I had my first Cracker Barrel experience this morning. I now know why America is 50% obese. 2 eggs, sausage, ham and bacon, grits, biscuits, and fried apples. Ooofah. BTW, it was great. If my Zocor doesn't just up and quit by the end of this vacation, I don't know if it ever will. I'm tempted to go get tested when I get home to see if my cholesterol count has a comma in it.

Headed to Clarksdale after breakfast. Went straight to the Blues Museum, where working at the front desk was an old acquaintance, Bob, whom we'd met last time down here. We told him he was in our previosu Blues Cruise DVD-video and we'd send him a copy. He'd moved here 2 years ago from Kansas because he loved the Blues so much, and now he's working at the Mecca of Blues.

At the museum we sat in on a Q&A session for Big George Brock. Big George is one of the last of the original Delta blues harp players. He grew up playing with Muddy Waters and most of the other Delta Bluesmen. He began boxing as a teen also and supported himself by day laboring in the cotton fields, boxing and playing harp. Eventually he moved to St. Louis and opened a series of Blues clubs, where most of his friends would come and play, sleep at his house, and then go back to his club and play some more.

Big George, now 74 years old, must have been a formidable specimen as a young man, even then having sparred with Sonny Liston, who he was both knocked down by and the subsequently floored in three rounds of sparring. As Big George put it, "Sonny hit me in the head, over my aayh, and, well....sometimes mah head still hoits from it."

Afterward, we all walked over to Big George, a gentle old man with enormous hands, gold and diamond studded eyeglasses, 2 thick gold rings on each paw, a big gold chain around his neck, a bowler on his head and matching sateen striped beige shirt and pants. He was gracious with our adoration, especially when he and Dave sat together to trade licks on their harps. Dave finished those five minutes or so, floating on air. (He subsequently walked outside and began humping the side of the building).

From there, we went back to Ground Zero for beer, where Dave gave away $20 of his money playing Three-card Monty with a smiling and slick looking older black man. We subsequently found out this man’s name was Puddin’ and he’s never worked a day in his life. He basically hangs around the clubs and takes suckers for their money. Dave was just another willing idio…um, victim.

So we moseyed from Ground Zero to The Bluestown Music Store, a tiny little place half a block from the club. Ron, the owner is a silver-haired sweetheart who resembles the late John DeLorean. He’s always warm and welcoming, and lets us play with the assortment of vintage guitars that he’s got hanging. I bought Zac a glass slide so he can learn slide guitar technique. While we were there, Ron pulled out a reel-to-reel tape that he had recently made. He was very excited to tell us the story of how T-Model Ford (a local Blues legend) had been sitting in the store a few weeks back and he’d recorded him playing a wonderfully powerful acoustic set. (Normally, T-Model played an over-driven electric Peavey Razor, so the warm sound of a vintage acoustic being played by him was a terrific breath of fresh air. Sort of like hearing Courtney Love sweetly sing Amazing Grace).

So we walked around Clarksdale, dipping in and out of stores like Cat Head, a music/book/art boutique, and the New York High Style Clothing Company, where it was obvious from looking through the hanging inventory, many bluesmen bought their most garish and suave attire here. Suits like you’ll never find at Brooks Brothers! Lavender sateen stripes, Yellow Zoot suits, lime 5-buttons, all with shoes to match. Ray and Rich both needed to buy hats to protect them from the southern sun, so a couple of straw hats were purchased, and undoubtedly their wives will not approve. While in the store, a dapper looking gent came in to also purchase a hat. We recognized him from earlier encounters as the brother of the headline act for the upcoming evening, Super Chikan. We bantered some with him for a while, trading playful opinions on the hat purchases.

We walked over to see the opening acts for the free outdoor festival. Appropriately enough, the local school system has an after-school Blues program, and the prodigy we’d seen yesterday afternoon, Omar was leading about 10 of his classmates in a set of Blues classics like Kansas City and Walkin’ Blues.

After the set, we headed back to the hotel for quick showers, and then back to Ground Zero for more music.

Ground Zero was more crowded than I’d ever seen it. Not packed, but definitely a full house. We grabbed a standing table and ordered drinks. Also at our table were a couple of guys, Jim and Dewayne, who had been sent here by their company to construct a store for the past month. DeWayne looked a bit morose, and after about 20 minutes, after their food had been served to them, Dewayne folded his arms on the table, put his head down, and passed out. His pal tried to wake him, but Dewayne was having none of it. A few women came by and had their pictures taken with the unconscious Dewayne, but after while, the hostess came over and told Jim to get his friend out or she was calling the cops. Jim protested that he needed more time, but she replied that, “…he could pay to eat here but not to sleep here.” Jim rousted Dewayne enough to get him vertical and hauled him (literally) out the door. (The following morning, we coincidentally ran into Jim and Dewayne at a local mini-mart. I stopped and gave him a hearty greeting, “Dewayne! How are ya man? What’s new? How ya been?” He looked at me very confused, and I asked him, “What’s the matter man, dontcha remember me?” At this point Jim cracked up and Dewayne realized that this occurrence might turn out to be a pattern today).

After Jim and Dewayne left Ground Zero, we moved up front to watch a local legend, Super Chikan and the Fighting Cocks. Super Chikan is a black man in his late 50s, I’d guess. He began the night playing a funky-looking clear acrylic Peavey that I’d never seen before. The only other clear acrylic body axe I’d ever seen before was a Rickenbacker bass that I’d owned when I was in my early teens, so seeing Super Chiken’s Peavey was a nice connection-of-memory for me. Soon, however, he switched to one of the instruments that have made him semi-famous. You see, Super Chikan builds his own guitars out of an amazing array of what you and I might consider junkyard castoffs. He uses pool cues for necks. He uses 5-gallon gas cans or cigar boxes or even a ceiling fan motor shell for bodies. The instruments are be-jeweled with all sorts of airbrushing and glued-on plastic gemstones and such. There are nuts and bolts and wine corks and, jeez, almost anything you can think of that serve decorative or functional purposes. The truly amazing thing about these works-of-art is that they are functional. Not only functional, but when played by their creator, they make guitar music that is the equivalent or better of anything Gibson or Washburn or Fender has ever put out. He consigns these creations to the Cat’s Head store in town, where we saw them priced between $300 and $2500.

So Super Chikan puts on 3 spectacular sets over the next 3 hours, whipping the crowd into a jumping, dancing frenzy. Super Chikan's between-songs catch-phrase is "Somebody SHOOT that thang!" which by the end of the night, pretty much everyone in the club was yelling. Between sets, we got up on stage to talk to Super Chikan, and he was more than happy to show us his creations. Once he’s back to playing, the House is rockin’, as the saying goes. By 1:30, we’ve made friends with everyone in the club. We’ve drank our share (and more) and eventually they closed the bar, turned up the lights threw everybody out.

Ah but the night is young! So we drive to Hopson Plantation, just outside of town. Dave and I had been here 2 years earlier, during the day, when it was about a million degrees outside. There was no life to the air then, nothing but crickets stirring. The place was virtually empty and Dave sat on the porch of the commissary and played a sad sweet lick that brought tears to my eyes then. But tonight, the joint was jumpin’! Jimbo Mathes was crankin’ away on stage, there were about a hundred folks all dancing and drinkin’ and shooting pool (BTW, Rich took a game of eight ball off some young kid).

By 3:30 we were plum tuckered out, so we headed to the hotel for some shut-eye.