The Delta Blues Museum, the world's first museum devoted to blues, was founded on January 31, 1979, by Sid Graves, director of Clarksdale's Carnegie Public Library. Originally housed in a room of the Myrtle Hall Elementary School, it moved to the library in 1981 and to a former railroad depot in 1999. It grew from attracting about one visitor a month into a world-renowned attraction and a major part of Mississippi's blues tourism industry. Sid Graves established it at the Myrtle Hall branch library at 1109 N. State Street and took the small collection of exhibits home with him each night for security. Its attendance increased after its relocation to the main library at 114 Delta Avenue in 1981, expansion into its own adjoining wing in 1996, and move into the old Y&MV/Illinois Central freight depot in 1999, when the City of Clarksdale took over administration from the library board and the depot's North Edwards Street address was redesignated as No. 1 Blues Alley. Including paid admissions and attendance at free events, it drew an estimated 25,000 visitors in 2012 and was a 2013 finalist for the National Medal for Museum and Library Service. Exhibits have honored the history of the blues and featured artists including Muddy Waters, Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Big Joe Williams, Little Milton, B.B. King, Big Mama Thornton, Charlie Musselwhite, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Ike Turner, and Bo Diddley, along with works by photographers, sculptors, and folk artists and appearances by authors, scholars, and musicians. ZZ Top played a key role in raising funds in 1988, and guitarist Billy Gibbons had “Muddywood” guitars made from boards from the house where Muddy Waters once lived on the Stovall plantation; one became a permanent exhibit. With the cooperation of the Stovall family, that house was later disassembled, restored, taken on tour by the House of Blues nightclub chain, and eventually moved to the museum, where a Muddy Waters wing was added in 2012. The museum also helped perpetuate the blues through its education program, begun in 1992 with local bluesmen Johnnie Billington, Michael “Dr. Mike” James, and Big Jack Johnson among its first instructors, and through festival and concert performances by its students.
