Clarksdale, Mississippi has been a center for blues culture since the 1920s. Its location as a transportation hub—where Highways 61 and 49 connect, where the Illinois Central and other railroads maintained depots and passenger terminals, and where the Greyhound Bus Company built a station—made Clarksdale an economic boom town. Flush times created audiences with money to spend for entertainment, and the blues flourished in the city. Many now-legendary musical artists were born and raised in and around Clarksdale: Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Son House, Ike Turner, Jackie Brenston, Sam Cooke, Junior Parker, and W. C. Handy, among them. Clarksdale was a major market for the Delta’s constantly traveling musicians, and the likes of Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, and Charley Patton are also associated with the city. Today, that historic blues culture is preserved for visitors while contemporary musicians carry on the great Delta blues tradition.

Where To Stay

Clarksdale accommodations range from the colorfully idiosyncratic (which can mean no phones or Internet connections in the rooms) to the basic chain motels which may offer swimming pools and cable TV.

• Shack Up Inn/Cotton Gin Inn The Shack Up Inn is a half dozen former sharecropper shacks that have been updated with indoor plumbing and air conditioning. The Cotton Gin Inn is just that: ten rooms carved out of a former cotton gin building.
The shacks come with kitchenettes, porches, crazy-funky
décor, and bedrooms that sleep two to four. The Cotton
Gin Inn offers basic motel rooms with queen-size beds set inside a cotton gin building, with unique touches (hand-painted bathroom murals). Both are on the historic Hopson Plantation grounds, ten minutes south of town.
(662-624-8329; www.shackupinn.com)

• Delta Cotton Company Apartments. Tastefully decorated rooms, complete with appliances and coffeemakers, on the
second floor of a former cotton-grading warehouse, over the Ground Zero Blues Club. Each room is named after a different grade of cotton (“Strict Low Middling,” for example).
You’ll hear the music from below into the night (“you should be downstairs partying anyway” suggests the Web site). Perfect for longer-term stays and a very short walk from the Delta Blues Museum as well as from the lively ground-floor bar-music scene.
(662-645-9366; www.groundzerobluesclub.com)

• Riverside Hotel. As grittily authentic as they come, with spare accommodations (bathrooms are shared) that are drenched in Delta history. As the G. T. Thomas Afro-American Hospital, it was the scene of blues great Bessie Smith’s death after a nearby car accident (the room in which she died is for rent, when available). Converted to a hotel in 1944, it housed musicians such as Sonny Boy Wiliamson II, Robert Nighthawk, and Ike Turner. Now visitors book its rooms for their ultra-Delta ambience and to hear the colorful tales of proprietor Frank “Rat” Ratliff. (662-624-9163)

• Catalpa House A B & B that was formerly a house owned by the Wingfields, known for their collection of glass animals, and thus an inspiration for Tennessee William’s play The Glass Menagerie and its central character, Amanda Wingfield, and $300 monthly.
(662-627-5621)

• Big Pink Guest House A former icehouse converted into an elegant, New Orleans-style accommodation, with a waterfall in the courtyard, a Victorian parlor, and classy décor in its two suites. Kitchen available. A short walk from the Delta Blues Museum.
(662-313-0321/662-313-0028; www.bigpinkguesthouse.com)

• Uncle Henry’s Place and Inn This B & B was formerly one of the South’s most famous Prohibition-era clubs, the Moon Lake Casino, and figures large in the writings of Tennessee Williams—it’s mentioned in several of his plays. (It was owned by his mother’s first cousin.) There are three rooms over the restaurant, a separate cottage, and the “Fisherman’s Shack (“basic but clean”). Located on Moon Lake, 20 minutes north of town.
(662-337-2757; www.unclehenrysplace.com).

• Isle of Capri Coahoma County’s only casino, located between Clarksdale and Helena Ark. Straightforward casino-style hotel rooms, with amenities. Downstairs restaurant offers fine dining (see “Where to eat”). (800-THE-ISLE)

• Comfort Inn This basic chain’s swimming pool offers relief from Delta heat.
(662-627-5122; www.comfortinn.com)

• Other chain options: Executive Inn (662-627-9292); Budget Inn
(662-624-6541); Econolodge (662-621-1110).