The magazine

The magazine

Five long reads: the names, the town, the music, the screen, and the comeback.

This be-BOP is also a place to read. Five pieces, each one standing on its own.

Section

The great names of Clarksdale

Born here, raised here, or changed here. Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Sam Cooke, Ike Turner, Bessie Smith, W. C. Handy — and the line that runs to Super Chikan and Kingfish Ingram.

Section

A history of Clarksdale

Cotton, two highways and a railroad. Sharecropping, the Red Summer of 1919, Tennessee Williams as a boy, Martin Luther King in 1958 and 1962, then the Great Migration and the machines.

Section

A history of the blues

From the field hollers to Chicago, by way of one railway platform in Tutwiler where W. C. Handy heard a man play with a knife blade and wrote it down.

Section

Coahoma County on screen

What was filmed here, what was only set here, and why the difference matters. Including the day Sinners came home to a town with no cinema.

Section

The renaissance of Clarksdale

How a town with nothing left but its music decided the music was the economy.