Nashville hinterland - from football to Franklin

Day 12 - Sunday, September 21
The day didn't start well - I followed most of the MUFC v Leicester game which was an early kick-off in the UK - breakfast time in Nashville.
We went 3-1 up just after half time and then proceeded to lose 5-3. Shambles.

We drove out to Franklin - a pleasant prosperous town a few miles south of the city, with lots of big historic (by US standards) houses. We stopped for a coffee and a walk about and then moved on to the nearby Carnton Plantation. On the way out of town we noticed this house which was Hallowe'en-ready about 6 weeks early...

Franklin was the site of a major civil war battle in November 1864 and resulted in a catastrophic defeat for the confederate forces. Carnton was commandeered by the confederates as a field hospital. Apparently the family who owned the house got heavily involved in the care of the wounded and subsequently created, on their estate and not too far from the house, a huge confederate war cemetery. The graves are grouped by state.

The events of the battle and Carnton's role is described in the novel "Widow of the South" by Robert Hicks.

We drove back to Nashville via a lovely village called Leiper's Fork, where we had lunch at the general store/cafe, and via a small part of the Natchez Trace Parkway which winds through lovely scenic country for 444 miles south from Nashville.

Central City back to Nashville - Grand Ole Opry

Day 11 - Saturday, September 20

Before we left Central City we went downtown - not far, it's only a small place - because This is where the Everly Brothers are from and we wanted to see the monument.

We crossed Everly Brothers Boulevard on the way.

There's not a lot else in Central City, Ky so we headed back to Nashville.

In the afternoon we visited the Country Music Hall of Fame not far from Broadway. It's a huge building, with lots of interesting exhibits exploring the origins and development of country music. There are instruments, costumes, narratives and the history of many of the more famous people. A number of them were unknown to us but we enjoyed it nevertheless.

A memorable moment was seeing these....

The Hall of Fame itself is a light and airy large circular room with plaques on the wall honouring anyone who's anyone in the business. 

The phrase "Will the circle be unbroken" is one we came across elsewhere. It relates to a very well-known (although not to us) country song, with strong religious connections, but the phrase seems to have been acquired by the business to refer to the continuation of the traditions of the genre.

After our visit we had lunch at the rooftop bar of Tootsie's Orchid Lounge on Broadway.

Tasteful and discreet, isn't it ?

We went in through the main door on Broadway and made our way through 3 floors to get to the roof terrace - it was mid-afternoon on Saturday and the place was rammed, with a different band playing on each level. We managed to get a table at the front corner and could hear live music coming from all directions - and on another rooftop across the street there was a wedding going on.

Early evening we drove about 20 minutes east to get to the Grand Ole Opry - we'd booked tickets months earlier. It's the longest running live radio show in the world and moved some time ago from the Ryman Theatre just off Broadway to its current huge venue.

A main feature is that they cut out a circle of wood from the centre of the Ryman stage and incorporated it into the new stage, so that current artists would be able to stand on the exact same floor that all their predecessors had. A nice idea and fits in with the "unbroken circle" concept I mentioned earlier.

The format is four half-hour segments each hosted by a different artist who sings one song and then introduces a couple of guests. The MC/announcer also doubles as the reader of frequent sponsor commercials.

The show was a mixture of old and new performers - Little Wille Dickens is 93 years old but still able to put on a good performance, wearing something that looked a bit like a mariachi suit.

Two singers who are in the TV series Nashville performed well - we loved the first series but somehow missed the second so we didn't know them. Apparently the third series is imminent so we'll need to catch up.

There was also a great bluegrass band from North Carolina who had a virtuoso fiddle player.

A guy called Bill Anderson, familiar to most but not to us, sang an entertaining song called Bubba Garcia's about the son of a redneck mother and mexican father opening a bar/restaurant.

In the final segment Ricky Skaggs introduced Ry Cooder but they only performed together - no RC alone - which was disappointing.

Altogether it was a great slice of American tradition which we enjoyed.

