Mississippi
Blues lives on in Mississippi as a cultural inheritance passed down through generations
Muddy Waters once sang: “the blues had a baby and they named it rock and roll.” But it’s more than rock… the blues makes a strong case for itself as the most influential sound in American music history… foundational to soul and funk, country, jazz and hip-hop. We wanted to check in on the state of the blues; so we headed to, well, the state of the blues… Mississippi and, specifically, to the town of Clarksdale… in the belly of the Delta… where the blues first flourished and where in recent years, there’s been something of a renaissance… showing the world that the granddaddy of American music still has chords left to play.
Head up Highway 49… and the Mississippi Delta thrums with the sound of the blues even before the music hits your ears.
At the annual Juke Joint Festival in Clarksdale, thousands flood this town to experience the Delta blues – in perhaps the last place it’s still thriving.
They come for those familiar licks and wails…songs of pain… and pride.
James Johnson goes by the name Super Chikan; and if you’re out to find the beating heart of the blues… he’s a good person to get to know.
Super Chikan: I never studied music– or had any music classes. I hear it and it sound good to me. And then I play because of the love of it.
Super Chikan: I make up my own sound, my own style.
This is how the blues still lives in Clarksdale…
…a cultural inheritance passed down through the generations. which is why this town of around 14,000 has surely produced more famous blues stars per capita than anywhere else on the planet.
Many of them, like Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, worked the surrounding plantations. Super Chikan, too… he brings his own kind of levity to those difficult memories.
Super Chikan: Bein’ a sharecropper, you have to have a rhythm to work to. And our favorite rhythm was the old choo-choo train. I tell the folks I grew up in a crack house. Our house had so many cracks in the wall, we had to stuff cotton in the cracks to keep snow out. Shoot that thang.
Jon Wertheim: You really lived that song?
Super Chikan: Oh yeah. I mean, I sing about the life I live.
Jon Wertheim: When did you start workin’ in the fields?
Super Chikan: Until I was big enough to go to the field, like three and four, I took care of the chickens. Five and six, I was in the cotton field, picking cotton, choppin’ cotton, what have you.
Experiences like these helped forge the blues in the Delta… where places like Clarksdale were built into boomtowns on the backs of slaves and later sharecroppers…
The music was a vessel for the Black experience… what started as field songs and spirituals evolved into a new sound… mixing slide guitar with a howl to the human condition.
Blues houses – juke joints – opened up. And by the 20s and 30s, stars emerged… like Robert Johnson who, per legend, went down to the crossroads outside of Clarksdale… and sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his guitar chops. A monument marks the spot where it happened… or not.
Super Chikan: Aaahhh, I heard a different story. A guy named Ike Zimmerman taught Robert Johnson how to play. Gave him a few licks to go on, somethin’ to start with. Gave him a pattern to go on.
Super Chikan Johnson might have inside information… Robert Johnson, he told us, was family.
Jon Wertheim: You realize Robert Johnson went to the crossroads, took guitar lessons from Zimmerman–
Super Chikan: Ike Zimmerman, yeah.
Jon Wertheim: Little bit less mystical than he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for learning to play guitar.
Super Chikan: Yeah.
Flavorful lore like this is what beckoned Sean “Bad” Apple, when he came to Clarksdale from Scranton, Pennsylvania, in the early 90s, and never left.
He opened his own blues club here where he serves as bartender, doorman, headliner… and he lives backstage. Clad in his… ornate stage clothes… he waxed nostalgic about the old blues scene.
Sean “Bad” Apple: When you’re in a juke joint it’s like, there’s gamblin’ in this corner, someone’s makin’ a baby in this corner, there’s a chicken fight right over here.
He says he’s sharply aware that he wasn’t born into this tradition… but tries to honor it as best he can, giving demonstrations on the blues’ evolution.
He showed us how the blues got repackaged for wider – and, frankly, whiter- audiences.
Sean “Bad” Apple: And then these young kids growin’ up like Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney, Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin all these bands were listening to this blues music. Clapton’s “I Went to the Crossroad.”
Jon Wertheim: That’s the Cream..
Sean “Bad” Apple: Yeah, that’s Cream’s version. But Robert Johnson, the blues man, that’s his song, I Went to the Crossroads.
Over the years, musical tastes changed. The local blues houses closed down, and farm work dried up. Today, Clarksdale sits in one of the poorest counties, in the poorest region of a stubbornly poor state.
Once vibrant, the downtown is crumbling.
Jon Wertheim: You’ve played all over the world.
Super Chikan: Yeah.
And a seasoned musician like Super Chikan, who’s won awards, toured internationally and had a long recording career… has to supplement his income by building guitars… and driving a truck.
