imposing English-style mansion that dominates the virtually empty landscape, which he would recognize.
Slavery was replaced by Jim Crow, Jim Crow displaced in its turn by a statutory equality which nowadays means little more than the right to share an endemic poverty side by
side. The old South has gone, taking with it both the institutionalized racism of old, and the warm, yeasty sense of family and community which enabled the descendants of kidnapped Africans to
withstand the depredations of a society explicitly constructed not only to keep them under but to discourage them from ever looking up. The new South which was supposed to replace it may have
manifested elsewhere in the region – in the proud metropolis of Atlanta, for example – but it never arrived in Mississippi. It wasn’t until 1995 that the state finally got around
to passing the anti-slavery laws into the statute books.
‘John Lee’s from Mississippi,’ says Archie, in case anyone should need reminding. ‘Most people that came from Mississippi want to forget it . . . or escape. It’s
like a bad nightmare, and most of ’em want to try and sleep it off, sleep it away.’
‘Leaving a place when you’re fourteen [ sic ], it’s pretty hard at my age to say, “It were right there.”’ confesses Hooker. ‘Things change so. Back
then, the big white man had all the land, acres and acres and hundreds of acres and stuff like that. Now it’s all cut up and sold, and all them farmers ain’t there no more. It’s
farming, but everybody got they own thing. Everything is equal down there now. It is equal, so it’s cut up, the land is taken. If I went to Detroit now, I’d get so turned around with
all these buildings tore down . . . Mississippi probably worse, because they done took all the land from all the big old rich people, and the government took it and made everybody equal, cut it up
and said, “This is yours, build on this.” The mules, they gone. They got tractors, they got different things. It’s so turned around down there. It’s a different world. All
that’s tore down. There’s apartment buildings where them old houses used to be. People done say, “Mr Hooker, you wouldn’t know where nothin’ at, you went down
there now.” I was down in Greenville, Mississippi, and everything was so different . I played down there: Greenville, Dublin, Drew-Mississippi, Jackson . . .
it’s built up, and there ain’t no big fields, no cotton belts down there. It’s fields, but everybody got they own little patch, sharecroppers got they own land. So all them old
houses are gone. Them old houses? Shoot, man, they gone . It’s history .’
Vance remains helplessly suspended between a painful past and a threatening future. If it was my hometown, I wouldn’t want to go back there, either. Neither would you. Maybe this goes some
way towards explaining why, whenever a movie about the Deep South – be it Gone with the Wind , The Color Purple or Mississippi Burning – shows up on television, John
Lee Hooker reaches for the remote control, and switches channels.
3
THE REAL FOLK BLUES?
The Mississippi Delta is land both created and shaped by its river. Ambiguous union of fluid and firm, the delta is a liquid land where life responds to both tidal and
freshwater urgings. The processes of creation have been going on for a long time here . . . there is about the delta something original, primeval. We look to the delta for many of the oldest
continuing life forms . . .
Barbara Cannon, from Mississippi River:
A Photographic Journey
[The blues is] the only thing after all these years that still sounds fresh to me. The serious old blues guys get it from somewhere else, it seems to me, and
that’s what I want to know about.
Eric Clapton, interviewed in the Guardian
I guess all songs is folk songs – I never heard no horse sing ’em.
Big Bill Broonzy, possibly apocryphal
In 1966, during a brief hiatus between lengthy stints with
Slavery was replaced by Jim Crow, Jim Crow displaced in its turn by a statutory equality which nowadays means little more than the right to share an endemic poverty side by
side. The old South has gone, taking with it both the institutionalized racism of old, and the warm, yeasty sense of family and community which enabled the descendants of kidnapped Africans to
withstand the depredations of a society explicitly constructed not only to keep them under but to discourage them from ever looking up. The new South which was supposed to replace it may have
manifested elsewhere in the region – in the proud metropolis of Atlanta, for example – but it never arrived in Mississippi. It wasn’t until 1995 that the state finally got around
to passing the anti-slavery laws into the statute books.
‘John Lee’s from Mississippi,’ says Archie, in case anyone should need reminding. ‘Most people that came from Mississippi want to forget it . . . or escape. It’s
like a bad nightmare, and most of ’em want to try and sleep it off, sleep it away.’
‘Leaving a place when you’re fourteen [ sic ], it’s pretty hard at my age to say, “It were right there.”’ confesses Hooker. ‘Things change so. Back
then, the big white man had all the land, acres and acres and hundreds of acres and stuff like that. Now it’s all cut up and sold, and all them farmers ain’t there no more. It’s
farming, but everybody got they own thing. Everything is equal down there now. It is equal, so it’s cut up, the land is taken. If I went to Detroit now, I’d get so turned around with
all these buildings tore down . . . Mississippi probably worse, because they done took all the land from all the big old rich people, and the government took it and made everybody equal, cut it up
and said, “This is yours, build on this.” The mules, they gone. They got tractors, they got different things. It’s so turned around down there. It’s a different world. All
that’s tore down. There’s apartment buildings where them old houses used to be. People done say, “Mr Hooker, you wouldn’t know where nothin’ at, you went down
there now.” I was down in Greenville, Mississippi, and everything was so different . I played down there: Greenville, Dublin, Drew-Mississippi, Jackson . . .
it’s built up, and there ain’t no big fields, no cotton belts down there. It’s fields, but everybody got they own little patch, sharecroppers got they own land. So all them old
houses are gone. Them old houses? Shoot, man, they gone . It’s history .’
Vance remains helplessly suspended between a painful past and a threatening future. If it was my hometown, I wouldn’t want to go back there, either. Neither would you. Maybe this goes some
way towards explaining why, whenever a movie about the Deep South – be it Gone with the Wind , The Color Purple or Mississippi Burning – shows up on television, John
Lee Hooker reaches for the remote control, and switches channels.
3
THE REAL FOLK BLUES?
The Mississippi Delta is land both created and shaped by its river. Ambiguous union of fluid and firm, the delta is a liquid land where life responds to both tidal and
freshwater urgings. The processes of creation have been going on for a long time here . . . there is about the delta something original, primeval. We look to the delta for many of the oldest
continuing life forms . . .
Barbara Cannon, from Mississippi River:
A Photographic Journey
[The blues is] the only thing after all these years that still sounds fresh to me. The serious old blues guys get it from somewhere else, it seems to me, and
that’s what I want to know about.
Eric Clapton, interviewed in the Guardian
I guess all songs is folk songs – I never heard no horse sing ’em.
Big Bill Broonzy, possibly apocryphal
In 1966, during a brief hiatus between lengthy stints with
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