Two backpackers in Clarksdale, Mississippi, asked a simple question: where could they hear the blues? By Morgan Freeman's own account, he and his friend could not name a single club. So they opened a blues club of their own, and it still has live blues four nights a week.

A Question From Across the Street

Clarksdale sits in the Mississippi Delta, and the town has long been called "Ground Zero" for the blues. Freeman grew up in the Delta, in Greenwood.

He told the story on stage at the Chautauqua Institution in New York in August 2025. He and his friend Bill Luckett, a Clarksdale lawyer, were working on a building they planned to turn into a restaurant.

"Across the street were these two young people, obviously backpackers," Freeman said. Luckett, whom Freeman called "a people person," walked over to ask if he could help.

"And they said, 'Where can we hear blues?' And we couldn't tell them. There was no place in Clarksdale that we could say, 'this club,'" Freeman recalled. "So we decided, 'OK, got to do something about that.'"

Clarksdale did have juke joints with a long blues history. The club's own history page names Red's, the Red Top Lounge and Margaret's Blue Diamond Lounge. But in Freeman's telling, the two men had nowhere they could point a stranger to.

Shoveling Out a Cotton Warehouse

Ground Zero Blues Club opened in May 2001. Freeman and Luckett founded it with Howard Stovall, a Clarksdale native and Memphis entertainment executive.

They chose a building that had once housed the Delta Grocery and Cotton Co. It had sat empty for about 30 years, beside the railroad tracks on Delta Avenue.

"Here's this internationally-known, Golden Globe, five-time nominated, one-time-winning Oscar guy in there with me and we're shoveling debris," Luckett told Action News 5 in 2020.

Inside Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, Mississippi: graffiti-covered walls, mismatched chairs, Christmas lights and a small stage — Inside Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Photo: Deisenbe / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped).

They kept the juke-joint look on purpose: mismatched chairs, Christmas lights and graffiti on the walls. The club holds about 800 people standing, and there are seven rental apartments upstairs.

The Crowd Came From Everywhere

The question from two travelers turned into a destination for travelers. "Over the years, it grew in popularity so that now, 30% of our audience will be from out of the country," Freeman said in 2025.

Luckett, who later served one term as Clarksdale's mayor starting in 2013, remained a co-owner until his death in 2021. Freeman is still a co-owner.

Freeman has also been filmed at the club, reciting the lyrics to "She's Gone".

From a Juke Joint to the Concert Hall

In 2025, 24 years after it opened, the club's own blues players went on tour with symphony orchestras. The show, Morgan Freeman's Symphonic Blues Experience, pairs musicians from Ground Zero, including Anthony "Big A" Sherrod, with a live orchestra and Freeman's narration.

The club closed for a short time in early 2025 and reopened that March. Thursday nights bring a jam where musicians can sit in.

Live blues still plays there Wednesday through Saturday, in the warehouse two backpackers never knew they were asking for.

Social card portrait of Morgan Freeman: David Sifry / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

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