Delta Blues Museum

The Delta Blues Museum sits in a restored 1918 freight depot in downtown Clarksdale, between the Ground Zero blues club and the museum's own outdoor stage. It is the state's oldest music museum. It began in 1979 in a corner of the Carnegie Public Library, moved into the depot in 1999 as an independent museum governed by a board the city appoints, and received the National Medal for Museum and Library Service in 2013.

Its largest object is Muddy Waters's cabin, rebuilt from the original cypress boards of the house he lived in on the Stovall plantation outside town. You can sit inside and watch a film about his life. The cases hold instruments played by Charlie Musselwhite, Super Chikan, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King and Big Joe Williams, along with a signed card from W. C. Handy and the Muddywood guitar, which ZZ Top had built in 1989 from a board of the cabin.

Clarksdale sits on Highway 61, the road to Chicago that so many Delta families took, and the museum is a good first stop for placing the town in that larger story: who worked the cotton, who made the music, and why they left. Classes here teach local children guitar, harmonica, keyboard and drums, and the stage next door hosts festivals. Allow an hour or two, and check the museum's calendar before you go.