If Mississippi is the “Birthplace of America’s Music,” then Dockery Plantation is the delivery room.
Dockery is between Cleveland and Ruleville on Highway 8 and according to its historical marker, Dockery is where the blues was born. The farm was a meeting place for many of the people who became the founders of Delta blues — Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Son House, “Howlin’ Wolf,” Pops Staples and a bunch more. Plantation owners Will Dockery, and later, Joe Rice›s part in all of this was to not interfere with the farm workers’ Saturday night gatherings where music was played and playing styles were swapped. They also allowed a lot of freedom for people to come and go to and from the farm, thereby allowing lots of exposure to the music that was created there.
Now, to get a better picture of how blues music became the foundation from which all other original American music types grew, travel eight miles west of Dockery to the campus of Delta State University in Cleveland and stop at the first building you come to: GRAMMY Museum Mississippi. There is a whole section of the museum dedicated to the Mississippians who took the blues and modified it with string band styles to create country music, as Jimmie Rodgers of Meridian did. After adding a “back beat” to country and blues, rock and roll was brought about by Elvis Presley from Tupelo.
Delta State University is also home of the Delta Music Institute. It’s a school where budding musicians can not only find instruction on how to play, sing, write, produce, and perform music, but also learn the business of the entertainment industry. I visited with Delta bluesman “Son” Thomas one afternoon, and he told me that back in the day, he had heard of record companies paying off performers of hit records with a new car instead of a fair share of a song’s profits.
I asked one of my guides who was showing me around the Delta Music Institute’s numerous recording studios if part of the attraction for students coming to that school was the proximity to where blues was born. The school is not far from seminal blues events, like being near the crossroads where Robert Johnson was supposed to have sold his soul to the devil so he could play guitar. Surprisingly, my guide told me he didn’t think most of the students were even aware of the significance of the area to the birth of America’s music. Someone needs to tell them.
My friend and Greenville musician Steve Azar put the influence of Mississippi to music like this. He said there is no “six” degrees of separation. You hear songs on the radio, and you are most likely just “one” degree of separation from a Mississippian who wrote it, performed it, or produced it.
And the hits just keep on coming!
