CLARKSDALE, Miss. — From its birthplace in the South, blues music has spread to influence and shape popular tunes and culture around the globe.
Now, the world has the blues.
But the best place to explore the history, the people and, most important, the sound of that music might still be in its cradle: the Mississippi Delta.
The delta stretches along the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers from Memphis to Vicksburg, where floods and a changing channel have deposited a layer of topsoil dozens of feet deep through the eons.
Building a foundation is hard in the delta. Structures lean and sink over time. But some things take hold. Cotton, for one.
For another, the blues, which evolved from the chants, work songs and spirituals of African-American slaves and sharecroppers working the fields.
To celebrate the music — and to lure visitors and tourism dollars — Mississippi tourism officials established the Mississippi Blues Trail, comprising more than 100 locations significant to the art form.
Commemorating the musicians, venues and historic sites that shaped the music, markers are found throughout Mississippi (plus a few in other states), but they are densely concentrated in the Delta.
While informative and fun to seek out, the markers are just a convenient scorecard. The real reason to visit the blues trail is to hear the music and visit the people and places that shaped it.
The first person I met on the trail was blues musician Pat “Son of Son” Thomas. He was playing in the lobby of the Highway 61 Blues Museum in Leland, just a few feet from the blues trail marker honoring his father, James “Son” Thomas.
His father was a folk artist and gravedigger as well as a bluesman. Hearing his tales was a thrill, but such encounters are common on the blues trail.
Ground zero of the blues might be the intersection of Highways 61 and 49 in Clarksdale, the crossroads at the center of one of the hoariest legends of blues music: the site where seminal bluesman Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil in return for musical prowess.
Fans of Johnson’s music — or his legend — still make pilgrimages to his grave outside the town of Greenwood, leaving, as a kind of bluesy tribute, beer and whiskey or cigarettes in lieu of flowers.
Clarksdale is also the home of Mississippi’s oldest music museum, the Delta Blues Museum, located in the 1918 Yazoo and Mississippi River Valley Railroad depot. Visitors find a wealth of blues-related guitars and other instruments, costumes and mementos belonging to the musical greats and near-greats of the Delta.
The centerpiece of the museum is an exhibit about blues legend man Muddy Waters, a hometown favorite born just a few miles outside of Clarksdale.
Clarksdale music venues are the heart of the blues experience there. Weekends offer the best variety, but live music can be heard most nights of the week at sites such as Red’s Lounge and the Ground Zero Blues Club. Stop by the Cat Head Delta Blues and Folk Art store in downtown Clarksdale for a weekly calendar of performances, as well as some cool music and art for sale.
Every visitor to the Delta should also visit the B.B. King Museum in Indianola. Built in part in a refurbished cotton mill where King once worked, the museum is a multimillion-dollar wonder that rivals Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in technology and professionalism, if not in scope.
Naturally, the museum focuses on King, who was born nearby 88 years ago and who still performs and drops into Indianola on occasion. But through his story, wonderfully enhanced with advanced video and audio displays and a sparing but fascinating use of mementos, a visitor gets a comprehensive look at the development of the blues in post-World War II America.
Visitors to the Delta can also find unusual places to bed down for a night or more.
One of the best boutique hotels in the South is in Greenwood, a town with its own extensive blues history. The Alluvian is owned by appliance maker Viking Range.
The old hotel building was named one of the most endangered historic structures in Mississippi before it was bought by Viking and renovated. Happily, it’s now a AAA four-diamond-rated hotel offering the Viking Cooking School, a full spa service and the wonderful fine dining of Giardina’s restaurant.
For something a bit more bluesy, try the Shack Up Inn in Clarksdale. The Shack Up offers lodging in authentic sharecropper shacks, restored just enough to provide 21st-century comfort and convenience.
Most of the shacks also offer porches that seem designed for the consumption of a longneck or two. And, as fate or good planning would have it, the lobby, literally across the tracks in the old Hopson Plantation cotton gin, has plenty of cold beer for sale.
Guests can also borrow one of several available guitars should they feel the urge to do a little pickin’ themselves, although they’ll find it hard to feel the blues while having so much fun.