Riverside Hotel — Bessie Smith, Clarksdale

The Riverside Hotel at 615 Sunflower Avenue in Clarksdale is one of the most historically significant addresses in American music. Bessie Smith — the Empress of the Blues — died here on September 26, 1937, after a car accident on nearby Highway 61; the building was then the G.T. Thomas Afro-American Hospital, as segregation prevented her treatment at the white hospital nearby. After WWII the building reopened as the Riverside Hotel, run by Mrs. Z.L. Hill, and became the preferred lodging for Black musicians touring the Jim Crow South — Ike Turner, Robert Nighthawk, Sonny Boy Williamson II, and many others stayed here.

Mrs. Hill's son Frank 'Rat' Tibbs took over management and maintained the hotel as a living museum of Delta blues history. Room 2 — the room where Bessie Smith died — was preserved, and musicians would sometimes request to stay there. John Lee Hooker, Junior Parker, and Sam Cooke all reportedly stayed at the Riverside. The hotel's guestbook is a who's who of mid-20th century Black music.

The Riverside Hotel still operates as a historic hotel, one of the last vestiges of the 'chitlin circuit' accommodation network that allowed Black musicians to travel safely in the segregated South. Staying here is considered a pilgrimage by serious blues devotees. It is on Sunflower Avenue in Clarksdale, within easy walking distance of the Delta Blues Museum and Ground Zero Blues Club.