After-School Blues Travelers

This week, Hubby and The Teen have been after-school blues travelers!  We live in the Mississippi Delta, the birthplace of the Blues.  People from all over the world travel to our little part of the state to visit Blues landmarks and take in some of the amazing Southern soul food and live music.  Living surrounded by all of this, it becomes almost an afterthought.  It’s just a way of life.  Hubby loves watching YouTube travel channels and seeing what other people think about our little part of the state.  He landed on a video of someone touring the Mississippi Delta and decided that when he picked the Teen up from school that day, he would take him to check out some Delta Blues landmarks since they were so nearby.  There is big tourism in following the Mississippi Blues Trail, and these two stops are listed.

Po’ Monkey’s Lounge

First up was Po’ Monkey’s Lounge.  It’s not much to look at, but trust me when I tell you this was a big place for the college crowd and people looking to experience an authentic Mississippi juke joint! This was owned by Willie “Po’ Monkey” Seaberry and was also his residence.  Po’ Monkey’s has been featured in the New York Times and photographed by famous photographers.  I never set foot inside Po’ Monkey’s, but to hear tales, it was definitely a lively place!  Sadly, Mr. Seaberry passed away a few years ago, and it’s now closed.  Many of the colorful signs stating his rules for how to act inside this establishment are gone from the front of the building.  If you’d like to understand better what this place looked like in its heyday, these pictures of Po’ Monkey’s are fabulous!

The Teen got a kick out of stopping by there and wasn’t expecting Hubby to whisk him off on an adventure after school immediately!

Visiting Dockery Plantation

On Friday afternoon, they hit up Dockery Plantation, down the road in Dockery, Mississippi, which is an unincorporated town in Sunflower County.  It’s about 4 miles east of where we live.  There is much speculation about where the Blues was born in Mississippi, but many say it was right here.  According to Wikipedia:

Charley Patton and his family are believed to have moved around 1900 to the Dockery Plantation, where he came under the influence of an older musician, Henry Sloan. In turn, Patton became the central figure of a group of blues musicians including Willie Brown, Tommy Johnson, and Eddie “Son” House, who played around the local area.^[2] Because of its location, central to Sunflower County’s black population of some 35,000 in 1920,^[6] the plantation became known as a centre for informal musical entertainment. By the mid-1920s, the group widened to include a younger generation of musicians, including Robert Johnson, Chester “Howlin’ Wolf” Burnett, Roebuck “Pops” Staples, and David “Honeyboy” Edwards. Some of these were itinerant workers, while others lived more permanently on the farms.

I passed by Dockery Plantation every day on my way to work, and it was always a hopping place with tour buses and people in their cars stopping to take pictures.

Hubby and the Teen said this was a fascinating place open for visitors to walk the grounds.  A small church there still has a congregation, and the grounds are now used for tourism and hosting various musical events.

Planning More Adventures

Hubby is hunting for more nearby adventures for him and the Teen.  There are lots of places to explore, for sure.  Good thing summer break is almost upon us!