The ritz we ain’t! (It’s authentic Clarksdale)
The “Pinetop” Shack at the Shack Up Inn, named after Clarksdale native Pinetop Perkins (book it here)
How about a truly authentic deep blues experience in Clarksdale, MS? One you will treasure forever? The Shack Up Inn gives you that here in the birthplace of the blues, and when you stay here three things will happen: you won’t remember when you’ve had such fun, you’ll tell everybody you know about it and you will come back for more. It really is that real!
The Shack Up Inn ain’t the ritz, owners Bill Talbot and Guy Malvezzi exclaim joyfully (just wait until you meet them), it’s a lot of things, very cool things: some 40 plus sharecropper shacks, and one house, all re-done for your overnight comfort, but not so much that you won’t be dreaming up your next true blues song the moment your head hits the pillow. There’s a terrific gift shop, food, beverages, live music, and wonderful music workshops throughout the year (yes, learn to play guitar, play better guitar and bass, enter terrific songwriting workshops, get some southern blues education; it’s all here).
What follows comes via the Shack Up Inn website, check it out. (Shack Up Inn photography featured here by Shack Up Inn and/or Austin Brit.)
The single bed in the “Pinetop” Shack; there is a queen sized bed too (book it here).
Blues lovers making the pilgrimage to the cradle of the blues, the Mississippi Delta, should not miss the unique opportunity to experience the Shack UP Inn at the Hopson Plantation, located only three miles from the legendary Crossroads, Highways 49 and 61, in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
Immerse yourself in the living history you will find here at Hopson. Virtually unchanged from when it was a working plantation, you will find authentic sharecropper shacks, the original cotton gin and seed houses and other outbuildings. You will glimpse plantation life, as it existed only a few short years ago. In addition, you will find one of the first mechanized cotton pickers, manufactured by International Harvester, as you stroll around the compound.
Spend an evening enjoying live music at Ground Zero Blues Club or Red’s Lounge, on the corner of Sunflower and MLK Street and then pass out in one of the renovated shotgun shacks or one of the newly renovated bins in the Cotton Gin. Their corrugated tin roofs and Mississippi cypress walls will conjure visions of a bygone era. Restored only enough to accommodate 21st century expectations (indoor bathrooms, heat, air conditioning, coffee maker with condiments, refrigerators and microwave in all the units), the shacks provide comfort as well as authenticity.
Shack Up Inn gift shop at Hopson Plantation in Clarksdale.
Travel the back roads between Highways 49 and 61 in search of Lost Superstitions and the spirits of Sam Cooke, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Charlie Patton, Son House and Elmore James. Head into Clarksdale and tour the Delta Blues Museum, Cat Head Delta Blues and Folk Art, The Ranchero, Rock “n Roll Blues Heritage Museum and Hambone Art Gallery.
Shack Up Inn has played host to such blues performers and movie stars as Tom Waits, Pinetop Perkins, the North Mississippi Allstars, Dwayne, Gary and Cedric Burnside, Kenny Brown, Elvis Costello, Robert Plant, Johnny Neel, Morgan Freeman, Patty Griffin, Big Jack Johnson, Samuel J. Jackson, Super Chikan, Sam Carr, Charlie Musselwhite, Mary Louise Parker, John Mayall, Ike Turner, Barefoot Workshops, Down 2 the Crossroads Guitar & Bass Workshop and Jon Gindick’s Harmonica Jam Camp just to name a few.
Shack Up Inn in Clarksdale… ain’t foolin’ around!
Whether you’re looking for an overnight stay on your way to Memphis or Chicago or New Orleans or you need to stay longer to conduct historic blues business, and or monkey business, the Shacks will add a new dimension to your stay in the Delta. As you sit in the rocker on the porch, tipping a cold one while the sun sinks slowly to the horizon, you just might hear Pinetop Perkins radiatin’ the 88’s over at his shack. Perhaps, if you close your eyes even Muddy or Robert or Charlie might stop to strum a few chords in the night.
