by Danny Colman originally published on Rock On! This Week’s Sound Bites…6/12/2025
“I was born in Clarksdale in 1957; a boomer! I’ve lived here all of my life; (Except) for about five years, my wife, we’d just been married a year, we decided to move to Jackson to try to branch out and maybe seek our fame and fortunes; I was in the construction business and did good down there and started a family there but just felt the calling of the Delta,” says Bubba O’Keefe the current director of Visit Clarksdale in Clarksdale, Mississippi. “The Delta is a unique place, it has a mystique about it, which I’m sure you’ve noticed already and our parents were aging and so why are we three hours away raising a family when to us, life was more important and precious to be closer to our family at such an early stage of raising our own family;so, we came back and I just love Clarksdale Mississippi.”
Recently, this space published a piece about a yearly sojourn to Clarksdale put together by Jersey Shore Jazz & Blues Foundation board member Christine Zemla and the trip would not have been complete without a walk to the office of Visit Clarksdale to see our friend Bubba and catch up on the latest happenings in this incredibly historic and fantastic Delta town.
Now, to put things into perspective a bit, this writer met Bubba whilst emceeing the Long Branch Jazz & Blues Festival at his “Visit Clarksdale” pop-up tent site. After a brief conversation with myself, “Rock On Radio” producer Claire Henwood and Christine Zemla, Bubba had convinced us into packing our bags and head to the small yet mighty Mississippi town in no time at all.
Upon landing in Memphis, Tennessee, we took the approximate hour drive to Clarksdale which is widely considered the home of blues music and got ourselves settled. After some dinner and a trip to the Bluesberry Cafe, we retired for the evening. The next morning, this writer was relaxing with a cup of coffee at a small table outside of our hotel when a car pulled up, rolled down its passenger side window and from it came, “Hey Danny, how you doin’?” It was none other than Bubba O’Keefe and not only did he remember who he was speaking to but he remembered so much more and that, my friends, is why he and others like him are on a mission to “Lift up” all of Clarksdale and to do so together. So, to understand a bit more, let’s hitch ourselves to Bubba’s wagon and find out why he pours his heart and soul into all he does.
“Oh, that’s a long journey,” he said with a chuckle. “Actually, it started as far back as 1999. I just thought, if we moved back here and the place was dark, there were no cars downtown; when I say dark, (I mean) dark at night. The downtown business district was kaput and because of being in the construction business and coming back home, I decided to start one building at a time to have an impact on Clarksdale and because we had four daughters, my wife started a children’s shop with some friends and a clothing store. So, I just started downtown with a retail store and I started by buying a building and renovating it and buying another one and renovating it and that went on until about six or seven years ago. My last project was The Travelers Hotel where you’re stayin’. I was an original partner and contractor in that project and we had done; I don’t know how many buildings I have done downtown with different partners and again, if I was gonna live in town, I wanted to be able to feel good about downtown and have places to eat. There were no restaurants, no cars downtown even during Christmas week; it was just abandoned. I believe that the heartbeat of the community is the downtown, it’s the pulse of every community. Well, as soon as I finished The Travelers Hotel, this job became available and I told my partners, either I can stay here and run this hotel as we agreed or I can go to tourism but if I go to tourism, we can raise the whole town up but if I just stay here at The Travelers we can make it work but we need the whole town to work. They saw that opportunity; I forget what year it was, 2000 or 2001, 2002 but Roger Stolle at Cat Head, he and I co-founded the Juke Joint Festival and after three years, I got out of that to do something else and Nan Hughes came in and took over and she’s still running it to this day with Roger and it’s our biggest festival of the year. We have, I’d say, over 20 festivals a year, they might be small festivals but they’re very unique and very intimate and we have live Blues music seven nights a week all year long. So, here we are today, I’ve got a paying gig with a steady salary and I love my job.”
Like most things, the first step is the toughest. One can organize and research but putting those plans in motion isn’t always easy; it takes fortitude and a will to succeed. Clarksdale has some difficulties in that as historical as it is and as incredible as the residents are, there is no glitz and nothing glamorous about the town but yet it has a vibe to it like no other.
