From its hub in the town of Clarksdale, the Mississippi Blues Trail charts more than musical milestones—it maps a spiritual landscape shaped by hardship, resilience, and creativity.
Published on May 27, 2025
It was near midnight, the story goes, when teenage Robert Johnson met the Devil at a crossroads and swapped his soul for mastery of the Blues.
Did it really happen? Well, probably not. But in Clarksdale, Mississippi, myth and music are woven so tightly together that a monument now stands where the local highways cross, honoring a tale that’s larger than truth.The Devil may have been a no-show, but the Blues showed up—and stayed.
My husband Bob and I came to Clarksdale to do research on the Mississippi Blues Trail for my book on spirituality, the arts, and travel. When it came to writing about music, the Blues called to me, in part because I wasn’t very familiar with them. I just knew that they mattered, and that they rose up from the land itself, steeped in place and history and soul.
We spent several days traveling through the Mississippi Delta, the northwest corner of the state of Mississippi that’s been called “The Most Southern Place on Earth.” In Clarksdale, we explored the Delta Blues Museum; in nearby Indianola, we visited the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center. We walked the grounds of Dockery Farms, the cotton plantation that was home to pioneering Blues musician Charley Patton and where entertainers from Willie Brown and Howlin’ Wolf to Tommy Johnson once played. We chatted with locals, ate plenty of barbeque, and best of all listened to lots of live music.
Along the way, we learned how the Blues began in the experience of enslaved Africans forced to work the fields of Mississippi in searing heat and humidity. They carried with them musical traditions from West Africa—work songs, call-and-response patterns, and vocal techniques like pitch blending, melisma, falsetto leaps, and blue notes. Over time, these traditions mingled with English and Scotch-Irish folk influences, creating something wholly new.
In part because the Delta was so isolated, the music that developed here feels different from anywhere else—raw, soulful, and stitched tightly to the land itself. The Delta’s soil is famously rich, but it bred both abundance and deep hardship. It’s no wonder that music became a lifeline. In churches, juke joints, cotton fields, and on front porches, songs helped people weather tragedies, racism, exploitation, droughts, and floods.
As Bubba O’Keefe, the Clarksdale-Coahoma County Tourism Director, told me: “The Delta is a magical place. It’s full of hardship, poverty, and wealth. Everything is more intense here.”
At the Crossroads
The story that fascinated me most was that of Robert Johnson. Born in 1911 in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, he grew up moving between towns in the Delta region. As a young man, he married Virginia Travis, but she and their baby died in childbirth in 1930, a tragedy that marked a turning point in his life and deepened his devotion to music.
By most accounts, Robert Johnson was an unremarkable musician in his early years. Then he vanished from public view for about a year, and when he returned, he had transformed into a masterful guitarist and songwriter—a change so dramatic it helped spark the legend that he had sold his soul at the crossroads. Johnson came to embody the raw, untamed spirit of Delta Blues, crafting songs that captured both personal anguish and broader hardship. He died in 1938 in Three Forks, Mississippi (perhaps poisoned by the jealous husband of a woman he was seeing). He was just 27 years old.
The legend of the crossroads is thought to have its roots in African folk traditions, where a spirit was believed to guard crossroads and could grant favors if approached in the right way. Today, multiple spots in the Delta lay claim to being the “real” crossroads. Robert Johnson and other musicians wove the story into their songs, giving the myth a life that stretched far beyond Mississippi and became part of American music lore.
At its heart, the crossroads story is about sacrifice—the idea that if you want to create something powerful, you have to give something up. Robert Johnson’s legend is a reminder that real art often requires struggle, heartbreak, and fierce determination.
But I think that crossroads aren’t just for blues musicians. All of us hit those moments when life feels heavy with choice, when the path ahead isn’t clear, and something bigger seems to be stirring around us. Crossroads are thin places, places where the seen and unseen meet. And standing there, it takes courage to step forward.
In Robert Johnson’s most famous song, “Cross Road Blues,” he sings of standing at a lonely intersection, desperate for help. It begins:
I went down to the crossroad
fell down on my knees
I went to the crossroad
fell down on my knees
Asked the Lord above “Have mercy
save poor Bob if you please”
standin’ at the crossroad
I tried to flag a ride
standin’ at the crossroads
I tried to flag a ride
Didn’t nobody seem to know me
everybody pass me by.
When I read those lyrics, I can’t help but think of Psalm 13: “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” I know, it’s a weird connection—Robert Johnson and the Psalms. But I think it fits. Both the Blues and the Psalms lay it all out there. They don’t pretty things up. They name the heartbreak, the loneliness, the injustice, the stuff that breaks you if you try to carry it alone.
And yet, neither one leaves you stuck in the dark. Somehow, both manage to turn sorrow into survival. There’s a kind of stubborn hope tucked inside, the kind that says that life is hard, but I’m still here.
Beyond the Delta
From the cotton fields of the Delta, the Blues traveled north, carried by African Americans who left the South in search of work and a better life. As it moved, it took root in cities like Chicago and St. Louis and kept evolving, reshaping the sound of American music. Over the decades, the Blues have influenced just about every major genre, including jazz, rock and roll, R&B, soul, country, folk, hip-hop, pop, and gospel. Its raw vocals, storytelling, and guitar techniques still echo through the music we listen to today.
In Clarksdale, we also learned that the Blues is a global phenomenon. Everywhere we turned, we kept running into international visitors, from a stylish Italian family shepherding two young daughters to a towering trio of Dutch tourists who looked like they could have dunked a basketball without jumping. Somehow, this music born in the Delta has become a passport that connects the world.
On our last evening we attended a performance of Lucious Spiller, who played his harmonica and guitar like he was channeling something old and deep. At one point between songs, he leaned into the microphone and said, “The Blues belong to everybody. They don’t care about color. They don’t care who you are. They all about taking the bitter with the sweet.”
One more story—this one from the unforgettable place we stayed in Clarksdale. The Shack Up Inn sits on the grounds of an old cotton plantation, with guest rooms in original sharecropper cabins that have been fixed up (though not enough to satisfy anyone who’s used to a Marriott). Bob and I loved it, especially in the early mornings when we had coffee on the front porch, watching the Delta wake up around us.
One of the unexpected pleasures of staying there was all the graffiti people had scribbled on the walls. Reading the scrawled notes and messages, it was apparent that the Shack Up Inn is a popular honeymoon spot. I guess if you start your marriage in a sharecropper shack with peeling paint and mismatched furniture, you’ve got a whole lifetime of upgrades ahead of you.
My favorite message, though, was right above the bathroom door. Here it is:
And that’s the heart of the Blues—sorrow and strength, woven together. Dan, wherever you are, I hope you’re doing OK. But if you’re not, I know the Blues will help you get through it.
IF YOU GO: To plan your own trip to Clarksdale, see Visit Clarksdale. In addition to live music every night, Clarksdale hosts more than a dozen annual festivals, including the Women In Blues Festival in May, the Sunflower River Blues & Gospel Festival in August, and Red’s Old-Timers Music Festival on Labor Day weekend. if you can’t visit in person, the town has a Spotify list of Blues music.
Lori Erickson is one of America’s top travel writers specializing in spiritual journeys. She’s the author of books that include Holy Rover, Near the Exit, The Soul of the Family Tree, and Every Step Is Home. Her website Spiritual Travels features holy sites around the world.
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