Adventures In The South - New Orleans, Part 3

Our final day in New Orleans, and the rain poured down.
No, I’m kidding.  Once again, it was wall to wall sunshine, with added humidity.  Taking a break from hiking around, we decided to saunter down to Canal Street, and catch a hop-on, hop-off bus tour around the Garden District.
This was another side to the city, where once upon a time wealthy types had moved from the French Quarter – though Garden District is a misnomer, because the gardens of the early nineteenth-century mansions were gradually sold off to provide plots for new houses in the later

A Canal St streetcar, on our way to the Garden District

 years of the century.  Still, the architecture was impressive, in that typically Southern white-painted fashion.  But although our open-topped bus created its own light breeze, the heat was still oppressive as we tootled around.
We hopped off the bus as it approached the Warehouse District, and ducked out of the heat into the National World War II Museum, where a diner offered an option for lunch – and where all the accumulated heat of the bus tour was suddenly blast-frozen beneath our clothing by the air-conditioning.  Suitably cooled off, we then took in the Museum itself, founded by the war historian Stephen Ambrose – the guy who wrote the book Band Of Brothers.
If you think New Orleans seems an odd location for America’s National World War II Museum, there is a pretext of sorts.  NOLA is the home of Higgins Industries, which manufactured a variety of naval equipment during the war, including the landing craft – or “Higgins Boats” – used during the D-Day landings.  In any event it’s an impressive and interactive collection, with a number of World War II veterans acting as guides at different points, and a collection of genuine aircraft suspended from the ceiling.  During our visit it also included the temporary exhibit “Final Mission: The USS Tang Submarine Experience” – which included a number of alarms and excursions reflective of the “Final Mission” tag.

Everyday Bourbon Street traffic

Having completed our tour of duty, we headed back towards the French Quarter, and took another wander up Bourbon Street to take in one more tourist attraction, Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop – the oldest building in the French Quarter, dating back to 1772.  But no, it’s not actually a blacksmith’s forge.  More prosaically, it’s a pub, and has been for a very long time.  It’s still lit by candlelight, and has pretty basic wooden furnishings, creating an overall effect that is – well, dingy, to be honest.  So after a quick beer we headed back to the hotel, and had a spell in the outdoor pool, cocktails in hand, to chill out for a while.
Refreshed, we set off for a nearby eaterie and our most upmarket dinner in about a week.  Sadly I can’t now recall the restaurant’s name – Antoine’s, possibly – but it was smart and airy, with an acoustic jazz trio to keep us entertained as we ate.  Nothing fried, for a change  but instead some light and elegant fish.
Fortified, we strolled on to our entertainment for the night, at d.b.a., a bar and club in Frenchmen Street.  After a warm-up drink in the welcoming bar - where I was amused to find McEwan's Wee Heavy, a resolutely old man's tipple back in Scotland, listed among the imported British beers - we headed to the adjoining room, and were treated to some genuine funky blues from local legend and recording artist Walter ‘Wolfman’ Washington.  This, I’m pleased to say, was the real deal for the final night of our odyssey, with Walter singing and

The Wolfman gets funky!

playing classy guitar in front of an impressive, grooving band.  (A year and a bit later I came across Walter's sax player appearing with Mike Zito, at a gig back home in Edinburgh.  After the show I accosted Jimmy Carpenter – for it was none other – and, showing him a pic from the Wolfman show, said I was amazed to have encountered him again.  “Yeah, you look kinda familiar too,” he deadpanned in response.  He has a dry sense of humour, does Jimmy.)
Walter’s set was so good that a guy and a woman suddenly got together and started dancing – a real jiving display, with overhead lifts and all sorts, that earned applause and whoops of appreciation from the audience.  Remarkably, it turned out that they weren’t even a couple, and had just spontaneously hooked up together and done their thing.
And on that high note we stepped out into the still warm night air, and ambled back to Hotel Le Marais for a final nightcap and debrief.  Our adventures in the South were over, and the next day we’d be making the long haul back home to Scotland.

You can find New Orleans, Part 1 here.

You can read Adventures In The South from the start by going to the Prologue, here.

