C Howl N’ Madd Perry says that “after a long night of playing, I sure get hungry.” Photo by Thomas GraninG
AAman manplays playspool poolatatGround Ground A man plays pool at Ground Zero Blues Club Zero ZeroBlues BluesClub ClubininClarksdale. Clarksdale. Photo by Thomas GraninG in Clarksdale. Photo by Thomas GraninG Photo by Thomas GraninG
LARKSDALE — Across the stained, Sharpie-scribbled tablecloth, bluesman Bill “Howl N’ Madd” Perry pours a steady stream of sugar into a steaming cup of strong, black coffee. He recounts, with an ever-ready laugh, a question that caught him off guard recently. “I showed up here one night and someone goes, ‘Hey, Howl N’ Madd, have you tried your sandwich yet?’ Me, I didn’t even know about it.” Indeed, here at Ground Zero Blues Club there is a sandwich – a Philly cheesesteak “sammich” — named in honor of this blues guitarist and fixture of Clarksdale ‘s world-famous music scene. James “Super Chikan” Johnson and Josh “Razorblade” Stewart, two other frequent Ground Zero headliners, also have tasty tributes, as does Highway 61, the foremost artery of the blues. This tourist mecca knows how to market the music with the food. Like a bluesman mid-show after a hard pull of whiskey, the Mississippi Delta’s blues scene has been remarkably rejuvenated in the past few years. Roots music entices fans from Liverpool to New York to Tokyo to come down to the Mississippi Delta for a pure blues experience. But the local restaurant fare, both venerable establishments and new endeavors, has many tourists staying longer and exploring further afield. The same culture that gave blues its vitality, its verve, also shaped a finger-licking good food culture. The duet of blues and food endows hard-pressed towns with a fresh spark. All you have to do is listen to the accents in the lunchtime crowds that pack Abe’s Bar-B-Q and Rest Haven to get a sense of how the blues has helped the local economy.
Ground Zero The region offers what Roger Stolle, owner of Cat Head Delta Blues and Folk Art Inc., terms the “no frills” blues culture. Take a look at Ground Zero, which receives the brunt of the Hertz rental cars and tour buses. The father of Clarksdale’s blues revival, though appealing to masses, clings stubbornly to the battered sofa on its sagging front porch and allows drunken scribbling on the rough wooden walls, encourages
58 club that turned Clarksdale The blues back toZero the blues: Ground Zero. Ground Blues Club in Clarksdale, Photoby byAlex AlexEdwards Edwards Photo