Issue link: http://cp.revolio.com/i/567026
34 GraceRiderMag.com September/October 2015 Clarksdale, Mississippi is known as the birthplace of the blues. Here at the crossroads of highways 49 and 61 are even two guitars on a tower to signify it. And behind it is Abe's, great BBQ since 1924. And then most of the town is what we would refer to as urban squalor. A type of poor so bad it doesn't show up on any government ledger. But there is an underlying wealth that supersedes a balance sheet and after arriving back to Southern California I know you need to experience to understand. I tried… There was a time when the color of your skin made you a desirable or a colored. In 1937 Bessie Smith, queen of the blues, was in a car accident and taken to the hospital in Clarksdale. Such places were not the huge facilities they are now, this was a building about the size of a Circle K. And she was left to bleed to death because of her color. You see whites didn't tend to coloreds in those days. Fast forward to 1944 and a Mrs. Ratliff runs a boarding house/hotel for African Americans in the building that once was a hospital. Her four-year-old son Frank is living with her. In 1957 she buys the building and runs it as "The Riverside Hotel". Which her son now runs, his friends call him, Ratt, who we can say is a friend of ours. If you have never spent time around musicians they are different, they have no sense of time, playing until 6am then sleeping all day, with music being their worshipped god. This is the place Ratt runs now. From the outside it looks abandoned and falling down. Like Ratt told us if you want a pretty face, go on the highway, it's what is inside that counts. A life lesson here brothers and sisters. But the inside rooms, all 32 of them are spotless. When we pulled up to take a picture, Ratt and another man were on the front that used to be a porch talking. My wife Theresa reluctantly got off to take a picture and Ratt invited us over Rumble in the Wind Highway 61 Revisited