Adventures in the South - New Orleans, Part 2

It was a lazy start to our first morning in New Orleans.  We’d promised ourselves that after driving all the way from Nashville over the last ten days or so, we were going to kick back and take it easy in the Big Easy.  So we took a leisurely breakfast in the dining room of the hotel before setting out to explore.
We sauntered down to the wide boulevard of Canal Street and then towards the Mississippi Riverfront.  Passing by the hulking mass of Harrah’s Casino, we made our way to the stop for the Riverfront Streetcar – never can resist a historic streetcar.  And there we waited  in the

That there is Satchmo's cornet, on display at the Jazz Museum

sweltering mid-morning heat.  For quite some time.  Early August, it has to be said, ain’t the most comfortable time to visit New Orleans, but other commitments had dictated our holiday period.  Even wearing a hat it helps to find any scrap of shade you can – and have a bottle of water to hand.  Eventually though, the streetcar arrived, and pulling away towards the Lower French Quarter we could immediately feel the movement creating a blissful breeze through the streetcar.
Getting off at the French Market, we had a stroll through the (thankfully covered) Flea Market.  Chatting with a local artist from whom we picked up a couple of pictures capturing the colour of the French Quarter, we mentioned our interest in music and asked if he had any tips.  Nearby Frenchman Street was the locale to aim for, he reckoned, and added that we should try to catch local legend Walter ‘Wolfman’ Washington playing in a club there the following night.
From there we headed for the Old US Mint in Barracks Street.  Now a museum, the Mint neatly tells the story of New Orleans’ chequered history through its frequently changing currency, as it changed hands from one “occupying power” to another – French, Spanish, then French again before the United States acquired it through the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.  It also houses the excellent New Orleans Jazz Museum, during our visit including a temporary exhibition about the historic venue Preservation Hall, which can be found in nearby St Peter Street.  For some reason we didn’t cotton on to the Louisiana State Museum, so the Mint was the closest we got to exploring the history of New Orleans.
Having done the culture vulture bit, we returned to the French Market for a spot of street food

There's always a gig somewhere in New Orleans

lunch – gumbo for me and a po’ boy for Jill, and very tasty it was too.  Much more satisfying, for my money, than the much-vaunted but disappointing beignets we sampled at Café Du Monde, the “Original French Market Coffee Stand” since 1862.  I mean, I like a good doughnut now and then - and that's all beignets are - but these didn't strike me as anything special.  What’s more, much of the icing sugar in which the doughnuts were swimming ended up on the tiled floor, turning it into a skating rink.
Meandering back towards our hotel, we passed through Jackson Square, with its statue of former president Andrew Jackson, and took in some jazz musicians playing al fresco, in relaxed but still impressive style.  And so back to the hotel, and some reading and cooling off around the outdoor pool.
 
That evening we set off for Mulate’s Cajun Restaurant and Dance Hall in the Warehouse district, where cajun music is played every night.  Having failed to score any cajun music a couple of nights earlier in its heartland of Lafayette, we were intent on making up for it now.  Mulate’s is a large and airy, pleasant room, but on this Tuesday evening customers were sparse.  Maybe we’d arrived too early, but while we did get a band knocking out some cajun stuff on the stage, the atmosphere was far from energising.  The food seemed uninspired too – or perhaps I’d had just had a surfeit of fried stuff after nearly three weeks on the road in the States.
Somewhat deflated, we walked back to the hotel in the decidedly warm and humid night air.  On the way, rather surreally, we passed two police horses tied up next to a multi-storey car park, their riders nowhere to be seen.  The horses seemed entirely unconcerned.  Taking a leaf out of their Big Easy nonchalance, we spent the rest of the night chilling out over cocktails in the cool of the hotel.

To read Adventures in the South from the beginning, go to the Prologue.