After dropping the car back at the hotel we got a cab back to Broadway. Started off with margaritas at Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville bar - named after his famous song - and then on to the Wheel bar to see frenetic punk rockabilly outfit, which reminded us a lot of a band called the Cats who we'd seen a couple of times at the Colne Festival.

Country Music

Why isn't country music more popular in the UK ? 
Would it be if it got more airtime ?
The music is almost always very accessible and the quality is generally very high.
Is it a cultural thing ?  i.e. songs about pickup trucks, highways and rodeos don't travel very well ?
I'm sure people would write great songs about Fiat Puntos, the A41 and bingo if there was a market for it.
But there's a lot more content which would seem to be universal.
And there can be a lot of humour as well. One song we heard a number of times was called "Drunk on a plane" about a guy whose fiancee had called off the wedding and, as he couldn't get a refund on the honeymoon tickets, he was going to Cancun anyway - alone. And getting drunk on the plane.
A lovely song, sad and funny at the same time.

Another one we picked up on during a previous trip is "All my Ex's live in Texas" (great rhyme) - it goes "All my ex's live in Texas, which is why I hang my hat in Tennessee"

I could go on - but if people ignore country music I guess it's their loss.

Nashville, Tennessee to Rosine, Kentucky

Day 10 - Friday, September 19

We drove downtown and parked near the river and walked for a while. There is a huge new park being constructed along the riverfront. We wandered through the historic 2nd Avenue area which had a nice atmosphere and around midday the live music started in all Lower Broadway bars - mainly solo or duos at this time of day, so it was lower key than the more raucous feel of the previous evening. Many places were filling up with a lunchtime crowd. 
We stopped at a place called Rippy's where there was a nice male/female duo playing and singing - songs which were very familiar to most of the clientele if not to us.

After lunch we left Nashville to head up into Kentucky. We were staying in Central City in order to spend the evening at a place called Rosine - it was about 30 miles away but this was the nearest decent hotel we could find.
I'd read that every Friday evening in a big barn in Rosine local musicians gather to play bluegrass music. It sounded like it might be entertaining. 
Rosine is a tiny place and we had no problem finding the barn - a number of vehicles outside and the place about 3/4 full inside.
It could have been a highlight of the trip but, to be honest, the music wasn't great although the atmosphere was nice and people-watching the locals was interesting. A number of oldish guys in bib overalls with long beards - who looked like they'd come straight from the fields. 
To our dismay we found that this is a dry county so the only refreshment on offer was coke and popcorn.
After a couple of hours or so we headed off to nearby Beaver Dam where we found an old chrome-style diner with red/black/white interior. Lovely.   

Memphis to Nashville via Sun and Nutbush

Day 9 - Thursday, September 18

Checked out of the hotel and the first stop was only a few hundred yards along Union Avenue at Sun Studio.
This is the legendary place where Elvis made his first records and where so many other greats recorded. It's only small and a guide takes you through the two rooms - the first of which tells the history of Sun (and of rock and roll), via artefacts and a soundtrack. It was very well done and the guide was a very enthusiastic young guy who really seemed to relish the story.
He took us through early recordings of Howlin' Wolf, to Rocket 88 by the band led by Ike Turner Band (arguably the first rock and roll record) and on to Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Roy Orbison - playing the relevant tracks at each point.
And then we were taken downstairs into the studio (still used to record during the evenings)
which has been retained just as it was. There is a wonderful photo on the wall - in the room where it was taken - showing Elvis at the piano with Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash standing behind him.
That's it also on the outside of the building

We were told that the microphone there is the original - I'm always a bit sceptical about these things but it didn't stop me having a look........

and yes, I know, my stage posture needs a little work...............

The visit to Sun was a very worthwhile experience.

And then we left Memphis.

I got a little bit of stick for what came next. We were heading for Nashville which is only a few hours drive up the interstate but I wanted to do a detour to go through Nutbush - I knew it was tiny with not a lot to see but I wanted to go anyway - see the comments in an earlier post about Rosedale and Winslow - but I'm afraid I hadn't communicated this as fully as I might have to my travelling companions. 
So when we arrived there was a degree of disappointment - along the lines of "why the bloody hell have you brought us here ?".

