🏛️ CulturalWeekend · from Memphis, TN
Delta Blues & Oxford: The Two Souls of Mississippi
The Mississippi Delta produced the blues — born in sharecropper cabins and juke joints along Highway 61. The Mississippi hills produced Faulkner — written in the study at Rowan Oak and celebrated at a bookstore on The Square that anchors one of America's great small-town literary cultures. Clarksdale and Oxford are ninety minutes apart and a world away from each other; together they tell the full story of Mississippi's contradictions.
Day 1 — Clarksdale: Delta Blues & Juke JointsDay 2 — Oxford: Faulkner, The Square & Southern Food
Day 1 — Clarksdale
Day 1 — Clarksdale
🚗 1 hr 33 min driving📍 7 stops
🌅
Morning
🚗
Drive
Memphis, TN → Clarksdale, MS
1 hr 25 min
Delta Blues Museum
★ Reviews →The definitive collection of Delta blues history in the restored Clarksdale freight depot — Muddy Waters' reconstructed cabin from Stovall Plantation, instruments played by Sonny Boy Williamson and Robert Johnson, and photographs documenting the sharecropper world that produced the most consequential American music of the twentieth century.
~1.5 hrs📍 See location
🍽️
Lunch
Ground Zero Blues Club
★ Reviews →Lunch at the ramshackle juke joint co-owned by Morgan Freeman — dollar bills on the ceiling, blues on the speakers, Mississippi tamales and Delta soul food on the menu. The best lunch in Clarksdale and an experience that doubles as a living artifact of the juke joint culture the Delta invented.
~1 hr📍 See location
☀️
Afternoon
Cat Head Delta Blues & Folk Art
★ Reviews →The cultural nerve center of contemporary Delta music — owner Roger Stolle maintains the most reliable live blues calendar in the region, sells handmade folk art by Delta artists, and can tell you exactly what is happening in every juke joint within 50 miles on any given night.
~1 hr📍 See location
🚗
Drive
Cat Head → The Crossroads
5 min
The Crossroads — Highway 61 & Highway 49
★ Reviews →The intersection where Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil — the founding myth of the Delta blues — marked by a giant guitar monument at the junction of the two highways that defined the musical geography of the South.
~1 hr📍 See location
🚗
Drive
The Crossroads → Riverside Hotel
3 min
Riverside Hotel
★ Reviews →The building where Bessie Smith died in 1937 after a car crash on Highway 61, and where generations of blues musicians — Robert Nighthawk, Ike Turner, Sonny Boy Williamson — stayed when passing through Clarksdale. Still a functioning hotel at 615 Sunflower Avenue; the exterior and lobby are the most unrestored piece of blues history left in Mississippi.
~1 hr📍 See location
🌙
Evening
Red's Lounge
★ Reviews →An unrestored juke joint on Sunflower Avenue — concrete floor, bare bulbs, and live blues from local musicians who have been playing here for decades. Red Paden's lounge is the least touristy blues bar in Clarksdale and the most likely place to hear something that sounds exactly like it did in 1960. Call ahead to confirm they're open; Red's operates on its own schedule and hours vary by night.
~45 min📍 See location
Shack Up Inn
★ Reviews →Sleep in a restored sharecropper shotgun shack on the grounds of a former cotton gin — the most distinctive accommodation in the Mississippi Delta, where the guest rooms are actual tin-roofed farm workers' cabins furnished with vintage Delta memorabilia and surrounded by cotton fields. There is no other place to stay in America quite like this.
Day 2 — Oxford
Day 2 — Oxford
🚗 2 hr 30 min driving📍 4 stops
🌅
Morning
🚗
Drive
Clarksdale → Oxford, MS
1 hr 5 min
Rowan Oak
★ Reviews →William Faulkner's home, preserved exactly as he left it — the cedar-lined drive, the modest Greek Revival house, and the study where the outline of A Fable is still penciled on the wall. The contrast with the Delta you drove through this morning — the flat cotton fields, the poverty, the blues — makes both places more legible.
~1.5 hrs📍 See location
🍽️
Lunch
Ajax Diner
★ Reviews →Oxford's beloved dive-diner on The Square — red beans and rice, turnip greens, fried chicken, and banana pudding at communal tables where Ole Miss professors, students, and out-of-towners eat elbow to elbow. Ajax has been feeding Oxford since 1997 and shows no signs of changing anything, which is exactly right.
~1 hr📍 See location
☀️
Afternoon
Square Books
★ Reviews →Three floors of one of America's best independent bookstores on The Square — the Faulkner section and the signed first editions alone justify the stop, and the reading series has hosted nearly every major American writer of the past thirty years.
~1 hr📍 See location
🚗
Drive
The Square → University of Mississippi Museum
5 min
University of Mississippi Museum
★ Reviews →The university's art and history collection housed in an 1848 building on campus — strong holdings in Southern folk art, 19th-century American painting, and rotating contemporary exhibitions. The adjacent antebellum building and the walk through the Grove provide the full context of this complicated institution.
~1.5 hrs📍 See location
🌙
Evening
🚗
Drive
Oxford, MS → Memphis, TN
1 hr 20 min
← All Memphis trips
More getaways from Memphis
Crowley's Ridge — Village Creek State Park & the Trail of Tears Trace — Day trip🥾Petit Jean & Mount Nebo — The Arkansas River Valley's CCC Mountains — Weekend🥾Ozark Folk Country — Mountain View, Blanchard Caverns & Greers Ferry — Long weekend🥾Holly Springs — Antebellum Mansions & the Marshall County Courthouse Square — Day trip🏛️Little Rock — Central High, the Clinton Library & the Arkansas Capital — Weekend🏛️Vicksburg — River Fortress of the Confederacy — Long weekend🏛️Tunica — Gateway to the Blues, a Riverboat & the Casino Strip — Day trip🌿Hardy & the Spring River — Old Ozark Resort Town & Crystal Float — Weekend🌿
© 2026 theweekendgetaways.com · All itineraries are original content. Terms
Plan your own escapeExplore more trips →