Stax and the Natchez Trace Parkway

On our final real day of the trip (ie doing new stuff) we went to visit the Stax Museum of Soul. The story of Stax is an amazing one. Stax was a recording studio that brought us some very famous musicians and songs. Most notable of the Stax family to the general population are the late great Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes. However, there are many more songs as I found out that once I listened to them I recognized. The beauty of what Stax did was that they were founded by a white owner who located them in a predominantly black neighborhood or at least a neighborhood that was shifting in it's demographic. This at a time when racial tensions throughout the south were running very high. It was repeatedly told to us that Stax was an integrated company from top to bottom (with eventually shared ownership between black and white people). Many of the musicians at Stax said that they did not have any conscious realization of the racial boundaries that they were breaking. Unfortunately for Stax all of the good that they were doing would change almost instantly with the assassination Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Subsequently Stax's top star, Otis Redding, would die along with several members of his backing band in a plane crash. These two events were a major blow for Stax. They would go through several ownership changes and strangely enough one of them saw Stax's masters owned by the legendary studio from Berkeley, Fantasy. Listening to a CD of the great soul hits from Stax the instantly recognizable Stax rhythm section and horns sound phenomenal. After we finished up at Stax I asked one of the people at the ticket counter where we could get some good food. He directed us to a great soul food restaurant around the corner. Inside we found a restaurant that had been open (albeit not continuously) since 1942. We were informed that Dr. King would often eat there and that he favored the peach cobbler.

Dad eating some salmon croquettes, black eyed peas, and okra.

I had turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes/gravy, and collards.

As we began our drive home we plotted what route we would follow. The obvious choice was the interstate south to Baton Rouge and then the interstate again west to Houston. However, this has not been a trip of doing the obvious. We decided to stop in Jackson for the evening (thus allowing us to watch the UGA/'Bama game). The next morning we got out of Jackson and hit the Natchez Trace Parkway. The parkway is a meandering 2 lane road that goes through fields and is tree lined. Judging by all the historic markers we saw I think many of the endless fields were likely old Civil War battlefields. This and one of our drives on the Great River Road where we drove through cotton fields following the Mississippi were two of my favorite moments of the trip. Dad made a great point that both drives were beautiful and were not particularly quick to get from one point to the next. In that way they were similar to driving on Hwy 1, but the major difference was the ease of driving these roads without a sheer dropoff on oneside. So if you ever find yourself with time to kill while driving through Mississippi consider driving the Natchez Trace Parkway or the Great River Road you will not regret it.