Jon Wertheim: I heard of a guy though who travels the world and he’s got 10 albums. And he still drives a truck.
Super Chikan: I know a fella like that.
Jon Wertheim: Who’s that?
Super Chikan: His name Chikan. And I’ve been asked, “When you gonna record a new album?” I said, “For what? I got 10 of ’em out and they ain’t not one of them done me nothing yet.”
Even his fans don’t fully grasp that he’s still living the life he’s singing about.
Super Chikan: We got a lotta blues seekers that’s comin’ here, tourists comin’ here. They want the blues, you don’t want the blues, you want the blues music.
Jon Wertheim: They want the sound, they don’t want the underlying experience.
Super Chikan: That’s right, that’s right.
Jon Wertheim: If someone says, “Listen, I like the way you sound. I don’t need to hear about the experience underneath it all,” is that cool with you?
Super Chikan: Yeah. but it’s gonna come out in the song.
But recently… Clarksdale has been experiencing something of a resurgence. It’s no Nashville, but new shops and restaurants are opening up, and fresh fans and young musicians have been flocking to a place they see as the gravitational center of blues today.
Ghalia Volt hails from Brussels originally, and she is a fixture of the music scene here.
Jon Wertheim: How did you first get into this music?
Ghalia Volt: I guess from punk and rock and roll music. Just diggin’. Diggin’ and diggin’, trying to find what’s the real roots of the music I used to listen to until I got caught.
When she first came here in 2014, she traveled the Delta, absorbing blues truths from local masters, perhaps the closest this music gets to Juilliard.
Ghalia Volt: I was just watchin’ the guys play and learning from that. And trying, you know, in my room, so, “Okay, how does that sound.” You know, and oh, OK. And maybe I try to reproduce what they teach me. And they’re like, “Oh but this sound– this actually sounds really good.”
The sound she’s talking about? It cuts through the air at places like Red’s… a relic from the old juke joint days… here, modernity keeps its distance.
If you’re looking for a hand-crafted cocktail, this ain’t the place.
But the beer and the music flow in equal volume, late into the night… under the… watchful gaze of Red… one of the last Black blues club owners in Clarksdale…
Just a few blocks away… literally, on the other side of the tracks…
Morgan Freeman: There you are.
Jon Wertheim: Saturday night, Ground Zero.
Another venue…slightly more polished.
We met the proprietor here, too.
Big A: What’s up my brother from another mother.
Morgan Freeman: You know who, you know what, you know why.
Yes, that’s Morgan Freeman…
He spent his childhood in the Delta, keeps a home near Clarksdale, and, 22 years ago, opened Ground Zero Blues Club as a place to showcase the vast local talent. That’s Anthony “Big A” Sherrod on guitar.
Jon Wertheim: Can blues revive this town?
Morgan Freeman: It has.
We met Freeman for a drink, along with Ground Zero co-founder, Howard Stovall – whose family still owns the land Muddy Waters once worked as a laborer.
Morgan Freeman: When I was a little boy, four, five, these guys would come by, sit on my grandmother’s porch on a Saturday, drink gin, or hooch, or moonshine.
Howard Stovall: Moonshine.
Morgan Freeman: And play the blues.
Jon Wertheim: What is it about this music that has made it so durable, such a building block? What is it about the sound?
Morgan Freeman: Can we use the term “soul,” here? Because I think this is the music that comes directly from the soul. It’s just wrenched out of you. It’s palpable that they’re singin’ from deep.
Morgan Freeman: But the blues is the blues. There are chords and licks that you gotta do if you’re gonna play the blues.
Morgan Freeman: Dow dow dow, ding ding ding, dang dang dang dang, dow, dong dong, dong dong, ding ding. Dong dong dong, dong dong dong. Hard rock is my pillow. The highway is my home, so I might as well be dead. I’m just walkin’ and walkin’. Seems I have no place to go. The blues.
As the Delta town of Clarksdale, Mississippi leans into its blues past… its rebirth has given rise to a new blues superstar…the ultimate neighborhood kid-made-good. He’s a guitar phenom who learned his licks locally and who has been updating the blues for this century. He’s 24-years-old and has already won a Grammy. Ladies and gentlemen: Kingfish.
His real name is Christone Ingram. and he is the brightest blues star to come out of the Delta in decades…
He’s opened for the Rolling Stones and tours the world as a headliner…
And it’s not just blues die-hards who come out to see him. His uncanny guitar chops draw packed crowds.
And he draws frequent comparisons to Hendrix, Clapton, and, inevitably, another Mississippi native…
Jon Wertheim: So, if I said I read you were the next B.B. King, I should probably keep that to myself? Not let you — get that goin’ to your head?
