By Walt Grayson
walt@wlbt.net

Walt Grayson is taking us to a "B&B" in tonight's look around Mississippi , and it's not what you might imagine. There are no lace curtains on the windows, no columns on the front, and the second B doesn't even stand for breakfast. We're off to the shack up inn in Clarksdale.

"We're Mississippi 's oldest B&B, in that we're a bed and beer. There's a bunch of guys and none of us could really cook, but we wanted to be a B&B, so since it was kind of born out of beer, it continues that way."

So there you have the genesis and the genus of Clarksdale 's Shack up Inn . Now the "Shack-up" part of the name comes from the type accommodations offered there, old shacks rescued from this and neighboring plantations. Actually, that's how the whole thing started. Bill Talbot and James Butler and a few others had an idea to preserve some of the tenant houses now abandoned and decaying in the delta, coupled with a plea from a songwriting relative for a place to come and write. So a few of houses were moved in to fulfill both desires, and the songwriter and some friends came and stayed and delta magic happened.

"Just oozed music out. A song in the morning, song in the afternoon. Sometimes they'd play a newly birthed song in the commissary that evening," said Talbot.

But after the song writers returned to Nashville , the shacks were still there and then they attracted another group of inquirers, tourists, especially those from Europe in the delta to visit the land of the blues.

"The Europeans walked in here saying what's with these houses? Could we possibly rent these houses? And we thought, ya know, pretty good idea. And it took off like a runaway train," added Talbot.

There's six of the saved shacks now, and they stay pretty booked up. Not bad considering there's not a phone listed for the shack up inn, nor is there a sign out front.

"Most people in Clarksdale don't know we're here," Talbot said. It all comes from that latest world-wide word of mouth aid, the internet. People all over wanting an authentic taste of the delta, to not only come here and see the land that gave birth to the art form, but to hear it and then to spent the night in the flat land under the big sky in an authentic delta house, to feel the delta, and see it and taste it, down to the moon pie left on the pillow.