Adventures in the South - New Orleans, Part 1

It was the morning after the night before in Lafayette, Louisiana, and we were up and about and ready to hit the road for New Orleans.  If you want to read about our Lafayette layover, you’ll find that episode here.  Or if you don’t know what this Adventues In The South business is all about, you can go right back to the beginning here.
We headed back along Highway 10, and the 18 mile long, stilts-over-gator-country Atchafalaya Basin Bridge towards Baton Rouge.  But from there we didn’t take the direct route to New Orleans.  Our plan instead was to take the scenic route, and approach New Orleans via the Lake

The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway

Pontchartrain Causeway – the longest continuous bridge in the world, at nearly 24 miles.  This detour wouldn’t take us much longer – or at least wouldn’t have done if a landmark like this was clearly signposted.  But no – here’s the longest continuous bridge in the world, which is even name-checked in John Hiatt’s much-loved, much-covered song ‘Feels Like Rain’, and you’d scarcely know it existed from the road signs.  Bizarre.  So we managed to plough on across the state line into Mississippi, where we had to make an impromptu pit stop at a State Park or some such to do an about turn.
Second time lucky, we found the turn-off, and then the bridge.  And it is remarkable, arrowing south across the lake, and over the horizon to N’Awlins – not jaw-dropping, but worth the diversion.
We dropped our hire car at the airport, as we wouldn’t need it for the remaining few days of our trip, and took a cab to our lodgings.  For New Orleans my other half Jill had selected the Hotel le Marais in the French Quarter, just a few steps from Bourbon Street.  Very nice it was too, as we chilled out after the drive (during which we had blessed the aircon as the temperature hit new heights) and the cab ride, by sinking into the pool in the rear courtyard with a couple of cocktails

Hotel le Marais hangs out the flags for us

– Strawberry Mimosas being the order of the day.
Later, in the course of a first wander around, we enjoyed some grilled oysters in one of the numerous local oyster bars.  Then we took the very warm evening air in Bourbon Street, and ended up in one of its well-known music haunts, the Famous Door.  Here we were treated to a soul and R’n’B, so cool one of them was wearing wraparound shades, whipping through a set of classic covers in most satisfying style.  The audience – a decent number for midweek – was rather less cool mind you, as it included a high proportion of Elks.  No, not the big beasts with coatrack antlers, of course.  These middle-aged folks were members of the Order of Elks, one of those fraternal societies so popular in the States, and their bright yellow t-shirts announced they were in town for a Convention.  The Order of Elks is very keen on God, the Flag and the Constitution – but less keen on black members until the 70s, and still not wild about women members.  That

One of the more genteel Bourbon St buildings

evening though, the Elk types – of both sexes – seemed mostly intent on having a few beers and shaking their booty to the band.
When the band took a break we spread our wings and found a bar further up the road where a jazz quartet was in action.  Rather good they were too, with an exuberant drummer who was really throwing himself into it, and a trumpet player who in my recollection bore a startling resemblance to the actor Chiwetel Ejiofor.  What was most noticeable though, was that they were competing with some rock bar across the street, which was blasting out the likes of Bon Jovi with the volume turned up to 11.  If this was the cause of the slightly pained expression that often crossed the face of our trumpeter, then I sympathised.
That trumpeter’s expression, I have to say, sums up my abiding impression of Bourbon Street.  It’s tacky.  People wander up and down it carrying large, garishly designed plastic vessels filled with high voltage concoctions named “Hurricanes”, “Hand Grenades” and such like.  Here and there along the way they pass by a selection of strip joints, with window displays that make their repertoire clear – even to the pre-teens dutifully trailing along in the company of Mom and Pop.  It smells a bit too, like once a week the whole avenue gets sluiced down with slops from the beer.
Appealing, huh?  Well, it still has some plus points.  And there’s more to New Orleans than Bourbon Street!

Adventures in the South - Vicksburg to Lafayette

Now then, where were we?  Ah yes, Vicksburg.  For anyone new to the Adventures in the South travelogue down the Mississippi, you can go back to the beginning with the Prologue, or check where we left off with the Clarksdale to Vicksburg episode.

Vicksburg is generally recognised as the foot of the Mississippi Delta, the fertile plain spreading out from the Big Muddy.  It’s not a Delta in the classic sense, like the Nile Delta for example, occurring when a river branches out as it nears the sea.  What’s more, Vicksburg isn’t strictly on the Mississippi any more, having been left behind when the river changed its course decades ago.

Waking up in the Andrew Jackson Suite of the Anchuca B&B, we had Sunday breakfast in the airy dining room.  I decided to give grits another go, this time of the cheese variety, and it has to be said they were at least more palatable than the ones I’d sampled in Denny’s back in Memphis.