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram: Hey, no, not at all. Plus, you know, I kinda think, you know, I love Mr. King’s music, that’s one of my favorite. But I kinda think I have my own thing goin’, as well.
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram: I’m more rough around the edges, I like to say I feel like I’m B.B. if he—
Jon Wertheim: If B.B. took off that suit?
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram: Yeah, and put him in some Jordans and you know, put his hat backwards, you know?
Kingfish was fresh off a Grammy win last year for best contemporary blues album when we saw him perform before a spirited crowd in Austin.
It was 600 miles and a world away from where he started out…in his hometown of Clarksdale…picking up gigs at the local blues clubs after school, starting at age 11.
Jon Wertheim: I think most people, you think of blues, and it’s sort of an older, maybe a weathered guy who’s had his share of struggles. Where you do you get blues in your mid-20s?
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram: I haven’t went through no divorce or anything like that, but I’ve definitely had my share of struggles. And, you know, anybody havin’ struggles, that’s the blues. Blues is life.
He was introduced to the blues by his parents and fell in love with the sound. Kingfish told us his musical tastes, his generous talent… as well as his generous physique…set him apart in school.
He found comfort in practice… obsessive practice… as we witnessed backstage… he works to master the old standards and also writes his own music.
Well aware that he is heir to a long line of blues greats from the Mississippi Delta…a rich history he weaves into his songs.
Jon Wertheim: What is it about this region that produces so many talented musicians? How do you explain that?
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram: As I have a song, there’s just somethin’ in the dirt, man. It’s just somethin’ about, you know, how we had, you know, you know, old blues guys, and ancestors who was down here that, you know, we got all that from, you know? It came from them.
Spend time in the Delta and it’s easy to see why the place enchants so many…
But the hardships jump out at you. Forty two percent of Clarksdale’s residents live below the poverty line. This was once a seat of the civil rights movement, and the legacy of Jim Crow lingers here.
That’s the Clarksdale Kingfish knows well.
Jon Wertheim: This is the old neighborhood.
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram: Yeah, man, this is Oakhurst. I grew up here…
When Kingfish was growing up, his gigs brought in much-needed money. He and his mother were homeless for a time.
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram: This is where all the moments happened: Me pickin’ up a guitar, you know. As you can see we still have some houses that are, you know, poverty stricken. You know, some parts of the city, you know, they don’t put money into or whatever. So.
Jon Wertheim: Still some struggle in the Delta.
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram: Yeah.
Jon Wertheim: You don’t hide that in your music.
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram: No, not at all.
Jon Wertheim: Why is that important to you?
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram: Because for one that’s also home. You know, that’s home, and I have to write about home. And that’s what we have to talk about today. We can’t talk about, you know, “Hoochie Koochie Man” forever.
Kingfish may be singing about the realities of Black life in Clarksdale, but he says that these truths don’t always connect with the Black community… difficult for him to miss when he looks out into the crowd at many of his performances.
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram: I come across a lot of, you know, people like me who say, “Well, you know, man we shouldn’t listen to that because that’s, you know, you know, that music reminds us of our pain. And, you know, it’s slave music.” And I get that. But, you know, we need to let it be known like, “Hey, man, this is a part of our culture. There wouldn’t be no 50 Cent, or Lil’ Wayne if it wasn’t for Son House and Robert Johnson, and the list goes on and on.”
Jon Wertheim: This is the family tree.
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram: Yeah, this is a family tree so we need to embrace that
He got his first real introduction to that history at a program run by Clarksdale’s small blues museum. We accompanied him on a visit… his first time back in years.
These after-school blues classes are where Kingfish first learned the basics of his instrument.
During a break in the music, we ran into one of the teachers.
… Big A… remember him? His voice still hoarse from his weekend gig performing at Morgan Freeman’s Ground Zero Blues Club.
Kingfish was six when he first met Big A.
Jon Wertheim: What was little Kingfish like?
Big A: He was bad.
Jon Wertheim: He said that.
Big A: He was bad. But he kept at it.
Jon Wertheim: Did you sense the talent early?
Big A: I knew he was gonna be somethin’.
For these kids, the program is about the music and the history.
It’s also, kingfish told us, about expanding their idea of opportunity… in a place where opportunity is not evenly distributed.
Jon Wertheim: We’ve seen a lot of new development here in Clarksdale over this blues tourism. What’s your opinion of that?
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram: (laugh)
Jon Wertheim: You’re laughin’
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram: I hope I don’t get in trouble. Through the years I’ve always seen, you know, money bein’ put into that, and it’s fine. I just wish more of the other neighborhoods would get some of that, you know, push and revitalization. When you step away from the actual “genre,” you go across the track: That’s the real blues.
