On the southeast corner of the roads is H Town Custom Wheels. Across DeSoto to the west is Beer & Bud Mart, which faces a Church's Chicken stand. Immediately to the east of that are the Delta Donut shop and Abe's BBQ, the latter noting its service to residents and visitors since 1924.
Yet this is the focal point of one of the towering legends of 20th century popular music - the original intersection of Highways 61 and 49, the place where seminal blues musician Robert Johnson is said to have arrived one midnight to seal a deal with the devil, trading his soul to become the greatest blues musician in history.
Perhaps.
Actually, there are at least three such crossroads around northern Mississippi, any of which might be the one Johnson had in mind 75 years ago when he wrote his signature song Cross Road Blues - and that's only relevant to those who are remotely likely to believe in such things.
But whether his reputation was the outcome of a supernatural bargain or simply natural-born talent combined with patience and practice, Johnson remains the man most broadly considered the pre-eminent bluesman of all time, a reputation that grows only more solid as the 100th anniversary of his birth in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, ticks over. It did so on May 8.
Consider that during his lifetime, his biggest-selling recording, Terraplane Blues, sold about 5000 copies. When the King of the Delta Blues Singers LP surfaced in 1961 with 16 of his songs, it sold about 20,000 copies. Since its 1990 release, a two-CD box set of all his known recordings has sold 1.5 million copies. That's despite detractors who have suggested his reputation is over-inflated.
"Robert Johnson, to me, is the most important blues musician who ever lived," said Eric Clapton, who helped turn a generation of rock fans on to Johnson by playing an amped-up version of Crossroads with the English power trio Cream in 1968.
"I have never found anything more deeply soulful than Robert Johnson. His music remains the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice."
References to the supernatural in songs such as Cross Road Blues, Me and the Devil Blues and Hell Hound on My Trail have only enhanced the mystery surrounding Johnson's seemingly overnight transformation from a competent guitarist and singer to the music's most powerful proponent before his death at 27 from poisoning by the jealous partner of a woman.
He is buried in Greenwood, Mississippi - a core piece of biographical information that wasn't confirmed until about 10 years ago. The burial site is now marked with a stately tombstone at the Little Zion Missionary Baptist Church.
Hundreds of musicians from the famous to the obscure have recorded his songs over the last half-century, since Johnson's own recordings first surfaced in a major way. Dozens of tribute albums have been recorded, and books, plays and films have been made about his extraordinary life, much of it shrouded in uncertainty.
The question is why? Johnson was just one of hundreds of African-Americans struggling to eke out a living playing music in rural Mississippi in the early part of last century, the only alternative for many to the backbreaking labour of harvesting cotton in the fields that still cover this part of the state.
Even a partial list of the music greats who emerged from Mississippi is imposing: Muddy Waters, B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, Elmore James, Son House, Charley Patton, Lonnie Johnson, Willie Dixon, Bo Diddley, Howlin' Wolf, Robert Junior Lockwood. And then there are blues-influenced rock and R&B giants including Elvis Presley and Sam Cooke.
Before Johnson came along, others were playing the Delta blues. Artists such as Patton and House were major influences on him. But Johnson's hauntingly expressive, high-pitched voice, the sophistication of themes and lyrics in his songs and a technical mastery of the acoustic guitar that still has musicians scratching their heads in wonder all helped elevate him above his musical predecessors, peers and descendants.
"So many mysteries remain, some we may never resolve," pianist and music historian Ted Gioia writes in the notes accompanying Robert Johnson: The Complete Original Masters - Centennial Edition, released to mark the occasion. It culls all 29 recordings and the surviving alternate takes from his only recording sessions, the first in San Antonio in 1936, the last in Dallas the following year.
Fact or fiction, it can seem everyone around Greenwood wants a piece of the Johnson crossroad myth.
"He was poisoned at a little joint called Three Forks, which is at the crossroad of Highways 49 and 82 - that could have been the mythical crossroad," said Paige Hunt, executive director of the Greenwood Visitors and Convention Bureau, which co-ordinated the four-day Robert Johnson 100th Birthday Celebration last weekend.
Shelley Ritter, director of the Delta Blues Museum in downtown Clarksdale, notes that Living Blues magazine in 1990 identified the most likely sites as the intersection of 61 and 49 in Clarksdale or 61 and 82 in Leland.
Historian and Johnson authority Steve LaVere, who championed his music and navigated through multiple lawsuits in recent decades to establish the rights of Johnson's son, Claud, as the legitimate heir to his estate, wants no part of such debates.
"If you want to know where he died, where he lived, where he was born, where he was poisoned - any factual information, I'll tell you," said LaVere, who moved to Greenwood about 10 years ago to work on Johnson matters. "But don't ask me about ... the crossroad."
Besides, given the string of casinos that have opened in recent years along Highway 61, "the Blues Highway," between Memphis and Clarksdale, there's no shortage of real-world places to make Faustian bargains for those so inclined.
That taboo subject aside, LaVere has lost none of his passion for Johnson's music through more than four decades of work.
"If the music was second-rate, you'd say, 'What's all this fuss about?' But the music delivers," LaVere said. "The mystery and the myth and all that stuff become even more appealing when the music is something of value."