This was why......

but, clearly, they couldn't even get the damn sign right......

But there is also this......

There are two of them - one at the beginning of town in each direction.
They are about 200 yards apart............

And this gives a flavour of the place...

But it's still a cracking record and very time I hear it in future I'll remember our visit.

A few miles down the road we stopped at a diner in Brownsville for some lunch. It was only when were already inside that we realised it was a chinese buffet diner - unusual, but we for stuck in and it was very good. We're normally very wary of buffets - food sitting around for long periods and then maybe again the next day......... - but this seemed to be fine.

We finally arrived in Nashville late afternoon and after a rest and wash and brush up headed down to Broadway. It's about a 20 minute walk but we saw a guy in a golf cart waiting outside the hotel - he runs people around town for tips and on the way he gave us some info about the city. He had a radio going and as we crested Broadway and got our first sight of the lights of all the bars at the bottom of the hill in front of us, with Jimi Hendrix playing Purple Haze it was a memorable moment.

When we got out there was immediately a tremendous buzz - lots of lights, people, bars - all with live bands so that there was music coming from all directions.
Some of the places have several floors with a different band playing on each floor.
Virtually all the bars are narrow but go back a long way. The band is usually positioned just to the side of the entrance door so you have to pass them on the way in and out. This seemed to have two advantages - the sound easily gets out into the street to attract people in, and everyone has to pass the band's tips bucket on the way out. The normal routine is for there to be no cover charge or entry fee, but every hour or so they take a short break while someone goes around with the bucket. 
It was tough to choose so we pick a place with a decent crowd inside and a band which sounded good from the pavement - a bar called Second Fiddle. Then next door to Robert's Western World and on to Honky Tonk Central - all big bars with great atmosphere and very good musicians.
Then dinner at Merchant's Restaurant - good but huge - and the on to the Whiskey Bent bar where there was an excellent band being led by a fill-n singer who was great - really got the crowd (lots of drunk young women) going. Seriously good fun and we stayed till very late.
If you enjoy music and drinking, this is the place.

And when we finally decided to call it a night there were plenty of taxis around for us to get back to hotel. 

Greenwood to Memphis - a day of legends and history

Day 8 - Wednesday, September 17


An early start because we wanted to get back to Memphis by early afternoon and there were things to see along the way.
The first stop was at Robert Johnson's grave on a back road just north of Greenwood - an informal graveyard - just a patch of grass really - next to a small country church.

His grave is at the back, almost in the trees, and various items had been left - empty bourbon bottles, plectrums etc.

It was a lovely peaceful spot.

On via backroads to Parchman, home of the legendary Parchman Farm - the Mississippi State Penitentiary. 

On the way, we passed this

I don't think that it's the Tallahatchie Bridge but it's certainly a Tallahatchie Bridge.

Nothing much to see at Parchman other than the trail marker outside the main gate.

The next stop was Tutwiler. It was allegedly here that WC Handy heard  a street musician singing about "...Goin' where the Southern cross the Dog", was inspired by the sound and went on to develop it into the blues. His song "Yellow Dog Blues", later recorded by Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong among others, apparently derived from this encounter.

Maybe.......

The line above refers to a point in nearby Moorhead where two rail lines - The Southern Railroad and the Yazoo Delta Railroad (also referred to as the "Yellow Dog" (Y.....  D....) which was then shortened to "The Dog") - crossed at right angles.

The junction is preserved as a historical site....

Near Tutwiler is another gravesite - this time that of Sonny Boy Williamson.Again an informal graveyard and again various artefacts, including harmonicas, left at the grave.

He is the first delta blues singer I remember ever seeing - on TV in about 1964/65. A number of performers were doing a tour following up the success people like the Stones, Yardbirds and John Mayall had been having in covering their music. 

The last stop on the way back to Memphis was at Vance where there is a trail marker commemorating the fact that John Lee Hooker grew up there.