Part of the appeal of Kingfish, he’s a thoroughly modern bluesman… updating the music in sound as well as subject matter…
Just as Elvis, Clapton and Hendrix borrowed liberally from the blues…
Kingfish is turning the tables, borrowing back from them…
His is a musical stew that mixes rock with funk, and jazz, plus muddy waters, B.B. King and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Jon Wertheim: What else do you draw on?
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram: Gospel, I love Gospel music. That was, like, kinda one of my first loves. Hip hop as well. You know, some of my favorite rappers were storytellers: Biggie, you know, he could tell a story just like Robert Johnson. So, it’s all relative.
And Kingfish marries his sonic storytelling with a natural showmanship.
Still, with blues on the musical margins, not exactly dominating Spotify playlists… we wondered where this genre is heading.
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram: Blues is always gonna be around, you know. The genre may not be in the Billboard Top 200, but blues is always gonna be here.
Jon Wertheim: You’re not worried about the future?
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram: Nah. Not at all. There’s always gonna be a little kid somewhere that’s listenin’ to B.B., Stevie, anybody else, so yeah.
He’s too modest to say it, so we’ll say it for him…that little kid somewhere is also surely inspired by a bluesman from Clarksdale.
We’ll let Kingfish… take us out.
Produced by David M. Levine. Associate Producer, Elizabeth Germino. Edited by Sean Kelly.
Mississippi
Mississippi State’s Loss Doesn’t Stop SEC from Owning Week Two in AP Top 25
Outside of Mississippi State, Arkansas and Auburn, the SEC had a very successful Week Two of the college football season. The latest AP Top 25 poll reflects the strength of the SEC with 6 of the top 7 spots belonging to SEC teams.
Here’s a recap of how the ranked SEC teams fared in the second full week of the college football season:
Click here for a recap of the unranked SEC teams.
With the exception of giving up three points, this was probably exactly how Georgia expected this game to go. Carson Beck threw five touchdowns and the defense held Tennessee Tech to less than 150 yards of total offense. Anything less would be a surprise.
More than 100,000 people saw Texas come into Ann Arbor, Mich. and leave with a huge win. The Longhorns looked like the better team from the first drive of the game where they easily marched down the field. That Oct. 19 game in Austin against Georgia is looking better and better.
It was a lot closer than Alabama would’ve liked, but it’s a win that will fend off the “Nick Saban is gone, we’re doomed” crowd. At the same time, though, there were some things that crowd could point to at a later time.
Two games against inferior competition and Ole Miss has outscored its opponents 129-3. They’ll take a slight step up in competition next week against Wake Forest, but the Rebels are still about a month away from playing a team that will truly test them.
Missouri’s schedule just took an unexpected bump in its level of difficulty with No. 24 Boston College joining the top 25. Bill O’Brien is brilliant at game planning and calling plays (not so much with making trades, but that hasn’t reached the college ranks yet). Missouri needs to be on upset alert (and ready to stop the run).
This happens every year. Tennessee looks really good to start the season and by the end Volunteer fans are saying next year is their year. But maybe this year is their year with the way Nico Iamaleava has been playing.
Of the two SEC newcomers, Texas is getting most of the attention which makes sense based on the current teams. But folks, don’t sleep on the Sooners. They ruined many of my own childhood memories growing up in Texas. This week’s way-too close game doesn’t help that argument, but think long term.
LSU was one of three SEC teams to play FCS schools after playing top 25 teams last week. The Tigers and Texas A&M both lost, while Georgia won. So, it’s not surprising to see each of them play FCS teams and neither were any of the results.
SEC Week 2 Power Rankings: Which Teams Are Contenders or Pretenders?
WATCH: Mississippi State’s Bowl Hopes Take a Hit with Arizona State Defeat
Mississippi State Crumbles in the Trenches: What Went Wrong Against Arizona State?
Mississippi
Arizona State RB Cam Skattebo ‘disrespected’ by Mississippi State football’s defensive game plan
Cam Skattebo slammed Mississippi State on the football field on Saturday night and also took another jab afterward in his postgame press conference.
The Arizona State running back, following a 30-23 Sun Devils win at Mountain America Stadium, took exception to MSU only utilizing three defenders on the line of scrimmage. The results were damning.
Arizona State (2-0) rushed for 346 yards. It was the most allowed by Mississippi State (1-1) in a game since Arkansas in 2016. Skattebo’s 262 rushing yards on 33 carries were the second-most in ASU history.
