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RIVERSIDE HOTEL
11 Most Endangered HISTORICAL PLACES 2021
by the National Trust for Historic Preservation
Save Black Family-Owned
Historical Blues Hotel
Where Blues Gave Birth to “Rock and Roll”
Please help us Save the most Historic Blues Hotel in America …The Riverside Hotel is located in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
Our beloved Riverside Hotel is in trouble! Covid-19 shut the hotel down in 2020, then a violent storm fell a tree onto the hotel, causing extensive damage. With the hotel now closed and overheads and critical repairs outstanding; the Hotel’s owners, sisters Zelena Ratliff and Sonya Gates, desperately need to raise operating funds to cover basic monthly expenses and pay for critical repairs, pending the hotel’s planned re-opening in Spring
Since 1944 the Riverside Hotel has provided lodging in the Delta for traveling musicians and like-minded folk. The Riverside Hotel “was dreamed up, owned, and operated by o an African American woman, Mrs. Z. L. Hill, living in Jim Crow–era Mississippi”; and since 1944 and up until the Pandemic in 2020, the Riverside Hotel had “provided safe lodging in the Delta for some of the most famous musicians in history as well as like-minded folk”, and was the place “where Blues Gave Birth to Rock and Roll”.
It was home to some, including the likes of Sonny Boy Williamson II, Ike Turner, and Robert Nighthawk. Others, like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Sam Cooke, Jessie Mae Hemphill, and other musicians made the Riverside Hotel their home away from home as they toured and crisscrossed the South. Rocket 88; considered to be the first Rock N Roll song ever, was written and rehearsed at The Riverside Hotel by Ike Turner and Jackie Brenston.
Prior to becoming the Riverside Hotel, the property operated as the GT Thomas Hospital for African Americans, wherein 1937 the Empress of the Blues, Bessie Smith was brought, seriously injured in a car wreck while traveling between shows, and where she died of her injuries. Today, the room she passed in is preserved as a shrine in her honor, as a tribute to the most famous woman in Blues History. It was home to some, including Sunny Boy Williamson II, Ike Turner, and Robert Nighthawk. Others, like Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters, made the Riverside their home away from home as they crisscrossed the South.
Still, family-owned and operated, the Riverside Hotel offers a singular lodging experience: an opportunity to experience old-school Southern hospitality and lay your hat where the bluesmen laid theirs, by and by.
Riverside Hotel: Where Blues Gave Birth to “Rock and Roll”
"ROCKET 88" The FIRST ROCK N ROLL SONG EVER WAS WRITTEN AND REHEARSED AT THE RIVERSIDE HOTEL by IKE TURNER and JACKIE BRENSTON before being recorded at Sun Studios in Memphis. READ MORE….