There have been 45 presidents of the US since King George III was sent packing. The US, though, has had three Kings, who have left a lasting legacy.
This year is the 50th anniversary of Dr Martin Luther King’s assassination and last week we followed in his footsteps from Memphis where he made his Mountaintop speech and was assassinated to the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum and the opening of a new chapter in the Civil Rights story.
This week we look at B.B. King, the Blues and Beale Street, before finishing in Graceland with Elvis Presley, the King.
The King of Beale Street
Woke up this morning. Well, this is the home of the Blues, Memphis, Tennessee, so there was only one thing for it, I headed down to Beale Street.
Which is, of course, the first place visitors come when they arrive here.
Even this early in the morning, 9am, the Blues is blaring out from the bars and clubs even though they won’t open until early evening.
We were in B.B.’s Blues Bar the night before, dancing to the early hours to the house band,
Working off the Barbecue chicken, rice and catfish and going back for seconds, rolling down the river to Tina Turner’s Proud Mary.
Riley King first came here from his native Mississippi in his late teens.
I’ll blow your trumpet for you: WC Handy
But he first started making his mark when the sole black radio station in town, WDIA, championed him
in his early 20s when he was christened Beale Street Blues Boy, abbreviated to Blues Boy (he was just B to his friends).
B.B. has been intertwined with Beale Street ever since.
His club is at the foot of the pedestrianised stretch where revellers mill every night, spilling out of the clubs, taking the party outside.
W.C. Handy, the ‘Father of the Blues’, looks down the road at us all,
From outside the pedestrian cordon further down Beale Street…
His boyhood shack has been recreated in exact detail nearby.
It was Band leader Handy, travelling around the Mississippi Delta over the turn of the 20th century who curated the sounds.
Which would become the Blues.
And developed it and brought it to the mainstream in Memphis,
And Beale Street comes alive at night
His standard Memphis Blues, which was originally called Crump’s Blues, was written for the Mayoral candidate.
Handy, his trumpet in hand, stands across the road from the Robert Church Park.
Named for the South’s first black millionaire, who along with Handy did most to turn Beale Street into a cultural and commercial hub for black Memphians.
Today it is a tourist hub but is also a living, breathing, musical experience.
And as is explained to us it provides work for gigging local musicians.
And it has the seal of approval from the Blues specialists in our group.
At the heart of Memphis life then, as now, is the Church and the historic First Baptist Church has special resonance.
They all came here to worship and sing Gospel.
The Blues today
Gospel was B.B.’s first influence when he watched his own pastor play guitar in church back in Mississippi.
Jerry Lee Lewis’s club is down Beale Street.
One of many jumping joints, including the highly-recommended Rum Boogie Bar.
Where our own Wolfgang got up to play harmonica and earned a tenner from the band, his first-ever commission.
There’s an Irish bar too, obviously.
Silky O’sullivan, with duelling pianos, a Blues museum, numerous soul diners.
And also Lansky’s which boasts that it is the clothier to the King.
The Blues Trail
Elvis, like B.B., was from Mississippi which is where we’ll go next to see where the Blues all started.
The Blues Trail is a 200-marker route through time and Mississippi.
It chronicles all the great Blues singers, B.B. Muddy Waters, Charley Patton, Son House, Sonny Boy Williamson, John Lee Hooker et al.
And retelling their stories.
If you are an independent traveller you should make use of the Blues Trail app.
I can never trust either my sense of direction regardless of how straight these roads are.
Much of it is the vertical Highway 61, the Blues Highway..
Or my command of technology.
But that’s just me, and thankfully our 20-strong party, has laid-back and knowledgeable Southerner Clint driving us.
And educating us in the Blues, cranking up the CDs on the decks.
Short of sleep… all these Bluesy nights, I drift off into a dream as we pass the open flat brown fields.
Everybody loves their Grammy
That at one time teemed with black slaves and sharecroppers.
‘Oh, I wish I was single because my lady is driving me mad.’
And suddenly I’m back. It’s the music.
In truth, you could never mistake Modern-Day Man with Bluesman, they were a different species.
No woman nowadays would allow it.
Not that they seemed to then either.
The Baddest Man in Blues: Robert Johnson
Every Bluesman has his wife leaving them ‘because his woman done them wrong’ though there’s always the assumption that he’ll talk his way back.
All Bluesmen are the same, the same but then different.
And then on top of all that there’s Robert Johnson, ‘the Baddest Man in Blues,.
Who legend has it made a deal with the Devil at a crossroads.
Near to where we stop off at Dockery Plantation.
After which we returned to town with a new-found guitar style which set him apart from his peers.
Whatever the truth, and who wouldn’t want to believe this story, we do know that Robert was a bit of an oul’ Divil for the women.
He seemed to have one in every port or town.
Birthplace of the Blues
More often than not somebody else’s which ultimately was his undoing.
When he was poisoned at 27, the wife of a jealous husband lacing his whiskey with Strychnine.
Our own hero B.B. loved, and was much loved by women.
He even named his guitars after women, or one woman in particular, Lucille, a damsel in distress.
Legend has it that two fellas were fighting over her at one of his gigs.
When a fire broke out interrupting the concert forcing everyone to evacuate the building.
We look the part, don’t we?
B.B. realising that his favourite guitar was still inside rushed into the building to retrieve it and thereafter named his guitars after her.
I get to caress Lucille later in our trip at the Westin Hotel in Jackson.
Where there is a promotion with replica guitars of the greats left in selected rooms.
Women held a special affection for B.B. He married three times and sired 11 children at least, maybe even 15.
When love came to town, B.B. certainly didn’t turn it down.
