Mr.Sherman's Place

Back on the road and off to meet Mr. Sherman who lives on the family estate. We arrive and drive up the double strip of concrete drive to his house, which is situated on the greenest front yard I have ever seen. There are several smaller houses, one of which Darlene tells us is the "ghost house" where she was once staying and was snapped awake as if by fingers snapping under her nose followed by strange lights movin' around in the hallway!







Sherman has just returned from a fundraising garage-type sale down at the country club and has some good stuff to show for his efforts: A china figure in a dish for a dollar and a Sansui AM/FM stereo receiver for seven bucks. (talked 'em down from the original ten)
Sherman is a kind hearted man and my impression is that he is a gentleman of the highest caliber. Slick puts a CD in his car's stereo and gets pretty animated while telling Sherman that this is "the REAL BLUES right here, Sherman....now wait...it's coming up...there THERE that's it!! You hear that? Wait a minute there's another place (Johnny Shines is rockin' hard from the speakers) There!! ain't that it? That is the lowest get-down dirty Blues that they ever was!!! O, that's good!!" Sherman agrees and listens while Daniel gets a fife made for him by Othar and plays a tune on it. He's good and hits all the notes and makes it go as if it had all the control of a regular flute with levers and valves. I feel I've wandered into some bizarro world where things like this happen and are considered to be common place. Everyone is grinning as usual while Slick plays fife blues. It is impossible to not grin and shake your head in disbelief when he gets going no matter if he's just stomping his foot. That boy sure has it and there is no mistake.

Sherman gives us a tour of the place and tells us that the main house is actually the third one to occupy the foundations as the first two burned down. His ancestor obtained 22,000 acres back in the early part of the 19th century and that the wagon train carrying all the plantation's furnishings and equipment stretched several miles long, while relocating from Georgia where his family originally were from. There is a low building with a good porch where Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones once played. Bill had not brought a bass guitar to the event and so Sherman arranged for one to be brought out with a smaller scale fretboard so Bill could play that night as his hands are not so large. When it was done Bill signed it and gave it back to the luthier. Pretty cool huh?

Slick leads us back to more familiar ground and onto an actual highway (51) and to B's QUICK STOP a gas station with mechanical type dollar/gallon pumps and a buffet style cafe inside. Darlene sez Slick's buying lunch so" get whatever you all want and the plate comes with sweet tea", so I get an order of ribs and coleslaw and cornbread. Bobertz gets fish or chicken or something that don't crawl on all fours and we sit down to eat. The manager comes over to say hello to Slick and his Mom and to hear what news there is to hear. I ask him about the regulations down this way as I work in the gas station installation industry and am naturally curious about other areas of the country and what kind of regulations they dump on the mom and pop stations. He has spent a load of money on cleanup and new lines and tanks and the whole works and hopes this will do it for a while. I tell him I would never have a gas station knowing all the hassles that go with them, but people seem to make some money out of them someway and this man has some of the best ribs and cornbread for sale at his place of business and should be fine even if the oil reserves ever run dry. Good food and served on, get this, REAL PLATES! No styro here. It don't get much better.....

Lunch being over we go to see Anna Jean and family again at their home. They are happy to get their Daniel back again and me and Bobert collect more hugs since we are now dang near kin. Mr Mack, who is Othar's son, is out mowing and weed wacking the front yard with a crew of buddies and make short work of the job. I ask Mack, "Mr.Mack, can you tell me why Othar took to Daniel like he did and showed him all the things that he showed him?"
Mack, who is an upright and no BS sorta man, looked me in the eye and said:
"Othar said he thought Slick was a saint come on the earth.... That's why he took him and learned him the ways."
I am somewhat stunned but not surprised by that. I have heard various reports that he is reincarnated from being a black bluesman, (this from a rather famous black woman folksinger), come back to right old wrongs and then there are the performances that he does, which almost defy description in their intensity and power. Slick of course is oblivious to all these accolades and high praise,and my impression is that he only seems to care about finding the real downhome blues, anything else is of little significance to him. I hope he will never find them as he might take off looking for some new mystery and the blues world would suffer great loss without him. Plans are thrown together amongst the women up on the porch and we take off yet again to go see Great-Grandma who is, I think, Anna Jean's mom or mebbe she is her grandmother, but it turns out that she is very ancient but certainly not infirm in any way..

