Ride
the blues highway down the mississippi delta
BY hunter kennedy
new york magazine - march 2001
It's been said many times that the
Mississippi Delta begins in the lobby of the Peabody Memphis
hotel. This historic haunt of Delta planters and boozy novelsits
is the perfect base for day trips throughout this storied
pocket of the Deep South. Drive an hour south on highway 61
to Clarksdale, Mississippi, home of the Delta Blues Museum,
which provides maps to blues landmarks throughout the state.
Early fall is the best time of year to catch a blues festival
(the King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena Arkansas, is the
first weekend in October, and Greenville's Mississippi Delta
Blues Festival is in mid-Septmeber). Finding a nice restaurant
among the cotton gins might seem as hard as tracking down
the Soggy Bottom Boys, but actor Morgan Freeman recently opened
the surprisingly chic Madidi in downtown Clarksdale. Twenty
minutes north, in Dundee, is Uncle Henry's Place, a fine Louisiana
Creole restaurant located in the old Moon Lake Casino made
famous by Tennessee Williams
