Mississippi's Blues Trail-- Part 2: A Half Empty Whiskey Bottle

The trail is self-guided and available by app through iTunes and Android.  There are also printed maps at Mississippi welcome centers and online at www.msbluestrail.org.

lara Weber recently drove through Mississippi and when she entered the Delta got to talking with her companion about B.B. King and that he had just been admitted to hospice care and died May 14th, they visited his birthplace  in Berclair. Mississippi.  There is nothing at the actual site of his birth except one of those Blues Trail markers  It says:  "B.B. KING'S BIRTHPLACE and then summarizes his life.

Jim O'Neal is the research director of the Mississippi Blues Trail and founding editor of the Living Blues Magazine in Chicago in 1970.  He says they started with the greats, but there were so many of local interest that they had to vastly expand the scope of the project.

One of the sites is radio station WROX in Clarksdale which was noted for its blues broadcasts and black deejays.  In Indianola, you can visit the grave of Charley Patton, who died in 1934 and is considered  the "Father of the Delta Blues."  (Reckon I'll have to brush up on my blues history.)

Much better known (to me, anyway) Robert Johnson is supposedly buried in a simple cemetery nmorth of Greenwood at the Little Zion Baptist Church.  It is the most likely of three grave sites he might be buried in, but no one's certain.  The blue Blues Trail marker is easy too find, and after a few minutes they found his headstone with a mostly empty whiskey bottle on it.

Sounds Like a Trip in the Making.  --RoadDog