Along the Mississippi: Cotton Fields & Blues (Part 2 - Full Documentary) | TRACKS

[Music] the rhythm of their paddle-wheels used to be the heartbeat of life up and down North America's largest river but soon the traditional Mississippi steamboats will disappear once they transported a unique attitude towards life out into the whole world this lack of our journey takes us to the roots of this attitude it was the Mississippi that gave us the rhythm that accompanies our joys and sorrows our love and our anger America's largest river gave us the music to all this [Music] US Route 61 better known as highway 61 this long and winding road follows the course of the river from the south to the north for almost 1,400 miles it's also known as the Blues Highway in the town of Clarksdale they've even dedicated a museum to this music the guitars presented here like icons in temple where once owned by the blues masters originators of a musical revolution that would change the whole world's attitude towards light they say that Clarksdale is the cradle of the blues because the legend has it that over 70 years ago at a crossroads here a young musician sold his soul to the devil the devil for his part granted the young novice and unparalleled mastery of the guitar many years ago it was the blues that drew John to the banks of the Mississippi it was here that the young man from the Rocky Mountains who had studied philosophy and mathematics found the life he had been seeking at some point John began building canoes a business that turned out to be quite lucrative booooo and woody two youths from Clarksdale are learning everything from John that they'll need later as boats men on the river including the basic skills required for boat construction John named his company Quapaw the tribal name of the indigenous residents who once controlled the Mississippi this canoe has been under construction for several weeks when it's finished and will carry up to 12 people on the Mississippi this is a Voyager style canoe it's modeled after big Voyager canoes of the French furred trade from the Great Lakes the lines come directly from the canoes that the Indians were building for thousands of years so it's a very old design the design that they had it's the same design and it has this beautiful shape that cuts a straight line in the water in the lake but when you need to turn when you're in the river you know you do need to do a lot of maneuvering it turns fast too so it's it's it has both qualities that's why we love them for the Mississippi the design is old but the materials are modern John says that some of them have been tested in space travel safety is the top priority John wouldn't want anyone who boards this kind of canoe to head out on the river to put himself at risk that's made for the big water it's really opened up the door because before people really scared about getting the river with good reason you get it in a short canoe and it's going to be you know it's like getting in the Porsche and getting on a mountain road you know you let's go pom pom pom pom pom you know you get in the Cadillac and it's come very smooth and it'll levels out all the bumps you know on the Mississippi John has long since acquired the nickname River man and we are getting ready with him for the big journey our equipment and the supplies all have to fit into two canoes Americans are just rediscovering what this river is about and our whole purpose is to reconnect Americans and people from anywhere with the beauty of the river and our hope is to provide access in a way in a quality way you know it's quiet and respectful and makes better the environment and so when we say made the river be with you or just invoking that connection and then we're underway in the great quiet world of the river it is a solitary world with nothing but the water the sky and the greenery of the river bank the Mississippi has long been separated from the life in the land of its banks concealed behind the dikes is the Delta once massive flood land area the early discoveries of the marshland may have thought that this was already the mouth of the river and subsequently gave it its misleading name the Delta is the land of the shacks once upon a time disparagingly referred to as negro shacks you can occasionally still see one on the roadside as nostalgic and quaint as they might appear today there are nonetheless a reminder of Tears despotism and suffering under there tin roofs lived a host of slaves whose job was to drain the land they turned the Delta into the land of cotton the job of picking the white cotton balls was always accomplished with the help of child labor even after slavery ended life in the Mississippi Delta was spent on Sun scorched fields accompanied only by the songs of the Cotton Pickers this is also a part of the history of the white gold for over 200 years cotton made the deltas plantation owners wealthy today is the first day of the cotton harvest rain has kept the farmers from getting the crop in for two weeks now the ground is actually still too soft for the heavy machines but for even Whittington there's a lot of money at stake Aven is the third generation of cotton farmers in his family his grandfather bought this land in 1910 in former times farmers like the Whittington's would employ hundreds of Pickers