Mississippi Delta

A couple times over the past few years I've come across a photography book by Birney Imes called "Juke Joint." The last time was about six months ago, at the McNally Robinson bookstore on Prince Street. The book is a photographic study of the juke joints scattered along the Mississippi Delta. Juke joints can be defined as "primitive rural counterparts of resort night clubs" where "the blues was incubated until it gelled into a recognizable art form." Naturally, the juke joints Imes photographed are all oozing with character. Photographed in the 1980s, the dilapidated, run-down, ramshackle structures are remnants of a dying era. Looking at the photographs, I couldn't help but notice that many of the juke joints have pool tables. "Good idea for a blog post," I thought. Click here to see a gallery of images from the book. And then go check out the high resolution version of the cover photo, which was taken at the Riverside Lounge in Shaw, Mississippi in 1986. Some reviews of the book can be read here and an amusing account of a speech Imes once gave can be read here.

Around the same time I came across "Juke Joint" I was at a bar with a copy of the New York Times spread out in front of me. On the front page, below the fold, was a picture taken in one of those juke joints, a place called Po' Monkey's in Merigold, Mississippi. The photo, taken by Nicole Bengiveno, features two men playing pool. So I took a picture of the newspaper. After all, it's not every day that the editors of one of the biggest and best papers in the world choose to publish on the front page a photo of people playing pool:So when the time came for me to begin writing this post, I did a quick google images search for juke joint and came up with a treasure trove of great images. One of my favorites (at the very top) is a photo taken at Po' Monkey's by Brett Peruzzi and Robyn Gold. Their journey of the Mississippi Delta juke joints can be read here. An exterior of Po' Monkey's (taken by Daryl Thetford):
Another fantastic image I found was one taken by Bill Steber. Steber's photograph of women dancing at Junior Kimbrough’s juke joint in Chulahoma, Mississippi was part of an extended essay on blues culture in Mississippi. The work earned him an Alicia Patterson Foundation Grant in 1998. Not only is it an iconic moment, but if you look closely you can see a pool table in the backround:All of this made me recall reading the book "The Color of Money" by Walter Tevis. My favorite part of the book is when Eddie Felson is encouraged by Minnesota Fats (with whom he has been playing a series of televised straight pool matches) to get back into the game by touring the South and hitting all the roadhouses. In the book, Eddie is based out of Lexington, Kentucky so he's not far away. He starts in the fictional town of Haneyville, North Carolina. And then he gets some serious action on the doorstep of the Delta, in Memphis, where he plays at "the hottest place in the whole South," a bar called Thelma's. Here he plays for $1000 per game in 8-ball (on bar tables set up for 25-cent games, no less).

The only geographic reference in the movie version of The Color of Money is the 9-ball tournament in Atlantic City, New Jersey. But most of the movie was filmed in Chicago. I think the scenes from the South in the book version would make an excellent basis for a film. And I think the perfect place to begin would be Messenger's Poolhall in Clarksdale, Mississippi. "Part pool hall and domino den...and part café and juke joint," Messenger's was the subject of a documentary in 2005, as well as a feature article in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger (story can be found here, scroll down a bit). I know I would love to visit all these places. This shot of Messenger's by Daryl Thetford says it all: