"I'm On My Way, Baby!"

Lunch and blues

In Jackson, we went to F Jones Corner to have lunch and to listen to some blues. Carol ordered fried grits and a chili dog. I got a spinach salad.

Fried grits: Small, dark-golden cubes. The outside crunchy; the inside mushy. Devilishly good.

Virgil Brawley, F Jones Corner, Jackson, MS

 Virgil Brawley sang and played his guitar while we ate. Virgil's good. He has a mature bluesy voice that lets you know he's already paid his blues dues, so he doesn't need to do anything to fancy things up. He played several Robert Johnson songs, in honor of that musician's birthday. Robert Johnson is one of the fathers of Delta-style blues.

Below is Robert Johnson himself singing his Hellhound on My Trail:  

Love the music, but I'm not a big fan of Robert Johnon's voice. If I think of it as a woman's voice, I can kind of get into it, but that's a lot of work.


Now, same song, this time by Big Joe Williams. Gives you shivers.   

The 10 Best Robert Johnson Covers offers one person's view of same. Some passionate arguments for alternatives are in the comments at the bottom of his page.

Farish Street Project

F Jones Corner is smack in the middle of the Farish Street project. It all looks like it'll be standard-formula gentrification to me, but there seems to be an effort not to make it so.

I'm on my way, baby! 

As we left the Farish Street area, we saw a terrific billboard for Big Mama Bail Bonding with her genius tag line.

 

Vicksburg - National Military Cemetery

In the afternoon, we drove to the National Military Park in Vicksburg. It was a crime we didn't have more time to spend at that remarkable place. As we drove the winding auto-trail, past "camp" after camp,  it was easy to imagine the exchanges of fire, the hunkering down in the trench, the smoke, the sounds of war. The cemetery really brought it home: Of the 17,000 people buried there (and that only includes the Union soldiers), 13,000 are unidentified.

The good that came out of that rushed visit was that if I return to the area in the future, I'll devote a day to its exploration. I'm glad Carol wanted to see it; otherwise, it wouldn't have made my list of things to do.