but machines have been doing the work now for more than 50 years there aren't many farmers left to grow cotton in the Delta corn and soybeans seem more profitable these days and they're less susceptible to the weather but Aven is reluctant to follow this trend I wouldn't want to live anyplace else the Mississippi Delta is ideal cotton ground 200 miles long 85 miles wide and some of the richest cotton land in the world there's no rock in the Delta it's all just good topsoil even hopes to harvest enough cotton for almost 1 million pairs of jeans this year if all goes well he earns about a dollar on every pair but the price for this raw material depends Hawley on its quality okay this is probably got a little more trash in it then then we would like wish we could have given it more time to the foliate a little bit better the gentle clean it up the cedar firm so that's good fiber length just on close inspection looks ok color not the brightest stuff in the world it's not going to be the little cotton balls you find in the drugstore but the the priority is getting it out of the field oh yeah we're picking cotton I'm happy cotton is an atmosphere it's a way of life down here if you'll let it happen things are slow nobody gets real pushy nobody gets in a hurry except me when I'm trying to get a cotton crop out the weather and the river are unpredictable and every family in the Delta has a story to tell about them you were asking about the photographs this is one of my mother in 1932 there were two great floods for in recent memory one in 27 and one in 32 this happened to be from the 32 flood and she and two friends are standing out and knee-deep in the water but this is Mississippi River water and that came from 65 miles away thanks to the dykes this won't happen again but even sits in his office several times a day checking the weather reports right now we need hot dry weather and by heart I mean upper 80s would be nice and lots of sunshine and we need about six weeks of it the next day it rains and the forecast predicts nothing but low fronts after that the sensitive plants begin to rot the farmers say that cotton hates wet feet [Music] cut-ins long history on the Mississippi may face an end all over the Delta we encounter rusty ruins on the roadside they're called gins the machines that remove the seeds and clean the cotton they're no longer needed now neither the machines nor the people who once worked here as always many of those people will move away to find a better life what remains are places like Baptist town a settlement of former cotton workers as far back as anyone can remember only black Americans have lived here Sylvester Hoover was born on the Whittington farm these days he runs a general store carrying everything you need to live in Baptist town it's a meeting place thanks in large parts to his wife Mary Ann's cooking she's been making barbecue here for 27 years and it's made her famous Sylvester jr. is helping his mother prepare spareribs when you cook an outdoor real southern cook it slow cooking you know but you have both degree of going on when you're doing a piece you have it all the meat all the chicken all this time they're back here all lined up we just trying to near the thing at the same time it's southern cooking I got three down real I got a hamburger meat it's all right now Maryanne and Sylvester Hoover want to preserve the memories of their 1950s childhood world for the residents of Baptist town and anyone else who's interested so they bought a house and turned it into the back in the day Museum [Music] dad he couldn't think about a big pretty white house a nice cheer or nice anything all he could think about was food for the stomach and the rain don't fall on your head when it's raining these houses with no hallways are called shotgun shacks a symbol of the poverty in the American South this is the bedroom and this house will have nine to eleven people's living in this house and when they would only have one bed and we all stayed in the same three room house and the way our house was set up mom and dad stayed in the front room the girls bled it in the next room then the boys we had us a bed in the kitchen in the corner in the kitchen we had a little petition separate something like this separate our base from the stove most of the black population in the south lived like Sylvester's family until the end of the 1950s [Music] my mom make us shirts out of cotton sack and she would make us pants out of the de sacs that the fly will come in and we would have one pair of shoes then that head pair of shoes had to last us all year we have to do it regular time we had to walk barefooted back then in Mississippi there was no compulsory school attendance for black children Sylvester also only attended school when he wasn't needed to work in the fields this desert school boy this morning one that I sat in I just wanted to bring it here so my grandkids could see the way I lived in the way we came up and just get a little bit of background on what made me be here today progress seems to have passed Baptist town by not much has changed here since the days when it was only the black musicians with their guitars who were able to attain money and respect Robert Johnson the legendary Godfather of modern blues music is said to have had a reputation