10.Tag - Clarksdale - Delta Blues Museum, Ground Zero Blues Club, Bluesberry Cafè

Wade Walton - Clarksdale

"One of Clarksdale's most talented and renowned blues musicians, Wade Walton (1923-2000) chose to pursue a career as a barber rather than as a professional entertainer. Walton never lost his love for blues, however, and often performed for customers and tourists at his barbershops, including the one he operated at this site from 1990 to 1999. Walton, a popular and respected local figure and a charter member of the city's NAACP chapter, was inducted into the Clarksdale Hall of Fame in 1989.

Wade Walton’s contributions to the blues extended well beyond the music he made playing harmonica and guitar and slapping out rhythms with a straight razor and razor strop. Blues enthusiasts, researchers, and musicians called on him at his barbershops for information and introductions, and Walton often escorted visitors around the area. Howlin' Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson No. 2, and Ike Turner (whom Walton claimed as a protege) all had their hair cut at Wade's.

Born October 10, 1923, or possibly earlier by some accounts, on Lee May's plantation in Lombardy, Mississippi, Walton was raised on the Goldfield plantation near the state penitentiary at Parchman. His brother Hollis played guitar, sometimes alongside Tony Hollins, an influential Delta bluesman who also worked as a barber; another brother, Frank, blew jug and danced, and Wade soon joined them on guitar. Walton began his barbering career in the 1940s and worked at the Arnold Brothers and Big 6 shops in Clarksdale before starting his own business, a combination barbershop and lounge, at 304 4th Street in the early 1970s. Walton came to the attention of the international blues community after two California college students in search of folk and blues musicians, Dave Mangurian and Don Hill, visited him in 1958. Walton went with the pair to Parchman, where their request to record prisoners' songs garnered a hostile rebuff and became the topic of a song Walton composed after the encounter. On a return trip in 1961, the students were jailed, but after concluding that they were indeed in town to record blues, not to agitate for civil rights, a State Sovereignty Commission investigator dismissed them as "crackpots." They then traveled with Walton to New Jersey for the recording of his album for Bluesville Records, Shake 'Em On Down.

In 1960 producer Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records and British author Paul Oliver recorded Walton and guitarist Robert Curtis Smith at the Big 6. Smith also recorded an impressive LP for Bluesville, Clarksdale Blues, in 1961. Walton saw little financial return from his records, reinforcing his decision to remain a barber. Even more disheartening was an ill-fated expansion in 1989 into the nightclub business, which quickly ended in disaster. Walton lost both his shop and the adjoining club, and recorded a song about the incident, "Leaving 4th Street," in 1990. After reopening on Issaquena Avenue, Walton was often joined by his son Kenneth Lackey, who operated Lackey's Entertainment, a "musical catering service." Another son, Luther Lackey, gained fame as a singer on the southern soul circuit after recording a country & western debut album. The Lackey brothers also sang gospel with their mother, Dotsie "Dorothy" Lackey. Wade Walton died in St. Louis on January 10, 2000, and is buried at McLaurin Gardens Cemetery in Lyon, Mississippi." (content © Mississippi Blues Commission)

The New World - Clarksdale

"This neighborhood, known since the turn of the twentieth century as the New World, was a breeding ground for ragtime, blues, and jazz music in Clarksdale's early days as a prosperous and adventurous new cotton town, when brothels here attracted both white and black clientele. Jews, Italians, Chinese, Syrians, and Greeks owned various local businesses, as did some African Americans who lived here, including the Messenger family, which opened its first business on this block in the early 1900s.

The New World acquired its name from Nelson Jones, an African American who built a saloon with an upstairs rooming house on the south side of the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad tracks, across from the site where the passenger depot was later built, according to H. L. Talbert, who arrived in Clarksdale in 1891. In 1948 Talbert recalled: ". . . he had a large sign erected on the front which read, Nelson Jones’ New World, and this part of Clarksdale has been known by that name all these years." This sector was also once known as Yellow Bottom(s), when early railroad workers stayed in yellow-painted shanties. African Americans moved into the housing when the railroaders moved on. Brick buildings were constructed after a devastating fire swept the area.

