Clarksdale chosen as home of new museum
CLARKSDALE – LaMont Robinson, founder of the Official
Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame announced last month at Ground Zero Blues
Club that his organization has chosen Clarksdale as the permanent home of the
museum.
The museum will be temporarily housed in the Greyhound Bus
Station downtown while a larger building is decided upon.
The announcement was made after a meeting with the
Clarksdale Board of Mayor and Commissioners on Oct. 31. Robinson said,
“Clarksdale is the perfect home for this project. This area has been so
important to the history of American music and global music culture that we
felt this was the best place to enshrine and honor the legends of R&B.
Delta Blues became Rhythm & Blues, and we are proud to be bringing our
Museum and Hall of Fame to Clarksdale. This is where it all began.”
Clarksdale has long been a top destination for music
tourists from around the world and is home to numerous festivals and events
that bring thousands of visitors a month to town. Home to the Delta Blues
Museum, the Juke Joint Festival, and the Sunflower River Blues and Gospel
Festival, the town has begun to reinvent itself following years of declining
population as industry moved to larger cities and mechanization displaced
thousands of farm workers over the previous generations.
Clarksdale has pulled off a monumental coup, beating out the
much larger cities of Detroit and Memphis to bring the Hall of Fame to
Mississippi. Robinson and Hall of Fame CEO Cheryl Ruffin, daughter of David
Ruffin of the Temptations, met with city and county officials and community
leaders for several days as details of the project were hammered out.
Robinson said, “We are finalizing our list of inductees for
the 2015 class, and we will be telling you more soon about next year’s
induction ceremony. The ceremony will be held at the Pinnacle on the campus of
Coahoma Community College on June 14.”
The Greyhound Bus Station was renovated in 2003 and most
recently housed Clarksdale Revitalization, Inc. It is currently undergoing some
repairs, and by the time Robinson’s museum will move in, the space should be in
good repair. The site will also house the National Gospel Music Hall of
Fame.
Gospel music, said Robinson, was also a key factor in the
decision to choose Clarksdale. “Gospel music, to me,” said Robinson, “is the
heart of it all, and the influence of Delta gospel performers to American pop
music is undeniable.”
Clarksdale Mayor Bill Luckett said, “We are happy to have
been chosen as the home of the Official Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame.
Clarksdale is more than ready for this opportunity.”
City of Clarksdale Economic Development Coordinator Mac
Crank said, “We are going to push through all avenues to make sure that this
project is successful, and that the Hall of Fame is the shrine that the legends
of R&B deserve.”
Another factor that Robinson cited for choosing Clarksdale
was the sense of community and family he felt from the city leaders. As a young
man, Robinson had visited Clarksdale when evaluating colleges, coming to town
to check out Coahoma Community College. During that three-week visit,
Robinson made a friend who, years later would become a Clarksdale City
Commissioner. Their paths crossed again during the meeting at City Hall.
Commissioner Buster Moton said, “Raymond Green was a
football coach at Higgins High School, and he was a powerful mentor to the
young people in his life. He was LaMont’s godfather, and he invited LaMont down
for his first trip to the South, and we got to know each other during that
visit. We went water-skiing, and he used to come over to my house to go
swimming.” Neither realized, however, what had become of the other until
they met during the board meeting during Robinson’s visit.
Robinson and Ruffin flew down and toured Clarksdale’s music
venues, catching performances by Robert “Bilbo” Walker, Stan Street and the
Hambone Band, David Dunavent and 15-year-old guitar prodigy Kingfish Ingram.
They visited the town’s two existing museums, the Delta Blues Museum, and the
Rock & Blues Museum, discussing possible collaborations for the future.
They looked at several buildings that Crank suggested might be possibilities
for a permanent home for the museum, and once Robinson saw the bus station
building, he knew he had found one of the elements he sought for his project.
“It is an amazing old building with an important history of
its own,” said Robinson. “And the fact that it has already been restored moves
our timetable up considerably.”
City leaders are well aware of the impact that this project
can potentially have on this extremely poor part of the country, and Robinson
and his team will be returning to Clarksdale to begin work soon. The mayor is
partner with Freeman in Ground Zero Blues Club and has worked for years
developing Clarksdale’s tourism industry even before taking office last
year.
“Clarksdale is known to people around the world, who may not
know much more about America, in some cases, we’ve found out. Our name is
synonymous with music history, and that’s what people come here to experience.
Then they keep coming back because they had so much fun,” Luckett said.
Moton said, “This is a wonderful opportunity here in the
city of Clarksdale, and there are a lot of people here who would have never
thought we could get something so huge.”
According to Robinson, he has commitments from several artists
to perform and present at the induction ceremony in June. For more information
about the project, visit rbhalloffame.com.
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