Just some of the local attractions in Lafayette that we didn't see

And then we were off, aiming for Lafayette, a couple of hundred miles away in Louisiana.  First stop though, was a Walmart on the outside of town.  I’d mislaid my shaver, so needed a replacement, and we took the opportunity to pick up a spare holdall as well.  And yes, the place sold guns, in all shapes and sizes.

Continuing down Highway 61, we stopped for lunch in a baking hot Baton Rouge, then took a sharp turn west to cover the last 50 plus miles along Highway 10 to Lafayette.  For a substantial chunk of this the road was on stilts over the bayou, with signs periodically advertising the presence of alligators in the area, which I think was designated a nature reserve or similar.  It was a dramatic example of the effort necessary to negotiate the swampy southern land.

Approaching Lafayette in the late afternoon, we were running low on petrol, and looking to the south there were dark clouds and flashes of lightning heading our way.  And sure enough, before we could reach a gas station, a tropical downpour arrived.  If you’ve ever visited Disneyworld, this was the same kind of rainstorm that seems to hit the Orlando area metronomically at 5pm each day in summer – short lived, but torrential.  And although it soon began to ease, it was still a bit disconcerting when you were struggling to find your way around town – which was a bit of a nuisance, as Lafayette was the one place on this trip where we hadn’t booked accommodation in advance.

After taking shelter and filling the tank at a gas station, we groped our way towards downtown, expecting that to be the obvious location for a hotel or two, and tripped over a Courtyard by Marriott.  Initially I went in just to see if they had a local map, but after a swift consultation we decided to take a room for the night.  We were feeling tired and grubby after the drive, and all too ready to avail ourselves of the very hospitable young staff, a decent room, and even laundry facilities.

The idea behind visiting Lafayette had been to seek out some Cajun music, this being the heartland of the style apparently.  This would turn out to be a bust though.  After having a rest, dealing with the laundry and getting freshened up, we emerged into the lobby looking decidedly more human.  “Hey, y’all clean up real good!” laughed the receptionist, which said it all about how bedraggled we must have looked on arrival.

We ordered a cab to take us downtown to a likely sounding restaurant, and had a drink while we waited.  And waited.  And waited.  A good 45 minutes later the cab finally turned up – and got us to the restaurant just in time to be told that the kitchen was closing.  In fact it seemed like the centre of Lafayette was closing all round, with the exception of a large sports bar, where we ordered a couple of beers and considered our options.

Cajun music was no longer on the agenda, we reckoned.  Options to eat out looked limited.  Our planning for Lafayette, we concluded, had been sadly lacking.  So we cut our losses, got a cab back to the hotel, and got fed and watered on a bottle of red wine and a couple of burgers and fries, while the hotel staff gave us tips for our next destination – New Orleans.

It may sound like a total cock-up, but it was one of those bizarre episodes you look back on and laugh.  Like WC Fields visiting Philadelphia, we’ve been to Lafayette.  It was closed.

Adventures in the South - Clarksdale to Vicksburg

If you haven’t read any of the ‘Adventures in the South’ series before, it’s a travelogue from a trip me and my better half took down the Mississippi Delta back in 2013.  So if you want to go back to the beginning, here’s the Prologue.

Or if you want to remind yourself where we’d got to, here’s where we left off, with Clarksdale Part 2.

Sculpture, hoodoo style

Up in the morning to head further south to Vicksburg, but first we wanted to check out the Shack Up Inn, a couple of miles outside town.  The Inn is a rather clever business venture, turning a plantation into a niche motel by offering actual shotgun shacks – somewhat modernised - as chalets for visitors to stay in.

The inn had been our original choice of accommodation for Clarksdale, but we’d given up on the idea when their website indicated that it wasn’t possible to make one night bookings at the weekends.  Too late, we were informed by local guru Roger Stolle that this was a measure designed to dissuade locals from renting shacks for parties, and that international visitors are generally welcome for one night.

But despite missing out, we decided to give it a look anyway.  On one level, it’s a bit of a dubious proposition, selling the experience of plantation life as a tourist attraction.  But it still offers some insights.

There’s a spookiness about the disused railway running past the place, once upon a time presumably a vital link for shipping supplies in and cotton out.  The shacks themselves underline the spartan nature of plantation experience for African American slaves. And then there’s the bottle tree – an interesting piece of hoodoo, voodoo, or what you will, in which coloured bottles are hung on the branches of a bush or tree in order to attract and catch evil spirits.