for paying clandestine visits to the Cotton Pickers wives when their husbands were working in the fields the legend goes that he was murdered by one such jealous husband he is buried beside the Mount Zion Baptist Church and the cemetery has become a mecca for blues fans from around the world while Johnson only ever recorded some 30 songs they remained the roots of the music of Eric Clapton the Rolling Stones the White Stripes and others blues for me meant happiness saying it meant everything we expressed ourselves with music but in our household a blues was bad because our family would say that's the devil's music they wouldn't let us and we sang blues in the house we would get slapped in the mouth because they didn't want you to sing no kind of Blues in the house but they would go out to listen to blue they would go out on Saturday night and listen to blues the dark streaks of the Delta with its furtive bars and cafes this was the realm of the blues musicians the kings of the Delta they could earn as much here in one night as the members of their audience did working the fields in a whole month only a few of the Blues cafes have survived one of which is club evany in Indianola tonight jerry fair is playing here with his band the delta blues crew on a weekday like today only a few guests wind up in the snow man's land the band's pays pity but what counts here is the reputation that this venue enjoys and this is due to its owner mr. BB King one of the last surviving legends from the Blues heyday Jerry is a cousin of the star but he can only dream of a similar career [Music] this is the house where Jerry fare grew up together with six siblings in a family where everything revolved around God and music in fact the entire neighborhood were very religious people we had to do right they made sure we did right they didn't send us to church they took us and got us involved in most of the functions that the youth had to do it with the church that's how I got involved in losing my father played guitar for the same church for 60 years there was only one guitar one piano I started on piano because he was playing the guitar and maybe we had some good services you know we're riveting so I can recall all occasions are before the fog machine was invented the people in the trip would be shouting chopping and dust were tried from the floor and it looked like a fog machines [Music] the same music we did in church and you could take it today and you know change the lyrics and put a little blues flavor in there and you could play it in both environments so I think that was the chemistry the people in do it their spirits were crying out oh lord save me from these conditions it'd be easy to change the words and say big lead woman keep your dress down with the same delivery besides the erotic nature of a sexual encounter the guitar the next best thing his music and his career as a carpenter helped Gerry acquire a nice house for himself and his family [Music] Colleen has been Jerry's wife for 30 years their children are grown now and have all moved out and the couple says that it is the music that binds them to one another they have stayed together despite all the problems Gerry had over the years [Music] I think the music is the ingredient God gives us herbs and the field and box off the tree and the leaves and the stems to cure man's physical ailments but music did the cure for the so life is not generous down in the Delta America's poorest region [Music] to get a sense of the melancholy of the blues you only have to drive through it's almost abandoned towns on a day like this one [Music] [Music] and then we're back at the banks of the mighty River as wild and untamed as the stories that this vast land tells the area in front of the dike is the last refuge of the desperate the unfortunate who have come up short in the American Way of life those who live here are at the mercy of the river even when the trailer is on stilts [Music] years ago rusty lost his job at a nearby factory since then he gets by as a fisherman living from and with the river this is his world you know I've been through a bunch of fluids up here last year was rough last year I mean we had it was 10 foot of water right here were you standing at right now we had water all the way up on the air conditioning unit and all that stuff went on the water on it was I started I started putting all this back up you know just trying to get it put back together you know there was water was terrible last year and I slept in the truck for almost two months oh we're on outside lady over there despite everything the people here wouldn't trade their lives with anyone [Music] Oh in the summertime when the waters down the sandbars is up oh it isn't this really I mean this it's like going into another world out there time to me when I used to go out there on that River and stay on them bars and stuff is like time stopped traveling here just so peaceful like there and you know it's really nice out there you know as we say goodbye to rusty the rain begins again the rain is unceasing [Music] right when we're about to attend the Blues Festival in Rosedale just behind the Dyke the rain turns into a storm [Music] no one here can remember another year with so much rain [Music] we drive on through this mournful landscape further northwards