“They couldn’t stop us in that three-down front,” Skattebo said when asked what made ASU’s run game successful. “Honestly, we all felt disrespected with them in a three-down front. You can’t come in here and put five guys in the box and expect to stop six. I don’t know. We took that a little disrespectful, and we rushed for what over 300 yards? Something around there. It is what it is.”
Skattebo, a 5-foot-11, 215-pound junior, also led Arizona State with 35 receiving yards on three catches.
“I knew these dudes were big and heavy,” he said. “We knew going into the game they weren’t as physical as most other teams but they’re heavy. So when they hit you, it hurts, no matter how hard they’re coming — 300 pounds at 10 miles per hour or 16 miles per hour hurts the same. I just kept my feet moving.”
Mississippi State trailed 30-3 in the third quarter but scored 20 unanswered points to cut the score to 30-23 with 5:27 to play. The Bulldogs never touched the ball again, with the Sun Devils running out the clock on 12 plays.
Skattebo had a game-sealing 39-yard rush that allowed ASU to kneel down.
“Until the end, we had our ups and downs there, but that was fun,” he said. “You can ask these guys up front, bullying dudes, grown men that are 300 pounds, that’s fun to us. That’s fun to the front-five, the front-seven and the running back. The quarterback probably hates it. He probably likes watching, but he didn’t complain one time the whole game.”
Sam Sklar is the Mississippi State beat reporter for the Clarion Ledger. Email him at ssklar@gannett.com and follow him on X @sklarsam_.
Mississippi
Why Mississippi State football loss to Arizona State revealed a strong Jeff Lebby culture
It was 11:10 p.m. Saturday in Starkville when Arizona State quarterback Sam Leavitt barreled into the end zone for his second touchdown of the game.
At that point, it would’ve been fair for Mississippi State football fans to call it a night. The Bulldogs (1-1) trailed 27-3 at ASU in the final minute of the second quarter. They were dominated in just about every statistical category. New coach Jeff Lebby looked like he was headed toward his first loss, and an embarrassing one.
And even if you gave the second half a chance, eyes just a crack open, that wasn’t encouraging either. Arizona State (2-0) took the opening drive of the third quarter for a field goal while eating 8 minutes, 27 seconds of game time. That just about decided the game before Mississippi State touched the ball in the second half.
Wrong.
Instead, MSU scored touchdowns on three of its next four drives and cut the score to 30-23 with 5:27 to play. The defense, which was torched for 346 rushing yards, needed one more stop to let the offense try to tie it. It would’ve been the largest comeback in program history.
Mississippi State’s path to a bowl game seems murkier than it was a week ago. But in the long-term, there’s still encouragement after the 30-23 loss.
“Our guys battled in an incredible way in the second half, and we’re going to hold on to that,” Lebby said in his postgame radio interview. “We’re going to find ways to get back in the building, get back to work and be able to walk into Davis Wade (Stadium) with a ton of confidence and ready to go win a football game.”
The encouragement from Mississippi State’s comeback effort
Lebby said after beating Eastern Kentucky 56-7 in Week 1 that there is an abundance of teachable moments in wins, just like losses.
There is plenty to point to after losing to Arizona State.
Mississippi State came out incredibly flat. The Sun Devils scored on their first five possessions. The MSU offense had one field goal, two punts, a fumble returned for a touchdown and a turnover-on-downs in the first half. MSU had -13 rushing yards in the first half.
There were concerns entering the game about the travel distance, late kickoff and high temperature. But let’s be real, Mississippi State was playing so poorly at the start that it was hard to judge if those were factors.
“I got to do a better job getting these guys ready to go play out of the gate,” Lebby said. “I thought our energy, our effort and our emotion was really good, but then we did not play clean there in the first quarter, so that part was frustrating.”
The Bulldogs outscored the Sun Devils 20-0 in the final quarter and a half. It was a surprise. Arizona State was rolling. Mississippi State was not.
MORE: Introducing Sam Sklar, the Clarion Ledger’s new Mississippi State beat reporter
For Lebby, a first-time head coach at any level, let it be a learning moment for him. It was his first time getting pinned in a corner. The Bulldogs adjusted correctly in the second half like good coaches do.
The rushing offense and defense both need to improve. Badly. Quarterback Blake Shapen has been impressive in his first two Mississippi State games and the wide receiver room is deep and talented as ever, but they can’t be the only answer.
That’s just for this season.
Mississippi State has its first tally in the loss column. But it isn’t a strike against Lebby leading the future of the program.
Sam Sklar is the Mississippi State beat reporter for the Clarion Ledger. Email him at ssklar@gannett.com and follow him on X @sklarsam_.
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