Rat, The River, and Bessie Smith

I went to the Mississippi Delta once with my cousin Jessica. We drove from St. Louis to New Orleans on the Great River Road. In Clarksdale we went to visit with Rat who runs the Riverside Hotel - the place where Bessie Smith is rumored to have died after a car crash and being denied access to a white hospital for treatment. This story has been a matter of dispute, but when we were there in 2001 Rat still had the room done up as a tribute to Bessie. I don't know if Rat is still around but he told us: "If you want to find Rat, he's down by the river." That's where I'd start.

The Devil's Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith is playing now at St. Luke's Theater. Click here for tickets.

Bessie on the Hudson...

Thanks to Film Forum, you can catch the only big screen appearance of blues legend Bessie Smith tomorrow night (8/10) .

This conjures my own memory of Bessie...and the photo I took, during a road trip thru the MS Delta in 2001, of the room where she died.