Plants of all genres can be found at Miss Del’s General Store in Clarksdale. Photo by LAUREN H. LOYLESS
Clarksdale Morgan Freeman and Bill Luckett knew that if they built it people would come.
B
ack when cotton was King, business was brisk. The Alcazar Hotel was one of the biggest in the Delta and movie fans packed a nearby theater. Cadillacs and Lincoln Continentals cruised down Delta and Yazoo Avenues in search of a parking spot. But mechanized farming and the wane of King Cotton dealt a heavy blow to Clarksdale. After decades of decay and white flight, downtown streets were lined with vacant buildings. But everything changed in 2001. Local attorney Bill Luckett teamed up with his good friend Morgan Freeman and made what some folks here thought was one of the stupidest business decisions they had ever heard of. They opened Madidi, a fine dining restaurant on a street that looked deserted. They threw hundreds of thousands of dollars into it, creating an upscale decor and an ambitious gourmet menu that included rack of lamb and sweet corn succotash. It was an instant hit. And it lost money. But they kept at it because, as Luckett put it, “Morgan and I kind of wanted to jump-start downtown.” The two could have stopped there. They had done their job. Instead, they opened Ground Zero Blues Club on the opposite end of Delta Avenue, creating an instant attraction for international blues fans. Ground Zero offers traditional blues food, from
96
Marvell Fox has manned "Smoky Joe" grill at Ground Zero Blues Club for the past 5 years. PHOTO BY KAITE WILLIAMSON
hot tamales to plate lunches to the “best burgers in town.” They even offer fried grits, or as Luckett likes to say, “the most southern food on earth.” “We went from no restaurants to our opening two restaurants, and now there are like eight or ten open,” Luckett said. After 10 years of trying, Madidi finally shut its doors in February of 2012. The restaurant didn’t make a dime in the ten years and three months it was open. People told Luckett he was crazy, that running a business and not ever making money was plain ignorant. Luckett knew it made no business sense, but his eyes were set on the future. Madidi had planted the seeds.
The Transplants Roger Stolle, a native of St. Louis, was one of the first. “Transplants,” as the locals called them. Stolle opened Cat Head Delta Blues and Folk Art Inc. in the spring of 2002. “When I first moved here, the first two years people were still bailing from downtown. It was like a mass exodus,” Stolle said. “If you weren’t out of here by 5:30, you were the last man standing. Your car would be the only one for three blocks.”