DOWN SOUTH JUKIN’: ONE NIGHT AT POOR MONKEY LOUNGE, BOLIVAR COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI
Recollections on a legendary juke joint that no longer exists.
In February I posted on Yakety Yak about experiencing Mardi Gras in New Orleans around 2011/12. This reminded me of further adventures during that journey – here’s a particularly memorable one.
I’d driven from Los Angeles to Louisiana with Liam Gerner, an Australian guitarist then playing in Ryan Bingham’s band, and we’d ensured our journey south was a musical road trip. After Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras day) we spent Ash Wednesday recovering – as did everyone else in New Orleans now the USA’s biggest street party was over for another year – then, on Thursday, began our journey towards Topanga Canyon (Liam living, like many of his contemporaries, in the hills outside LA). Again, our idea was to catch up with friends and acquaintances along the way, see sites and hear music. And our first destination turned out to be both a remarkable site and also a good place to hear music – exactly what Liam and I were looking for.
On that grey, cold morning - Ash Thursday would be an apt description - we drove straight north out of New Orleans, leaving Louisiana in the broad daylight (as Rodney Crowell memorably sang) and on into the most notorious state in the union. Mississippi, whose fertile soil produced so many remarkable 20th Century musicians, is also infamous for producing, at the same time, barbaric, murderous racists, a racism so toxic pre-1970s it matched that of apartheid South Africa and Hitler’s Germany. Mississippi today has changed, but only by degrees – as I detailed in More Miles Than Money, schools remain segregated via a sleight of policy, Republican state officials continue to play the race card and its poorest, most marginalised citizens are black. And Mississippi is the poorest state in the union.
Bypassing the state’s capital, Jackson, we headed for Cleveland, a small city of some 12,000 people. We chose Cleveland simply because it had motels and was in driving distance of a noted juke joint that was only open on Thursday nights.
Entrance, Po’ Monkey Lounge.