Mighty Mississippi: River of songs and stories
By Mike Dean
CNHI News Service
L. A. Suess leans back on the riverboat Mark Twain, crosses his right leg over his left, and takes his audience quickly back in time with the sweet, synchronized sounds of banjo and harmonica.
It has the feel of a scene from Show Boat, the long-running Broadway hit, but it is another entertaining day of music and tall tales on the chocolate waters of the Mississippi River.
“Music reflects the history and the culture of the river,” said Suess, who has plied the Mississippi for years. “People still have an appreciation for old country stuff, for folk music.”
Especially in Hannibal, Mo., where the Twain is docked and where author Samuel Clemens got his inspiration for characters like Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Pudd’nhead Wilson and Becky Thatcher.
Clemens, who wrote under the pen name Mark Twain, spent his early years in Hannibal, the son of a justice of the peace. His boyhood home is now a National Historic Landmark, and a museum charts his storybook background, much of which is tied to the Mississippi.
It was the lure of the river that drew a young Clemens away from his familial surroundings, including a stint as a printer, and into the adventuresome career of a riverboat pilot. Eventually, of course, he became one of the 19th century’s best-known novelists and humorists.
“When I find a well-drawn character in fiction or biography, I generally take a warm personal interest in him,” wrote Clemens in Life on the Mississippi. “For the reason that I have known him before – met him on the river.”
If Mark Twain’s tales and satire defined the rascals and river rats of the steamboat era, music described the hardscrabble reality of toting barges and lifting bales of cotton.
Folk, blues, soul, gospel, jazz and rock ‘n’ roll connect the dots between cultures and people along the lower Mississippi in places like St. Louis, Memphis, Clarksdale and New Orleans.
Memphis stands out. It is known as the birthplace of rock and roll as well as the home of the blues. It also helped plant soul and gospel music in the American conscience.
Elvis Presley is the best known local icon, but there were many others who made it big through the recorded sounds of Sun Records, the Memphis-based music studio known for discovering American idols long before the popular television show.
Johnny Cash, Ike Turner, Carl Perkins, B. B. King and Rufus Thomas, to name a few, trace their success to Memphis and the blending of blues, gospel and country.
Chuck Porter, an official at the Rock ‘N’ Soul Museum in Memphis, called it the “Memphis thang,” a unique backbeat sound often heard in songs of the river.
“It’s a sound that can be hard to learn to play,” said Porter. “It’s not something that somebody teaches you overnight. You need to get down and play.”
The acoustics at the Sun studio help. It features the original hard tiles installed personally by founder Sam Phillips in 1950. No recording facility has been able to duplicate the distinctive background noise.
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