Well, that was it, or so it seems. This is the end of our sauciness. They spoiled us so much in Greenville and Clarksdale that now we are falling down into a whirlpool of disappointment. This is legendary Memphis and we are the dummy brothers.

Memphis is a big city. We got so used to the small towns that now we feel like immigrants from a rural area. No one hugs us. No one wonders if we are the two journalists from Turkey. Besides, we are tourists in a touristic ‘universe’. In the evening, Fikret even thought about leaving our cameras in the room while went out.

Yesterday we were celebrities. Today we are tourists. One wonders what will come next.

There is a Beale Street in here. It is similar to the Bourbon Street in New Orleans, but better in some ways. There are bars and so-called juke points in a row. The musicians don’t play with their slippers on like it used to be in ‘our’ Delta. They are ‘cool’. In other words, they are good musicians but they play heartless popular blues songs like “Mustang Sally.” I am sure that any of these musicians can fill Harbiye Açıkhava, the notable the open-air concert venue in İstanbul, with crowds. But then again that place gets filled in summers no matter who plays. It’s like a movie is sold out during the Film Festival and somehow no one bothers to go to the same movie during the normal theatre screening. And now you see I have started to write inconsistently… Memphis doesn’t suit us at all.

The most you can get from this so-called juke point and the better blues bar right next to it – I don’t remember the name of this bar – is blues standards. And I understand that B.B. King is quite rich, since he owns some shops and a bar in critical points of the city. And when the program started with “Sweet Home Alabama” and ended with “Mustang Sally” even in his bar, Fikret said to me “Are we in Mojo bar in İstanbul, or what?”

This is how it feels in here.

But of course there is a reason to my being this pessimistic. In no way this place is worse than New Orleans. But when we first arrived in New Orleans, we were naïve. Then we got spoiled in Natchez, Greenville and Clarksdale, and now this place looks like a destination for an ordinary touristic tour. And we say that in this grand Beale Street. So don’t get the wrong impression when I talk like this. If you build this street right next to the İstiklal Street in İstanbul, this one will surely drive İstiklal out of business.

Tomorrow we will hit the bottom of our mainstream touristic activity and visit the Sun Studios, Gibson guitar factory, and take a tour on one of the steamboats of Mississippi. Okay, please don’t look at us this way, it’s not like there are genuine juke points around and we refuse to go…

Now if I stop being emotional for a moment and speak from the point of analytic evaluation, this is what happened:

In the morning of our second day in Clarksdale, Rat helped us shoot a raw documentary. Don’t worry, we will upload it here, someday… Anyway, the Riverside Hotel has been a home to many famous musicians since its opening in 1944. For instance, Ike & Tina Turner lived in here for years, John Lee Hooker stayed in here, as did Muddy Waters… And like I told you before, Bessie Smith died in here, when it used to be hospital. That is to say, Rat is an important part of the history of the blues.

Then when we couldn’t find an open shop in lazy Clarksdale – for example, the only place we could get an internet connection was a McDonalds, and even the walls of that unpleasant place was filled with posters of Stevie Ray Vaughan, etc. – and we went to the Crossroads.

Yes, the Crossroads… The junction where Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil… The intersection point of Highway 61 (does it ring a bell J) and Highway 49.

We spent quite a time there, commemorating Johnson, taking some pictures/videos, subjecting the other people around to our bragging about the importance of this point. Then we visited a Jewish cemetery, played with a horse, and lazed around in the Martin Luther King Park. And as usual, we went to Red’s Juke Joint in the evening. In fact there are more popular juke points in town. But since we are locals, we stuck on to the genuine one. However, since it was a Sunday evening, the group that started its set at 8 o’clock got done with it at 10 o’clock. All we could do was to chat a little with Millage Gilbert and buy his CD. Oh, and of course, we threw $10 in the tip bucket, surprising the guy sitting next to Gilbert. It’s hard to figure out the source of wealth in this place. No one works. But the extent of their wealth is astonishing.

There was not much to do since we were left without any entertainment at 10 o’clock, so we went back to the Martin Luther King Park, and drank rakı with mosquitoes accompanying us.

The next morning, I was supposed to get shaved, and Fikret was supposed to take pictures. Clarksdale is packed with barbershops. And the barbershops are important places in the Delta. For instance, ragtime is a barbershop invention. Of course you won’t remember it because this happened at the beginning of the last century. The barbers wanted to put on some music to draw attention. And understandably, it was unlikely that they could get a jazz band to play in a small shop. So a genius found a pianist. The right hand playing the melody with the left accompanying it with the chords, combined with the vocal, formed a modest jazz band. The ragtime era began this way. Inspired by this, my intention was to start a rakı era in the barbershops, but I skipped an important detail: These people don’t work. They are extremely bon vivants. We haven’t met anyone working in the Delta yet. Maybe some waiters, or some barmen, and that’s all. Fikret even came up with a theory about how this town was not founded by anyone but fell from the sky.

Let alone finding an open barbershop, we couldn’t even find out when any of them would be opened. So we went to the Rock’n Roll Heritage Museum, which was closed. Then to the two restaurants, Abe’s and to Madidi, which were, again, closed… All we could do was to visit the Delta Blues Museum. It was nice. We spent some money, met some writers/musicians, and left. You can visit it in here, too: http://www.deltabluesmuseum.org/

We walked around a little bit more on the silent streets of Clarksdale, took some photos, and hit the road to Tunica. We got in the legendary Blue & White restaurant there…

When I say legendary, don’t get the wrong idea that we learned about these before we came from Turkey. We keep on being directed to these places by the friends we meet in here. But this place was really superb. They were all warm people. I asked about the sauces at the salad bar, and the waitress didn’t hesitate for one moment before pouring samples from all kinds on a plate, urging me to taste. Anyway, after we finished our excellent meal (catfish for the millionth time) we set off for our last stop on Highway 61: Memphis.

Memphis is how I described above. We are having such a big adaptation problem that now we are back in to our hotel, drinking rakı by the pool. As the touristic life goes on outside, we are wondering how we didn’t complain even a bit about the very same kind of touristic life in New York and New Orleans.

This episode ends in here. Now we have to listen to some Bukka White coming out of the speakers of my laptop, and drink rakı

Take care!