1362 to 1615 miles

“You guys have just come from Alabama. Wow, that’s pretty scary, Alabama’s a scary place. I hear they have three lanes of traffic on the motorway.”
10 miles into Mississippi and already its another planet with, as our motel clerk has keenly pointed out, smaller roads. Sue’s technique for fathoming the amount of grease used in a restaurant by checking the hand prints on the inside of their front door forewarns us that we are about to get the heaviest breakfast yet. Lardy faces stick to us and won’t budge their stares till we leave, a gallon of grease heavier between us.
Inside a Thrift Store with a sign on the front door proclaiming “No Profanity” and free coffee inside we find an album by the late great Phil Harris otherwise known as Balloo the Bear. Harris, who was born in Louisiana, knew the languid and breathless landscape of the South and as we drive from one bankrupt town thru the next his spirited ‘That’s What I Love About The South’ turns 84 times on our record player.



Shadowing a two-mile train thru the voluptuous low lands of Mississippi we find ourselves in Hattisburg, a small town with a large number of fire stations and even larger number of fire ravaged houses. A black man in a Vietnamese straw hat stands under the shelter of a street sign, his bull dog collapsed on the pavement with its huge tongue rolled out as if to welcome visiting dignitaries. “Sure’s hot” is all he can manage and the gesture feels generous. Being Sunday the only people out besides him in town are bikers who are about as welcoming as a mouthful of sawdust. Even the water of the motel pool can’t break the sweat, but this doesn’t stop myself and Sue from spending the afternoon stood like stupid livestock with a Mexican family in liquid as warm as devils piss.
Early the next morning we are banging at the door of a woman called Cheetah who obliges our addiction with a fix of crate after crate of dusty, dog eared records, three quarters of which are by religious groups. Two of them have covers painted by the enigma who is known only by their first or last name of Harvey. This artist painted over a hundred album covers for the Savoy label who posted checks to a PO Box and Harvey, in return, posted them the paintings. That is as far as any investigation into who painted these vivid and naive pieces goes and at our next thrift store we discover why.





Rudy Boutwell has been collecting for over 50 years. The glass of his front door is so consumed by cuttings from papers and hanging fetishes his thin blue eyes can hardly find us as he peers out. Inside looks like he has spent 50 years not collecting but rather excavating, burrowing minute passageways thru a deluge of toys, golf clubs, velvet paintings and shot glasses like a prisoner digging for freedom. After 10 minutes of squeezing my slender frame thru this warren it suddenly becomes startlingly apparent that Rudy doesn’t live in a small house but in a considerable warehouse. You would have to be crazy to try and make sense of it. But Rudy, all 83 years of him, knows exactly where everything is and as we dive into his record collection converses with us about the second coming, plays songs on his harmonica and suggests, not meekly, that dropping an atom bomb on Iraq would “Quiet them down”. Despite what we would like to hold against Rudy for this it is hard not to like him. Like Harvey he is a man of absolute passion and conviction. And like Harvey, Rudy’s is just another door in the vast American landscape thru which people rarely pass.
Not wanting to buck a perfectly fun trend we shadow a train out of Hattisburg and, loosing it as the trees once again take on the impenetrable dark green of Florida, we open up a scratched and nearly lost piece of vinyl from Rudy’s labyrinth. It is by Robert Parker a man from New Orleans, who pressed a few records and then became a bus driver. As we place the needle on the record and enter Louisiana we are reminded that while the buses still run Robert is only to be remembered today in the wonderful life that he left in his songs.

952 to 1362 miles

Bainbridge, Georgia, 20 miles from the Alabama border, will soon be a town full of migrant Haitian farm hands. It is a strange little place where the poverty is so evident that people tell you “the cheapest way” when you ask for directions.
We stop the car at a run down repair shop where two 80 year old brothers sit staring with little enthusiasm at the road they have been witness to their entire lives. One looks as though he has only ever washed the crown of his head, which sits like a vivid white mountain top above a swarthy leather complexion. The others wiry frame culminates in a greasy pair of glasses with lenses a good half inch thick and held together with tape. Both are stone deaf and shout directions at me through sun dried, empty mouths. A storm is picking up overhead and midday becomes dusk in the blinking of an eye as dried leaves and debris begin circling around us. Feeling I am experiencing the eye of the storm being formed by these wizened wizards I turn to leave only to be confronted by a 6 foot 7, 400lb black man in overalls, seemingly dropped silently by the storm, who is bouncing a truck tire as if it were a basketball and laughing with a voice that is so deep its almost not there.

