The
W.C. Handy house once stood at this site on Issaquena Street.
W.C. Handy lived in Clarksdale from 1903 to 1905, and it was during
these formative years that he collected many blues songs. 
The
Delta Blues Museum is located in an
old Carnegie Public Library on Delta Avenue. It houses a collection of memorabilia
from B.B. King,
Sonny Boy Williamson, Bessie Smith,
Muddy Waters, and others. The museum also curates blues records and
features blues workshops by local artists. 
At
615 Sunflower Avenue stands the Riverside Hotel,
once the G.T. Thomas Hospital. Its most famous patient, Bessie
Smith, died here in 1937 after an auto accident on Highway 61 outside
of town. The Riverside Hotel has hosted famous bluesmen
Sonny Boy Williamson, Ike Turner, and
Robert Nighthawk, who left a suitcase here before he died. 
Crossroads
are important landmarks in the flat, homogeneous Delta landscape, and the
intersection of Highways 61 and 49
in Clarksdale is one such landmark. Tommy
Johnson claimed to have met a diabolical figure at midnight on a crossroads
in the Delta. This large black man tuned Johnson's guitar so that Johnson
could play any song he wanted. Another Delta bluesman,
Robert Johnson, wrote "Crossroads Blues," wherein he sang
"Sun goin' down boy, dark gon' catch me here." It typified the
fear of such a place after dark. 
Eight
miles outside of Clarksdale is Stovall Plantation, the location of the
Muddy Waters cabin site.
Muddy Waters ran a juke joint on this site and was first recorded
here by Library of Congress folklorists Alan Lomax and John Work. The
cabin is now on tour for the House of Blues Corporation.