When I was planning the route, I'd taken time to create playlists on Spotify, including the music of as many as possible of the people noted on the markers we would visit. It was quite special to travel through the region listening to the songs created by all these influential people.

When we arrived back in Memphis we went directly to the Civil Rights Museum (stopping first for lunch at the excellent Central BBQ restaurant next door). The museum is based in the Lorraine Motel which is where Martin Luther King was murdered in 1968. The outside of the building has been retained as it was, so the balcony is still there and readily recognisable from the news reports of the time.

The museum itself is an outstanding collection of artefacts, documents and displays covering the origins of slavery and the subsequent efforts to achieve first emancipation and then equality. There is much about the turmoil in the South in the 1960s.

Perhaps the thing most shocking/surprising to me was a recording of a telephone conversation between President Kennedy and the Governor of Mississippi when there was a huge amount of violent unrest going on as people were trying to enforce their constitutional rights to equality - Kennedy clearly wanted only for the governor to put a lid on the situation. Not at all in line with the image of Kennedy as an enlightened force for freedom.

The museum was fascinating and informative but I came away thinking that I would have liked to have learned more from the other (white) point of view. What were they thinking at the time, what do they think now in retrospect about what they did at the time, and what do they think now about the changes which have occurred in the last 40 years or so ?

On the way back to the hotel we stopped at the top of Beale Street to see the Elvis statue..

Later we had dinner at McEwan's restaurant near the hotel  (very good - proper food with even some vegetables) and then went to BB King's club on Beale Street. We paid a $5 cover charge each and were there for 2 hours during which the band was on stage for only about 45 minutes (between 8.45 and 10.45 i.e. peak time !!) - and, even then, they seemed to be largely going through the motions. Not good.

So we went back to the Blues Hall where a great band was playing who sadly got hijacked after a few numbers by a girl at a table near the front who wanted to sing with them. She did but she couldn't - so we went next door to the Rum Boogie Bar where then excellent 901 Blues Band entertained us very well.

And during the evening I added another statue to my growing collection....

The inscription is not clear in the dark - it's W.C. Handy in the eponymous park on Beale Street. 

Greenville to Greenwood - BB King and Kermit the Frog

Day 7 - Tuesday, September 16

From Greenville to Leland - another small delta town dying on its feet because the main road no longer goes through.
A number of blues notables came from here - the most prominent is Johnny Winter, who sadly died recently.

But Leland's most famous son has nothing to do with music....

There are various markers about town but not much sign of life. But we liked these......

From Leland we made a detour via Highways 278 and 8 and stopped near Cleveland at a place called Dockery Farms which was at one time a very well-known plantation. The main claim to fame now is that it is acknowledged as possibly "the birthplace of the Blues", mainly due to the fact that blues historians have traced much of the early music back to Charley Patton who lived here  on and off during the early years of the 20th century.
Just off Highway 8 is a collection of old plantation buildings set in a large grassy area. There was no-one about but you can wander around the site. Near one of the buildings is a button to press which starts a loop of early blues which plays through speakers concealed in the buildings - it made for a very atmospheric half hour.

On to Ruleville and then down Highway 49W to Indianola. This is where BB King was born and grew up. The town is very proud of this - there is  BB King Park and statue........

there are markers.....

there are murals.........

there is pavement art......

there are artefacts..........

but best of all is the BB King Museum - we spent hours there - which is very well laid out and informative, with lots of archive and performance film, lots of history of his life etc.

One thing which really brought home the changes seen in this region was that in 2005 the governor of Mississippi declared a state-wide "BB King Day". It's not too many years ago (during our adult lives) that he would have had to sit at the back of the bus.

After a late pizza lunch we set off to find the trail marker at his actual birthplace, but is's among a network of back country roads and our maps weren't good enough for us to find it. Disappointing.
On to the Hampton Inn at Greenwood and dinner at the Delta Bistro in the main street downtown. A very pleasant area but, once again, very few people about.