"For concerts Mrs Jackson may be contacted by
calling: (301) 752-5346"

Just north of Bainbridge is the birthplace of Katie Jackson whose divine “Didn’t It Rain” we find in a thrift store that also houses the local Grey Hound bus stop, with people waiting sat on sofas for sale. It is Katie’s voice that guides us securely through the storm and into Alabama, the only state on our journey named after a famous rock band.
In Andalusia we stay at a motel whose previous guests have included 1995’s Miss America and the inventor of a very famous catch phrase. We have BBQ for dinner and breakfast and find some amazing records at a Christian thrift store. Paying 50 cents a record at the counter the man behind us notices the three Mahavishnu John McLaughlin albums we have found and smiles. He knows now that somewhere out there in his town is another kindred spirit that he can find amongst all the good old boys and indulge in beautiful, sensitive music.
A thrift store whose owner has framed photos of herself and The Drifters in hotel lobbies on the walls reveals a group of wonderful 45RMP singles. All are from the duke box of a local bar as they have no covers and are as scratched as Sue’s mosquito riddled legs.





Latimore’s “Red Neck in a Soul Band” is a gift from the hidden treasure Gods. The smooth voice of this unknown crooner lifts us as a road across Alabama guides us through forests growing out of houses, entire towns waiting for nature to suffocate them fully. Kudzu, an imported vine that grows a foot a day, is submerging the land like a beautiful verdant veil. Entire valleys of trees lie under a sheet of this vine and appear like huge creatures frozen in agony. The smallest road into the deepest part of Alabama’s countryside starts turning into a pot holed track and the states red red soil begins taking over the road. Tiny wooden houses forgotten by progress hide under huge oaks with a few hot beasts shading in nativity. Women sit at the side of the road with a few belongings at their feet for sale.
The storm has thrown us backwards in time. The nature, the houses and people of Alabama are simple, beautiful props and players in the painfully slow tragedy of poverty. The road, held together by different shades of concrete like a patchwork quilt deteriorates further as we enter Mississippi.

389 to 952 miles

40 Miles west of Jacksonville and the hallucinogen of the Floridian landscape is setting in. Perfectly manicured golf courses give way to tumble down trailer parks then back to another golf course followed by strange church malls, huge, modern, clustered in fives, a new form of golf.
“My favourite Pastor is in Jacksonville,” bellowed the 300lb black woman. “He had cancer of the lymph’s you know! Now they told him he wouldn’t have long, that it will get him. So I went to see him preach and he looked weak but his voice was strong, had the power of god working in him. I tried to take a picture of him preaching but the devil gone interfered. He double exposed the picture and put someone else in the way.”
Up and down both the woman’s arms were burn marks. The thrift store we found her in collected money for a local charity called Helping Hands that supported victims of domestic violence. In the crate of records we found one by a victim of a unique sort of spousal abuse, the only album by Vince Cardell who took covering another musicians to extreme new levels. Trying to contact Vince to allow him to tell his amazing story has proved unsuccessful so I will have to tell it as I know it.



Vince Cardell was Liberace’s longest standing “chauffer”. They duet on this album with the song “Tea for Two” but perhaps the most telling song title is the records opener “You Make Me Feel Brand New”. The uncanny resemblance between Vince and his “employer” is no coincidence but rather the result of a birthday present from Liberace. In one of the greatest known examples of 21st century narcissistic decadence, Vince Cardell underwent plastic surgery to satisfy and resemble the man whose car he drove.
Perry, a little town with a two foot bouffant behind the liquor store counter and 50 cents oysters at the bars, is where we sleep. Florida, though in the South, is predominantly white. You can divide these people into two categories: those who are saved and those who are damned. Those who are saved have adapted biblical dress to include khaki Bermuda shorts and polo shirts. Those who are not wear leather or camo and ride bikes and trucks. Being and dressing like neither, Floridians are finding us very hard to understand and are assuming therefore that we must be very lost. Therefore the only time they have extended us the courtesy of kindness is when we are asking them for directions away from their town. This in itself creates problems, as it would appear many of them have never left their own town.
“Head north and you’ll get to Alabama,” was some of the kindest advice we heard in Florida’s panhandle and as it was free we took it. Not, however, before stopping in a small roadside thrift store where the woman pointed us in the direction of the records with “The big CD’s are over there”. Amongst them we found many corking Christian albums that stood as testament to our time in the sunshine state. ‘Gods Brady Bunch’ and ‘Richard and Gail Miller’ sang for us from the gospel of love as we got the hell out of Dodge and, thanks to the kindness Floridians, drove into Georgia.

