The three-hour tour focuses on the lives of Robert Johnson and Mississippi John Hurt. We’ll visit all
three of Robert Johnson’s grave markers. You could say the tour route is the same one the Devil
travels as he searches to re-claim Robert Johnson’s soul! We’ll also visit Avalon, which was
Mississippi John Hurt’s famous stomping ground. The tour begins at 222 Howard Street in downtown
Greenwood. It was in this building that B.B. King first performed on the radio, long before he began
his stint as a DJ at Memphis’s WDIA, which would later lead to stardom. One of the unique features
of the tour is that we’ll stay off main roads as much as possible, with much of the tour taking place on
back roads – gravel roads on which most people unfamiliar with the area would not travel.
While in these rural settings, your tour guide will sing songs you would have heard on these roads a hundred or so years ago: work songs,
field hollers, spirituals, riverboat sounding calls (find out just how deep Mark Twain is) and other music that was a part of plantation life.
With the advent of mechanized farming, this plantation music disappeared. It now lives on only in John and Alan Lomax’s folk music
recordings for the Library of Congress, and on this tour. Your tour guide will illustrate how some of these songs gave birth to the Blues.
For instance, you’ll learn how a children’s song called “Little Sally Walker” evolved into Wilson Pickett’s “Mustang Sally,” by way of
Rufus Thomas. Also, a song Muddy Waters composed while changing a flat tire (a few miles from the tour route) was to become the first
Chicago electric blues song. You’ll hear the original version of the song (I Be’s Troubled) as recorded by Alan Lomax and John Work,
and then the electric version (I Can’t Be Satisfied).
The Lomaxes “discovered” Muddy Waters, as well as Leadbelly, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Son House and others. You’ll also hear
Muddy Waters’ song “Rolling Stone.” A Briton by the name of Keith Richards was such a fan of the song that he named his band after it
in the 1960’s. No Delta blues tour would be complete without touching on the Civil Rights struggle. On the tour route is Bryant’s store in
Money, Mississippi, where Emmett Till allegedly whistled at a white woman. The results of this event brought the hardships of blacks to
national attention. We really think you’ll enjoy this tour and will learn a lot! We hope to see you soon.