And that’s worth singing about.
Travel facts
United we stand: Boarding United Airlines
Jim flew with United Airlines, Dublin to Newark, New Jersey and then onto Mississippi, returning Jackson, Mississippi to Houston, Texas.
Then onto Newark and onto Dublin.
Car hire, three nights Memphis – Peabody, one night Cleveland – Hampton Inn, two nights Natchez – The Burn B&B, two nights Jackson – Westin. Costs may vary.
While Memphis saw me picking up their love of basketball, I was pitched straight into the Eastern seaboard’s love of all the Big Four American sports on another occasion.
And tell me which American sports team you support. Is it because you’ve been to see them, have relatives there, like the name of the team or the colour.
American Airlines will increase weekly cargo-capacity to 5.5 million pounds.
And they will transport critical goods between U.S. and Dublin, Buenos Aires, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, Seoul and Shanghai to support those in need.
The new DUB-DFW cargo only service will launch 1x weekly beginning, April 13, and will be operated on Boeing 777-300 aircraft.
Wrap it up: The ground staff do their bit
These flights will help transport life-saving medical supplies and materials, including personal protective equipment and pharmaceuticals.
Other essential goods on these flights will include manufacturing and automotive equipment, fresh fruits and vegetables, fish, mail and electronics.
“The air cargo industry plays a critical role in pulling the world together in times of crisis, and it takes all of us to get the job done,” said Rick Elieson, President of Cargo and Vice President of International Operations.
Fly the flag: American Airlines
“With the expansion of American’s cargo-only flights, we have more capacity to bring critical medical supplies and protective gear to the areas that need it most.
In March, the airline began operating its first cargo-only flights since 1984 between Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) and Frankfurt (FRA).
Stepping it up: Vital cargo
They will be transporting more than 350,000 pounds of medical supplies.
There will be mail for active U.S. military, telecommunications equipment and electronics to support communities impacted around the globe.
Of course these supplies are vital to get us through this crisis.
But American Airlines will never forget its human cargo and will have us all flying around before too long.
Sweet home Chicago
Out on the lake: Chicago Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
They will be learning from the medical stafff on how to take care of patients.
The training is part of a larger initiative where SAS employees get the chance to contribute to society and to temporarily work where they are needed most.
Now not to put too fine a point on this but they do look like angels… and I am more than a little jealous of the younger beardie gent second on the left.
I’m indebted to my old pal Tony Flynn for this lockdown game… use the initials of your Christian name for what you need when you’re holed up at home.
But Tony, I know you better than that… Tea, Onions, Noodles, Yogurt?
And you know me better too… and that’s why I went for Johnnie Walker, Ardbeg, Mossburn, Elements of Islay, Springbank.
You must have known I’d have used my full Christian name… more whisky, you see.
It’ll put a smile on your face
And in this regular feature, ‘Hungry and Thursday’ that’s what it’s all about, and being in lockdown my whisky is my best friend.
And while punters snap up the cheap lager from the supermarket shelves I’m happy to report that there’s still plenty of uisce beatha, or water of life, to be had.
So here’s a trawl of whiskies around the world…
Smoky Scotch
For peat’s sake
Scotland: The original and the best, Scotland is the home of whisky.
It has five clearly defined regions, of which the smoky and peaty whisky from the isle of Islay is the best. Think an ashtray of water… no, seriously, it will grow on you.
Back then, and it’s only a year ago, I would call on the services of the finest freelancers who never let me down.
Star women: The Irish at IPW
On the other side
Now I’m on the other side of the fence I have been glad to say that the holiday providers I cultivated then and many writers and editors remain the best of friends.
We all of us heard about the world, saw the world or were told about the world before we ever saw it… and for many of us we fell in love with the world through books.
I’m not talking about the holiday page-turners where Major Jeremy or Lord Montgomery crosses the class divide to elevate Mary the chambermaid.
A novel travel experience
Rather these are the books which mark out a country as somewhere we strive to visit and then do so:
The Story of an African farm girl (South Africa): Olive Schreiner unsurprisingly wasn’t on my school syllabus growing up in Scotland in the Seventies.
South Africa was completely off my radar until my best friend Thomas was taken out there to live with his family.
Thomas was addicted to the Commando wartime comics from the DC Thomson stable which includes the Beano and the Dandy, and who I am working for now.
But I digress. Olive, as I discovered on my trip to the Karoo in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, was a feminist pioneer.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (USA): Arguably one of the most influential books in the history of the modern world
With Abraham Lincoln purportedly greeting Harriet Beacher Stowe with the salutation: ‘So this is the little woman who started this great (American Civil) war.’
Tom was based on a real-life slave, Josiah Henson who lived and worked on a plantation in Bethesda, Maryland.
Much changed and much gentrified as an exclusive suburb of Washington DC where I always receive the best of welcomes from my cousin… www.washington.org and Easy DC.
Slaughterhouse–Five(Dresden, Germany): War revisionism hadn’t reached my Glasgow school but Kurt Vonnegut seeped into my consciousness a few years later at Aberdeen University.
The cult Sixties novelist placed his time-travelling hero Billy Pilgrim in and around the Allies’ firebombing of Dresden
Which is where the greats from Motown from Aretha to Whitney started out and how cruise ships https://www.celebritycruises.co.uk put on entertainment.
I’d missed the old gospel choir in Memphis after I had to get the early-morning connection back to Europe.
But we were greeted to Christmas songs in an antebellum house turned B&B (and Deep South B&Bs are actually country houses). Visit https://www.deep-south-usa.com.
Elvis and me: At his breakfast bar in Memphis
