{"id":17703,"date":"2019-12-09T05:30:57","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T10:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=17703"},"modified":"2019-12-10T07:46:02","modified_gmt":"2019-12-10T12:46:02","slug":"40-years-of-the-delta-blues-museum-part-1-of-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2019\/12\/09\/40-years-of-the-delta-blues-museum-part-1-of-3\/","title":{"rendered":"40 Years of the Delta Blues Museum (Part 1 of 3)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Assuming the story is based in any kind of fact, it still remains a matter of contention as to the location of the crossroads, site of the legendary pact between the Devil and Robert Johnson. That mythical spot is variously identified as lying in the Mississippi towns of Beauregard, Clarksdale, Dockery and Rosedale. Today, each of those towns lays a claim to being the birthplace of the blues. There’s more than a whiff of irony in that competition; as folklorist, blues historian and Grammy Award winner Dr. Bill Ferris says, \u201cWhen I started the work in the 60s, the state viewed the blues as an embarrassment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ferris says that those with a say in how Mississippi was portrayed to the rest of the country (and the world at large) wanted nothing to do with the blues. \u201cI spent much of my life \u2013 working for 18 years at the University of Mississippi \u2013 trying to convince the state to invest tourism dollars in blues,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I never got very far. They didn\u2019t want photographs of those musicians and [their] small houses; they considered them an embarrassment to be publicly shown.\u201d<\/p>\n

That has all changed; today, blues is big business for the state recognized as the home of the blues. And one of the most important factors guiding the blues’ path from cultural pariah to worldwide attraction is the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi. From its humble 1970s beginnings inside a portable display case to its current status as a world-class destination, the Delta Blues Museum has been a key part of informing, entertaining and educating the public about the past, present and future of the blues as well as Clarksdale’s important role in that story.<\/p>\n

This year the museum celebrates its 40th<\/sup> anniversary, and a number of key figures from its past and present help to observe that landmark event by recounting its four-decade journey to where it is today.<\/p>\n

By the ’70s, \u201ctourists were coming to Clarksdale,\u201d says Shelley Ritter, current Director of the Delta Blues Museum. \u201cThey knew the history and heritage of the blues and Clarksdale\u2019s role in it, and there wasn\u2019t a central place for them to go to learn more. So, they would naturally come to the library.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former library director Missie Craig recalls a 1979 conversation with Sid Graves when both worked at the library. \u201cWe were walking down Delta Avenue towards downtown, and he said something about the fact that this area was so important to blues music, and that we ought to start a museum. And in my ignorance and stupidity, I said, ‘Sure, let\u2019s do this!’ Sid just took it from there and he made it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1979, the museum was founded by the Carnegie Public Library Board of Trustees under Graves’ direction. As the museum’s first curator, John Ruskey recalls, Graves \u201cwas a voracious reader and had an acute memory. He came to Clarksdale and started diving into books about the history of the town. And of course he ended up discovering the rich history of the blues through literature.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ruskey laughs when he says that Graves \u201cwas not a juke joint sort of person.\u201d Living Blues<\/i> founder Jim O’Neal agrees. \u201cI would always go to the juke joints and to the black neighborhoods where juke joints were, but Sid was always hesitant to recommend that anyone go there. He said he didn\u2019t think they should tell people to do that in case something happens and the museum could get blamed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut Sid quickly discovered what a treasure Clarksdale was and what rich history it had in the music,\u201d says Ruskey. \u201cSid\u2019s original vision was to recognize and portray the incredible artistic quality of that music and how that quality has kept it alive to inspire entire genres of music on its own.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSid knew what he had his hands on,\u201d says photojournalist, author and longtime Clarksdale resident Panny Mayfield. \u201cIn those early days, some white people would get tired of hearing about it. But he was a great advocate of blues.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey housed the museum in the African American branch, Myrtle Hall,\u201d Ritter recalls. \u201cIt was smaller than the main library branch, and the exhibits were very limited in scale.\u201d Because of security issues, Ritter says that every day at closing time, Graves would pack up the exhibit, put it in his car and take it home. In the morning he’d bring it all back in and set it up for viewing. \u201cSid knew a lot of people and got in touch with them,\u201d says Missie Craig. \u201cThey would lend guitars and old records; that kind of thing. The museum got started with nothing but Sid\u2019s contacts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was certainly<\/i> not established as a tourist attraction,\u201d says Howard Stovall, former head of the Blues Foundation. \u201cThere was no blues tourism back then. It was truly a voice in the wilderness in the early days, and it’s the foundation for all Mississippi\u2019s blues tourism efforts today.\u201d<\/p>\n

O’Neal first visited in 1980 when he was invited to give a talk at the museum. He points out that the blues didn’t seem to be celebrated locally in those days. \u201cIt was just local music that some of the black people played.\u201d He recalls the museum’s modest character. \u201cThere weren\u2019t very many people there,\u201d he says. \u201cIt would be locked, and when a visitor would come, someone from the library would take them in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Click here to continue<\/a> …<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Assuming the story is based in any kind of fact, it still remains a matter of contention as to the location of the crossroads, site of the legendary pact between […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17713,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,41],"tags":[4036],"class_list":["post-17703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-interview","tag-delta-blues-museum","cat-9-id","cat-41-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17703"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17906,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17703\/revisions\/17906"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}