We Go... for Fife and Drums

We head off again on a paved road over hills and more valleys, the Mississippi sun is still high and it must be about 2:00 I figure. Up a long driveway to a newish brick ranch-style house with a huge front yard. People come out to meet us and are glad as always to see Slick and Darlene come home and also glad to meet Bobert and me. The entire time there, neither of us were made to feel outta place or uncomfortable in the slightest way. It was a positively other-worldly experience and nowhere I have ever been has extended such hospitality to complete strangers. Smiling and laughing are the norm in rural Mississippi, at least in Tate and Panola Counties they are, and I suspect this trait may reach even further throughout the state. Hard times seems somehow to breed friendly people and the world's greatest music as well. The Resonator is pulled out of the trunk again and Daniel takes his place on the front porch and begins to play. Little children appear from everywhere and dance, followed by grandma and great-grandma and everyone in between. Clapping hands, stomping feet, Slick's blues, a little Seagram's 7.....I am having a heck of a time at this place. Great Grandma is everywhere it seems, at times she sits in a lawn chair shaking her shoulders and raising her hands up in the air, other times she gets up and dances in the front yard to the beat and Daniel's song. She does stuff I've never seen a woman her age, or any other age do and is darned good at it too. Sometimes getting on all fours and doing a sort of twitch and shake, all in time to Slick's blues. It's something to see and the children try to get it right and she stops and shows them what's going on so they'll know how to do it. I figger I am witnessing what used to be and ain't in too many people's memories anymore, this is a handing down of the old ways to the young ones, as it should be instead of handing them a TV set and letting them get fed whatever the sponsors feel like feeding them. It's intense to watch her, hoping she don't hurt herself but great-grandma knows the score and how far she can go, which seems to be without limit in the dance area. I snap some photos and a short movie of the scene. When she jumps up and gets down with the porch support, I almost lose the camera from laughing and she comes after me, shaking that thing and doing the snakebelly move, where she lifts her shirt and does a belly dancer thing with her stomach muscles. Probably due to a little Seagrams from a half pint bottle, I begin to think that I am a dancer and instead of standing back I go to her and try to move like she is doing....Hooooooo... I was getting into it.
She had a spell worked for sure and I was right with her all the way gyratin' my old butt just like Elvis with hands held up high. My only regret is the extreme age difference between her and me, az she was no doubt something to behold at 25 or 30....or even 50 ......Hooooo!
A drum is produced and a beautiful woman called "Toot" in some sort of full length African garb straps it on while Slick plays the fife. Bob and me take a turn with a snare and beat it sans drumsticks and we look to Toot for guidance while she keeps the time on the big drum. Slick plays for a long while, a tune that reminds me of marching music from old militias and something else, older even, that is mixed in with it. I have heard Sharde and recordings of Othar but his is somewhat different, which makes sense I reckon as this music is not written down anywhere but flows from deep inside any individual who takes the time to find it within and set it free. Toot is smoking a cig and sweat is breaking out on her forehead, the kids are jumping and shaking, grandma is going strong. She's everywhere, on the porch, in the yard, and then over on the concrete driveway on all fours moving like a 19 year old. It is surreal to say the least but it is all right and the way it should be. No changing nothing here as it has gone on like this for a long while, mebbe even on a continent far away from Mississippi in the distant past. I find that I am thinking there's a Black person inside of me somewhere. We all came from Africa they say, just some of us got bleached out a bit from the long Northern European Winters. I love this place and these people and feel like I've come home.
The sun is lower in the sky now and we pack up and say goodbye to everybody thanking them for about the best time we've had in a long while, at least since Wild Bill's the night before...I would be wore to the bone if I lived around there for long, I fear, as there is no end of things to do and experience in the Hill Country. I believe I would thin down somewhat as well since eating is about the last thing on a person's mind while all this is going on and we skip dinner and head to the music store in Senatobia to find a guitar strap for Slick, but the place is closed up tighter than Toot's drum. While in the parking lot, a van door opens and an ancient man with a cane is hollering to Slick. I don't catch the conversation but figger it to be a friend of Othar's and he's glad to see Daniel. I'm not sure that anyone in the county does not know Daniel by sight as they all holler Slick when they see him. Mr. Othar must have taken him around to meet the entire population of two or three counties last summer. I kinda doubt if many eighteen year old kids that lived down there all their lives know as many folks as Slick does. It's fairly astonishin' to me.
No strap here so we go back to the motel to get ourselves cleaned up and set to go to Como and the Windy City Grill.