Hot tamales are standard fare in the Delta. Photo by Katie Williamson
Poor Monkey draws locals and tourists to the unique dance club/ bar. Photo by thomas graning
Owner, Willie Seaberry, also known as “Po’ Monkey,” opens the doors on Thursday. Photo by Katie Williamson
Baptist Town’s own Robert Johnson adheres to this signifying tradition in his 1936 recording They’re Red Hot. In the song, he croons about a favorite girl: Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got ‘em for sale / Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got ‘em for sale / She got two for a nickel, got four for a dime / Would sell you more, but they ain’t none of mine.
It’s real simple Stretching parallel to the Mississippi River, Highway 1 merges into Joe Pope Boulevard by the Eagles football stadium at Rosedale. At the modest wood-framed White Front Cafe, Barbara Pope has her family’s famous tamales for sale by the trio. On a classic red tablecloth, she serves up an order of three tawny tamales speckled with crimson drops of her piquant spice. Blanch Turnage, a retired high school history teacher, quips knowingly: “You’re really going to want more than three. I promise.” Without so much as a nod to the complement, Pope tells her story in a gentle voice. The strongest pull of the South,
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family, brought her home from Chicago to care for her now 105-year-old mother. Back in Rosedale, she became her brother Joe’s tamale apprentice. While working at Dattel’s Department Store, Joe learned the tamale craft from his childhood friend’s father in order to earn some extra money on weekends. Just as Joe personalized the recipe, Barbara gave it her own riff. Yet at the heart of these tamales is simplicity: beef brisket and cornmeal. Her tamales are for savoring, like a favorite vinyl record. True to the code of great cooks, Barbara guards her recipe. But she does not mind if her neighbor Turnage helps her out with the hard, monotonous part of tamale making: rolling. Southern food was a family affair for Turnage as well. She remembers that her mother operated a cafe on the north side of town. But the traveling bluesmen stopped on the south side, the “end of town.” Gay Ruth’s cafe fed musicians such as Tyrone Davis, Willie Cox, and Bobby Rush as they headed north for Memphis and beyond. These days, Rush still comes by the White
Front for an occasional taste of tamale. Tamales and the blues are no longer found solely in hidden dives off the highways. As towns develop their blues legacy, restaurants follow. Twenty miles east of Rosedale in Cleveland, state Sen. William “Willie” Simmons, the proprietor of The Senator’s Place, and harmonicaplaying bluesman Rush, close friends, keep the blues and soul food partnership alive. To the right of an engraved mirror portrait of Simmons, a rainbow sherbet-colored poster proudly hangs, commemorating the opening night blues show which gave the restaurant an electric start. The two hosted a fundraiser for army veterans at the state Capitol in March. Rush plays sweet blues. Simmons cooks fine soul food. People give generous tips to charity. Working in the blues hub of Clarksdale when the B.B. King Blues Museum opened virtually in her Indianola backyard in 2008, Trish Berry had an epiphany. “I learned when I worked in Clarksdale that blues tourists are coming. I just kind of thought I could cut my commute from