Blues, haints and bayous: snippets from the Deep South: Saturday nights at the jook joints

If Clarksdale is the beating heart of the Blues, then Dockery Plantation, it is said, gave birth to the Blues.

Here, Charley Patton and men of that ilk shared their skills and played their songs and inspired the rest, beginning the Blues ripple that spread across the land. Many of them living in share-cropper huts set about the never ending fields of cotton with their never-ending bolls to crop.

Their days lasted, the saying went, from 'Kin to Cain't'. From the time they 'kin' see the work, at sunup, to the time they 'cain't, at sundown:
"When the sun be breaking you go in to the field.

When the sun go down then you come out of the
field."

Heartbreaking. But, on Saturdays they played.

Their work done, many plantation owners, including the Dockerys, left them to themselves for this one evening a week, which often went all night long it was so joyous.

A sharecropper would clean out the floor of his hut, make some space, and friends would call in. Instruments would tune, drinks would be shared around, dice would come out and the dancing would rock the foundations throbbing to the rhythm that was African in its conception but showed the influence of many other forms of music, including the Irish folk and shanty music.

The hut became a Jook joint. We took to hunting down remnants of old juke joints around these parts.

Cabins like these at Dockery would have been part of the mix, but come Saturday, bluesmen would travel, too. They would put on their best gear, grab their musical instruments, and walk the dusty walk to wherever they were needed.

Po Monkeys, one of the early ones, still sits at the edge of a field overlooking a bayou on a plantation on the outskirts of Merigold. Looking much as it always did. With a few signs added for today. Willie Seaberry, who owns it, shows his preferences on all his walls. You must look 'sharp' come Monday nights when he opens: 'not like this and not like that' the illustrations posted on the cabin slats set the standards.

Similar requirements were established along Greasy Street, in Ruleville. Where, it is said, the name came from owners trying to lay the dust around all the music joints by spreading grease. Then, a whole row of juke joints, including Mack's Coloured Cafe and Club Black Castle stretched down the block. Faded remnants of these places still stand, mainly as ruins.

But, if you could put a finger on where the Blues had most influence in its development, it would likely come from juke joints like these. You just had to survive the work week and make it through until Saturday night.