Travel America: Mississippi's got the blues: in the cradle of the blues, new museums and clubs join

THEY SAY TO PLAY THE BLUES YOU HAVE to understand pain," says B.B. King as spokesman for a painless diabetes testing method advertised on TV. Born into a sharecropping family in the Delta region of Mississippi almost 80 years ago, B.B. (for Blues Boy) lived the hard times and heartbreak embodied in this uniquely American music form, a by-product of the Delta's famed cotton growing.

Mississippi's Ambassador of the Blues by gubernatorial proclamation, Riley B. King, the most widely known among a host of Mississippi bluesmen, has played his guitar around the world. But he comes home to Indianola (where a sidewalk bears his handprints and footprints) every first Friday in June to perform free in B.B. King Park. During his annual visit, he also entertains at the historic Club Ebony, a venue for blues artists on Sunday nights year-round. Thursday through Saturday nights in Indianola, the sound moves to the 308 Blues Club and Cafe, a newer arrival to the Delta town of 12,000. In the works is a museum to honor Indianola's native son, planned to mark King's milestone birthday later this year.

Another famous African-American, also proud of his Mississippi roots, co-owns a modern juke joint in Clarksdale, a town of 20,500 with a rich blues pedigree. Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman's Ground Zero Blues Club welcomes pilgrims from around the country and the world with local and regional musicians Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday nights. Weekday plate lunches and dinners Wednesday through Saturday complete the down-home experience. (For those with a finer palate, try Freeman's upscale dining at Madidi just steps away.)

Housed in an early 1900s building used for classing cotton, Ground Zero joins the 25-year-old Delta Blues Museum inside a renovated freight depot and the Art Deco-style Greyhound Bus Station-turned-Clarksdale Visitors' Station to create tourist-friendly Blues Alley. Nearby, Cat Head Delta Blues and Folk Art is both a retail outlet for the many expressions of the blues and a source of information on live blues performances throughout Mississippi.

Clarksdale's 18th annual Sunflower River Blues & Gospel Festival plays August 12-13 this year, free to the thousands who arrive from near and far to hear authentic blues. The second annual Juke Joint Festival and Planter's Celebration takes over downtown Clarksdale on April 16 with music, history tours, and pig racing.

For an overnight you won't soon forget, reserve one of the renovated sharecropper cabins at the Shack Up Inn (www.shackupinn.com) just outside town on the Hopson Plantation, the first to mechanically produce a cotton crop. Tin roofs and all, the shacks provide modern conveniences in blues-evoking surroundings.

At state welcome centers in Clarksdale and Greenville, ask for the special issue of Living Blues magazine published in 2004 as the ultimate travel guide to Mississippi blues. Or call the magazine (662-915-5742) to order a copy.

The Mississippi Delta Tourism Association offers the two-day itinerary "Where the Music Meets the Soul" at www.visitthedelta.com. It suggests starting at Tunica, just 30 minutes from Memphis, Tennessee. Blues stars like Bobby Rush and Denise LaSalle occasionally appear in the world-class showplaces of Tunica's nine casino resorts. The Horseshoe Casino's excellent Blues and Legends Hall of Fame Museum, tree and open to the public, traces the evolution and impact of the blues through bold, high-energy exhibits. (Allow time for the new Tunica RiverPark for awesome views of the Mississippi River, narrated river cruises on the Tunica Queen paddle-wheeler, and a state-of-the-art museum steeped in river life and lore.)

The Greenwood website (www. greenwoodms.org) narrates an ambitious "day tour" for locating places where noted bluesmen lived and died. The site can help steer you along Delta roads in a quest for cemeteries, churches, or Dockery Farms--Charley Patton's home and stage.

Greenwood itself is a destination for those intrigued by the short, remarkable life of Robert Johnson, with his three possible burial sites short drives outside the town of 18,000. In its rejuvenated downtown, the Greenwood Blues Heritage Museum and Gallery contains Johnson memorabilia and displays on other area bluesmen. Soon it will slide over to a restored three-story building with room for a cafe and blues club. Nearby is the state's only boutique hotel, The Alluvian, referencing the region's fertile alluvial soil.

Amid sophisticated furnishings, The Alluvian displays original artwork and literature by Mississippians. Owned by the Viking Range Corporation, headquartered in Greenwood's historic Cotton Row, the singular hotel (worth splurging on) offers its guests, for a fee, guided blues tours developed by area scholars. "Cooking to the Blues," one of many classes in the Viking Cooking School, is a creative option for sampling Delta culture.

The Delta's largest town (42,000) shares an often-tragic history with its neighbor, the Mighty Mississippi. Greenville today nurtures the blues within the Walnut Street Entertainment District of blues clubs, restaurants, and hotels near the historic waterfront. Here the Greenville Blues Walk Association embeds several commemorative stones each year to honor area bluesmen. On the third Saturday of September, Greenville hosts the state's largest blues festival, the Mississippi Delta Blues Festival. Nearby Leland has the Highway 61 Blues Museum and holds the Highway 61 Blues Festival in June.

Although blues sites are concentrated in the Delta, almost anywhere you go in Mississippi you can find the blues. In the northern hill country, for instance, a hard-driving style of blues gave rise to Mississippi Fred McDowell, Junior Kimbrough, and R.L. Burnside. Their progeny carry on the tradition in recording studios, juke joints, and festivals. In Oxford, home to the University of Mississippi, bars and restaurants frequently book blues acts, as does the Double Decker Arts Festival in April.

Among other towns where blues can be heard all year is the river city on the southern edge of the Delta best known for its Civil War history. Vicksburg, stimulated by its new blues society, regularly features blues in the Ameristar Casino's Bottleneck Blues Bar and in Rainbow Casino's 61 South Lounge.

Talking with Living Blues about his role in Mississippi's blues revival, Morgan Freeman said, "It's not just the blues. It's not just music. It's music that has history, heritage, meaning, depth, truth, and all of us embrace it. It's an American phenomenon ... Oh, not only is it alive. It's thriving."

Contact: Mississippi Division of Tourism, (866) 733-6477; www.visitmississippi.org.