Clarksdale – Home of the Delta Blues

“You can’t spend what you ain’t got and you can’t lose what you never had”…..Muddy Waters

Finally- our trip to the home of the Delta Blues, Clarksdale, Mississippi. Muddy Waters lived and worked here, John Lee Hooker was born just outside Clarksdale and Ike Turner and Sam Cooke were born and raised there.

At the intersection of Highway 61 and 49, the “Crossroads are marked with a monument to the place where Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil.
"I went to the crossroad Fell down on my knees I went to the crossroad Fell down on my knees Asked the Lord above "Have mercy now, Save poor Bob, if you please"
"Crossroad Blues" - ROBERT JOHNSON

The Sidewalk Scene in the "New World District" - Uncle Jessie's Little Greedy Pig Soul Food!
The Riverside Hotel, originally the GT Thomas Afro-American Hospital where singer Bessie Smith died, opened as a hotel in 1944 and was home to most of the blues musicians traveling to Clarksdale.

The Riverside Hotel

The town still has its share of juke joints. (The term supposedly came from a West African word that survived in the Gullah language spoken by some southern blacks. The word “juke” means wicked and disorderly.” When records became the rage, the term ‘jukebox’ was coined).

"Red's" - juke joint - Out front- a Pig Griller and a Toilet

"Red Top Lounge" Juke Joint
Morgan Freeman has made his mark in town with his own pseudo-juke joint, Ground Zero.
"Ground Zero"

Outside of town, on the Stovall Plantation, was the site of Muddy Water’s home (shack).

Several years ago, the folks from the Hard Rock bought the building and moved it to the Blues Museum in town.
An amazing place, a few miles south, is the Shack Up Inn , located at the Hobson Plantation.

Hopson Plantation- The Commissary

The owner of the Hopson Plantation turned his farm buildings into a commissary where you can get a cold brew and listen to the blues (and spend hours looking at his collection of everything from a complete barbershop and an old post office to old farm machinery). The country’s first cotton crop produced entirely by machine (from planting to bailing) was grown and harvested in 1944 here---Hence, the "Cotton Pickin Blues"

Inside the Commissary- The Bar (above) and the Back Porch (below)

"Ceiling Art"
At the Shack Up Inn next door, you can stay in sharecropper shotgun shacks. Their tag line-- Mississippi's Oldest B & B est. 1998(Bed & Beer)

Check out their photo gallery at: http://www.shackupinn.com/pictures.html

The Shack-Up Inn