upriver [Applause] for decades the white front cafe has been known as the deltas best spot for tamales after living in Chicago for 35 years Barbara Pope inherited the cafe from her brother and she has continued its tradition of success one living in New York any conv and director tamale to New York and it's very expensive to spend two hours anywhere yeah have a good day and I have one customer used to buy spread to the First National Bank each dentist tamales to telephone you to someone and I have another one doctor listen Rebecca Lewis lay down at the customer now I have children that live in South Carolina they ship tamales to South Carolina there are countless recipes for tamales this is one Barbara has from her brother Joe who founded the white front cafe tamales are an old American dish consisting of spicy meatballs wrapped in corn husks mexican workers introduced him to the cotton plantations in the American South some 200 years ago but it keeps you Joe Barbara is 65 and the span of her lifetime is also an epic of far-reaching changes on the banks of the mighty river [Music] few places in America have contributed more to these changes than the tiny Delta town of money and rarely does a story fade from memory like the one who's sitting Sylvester Hoover is now taking us to Sylvester experienced the events of August 1955 as a child and money in the neighborhood 14 year old Emmett Till the black youth from Chicago is spending his summer holidays with his uncle mo Emmett's was a high-spirited boy from the big city up north on a visit down south which was strictly segregated according to race at the time Roy Bryant and his wife Carolyn were the white owners of this mom-and-pop store now long abandoned and dilapidated Emmett Till set out on the front of this store along with Simeon Wright and his brother when Kerala Bryan walked out the store she walked out this door the car was parked right here and when she was holding her baby and when she walked out the store and went round to a car Emmett Till was stood at her and Simeon writes that when a Mattia whistled at Carol and Bryan see him Emma tear in his bro they started running and it runs to his uncle most plays he thinks he is safe there but Roy Bryant and his brother Milam aren't about to let an insult like this from a black kid go unpunished late on the night Bryant and Milan came to the house Mose offers grant money not to take Emmett Till and Bryant almost fell for it but his brother JW Milan said hell no don't take it so we're going to take this boy down here and teach him a lesson and then they took him away and then the next two or three days somebody was fishing in the river back here the Tallahatchie River and they seen Emmett Till in the floating in the river or something the river Emmett was tortured and mutilated for two days before he died the murderers were eventually brought to trial only to be acquitted by the white jury [Music] but for the first time this type of undertone murder made headlines throughout the country we think he started but even before dr. Martin Luther King it was immaterial and we think he's the one that got the civil right movement going much has changed along the Mississippi since those days but the past still hangs in the air especially when darkness falls the cotton fields conceal the local juke joints bars favored by black patrons the poor monkey is one of the last original delta juke joints and for 50 years it's belonged to Willie Sieber he is a tractor driver who prefers to leave the talking to his friends special something then they'd never seen before you know because it was some boys down from what bomber knew y'all last weekend where Boston we had they around for a wife Oh Millie about a week and a half around there yeah they really enjoyed it meaning no better get the feeling of the Blues you know they might start dancing sang-eun - sometimes you me try to dance in the kitchen baby working yes because he got blue you know blue make you feel good got to village yeah and so they plays blues nothing else nothing but blue [Music] 10 11 o'clock at night the house get packed yeah so now they're allowed to put them out yeah they don't even want to go home we have the port of Malvika speaker we ought to get up how to go to work me the job the next day yeah and when someone else no problem house do nothing that for the map [Music] [Applause] [Music] dirt tracks through the fields are the only roads leading to the Pamunkey but even on a Thursday evening there are plenty of folks who managed to make their way out to the club the word jew' is probably of African origin roughly meaning bad wicked or disreputable but there's nothing disreputable here Willy runs the place with an iron hand and has zero tolerance for drugs or violence for decades modest bars like this were the most important meeting places for the black community here the people could drink play their music and meet members of the opposite sex and it was always places like this where curious White's discovered black culture these were encounters with momentous implications that ultimately changed the music of the entire world and while Willie the tractor drivers pool monkey hasn't made him rich but it certainly made him famous as we're saying our farewells you can find steady still hasn't found the right