“It’s huge,” he started to explain, “The thing is, the way I promote Clarksdale is that we are edgy and gritty. We are not cute and quaint like other towns around us. That’s not our makeup, that’s not our personality and there are things we want to improve but that is not us, we’re not cute and quaint. That’s the reason we have the Blues, that’s why people know us and we don’t need a makeover. We are who we are and people come here because of who we are. Coming to Clarksdale is like a scavenger hunt, it’s not a step on step off bus tour type town. People come for the music but they say they come back for the people. We have more characters than Sesame Street, I’m one and now that you’re here, you’re part of the cast. I mean, it’s about relational learning; people will just say, “Go see so and so” or “Go over here” and they’ll recommend this and that and it’s just; things just pop-up that are unexpected and the stories that people have, I can’t tell you they’re true but they are their stories. We have been blessed with great tourism both internationally and domestically. We can’t compete with the cities, we don’t want to compete with the cities, we’re not trying to compete with Beal Street or Memphis. We are who we are and people come here because they can not only hear Blues music, you experience it, it’s authentic, it’s experiential. We have the history, all the different places to go, the museum and the stores that fill in the gaps but at the end of the day, they want to hear the music and they want more than to just hear it, they want to feel it and feel what it was like; what was the sense of what it was like 50 years ago.”
“Last night we saw each other at the Blues Berry Cafe listening to Watermelon Slim and Rob Robinson who goes by “Heavy Drunk” out of Leiper’s Fork Tennessee and it’s just an incredible gift to be able to witness that in an intimate setting. It’s not a commercial, it’s not about the money, they have to have that to survive but that’s not the driving force and they appreciate you as much as you appreciate them. Tourism is very big and very vital for our town, even though our town doesn’t really recognize it or know what we do; that’s OK. Some people don’t care for the Blues, it’s not for everybody and because we have live Blues music every night of the week; you can’t go out every night of the week, I can’t go out every night of the week but everybody has their businesses. You come down here, taking off, so you have free time but everybody here is working. They go home and they have to do their chores and they have to take care of their family and that sort of thing. So, they do come to the festivals and they engage but they don’t understand tourism.They’ll see me walking around with people, they might think I’m a tour guide and sometimes I am but they don’t know that this is 10 tour operators from Italy that we brought in or like you noticed the Titleist Pro V1 golf balls that we have our logo on for a number of golf travel writers who are coming here in a week; they were here a year or so ago and they wanted to come back. They’re staying in Robinsville, that’s up where the casinos are between here and Memphis and they’re playing Tunica National Golf Course but they’ll come in here at night to hear the Blues and have a good time and they love it! So, they never know who I’m with or where they’re from and until you engage with people one on one you don’t understand why they’re here and we take it for granted. We have to put on a new set of eyes everyday; I have to come downtown because I see the same old sights and sounds everyday and I have to put on fresh new eyes to walk around with somebody visiting to really appreciate what they see and appreciate.”
Once there, the residents do take over and be it knowingly or unknowingly, they are assisting Bubba with every smile, conversation and moment they spend with those from out of town. the authenticity and more importantly, their sincerity is perhaps unrivaled. So; how is it that the Clarksdale contingent developed a relationship with Zemla and the Jersey Shore Jazz & Blues Foundation?
“Well, it started when Roger Stolle at Cat Head took Anthony “Big A” Sherrod up to play at Monmouth College. I was not able to go because I was at the Chicago Blues Festivaland I heard so many good stories and things about it from Roger and Christine Zemla and people I’d bump into that were there that I said, “I wanna go up there” and Christine said, “Well, in August we have the Jersey Shore Jazz & Blues Festival” and I said, “I’d love to pay the fee for a tent and go up there and promote Clarksdale.” While I was there, everybody was coming to the tent, as you did and they all said, “We would love to come to Clarksdale. We’ve heard all of these good things about it” and finally, at some point, after about an hour of hearing this, I said, “Well, come in March when Christine is bringing a group down here” and she said, “I am?” I said, “Yes you are and we’ll help you.” So, with the music, the connection with Bruce Springsteen, no connection directly to us but Bob Santelli (Bruce Springsteen Archives Monmouth University) has been to Clarksdale, the exhibit they have down at the museum in Cleveland; I was there and saw Bob, I had met him a long time ago when he was in Clarksdale, he doesn’t remember me really but just that music connection, there is a kindred spirit and support there and why not? We’re the Blues and y’all are Springsteen to us; Jersey, y’all love the Blues.”
Once in Clarksdale, it is very easy to submerge oneself and assimilate into the community, the businesses and residents leave you no choice but to do so and like Bubba said, “You’re now part of the cast” but it’s the town’s contributions to music and history, both of which are so prevalent to this day that are just amazing and keep visitors from all over the world coming again and again.
