the land of piggly wiggly

Greetings from the southland...blogging tonight from a day's inn in covington, tn. Spent the day in Clarksdale, Mississippi...I'd wanted to go there since i was a teenager. Now that I've been there, I can only think this: are you kidding me? The Delta Blues Museum was a joke. It was one only one room. Along the walls were pictures taken in Clarksdale, but not having anything to do with the blues. At least twenty of the pics were of Clarksdale High School's 2006 prom. The were maybe 20-30 displays, the vast majority of which were regarding bluesmen you've never heard of, ever. With nearly 100 years of history, and so many amazing players, so many influential players...and none of them represented...it was just one giant "WTF?" Hello - anyone involved with this place ever heard of Robert Johnson?? Son House? Even Honeyboy Fucking Edwards? I left there not only disappointed, but angry. This is THE PLACE, the center of the blues universe, Where It All Began. And this is all we get? And then on to Ground Zero Blues Club. I was excited to go there - schoolboy excited. Yet again I had my hopes pissed on. Clarification: the building itself was perfect. From the beat-up old couch and lawn chairs out front to the vintage look and feel of the inside, the ambience was spot-on. It was the people I met that gave me the willies. There was the old dude that kept stopping at our table to show us dice tricks and articles in a Clarksdale magazine...who reeked of "Give Me Money", the three tables full of business people in three piece suits, the mid-life crisis guy who spouted non-stop bullshit and braggadocio about his knowledge of the blues to a mom and her pretty teenage daughter, and the screamingly incompetent waitress. Not to mention that 95% of these people were white while the cooks were black. Just yuck. Clarksdale, I expected better. Much better.