The Ritz We Ain't
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. Located only three miles from the legendary Crossroads, Highways 49 and 61, guests can immerse themselves in the living history found within these restored sharecropper shacks. Walk around the grounds surrounding the original cotton gin (now our bar & lobby), and you will find one of the first mechanized cotton pickers, manufactured by International Harvester.
Spend an evening enjoying live music at Ground Zero Blues Club or Red's Lounge, on the corner of Sunflower and MLK Street, or right here in our own Juke Joint Chapel. Then, pass out in one of the renovated shotgun shacks or 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.
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 , 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, and Ike Turner, just to name a few. Come participate in one of the many skills workshops hosted on site such as Down 2 the Crossroads Guitar & Bass Workshop, Songs at the Shacks Workshop, and Jon Gindick's Harmonica Jam Camp.
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.