The Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale exists to collect, preserve, and provide public access to and awareness of the blues. Along with holdings of significant blues-related memorabilia, the museum also exhibits and collects art portraying the blues tradition, including works by sculptor Floyd Shaman and photographer Birney Imes.
The museum is located in the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Passenger Depot, also known as Illinois Central Passenger Depot or Clarksdale Passenger Depot, which was built in 1926 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.
The museum has been visited by many notable artists such as Eric Clapton and Paul Simon. The Texas-based rock band ZZ Top, especially front man Billy Gibbons, have made this museum their pet project and have raised thousands of dollars in support. The museum also focuses on educating young people interested in learning to play musical instruments.
The museum houses many interesting artifacts related to the blues. Most notably, the museum contains the proported shack where blues legend Muddy Waters is claimed to have lived in his youth on Stovall Plantation, located near Clarksdale. The shack was restored to structural stability through the intercession of Isaac Tigrett the House of Blues owner and transported from Stovall Plantation on a tour of HoB venues before being returned to Mississippi to the museum and rebuilt inside.
There is a 2003 30-minute documentary of the same name.
Read more about Delta Blues Museum: Railroad Building
Famous quotes containing the words blues and/or museum:
“It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive character.”
—James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938)
“Flower picking.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 2710, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)