woman here yet but that's my change the morning following our first night on the river is like a journey back to the origins of our world we traveled the river for a day in canoes with a river man John before bedding down for the nights on an island in the middle of the river [Music] none of us could close our eyes to sleep under the star filled night sky [Music] John warned us that the river makes you hungry and there's a long strenuous day ahead John says that we're lucky most of the year these islands are underwater the water level already rose during the night and in just a few days there won't be any trace of the spots where were frying our breakfast eggs right now [Music] there's hardly a day that goes by throughout the year when the Rivermen doesn't go for a swim in his river [Music] when you're on the water you might feel like you're on the lake until you start looking around you see how fast the trees are moving by you and the big boils are coming up and big whirlpools are swirling around and the sky is so open above you and so it's a very elemental landscape you're reconnected to the sky and the earth and the water you know and then you build it then you make some cowboy coffee and breakfast and you reconnect it to the fire you know so those are pretty basic elemental things john traveled down the mississippi for the first time in 1982 with a friend on a raft they built from material that they found their journey back then took five months since then john's life has followed the flow of the rivers I haven't seen the whole world but I seen a lot of it but this is my favorite water one it's a very creative powerful expression of fluid movement freedom humility fear enlightenment things that are our basic human feelings that we sometimes get disconnected from I don't think a lot actually I spent a lot of time just looking and experiencing and trying to understand the landscape and all the things that are going on most of the time spent on a canoe ride along the Mississippi is a journey in words tourists looking for adventure and picturesque motives will likely to be disappointed [Applause] occasionally we meet barges a rare change of scenery for us and we too are a rare sight for the captains of these barge trains we can hear their radio chatter [Music] we're talking about you they said looks like one of them has a big camera and some lights and I can't tell what they're doing very dangerous you know yeah the most dangerous place is right in front of them of course you know so we just stay out of their way but uh they make all kinds of weird situations sometimes they're passing each other and oftentimes the current will pull you right into one and you don't even realize it you know so yeah you got you gotta be where all the time when around this des usually it's pretty mellow like that John has been on the river long enough to lose his fear of these giant vessels we keep our distance this especially the lower Mississippi that is very little traveled except by tugboats and when you think of the Mississippi you think of steamboats and picturesque little villages but the Lower Mississippi it's a huge floodplain you can't build anything right on the banks it's nothing but a huge floodplain this is not exactly a place designed for humans and the bayous the river branches we are joined by swarms of mosquitoes other animals are less conspicuous most alligators just want to be left alone John warns us about snakes but one has somehow made its way into his hat we've travelled almost 40 miles now and it's time to look for a place to bed down for the night our destination is an island without a name known only as number 68 we find plenty of dried driftwood for our campfire although this spot is under water for most of the year Islands come and go John says because the Mississippi is always looking for a new riverbed regardless of what people do no map of the river is useful for more than 10 years but John River man knows every nook and cranny he spends most of the year on his River it was on one such journey years ago that John met his wife they married on a sandbank nowadays their two-year-old daughter also accompanies him on his voyages of discovery whenever possible the river literally brought me here it grabbed my coat just like this and sucked me down and pulled me down right into this area the ocean is all around us but the river runs flew through us you know and so it's like our veins it's it's our arteries and our veins and it's the thing that sustains us and and drains us and it doesn't matter where you are in the value you're influenced by it we sit for a long time around the campfire talking about this vast untamed land whose very hearts is the Mississippi River further upstream another new completely different world awaits us on the final leg of our journey Memphis the capital city of the Mississippi River and the home of rock'n'roll [Music]

Channel: TRACKS - Travel Documentaries

Views: 233,448

Keywords: TRACKS, tracks travel channel, tracks travel, along the mississippi documentary, angola state prison, robert johnson, cotton pickers louisiana, plantation owners louisiana, along the mississppi, new orleans documentary, blues music documentary

Id: L942ArKGYMs

Length: 43min 8sec (2588 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 24 2018