Apart from Memphis, it would be difficult to name a city that has been as central to the Delta blues as Clarksdale, Mississippi.

Three major historical routes in and out of the Delta—Highway 61, Highway 49, and the Illinois Central Railroad—passed through Clarksdale, and throughout the 20th century thousands of African American migrants set out from this cotton capital, 70 miles south of Memphis, in search of a better life. Muddy Waters himself caught a Chicago-bound train from the Clarksdale passenger depot in 1943, leaving behind a sharecropper’s meager existence on the Stovall Plantation just a few miles away.

Through the mid-20th century, Clarksdale, the Coahoma County seat, was a business hub. Cotton was shipped out of town and consumer goods were shipped in. It’s been said that if you were looking for someone in Clarksdale, all you had to do was stand on Issaquena Avenue: Everybody came to town eventually.

With so much activity, and people with money to spend, Clarksdale became a natural gathering place for blues musicians. Among those who made a name for themselves playing in and around Clarksdale were Son House, Pinetop Perkins, and Howlin’ Wolf.

The city also boasted a number of truly native sons: among others, Sam Cooke, Ike Turner, Junior Parker, John Lee Hooker, and Earl Hooker were each born in the immediate vicinity. The Empress of the Blues, Bessie Smith, lost her life there, having died at the G.T. Thomas Afro-American Hospital (now the Riverside Hotel) following a horrific late-night car crash on Highway 61 en route from Memphis to a gig in Clarksdale. The widely circulated story that Smith bled to death after being refused treatment at a white hospital has since been proven untrue, but it remains a sobering reminder that Clarksdale, like the rest of the Delta, was strictly segregated at the time blues was finding a larger audience.

Next Page: Blues is a little harder to come by...

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