The Los Angeles-based GRAMMY Museum’s decision to open a sister museum in Cleveland in 2016 reflected Mississippi's rich musical heritage in blues, country, gospel, rock and other genres. Among Mississippi’s many GRAMMY winners, B.B. King received sixteen awards and Muddy Waters received seven, while artists with roots in the Cleveland area whose work was recognized with awards included Charley Patton, the Staple Singers, David “Honeyboy” Edwards and Henry Townsend. GRAMMY Museum® Mississippi became the first GRAMMY Museum® built outside Los Angeles, where the original museum opened in 2008. It is dedicated to celebrating the history of the GRAMMY® Awards and gives visitors opportunities to explore all genres of music, the creative and technological processes of recording, and music’s enduring qualities and cultural significance. It also places a focused spotlight on the region with exhibits and experiences including the Mississippi Music Table, which demonstrates the great influence Mississippi artists have had on multiple genres of music. In relation to its population, Mississippi artists have won an impressive number of GRAMMY® awards, particularly in the blues categories, as well as Lifetime Achievement Awards recognizing artists including Elvis Presley, Robert Johnson, Sam Cooke, John Lee Hooker, Bo Diddley, Pinetop Perkins, Hank Jones, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Honeyboy Edwards, and groups with Mississippi-born members such as the Allman Brothers Band, Blind Boys of Alabama, Earth Wind & Fire, the Staple Singers, the Temptations and the Funk Brothers. The Recording Academy® created the GRAMMY Awards in 1958, and the first of many Mississippians to receive a GRAMMY was classical vocalist Leontyne Price, who received the first of her nineteen GRAMMYs in 1960. Mississippi began a close relationship with The Recording Academy in 2008, when the first of a series of annual Mississippi GRAMMY Legacy Celebrations was held in Jackson to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the GRAMMY Awards. In 2010, an annual Mississippi Night was introduced as part of the GRAMMY Museum at L.A. LIVE’s celebrations preceding the awards ceremony, and in February 2011 a Mississippi Blues Trail marker was dedicated in Los Angeles near the GRAMMY Museum at L.A. LIVE. GRAMMY Museum Executive Director Bob Santelli and Jon Hornyak, Sr. Executive Director of the Memphis Chapter of The Recording Academy, together with the non-profit Cleveland Music Foundation, were instrumental in creating the Mississippi museum. Its placement near the campus of Delta State University facilitated coordination with the university’s Delta Music Institute, International Delta Blues Project, and The Delta Center for Culture and Learning, an important partner in creating and administering the Mississippi Blues Trail. The museum was created at a time when Mississippi was actively paying tribute to its musical heritage through the Mississippi Blues Trail, launched in 2006, the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in Indianola in 2008, the Mississippi Country Music Trail in 2010, a proliferation of local music festivals, and official state welcome signs proclaiming “The Birthplace of American Music.”