As we’re wandering around, a couple emerge from one of the shacks, and right away we recognise each other as fellow customers from Red’s Blues Club the night before.  It turns out they’re an Anglo-American couple on honeymoon, making their way down to New Orleans like ourselves.  But whereas we’d headed off from Red’s around midnight, they’d stuck around for Anthony “Big A” Sherrod’s next set.  According to the groom, Big A’s brother - a guy rather bigger than Big A himself - had turned up to sit in on guitar.  “And then it turned into a crunking party”, he said.  They were sitting by the door, and when Red decided to nick out and take the air for a minute he actually turned to the English lad and asked him to pick up the admission from any new arrivals.

Your modern day, all mod cons shotgun shack

Damn.  Party night in Clarksdale, and we’d only given it half measures.  Our new friends let us have a squint at their shack, which had evidently been modernised by someone with a sense of irony.  The place is what an English estate agent (a realtor, US readers) would call “compact and bijou”, with an especially snug shower cubicle resplendent with a rough concrete floor.  And while the shack has a colour TV, they tell us that it only shows a blues music channel.

And so off we go, down Highway 61.  Our next stop is a little place called Rolling Fork.  This is actually the birthplace of Muddy Waters, but to be honest I’m not one for going and looking at birthplace markers.  We do pop in to the little town museum though, a one room affair overseen by two little old lady volunteers so delighted to have visitors that we’re scared they might lock us in.

The museum celebrates Muddy, of course, but also recounts the story about President Teddy Roosevelt that gave rise to the ‘Teddy Bear’.  Back in the early years of the 20th century Roosevelt, who had cultivated a reputation for being an outdoorsman, went on a hunting trip in the vicinity of Rolling Fork.  Apparently he had a notion to shoot a bear, so his guide obliged by catching one – and how you do that is an interesting question – and tying it to a tree for Roosevelt to shoot.  Roosevelt, to his credit, found the idea of shooting a trapped bear appalling, and ordered its release.  A political cartoon drawing on the incident attracted the attention of an enterprising manufacturer of toy bears, who asked Roosevelt if he could name his bears “Teddy Bears” in recognition of the incident – thereby launching one of the most successful marketing wheezes of all time.

Tipped off by the museum biddies, we drive a few miles down the road and stop for lunch on a porch by the bayou at the Onward Store, where we get catfish and fries washed down with real lemonade.

Then it really is off down the road to Vicksburg, where our plan is to stop off at the National Military Park on the way into town, a significant memorial to the Civil War, with cemeteries for the dead of both the Union and the Confederacy.  Situated at the foot of the Mississippi Delta, with high bluffs overlooking the river, Vicksburg was a crucial area during the Civil War.  As Lincoln himself put it, “Vicksburg is the key.  The war can never be brought to a close until the key is in our pocket.”  But as we drive in on Highway 61, it appears we’re on the wrong side of the very large park to gain access.  The afternoon is wearing on, so we cruise around the pretty-looking town centre, and then head to our accommodation.

We’re staying at a B&B called Anchuca, just up the hill from the town centre.  For the benefit of British readers, for whom a Bed & Breakfast is at the lower end of the accommodation spectrum, I should explain that in the States B&B’s are more upmarket, boutique propositions.  So boutique that in this case we have a suite of rooms, the Jackson Suite, that is named after Andrew Jackson, the Confederate President who stayed in it following his release from prison after the end of the war, and gave a speech to friends from the balcony.

Heading out again on foot in the late afternoon heat, we go for a wander round town.  This must be a thoroughly alien notion to locals, as a fella walking along the other side of the street looks over at us, smiles, and calls out, “Hi folks.  Enjoying your vacation?”  Mad dogs and Scots people, it seems, go out in the midsummer sunshine.

And it has to be said they’ve got a point.  It’s not just the heat, it’s the humidity, which seems to have been ratcheted up a notch or few since we left Clarksdale.  So we potter around town picking up bits and pieces of history, and abandon plans to head back to Anchuca and freshen up before coming out again for the evening.  What would be the point when we’d be melting again within ten minutes?

