There are active juke joints downtown, but catching live music is a hit-and-miss proposition; there typically isn’t enough traffic to make more than one club a night operational. SARAH’S KITCHEN (208 Sunflower) had its night before we made town; RED’S JUKE JOINT (Sunflower & MLK) was closed also, reportedly keeping a low profile following recent unspecified “legal trouble.” (Recent reports claim that Red’s will be bumpin’ through the annual draw of the Sunflower Blues Fest).
A safer bet is GROUND ZERO, an overlit restaurant and club partly owned by actor Morgan Freeman. More a hang for the well-heeled and college-enrolled, this place features rock bands as much as blues. We were late for the door after five minutes, serenaded out by a power trio of twentysomething white kids churning out Cream’s version of “Crossroads” while two glum-looking tables of middle-aged black adults rested their chins in their hands…and snuck fingers into their ears.
Infinitely more gratifying was the discovery of Wesley Jefferson, holding court while fronting the transplanted house band from Sarah’s Kitchen on Saturday night at THE JUNCTION, a cinderblock bunker a few miles north of town on 61.
The Junction might not satisfy your juke jones: some retina-threatening light effects and a preponderance of soul-blues covers (lots of Z.Z. Hill and Latimore) might not jibe with your pre-conceiveds. But the local creme (not Cream) was in attendance this night, notably pre-teen guitar prodigy Jacqueline Gooch, rising star Anthony Garrard, and venerable drummer/treasure Sam Carr. Carr invariably looks like he’s enjoying some perpetual private joke behind his minimal kit, infectiously sharing the spirit through his showmanship as he plays one-handed, stick in mouth; or litters beats across rims, mike stands, wall, floor, anywhere within his swooping reach, which seems like everywhere.
THE RIVERSIDE HOTEL (615 Sunflower Avenue) is indisputably the most historic building in town. If walls could talk, they would mostly just repeat the stories of proprietor and unofficial historian Frank Ratliff, known to all as “Rat”; he grew up here and though his wife and kin reside at a house a few streets away, the Riverside is still home.
The hotel was originally built in the 1930s as the G.T. Thomas African American Hospital; Bessie Smith died here in 1937, in Room #2, then the emergency room. In the ’40s the building was extended back toward the river and turned into a boarding house for traveling artists, as well as famous locals including Robert Nighthawk. We declined a back-hall room (despite its mini-disco-mirror-ball appointments) when we learned we could instead stay directly across the hall from the Bessie Smith Room…in the JFK Jr. suite.
Newspaper clippings attest to John-John’s stay here in 1991, and this is as close to the Lincoln Bedroom as we are likely to get. “Same mattress,” Rat assured us.
But neither the Prince of Camelot nor the Empress of the Blues takes the cake with us, for the Riverside is the Bethlehem of rock ‘n’ roll. It took some out-of-town wise guys to record it (Sam Phillips in Memphis) and issue it (the Chess Brothers in Chicago), but the beast itself was born here before slouching off to conquer the world.
In this humble basement is where Ike Turner rehearsed his Kings Of Rhythm, with lead shouter Jackie Brenston, and it was here that “Rocket 88” had its genesis. (Find another forum to debate “Rocket 88” as the first rock record — we say it is, and you’ll have to come to Nashville to fight us.) And the inevitable Rat connection? His mother was a seamstress; she sewed the little rocket emblems onto the band’s clothing and accessories after the record hit big.
If you’re not into sharing a bathroom, and aren’t off put by the conflicting notion of such a place, you can spend the night in sharecropper style — minus the hardships, natch. THE HOPSON PLANTATION AND SHACK-UP INN features several refurbished and kitschified shacks, the privations of their original tenants removed and replaced with kitchen/bathroom facilities and air conditioning. A main barn building now serves as the commissary. Folks rent it out to celebrate reunions and weddings here when it’s not functioning an occasional live music and BBQ supper venue.
Sprawled across the stage this Saturday was a young Memphis band, the Bluff City Backsliders, making a racket more closely identifiable as Delta blues — with slide guitar, resonator bass, harp, and rickety piano — than anything else we heard in live context.
Back at the Riverside, Rat gave us directions to BELL GROVE BAPTIST CHURCH, pulpit of Pastor Willie Morganfield, Muddy’s first cousin. Pastor Morganfield was ill on the Sunday we attended, but his flock welcomed us warmly, and his stand-in gave a rousing sermon invoking a bit of musicology (by way of “The Color Purple”) wherein the shouts of a gospel choir overpowered the less sanctified sounds of a juke band.
We joined in to sing “Jesus On The Mainline”, shook hands during the greeting and introduced ourselves at large when so bidden. The blood of the lamb is all well and good, but looking around the congregation at the literal blood of Muddy, well…we were indeed sanctified.
