Dockery, Rosedale & Stovall

Next, the Dockery Plantation, and then on to the Stovall Plantation (these two produced well over eighty per cent of anybody who is anybody in Delta Blues). I passed Dockery first and found the famous sign, painted on the side of a barn, announcing to the world that Will and Joe Rice Dockery once owned the place. More cotton, thousands of acres. It was a virtual hothouse for seminal Delta Blues. Leaving Dockery, headed for the river and Rosedale (fabled in Robert Johnson lyrics), the skies began to darken.

Rosedale was quite, small and green. Kudzu crept up the water tower that stood across the street from the shuttered Texas Ladies Juke.

The old Town Hall stood on the corner, its windows broken, obviously empty. I tried to imagine what it was like in the 30's when Johnson went "…to Rosedale with my rider by my side…," the hot Delta nights where he "barrel-housed on the riverside." Maybe he played in some forerunner of the old Texas Ladies Juke. Maybe not. I stood in the middle of the street. A lone white guy with a camera in his hand. Looking for ghosts.

I headed up Highway 1 to Stovall and Friars Point.

About ten miles from Stovall, just past Gunnison, MS, the sky opened and rain came down in sheets. I slowed from fifty down to forty, then to thirty and finally pulled over to the side, unable to see. I sat for fifteen minutes, listening to pounding Delta rain pour on to the roof of the rented Buick. Finally, it eased and I pulled back on the highway. Fifteen minutes later, a sign said Stovall, MS; a gas station/store next to a cotton gin. An arrow pointed down a dirt road, over it read "Stovall Farms."

The Stovall Plantation, like the Dockery, was home to some of the Delta's greatest performers. Muddy Waters and Charlie Patton both drove tractors on this plantation. I wanted to know what living conditions were like, what the place "felt" like. Where they lived, where they worked. I didn't know what I wanted.

All I could find was a Manager's office and the crisp signage indicative of a big, corporate, agricultural enterprise. No "choppin' cotton" here. Just big machinery and mechanized farming - and no ghosts. I headed for Friars Point.