What Mississippi can teach Alabama about using blues to boost tourism
Skift Take
Destinations have to work what they have in order to stake a claim in the competition for tourism, and even a small rural town can transform itself into a southern music hub with the right amount of branding.
When Roger Stolle first arrived in Clarksdale, Miss., it was difficult for the Ohio transplant to find a good cup of coffee.
When he left his Cat Head Delta Blues & Folk Art shop at 5:30 p.m., he was usually "the last man standing" in the tiny Mississippi Delta town on the crossroads of U.S. 61 and 49.
Slowly, that began to change when people realized Clarksdale and the surrounding area was a tourism gold mine.
Today, a good espresso is not hard to find, and when Stolle leaves his downtown shop, his parking space is quickly taken.
The transformation from a sleepy Delta town with a population of 20,000 to an international tourism destination for lovers of American blues music didn't happen overnight.
"It's something that the tourism commission has been selling and pushing for 20 years and, of course, it's something that has been a part of our heritage and culture since the beginning of the Mississippi Delta," said Kappi Allen, executive director of the Clarksdale Tourism Bureau. "We have seen a huge surge in the interest in our tourism."
Alabama's blues challenge
The Shoals is about four hours east of Clarksdale, and has a musical heritage of its own dating back to the early 1960s with the founding of FAME Recording Studios and the birth of the Muscle Shoals sound.
Some have said the Shoals and even Alabama have never taken advantage of its musical heritage or used it as a tourism tool the way places such as Clarksdale, Memphis and Nashville have.
"Our area and our state haven't embraced it," said Rodney Hall, president of Fame Music Publishing and son of FAME Recording Studios founder Rick Hall. "Look at what Mississippi has done with their music and what Tennessee has done with theirs."
Tennessee has the luxury of having two cities that have become synonymous with music, Hall said. Mississippi has the blues and Louisiana has New Orleans blues and jazz, but is mostly a place known for live music.
"I don't think we ever got the vision that Alabama music is a huge brand, and Muscle Shoals music
