The Old School Verses

Crossroads

I drove on down to Clarksdale

On an autumn business trip

Then took the bridge to Helena

Across the Mississip

A crossroad I was seeking

Where old highway 49

Crossed 61, the older route

In legendry enshrined

I thought a monument or plaque

Adorned that dusty road

Where Robert Johnson, blues guitarman

Sold his human soul

Young Johnson was a ‘colored man’

As they said in that day

Who roamed the segregated south

For juke-joint player’s pay

Then one bad evil midnight

Robert took his sad guitar

To that old intersection where

Demonic forces are

And there a silken-suited man

With red eyes and goatee

Took that old out-of-tune guitar

And laid it on his knee

The tuning done, the devil handed

Johnson’s axe to him

And ever after, when he played

‘Twas like an angel’s hymn

But that the notes he strummed came not

As if from heaven on high

But from the fiery depths from whence

The wild-eyed curses fly

But at the dusty crossroad there

Was just a red stop sign

To mark that famous spot where

61 meets 49

No pull-off, no memorial

No monument to mark

The place a poor musician

Gave his soul up in the dark

In Hollywood, Mann’s Theater

Honors cinema’s stars

At BB King’s on Beale Street

The great blues musicians are

Cemented on the sidewalk so

We won’t forget their names

But that recalls the bit they did

When they had wealth and fame

Upon this earth; then, why does not

Some emblem mark the place

Where one of those guitarists

Took to Satan’s cold embrace?

The Devil needs no monument

When he takes someone home

It’s rather bad for marketing

To leave a memory stone