journey with the first target being McComb, birthplace of Bo Diddley*.McComb was founded by a killjoy railway man who wanted to relocate his railway maintenance employees away from the many and varied temptations of New Orleans to somewhere with zero distractions. Sadly, old Gradgrind succeeded and 140 years later the contrast between New Orleans and McComb remains stark. BD would not have been the man he did become, had he remained. It was a dull place with nothing but the railway station to commend it. Additionally, a mildly ominous note (for our future explorations), the memorial plaque to Bo Diddley seems to have been removed (crime #1). A woman sitting nearby who twigged us as tourists (the camera? the map?) strode over to inform me of the precise spot where the plaque used to be. * Britney Spears (crime #2) was also born here. Bentonia – strange tunings
Bentonia was the birthplace of Skip James, an hypnotic singer and singular musician whose ethereal songs clearly influenced Robert Johnson. His haunting falsetto and strikingly original guitar and piano work seemed to come out of thin air. It didn’t; it came from Bentonia, Mississippi, which is a town that, as of the last census, has a population of 500 people. Seldom can there have been an example of quality trumping quantity to such an extent because this town produced, not only the brilliant Skip James, but also Jack Owens and Henry Stuckey. Together this trio invented what is now called the Bentonia-style; this is characterised by peculiar guitar tunings and a general other worldly feel. Henry Stuckey was the Daddy here and, apparently, taught James and Owens his technique. Thus a miniscule one-horse town managed to produce its own form of music. Of these musicians Skip James is the reason we visited Bentonia (Stuckey was never recorded), but the journey also yielded up the Blue Front café. This is one of the oldest surviving juke joints in the Mississippi Delta region. Now run by Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, the cafe was first established by his parents. JH is an active musician himself and had just returned from a festival in Nashville when we arrived. Rather than discussing music, we shared our admiration and wonder at the powers of GPS without which neither of us would have been there. In truth, though, he was being modest because his music knocks GPS into a cocked hat. Indeed, there must be something magical in that Bentonia air.