Monsour's - Southern hospitality comes with the drinks

Instead we camp out in 'Monsour’s at the Biscuit Company', a bar-cum-eatery where we get ourselves well fed and watered for the remainder of the evening.  We make friends with the bar staff and the owner, and chat about the South, and I have enough to drink to get up and do a bad karaoke version of Sam Cooke’s ‘Bring It On Home To Me’.  At the end of the night the owner insists on one of the bar staff giving us a lift up the road, because apparently us Brits are being naïve to think it would be safe to walk home in the dark - but it's incredibly hospitable of them.

So we don’t encounter any live music in Vicksburg.  But since then it’s become apparent to me that the centre of town isn’t where you’ll find that action in a lot of towns like Vicksburg.  Instead the key venue for musicians like the local hero and internationally successful Mr Sipp is the Ameristar Casino a little way south of town.  That’s where the money is, but unfortunately it doesn’t really fit the romantic preconceptions of blues pilgrims from afar, does it?

Adventures in the South - Clarksdale, Part 2

After dropping off our car and bags at the Comfort Inn outside town, we got a cab back with the friendly local taxi driver.  “I had some folks from England ride with me the other day,” he said.  “They say you don’t got no churches over there!”

“Well, we do,” we replied.  “But they tend to be bigger, and there aren’t as many of them.”  This is undoubtedly true, given that in small southern towns like Clarksdale there seems to a church of some description on every other street corner, painted white and about the same size as a family house.

Once in town, we settled into the Yazoo Pass for some grub, but as they didn’t sell wine I

Al fresco cuisine in Sunflower Avenue

had to do a quick sprint round to the local off-licence for a bottle of vino.  Fed and watered, we then wandered round to Ground Zero for a drink, where a trio of old fellas were sat down on stage doing their thing, rather incongruously accompanied by a willowy young woman standing to one side, playing a small keyboard and shaking her tush.  Having given them the time of day, we decided to follow Roger Stolle’s tip, and so headed off to Red’s Blues Club.

Red’s is both literally and metaphorically “across the tracks”, in the sense that it is both the other side of the defunct railroad, and in the black part of town - not that the latter distinction meant much to us.  Strolling along Sunflower Avenue in the evening heat, initially there was no real sign of Red’s.  There was, though, a guy operating a dirty great smoking barbecue in the street, and when we asked after Red’s he jerked a thumb at a nondescript door and said “In there.”

As Steve Cheseborough notes in his guide Blues Traveling, “From the outside, Red’s looks like it has been closed for years.  But make sure to stop in on a Friday or Saturday night for excellent live blues in a super-authentic jook joint.  So authentic, in fact, that the place seems about to fall apart.  Insulation and ceiling tiles are falling from the ceiling, and it leaks when it rains.”

Well, it wasn’t raining when we were there, so no leaks were in evidence, but otherwise all

"Big A" gives it big licks in Red's Blues Club

of the above rings true.  Playing that night were Anthony “Big A” Sherrod and the Blues All-Stars, and although their set was mostly made up of blues standards from all points of the compass, rather than stuff specific to the Delta, they certainly delivered the goods.

So we were served up stuff like Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘Smokestack Lightning’ (admittedly the Wolf came from these parts), Jimmy Reed’s ‘Big Boss Man’, and Rosco Gordon’s ‘Just A Little Bit’ (aka ‘Teeny Weeny Bit Of Your Love’), but if the All-Stars on bass and drums were content to sit back and quietly take care of business, “Big A” was out there selling it, with a characterful voice and impressive lead guitar work.

With a long lead on his guitar, Sherrod was often out among the small audience as he played, cooking up an atmosphere and encouraging people to get up and dance, and punctuating songs with his catchphrase, “Wait a minute”.  It may not have been the most original set, but the feel of the blues ran through it like a golden thread, making it well worth paying a few bucks for one of his CDs.

When they took a break around midnight we reckoned it was time for us to make a move and get a cab back to the hotel, conscious of the longer drive we had planned for the next day.  This, it would turn out, was a mistake, as the next thrilling instalment will reveal.

If you want to read ‘Adventures in the South’ from the start, here’s the Prologue. If you want to read more about Clarksdale, here’s Part 1.