0 to 389 miles

Hours into our journey and already we have hit a rich seam of records running in tumble down piles through a ramshackle thrift store on the wrong side of town. Realising I haven’t locked the car, but not wanting to suggest to anybody walking by it that I suspect them of thievery I decide not to use the remote locking from the shop door but instead go back to the car, get my note book and then lock the doors.
The records are water damaged, their smell is mouldy and their contents is amazing. Above the deaf Korean cashier is a portrait of a moustachioed Physics teacher and his librarian wife super imposed onto a champagne glass emerging rising from a floral display.
Finally out of the shadow of Atlanta’s obesity I realise I have left, and now lost, my notebook and that perhaps the possibility of being interpreted as a bigot by a total stranger in the South isn’t something to loose sleep, or a notebook, over. Jack Hills wonderful “T is For Texas” is the record we choose to guide us through the rural roads of Georgia.


'Jack calls this album "Don't Know Where I'll be Tomorrow." I know where Jack will be tomorrow; in the hearts of a hell of a bunch of Country Music Fans.' Hillman Hall

Flat and long the swathes of asphalt wind us through gothic landscapes with heavy, moss-infected trees hanging over red neck Hansel and Gretel homes. Dead armadillos lie on the side of the road upturned like Hummers in Iraq, the swamp jungle shakes with the chorus roar of cicadas as the trees give way to an open vista of green tidal plains.
We book a room from a man who talks words like illegible handwriting as 10 mosquitoes feast on his face. The man two doors down called Buck Rodgers extends us a beer and takes us for a ride through the water ways with his twins. Since the area is tidal, he tells us, all of the water is considered land. This land has been owned for centuries by local families, oyster and crab men who sound as feral as the land. These young men have inherited with the land the right to shoot fishermen who lay anchor and are thus trespassing. But their catch tasted good enough and the local restaurant with a side of flour battered fries for us to forgive them their murderous tendencies.
On the road again early the next morning we meet a black man called Raymond. He is living on the side of the road in a caravan that is eclipsed by a hill of beer cans. When he sees us approaching he runs behind his home and returns with an American flag that, after much wading and rising, he pitches for us atop the mountain. “People drink a lot of beer around here” Raymond says with a rye smile. “For a black man to stay out of trouble he gotta think small”.
A few miles further down the road we enter Brunswick, a small town fortified by giant paper factories that feed off the seemingly inexhaustible interior we have just emerged from. The 100 plus degree air physically assaults us when we get out of the car and pelts us as we flee to a nearby Flea Market. Inside this oasis we find a whole room floor to ceiling with crates of records. The joy of two midday hours to kill getting dusty fingers is intensified as ruby’s and emeralds start appearing in every crate. Among our finds are two Goombay albums from the Bahamas. George Symonette “so tall that he had to sit sideways at the piano” and the darling Eloise Lewis, billed as the only girl balladeer of Goombay in the Bahamas, turn on our record player as palm trees begin to pepper the dense woodland and we enter the pastel decay of Florida and Eloises native Jacksonville.

-4382 to 0 miles

Touch down in Atlanta, a taxi rank of wheelchairs and drivers waiting at our gate to shuttle their 300lb cargos back into the land of choice and convenience.
The first person to greet us is an officious looking man wanting to know where we are going. Not wanting to begin our trip dishonestly we decide to answer him as truthfully as possible; from Atlanta we are heading to the Georgia coast, down into Florida and across to its pan handle. Zig zagging between Florida and southern Alabama we will be heading to the Mississippi delta, taking in all of Louisiana and then will try and make a dent of exploration into East Texas, rising up its pan handle into Oklahoma and cruising into Kansas. From Kansas we will turn East and head down through Missouri, dip our toes into Arkansas and then stitch a line between 'Tennessee, North Mississippi and Alabama all the way back into North Georgia and eventually Atlanta.
If at this point he’d followed protocol and asked us the purpose of our visit we would have replied that we were in his land to excavate for our own personal phonographic pharaohs, private pressings onto vinyl by amateur musicians who in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s found themselves inhabiting a unique epoch in which they could press their own records, an era in music that saw everyone from midgets to torsos and parrot orchestras to blind whistlers stand in front of a studio mic. As it was the line of wheelchairs was congesting like an overworked artery behind us and he simply waved us on as if to prove honesty is sometimes the best option.
In our car we join the 7 lanes of traffic that circle Atlanta like tracks on a permanently stuck LP. At the city limits we stop and an International House of Pancakes for coffee before stepping forward into the wild interior of the American South. The woman in front of us with thighs as wide as domestic boiler tanks asks to be seated at a table because she “can’t fit into a booth”.
Infiltrating this culture will obviously require us to eat five regular meals a day. Goodbye feet, hello enlightenment.


'When brother Esmond Patterson started at WAOK Gospel Caravan in the old '81 Theatre in Atlanta, almost everyone thought it would be successful. Whoever heard of gospel singing in a movie house? However brother Patterson is not familiar with failure.'