“Well, it’s not only amazing but we call it the vortex; it sucks you in. People come here for the music and then they have this experience and they’re like, this is unbelievable, we’ll be back and they come back. I met Bob Geldof two years ago and I was leaving the next day to go to London for a sales conference to meet with European tour operators and he knew I was flying the next day to London and he said, “How do you sell Clarksdale?” So, I told him and he grabbed my forearm and he said, “No Bubba, you changed the world. You changed the world” and I said, “Yeah, I know” and he grabbed it again and said, “No you don’t! You changed the world man.” So, as I was flying over the next night, I was going, “We changed the world, we changed the world.” You see, we grew up with this; do you know of Mississippi Fred McDowell? Mississippi Fred used to work for my father pumping gas at a Stuckey’s store in Como and I used to sit by the pumps; he gave me his record, “I Do Not Play No Rock and Roll” and I remember taking it home and listening to it, trying to get into it. I cut my teeth on The Beatles and all that because I was in the third grade when my brother took me to see The Beatles, then the next concert was The Dave Clark Five and then James Brown and I was in the third grade and it changed my life. I just loved music but I didn’t study it. One day, I was in the library here in town, probably 1999 and the librarian said, “Well, look who is comin’ here” and I turned around and there’s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page and some years later there was an album called, “Walkin’ Into Clarksdale.” We just live it, we don’t try to explain it; The Stones and the way Brian Jones was feeling about the blues and Keith Richards; it was the most important thing, they were on a mission. They weren’t trying to sell records, they were on a mission at that time in their early days. We’re just excited to have a big part in it, not just Clarksdale it’s all of Mississippi; it’s the Delta. We have a lot of Brits come and say, “We hope you don’t mind us stealing your music” and it’s. oh no, contraire, thank you! Thank you for shaping it because all of music is shaped by previous artists and styles and techniques. Music transcends everything, it’s a connector; it transcends race, languages, all kinds of demographics. The other thing is, music, I’m learning this more and more for me, I can hear a song and I can remember; I remember when I heard “The Concert for Bangladesh” after it came out on 8-Track and I can remember where I was driving through the Delta as a teeneager. There are anchor points in our lives and they may not be huge but they had an impact on that time or an event in our lives for whatever reason and just connecting to a song, whether it gives you peace or whatever; it’s just a beautiful thing and I love it.”
O’Keefe’s desire to see Clarksdale continue to grow and attain new levels of success led him to run for mayor. Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out as he and many others had hoped but as he reflects on other successes, he realizes that his efforts do make a huge difference.
“We have a lot of issues here that our visitors don’t see. We have a 40 percent poverty rate, we have a broken city administration but since 1999, I’ve seen what we’ve done with downtown from when there were no cars or restaurants, no hotels, nothin’ to seeing by starting the Juke Joint Festival and what it has evolved into today and to be the executive director of Visit Clarksdale and to be able to go promote Clarksdale internationally and hear the feedback and be one on one with people such as yourself who are so interested in our town but people are hurting. I feel like I have something to bring to the table to help that because for me, it’s all about the people whether they live here or are coming here, musicians or people hearing or playing music; it’s about the people, It’s not about the money, it’s not about tourism; I say, you’re not a tourist, you’re our visitor and there’s nothing too good for our visitors. Oftentimes we let those types of things leave us and we miss the true value of what we’re here for and that’s about each other and one on one relationships and showing hospitality. You might be excited that you’re here, we are equally excited or more that you’re here. You’re not a person walkin’ around with a dollar sign on your forehead like every tourist is in all of those other places, you’re our friend. You came to our town to experience it, we want you to feel the fullness of it.”
Bubba and all of which he speaks can be found at https://www.visitclarksdale.com/ and as far as this writer goes, there will be many return trips to this incredible small Delta town in the future.
That said, June 27 at The Lauren K. Woods Theatre located on the campus of Monmouth University; straight from Clarksdale comes Anthony “Big A” Sherrod & The Allstars for a return performance along with locals The Navesink Delta Blues Band for an 8 p.m. show. Tickets are available at the theatre box office, by calling (732) 571-3442 or tune into “Danny Coleman’s Rock On Radio” this Sunday evening on thepenguinrocks.com and/or dekoentertainment.com and hear how to win a free pair of tickets along with a “Rock On Radio” prize pack.