W. C. Handy, who lived in Clarksdale from 1903 to 1905, wrote that money flowed in the New World red light district, where his orchestra performed on "big nights, occasions when social and political figures of importance were expected to dine and dance with their favorite creole belles. . . . This led us to arrange and play tunes that had never been written down and seldom sung outside the environment of the oldest profession. Boogie-house music, it was called." A civic campaign led to curfews beginning in 1914 along with laws to control houses of ill repute, streetwalking, gambling, noise, and liquor. World War I brought economic restrictions as well, although Clarksdale would still be promoted as the Wonder City of the Delta, and the New World continued to be a vibrant, if less freewheeling, district, especially on Saturdays, when plantation workers poured into town. Blues singers performed on the streets, in juke joints, and at the train station. When the popular spots, including the Dipsie Doodle and Messengers, closed at curfew time, festivities shifted en masse back to the plantations. In 1941 scholar John W. Work III compared the Saturday night exodus to "a huge reveling cavalcade moving out to the plantation 'where they can have their fun.'"

Founded by Edward Messenger, who had a liquor license as early as 1907-08, Messengers was one of the earliest African American-owned local businesses. His grandson, George Messenger, celebrated the 100th anniversary of Messenger's in the 21st century. Other New World bars, juke joints, and clubs have included Wade's Barbershop and Lounge, the Casanova, the Blue Den, J.J.'s, Club 2000, and Club Champagne, but the primary blues venue here for several decades was the Red Top Lounge at 377 Yazoo Avenue, owned by Chester Tarzi and later by James Smith when it was also known as the Pig Trail Inn or Smitty's. Blues singer James Alford also ran Smitty's at one time. Other notable businesses in the New World have included Dr. Aaron Henry's 4th Street Drugs, the Roxy and New Roxy theaters, and deejay Early Wright's remote WROX radio studio." (content © Mississippi Blues Commission)

Sam Cooke - Clarksdale

"The golden voice of Sam Cooke thrilled and enchanted millions of listeners on the hit recordings “You Send Me,” “Shake,” “A Change is Gonna Come,” “Chain Gang,” and many more. Cooke’s captivating blend of gospel, blues, pop, and rhythm & blues made him a pioneer of the genre that became known as soul music in the 1960s. Cooke was born in Clarksdale on January 22, 1931. His family resided at 2303 7th Street until they moved to Chicago in 1933.

Cooke, one of America’s most popular and charismatic singing idols, began his career with his brothers Charles and L. C. and sisters Hattie and Mary in a family gospel group, the Singing Children. Their father, Charles Cook, a preacher and Clarksdale oil mill laborer, brought his wife Annie and the five children to Chicago in 1933. Sam later sang with the Highway QC’s and developed a national following on the gospel circuit as a member of the renowned Soul Stirrers. In 1957 he made the controversial move to “cross over” from religious to secular music, adding an “e” to his surname to establish a new identity as a rhythm & blues and pop singer.

Cooke’s appeal transcended boundaries of race, age, and gender, and his musical sensibilities were equally diverse, ranging from ballads to teenage dance numbers. He recorded a number of songs in the blues vein, including “Little Red Rooster,” “Somebody Have Mercy,” “Summertime,” “Frankie and Johnny,” “Laughin’ and Clownin’,” and several Charles Brown tunes. Asked to name his favorite singers in a 1964 interview, Cooke replied: “Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker. Louis Armstrong and Pearl Bailey also have a strong feeling for the blues.” According to his brother L. C., Sam also liked B. B. King, Bobby Bland, and Junior Parker.

An avid reader and astute, independent-minded businessman, Cooke was one of the first African American recording artists to own his own record label and publishing company. He also made headlines during the civil rights era by refusing to perform at a segregated concert in Memphis in 1961. Cooke was shot to death on December 11, 1964, in Los Angeles under circumstances that continue to generate controversy. More than forty-four years after Cooke’s death, his prophetic “A Change is Gonna Come” was revived as an anthem of a new political era when Bettye Lavette and Jon Bon Jovi sang it at the inauguration celebration for the country’s first African American president, Barack Obama.

Although L. C. Cooke never became as famous as Sam, he also made his mark as a vocalist, and in fact crossed over from gospel music before Sam did. L. C. was born in Clarksdale on December 14, 1932. His R&B career began in 1956 as a singer with a Chicago vocal group, the Magnificents. The Cooke brothers were the first of a number of noted performers in the soul music field to emerge from the Clarksdale area. Others include Charles Wright (leader of the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, famed for “Express Yourself” and other hits), Sir Mack Rice (composer of “Respect Yourself” and “Mustang Sally”), Chicago veteran Otis Clay, southern soul recording stars O. B. Buchana, David Brinston, and Luther Lackey, and local favorite Josh Stewart." (content © Mississippi Blues Commission)