2000s Archive

They’re Red Hot

Originally Published December 2003
Barbecue is rightly deified down South, but the tamales there are also devilishly good.

Robert Johnson, the blues master who died in 1938 at the age of 27, was said to have made a deal with the Devil for virtuosity on the guitar. The legendary pact was sealed in Clarksdale, Mississippi, out where Highway 49 crosses Highway 61.

Surely the most soulful road on earth, Highway 61 is a straight shot through the fertile cotton fields of the delta, home to vast numbers of influential bluesmen. It’s mostly a four-lane now, but just off the road in small towns and at country crossroads, wailing riffs still pulse from juke joints, front-porch boom boxes, and car radios. Beyond its prodigious gift of heartache lyrics, delta culture also provides a well-documented treasury of edible icons of southern soul: barbecue, catfish, biscuits, and greens soaked with pot likker.

But few outsiders know that the region’s most popular culinary creation is actually the hot tamale. Between the A&R Bar-B-Q, on Elvis Presley Boulevard (where you’ll also find exemplary pig sandwiches), and Sollys Hot Tamales of Vicksburg, countless men and women sell their steamy corn-husk packets from street-corner carts, back porches, tamale shops, pork parlors, and steak houses. Tamales are a snack, an hors d’oeuvre, or a meal, eaten by hand standing up or at table with a fork. You buy them tied up with string in threes and packed into large coffee cans that hold exactly three dozen.

As we grazed down Highway 61 along the Mississippi River, we were hoping to find a logical explanation for the ubiquity of tamales. In fact, many tamale vendors had a good story to tell about how this particular dish got so popular in the delta. And every one of the stories was different. Even people with no idea how Mexican fare became a local passion agree that it’s a tradition that stretches back in time nearly as far as the blues. Robert Johnson himself recorded a song about them in 1936, “They’re Red Hot,” which included the lyric “She got two for a nickel, got four for a dime.”

Abraham Davis began selling sandwiches in Clarksdale in 1924. He opened Abe’s Bar-B-Q at the infamous Robert Johnson crossroads in 1937, and today his grandson Pat Davis runs the place in the shadow of a tall monument that marks the location with crossed oversize guitars. The hot tamales at Abe’s—served three to an order, with or without chiles on top—are packed in cayenne-red corn husks, and their yellow meal is moist with drippings from a mixture of beef and pork. The recipe is Abe’s, unchanged. “No doubt Granddaddy got it from someone in town,” Pat says, reminding us that Abe came to the U.S. from Lebanon, where tamales aren’t a big part of the culinary mix. Why he thought they would sell well in his barbecue place is a head-scratcher. “There were no Mexican restaurants here then,” Pat adds. “And as far as I know, not many Mexicans.”

While browsing at Cat Head Delta Blues & Folk Art, in Clarksdale, for roots recordings all but unavailable elsewhere, we talked tamales with proprietors Roger and Jennifer Stolle, who solved the cracker riddle for us. When served tamales at Abe’s, we got a plate of saltines on the side, and the waitress said, “I’ll bring you more if you need them.” Her offer meant nothing to us until Jennifer Stolle told us that many connoisseurs insist on scooping bites of filling from their husk and putting them on crackers, adding crunch to the otherwise soft food.

The Stolles also pointed us to the White Front Café, in Rosedale, which turned out to be a windfall. Here, in a tiny wood-frame house, Joe Pope makes and serves nothing but tamales—about 120 dozen per week. His recipe came from John Hooks, who apprenticed with a Mexican man from Texas in the late 1930s. “They say Hooks’s tamales were so much better than the Mexican’s that the Mexican went back West with his tail between his legs,” Pope says. “When Hooks took ill, he gave the recipe to his daughter, who passed it on to me in ’73.” Cooking on his father’s 1945 O’Keefe & Merritt stove and using the same two big pots he’s had since opening day, Pope makes his tamales using no pork, only beef—“for those with heart problems, Muslims, or kosher.” They are cream-smooth and pepper-hot, weighty enough to squeeze from the husk in thick, flavorful clumps. If you choose to dine at one of the four kitchenette tables in the front room and you happen to be a cracker person, you’ll be directed across the street to buy saltines at the service station. The only other thing on the White Front menu is soda pop, fetched from an old Dr Pepper cooler.

Doe’s Eat Place is known to carnivores for serving some of America’s best steaks … in the back of a dilapidated former grocery store on Greenville’s once sinful Nelson Street. The fabulously improbable restaurant, at which customers sit adjacent to the stove where french fries sizzle in iron skillets, goes through some 450 dozen tamales a week. Most are packed in coffee cans to go, but many are served as appetizers to precede heavy sirloins and porterhouses.

We spoke with “Little Doe” Signa at the grill in the parlor where he makes the steak. Over the sputter of beef and in the roaring heat of the grill, he told us that it was his parents, Big Doe and Mamie Signa, who started the tamale tradition in their grocery store back in 1941 because it was a good way to make a little cheap beef go far. Steamed in parchment rather than corn husks, Doe’s tamales are fine-textured and luxuriously oily. A basket of plastic-wrapped cracker two-packs is provided.

Across the Mississippi River from Greenville, in Lake Village, Arkansas, we visited with Rhoda and James Adams, who run Rhoda’s Famous Hot Tamales. James believes that the region’s tamale history goes back to the 1940s and a man known as Hot Tamale Charlie. “When I was a boy living in the country, I used to come to Lake Village and watch him sell them on the street from a bicycle wagon,” he recalls. “They were fifty cents a dozen. People bought them from his stacked-full lard can. When he opened up that can, the aroma would knock you down with goodness.”

The tiny café’s open kitchen is behind glass-fronted butcher cases full of sweet-potato pies and cupcakes that are the stuff of bake-sale dreams. One morning at eight, Rhoda made bacon and eggs so delicious that we laughed with joy as we ate them.

Then came her tamales, succulent beyond measure, haloed with spices that made our lips tingle until noon. What’s her secret? “Chicken,” she explained. “I add it to the beef.” Rhoda uses only thighs, including skin—“all but the gristle,” she joked—thus infusing her tamales with the stuff that gives so much soul food its soulfulness, chicken fat.

When we pressed her further, Rhoda told us she was first inspired by her aunt’s tamales, and added that, in fact, it goes way beyond the chicken. Robert Johnson may have gotten his talents in a deal with the man from down below, but Rhoda Adams is quite certain her abilities come from the other direction. She raises her eyes heavenward and points to her blue T-shirt, which says, “When Praises Go Up, Blessings Come Down.” When we tell her that her tamales are the best we’ve ever had, she answers, “Glory to God!”

ABE’S BAR-B-Q 616 State Street, Clarksdale, Mississippi 662-624-9947

WHITE FRONT CAFÉ Route 1, Rosedale, Mississippi 662-759-3842

DOE’S EAT PLACE 502 Nelson Street, Greenville, Mississippi 662-334-3315

RHODA’S FAMOUS HOT TAMALES 714 St. Mary Street, Lake Village, Arkansas 870-265-3108

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