High Cotton Blues

Stay overnight in an old cotton grading warehouse turned loft apartment above Clarksdale's world famous blues club

By Laura Barnaby

Bill Luckett wears many hats: power attorney, restaurant and blues club owner, landlord and real estate developer, pilot, even biker and actor, but one of the hats he wears--as a carpenter-contractor--is perhaps the most surprising one.

Woodworking, painting and refurbishing old spaces requires patience, concentration and calm, qualities that are rarely seen in Luckett, at least in public. Visit him at his law office or run into him at Madidi or Ground Zero, and you'll usually find him in the middle of several

conversations and meetings--wheeling and dealing and having fun at the same time. He probably could have been the poster boy for Ritalin had he been born in a different generation.

"Luckett the carpenter" has had a hand in most of "Luckett the real estate developer's" projects: Madidi, the Hotel Clarksdale Apartments, the Bank of Lyon Apartments and the Delta Cotton Company Apartments above Ground Zero Blues Club. And it was as a carpenter-contractor that he came to buy the old Delta Grocery & Cotton Co. building that now houses Ground Zero and the apartments upstairs.

According to Luckett, the Delta Grocery & Cotton Co. building was built in 1903 by renowned portrait artist Marshall Bouldin III's grandfather, who owned and operated the feed and seed store. It was also used as a cotton-grading warehouse until the 1950s when it was merged into Delta Wholesale Hardware, located across the street. Owned by the Stovall family at this point, the building was first used to house Delta Wholesale's offices, but because the roof with its four massive skylights (necessary for cotton grading) leaked so badly, it was later used solely to store white plastic water pipes.

The Stovall family called Luckett in late 2000. "They called me to come look at the building. It was about to fall in and they wanted to know what they could do. I told them it was still salvageable, but if they let it go three more years, they were going to have a problem.

When they added up the cost of fixing the roof and the structural damage, they decided to get rid of the building, and agreed to sell it to me," says Luckett.

Meanwhile, Luckett and Morgan Freeman had been looking for a place to open a blues club, so it was serendipitous when the Stovalls offered to sell the building to Luckett. Thus Ground Zero was born. The Delta Cotton Co. Apartments came a year later.

Originally conceived as long-term rentals, the apartments were eventually converted to overnight rentals, due to demand. "We do offer extended stay rates, but we had so many people calling to see if they could rent overnight that we decided to switch over," says Luckett. "We opened the club in 2001, and when we decided to build the apartments the following year, we started at the back and gradually worked our way to the front."

Because they were built as apartments, and not hotel rooms, each unit has a full kitchen and bath with ample storage and closet space, as well as a separate living room area. With a total area of about 7,500 square feet, the seven apartments are indeed spacious. And, although they were only able to save one of the four skylights (the others had to be covered because of leakage), the ceilings remain impressively high.

Most of the flooring had to be redone because all the years of hauling cotton supplies around had beat up the floors too much. The exception was the flooring in Apartment No.1, which could be saved since that area used to be the grading warehouse offices. That apartment, known as "Good Middling," as each apartment is named for a different graded quality of cotton, is also referred to as "Morgan's Apartment," making it the most popular one as well.

"It was built as Morgan and Myrna's apartment, so they'd have a place to stay in town, but the crowd pressure got to be too much, so they don't usually stay there anymore," says Luckett. "In fact, the living area rug is from their house in Charleston."

The walls were painted by Luckett and the decor was styled by Freeman and Luckett's wives, Myrna Colley-Lee and Francine Luckett. "They drove a Suburban up to Memphis to some vintage shops on Summer Avenue, and it looked like Sanford and Son when they came back here," jokes Luckett.

In addition to the original flooring, No.1 also has some furniture that came with the building, including a taupe three-sectional seat and a sea-foam green dinette set (with recovered chairs). There is also

an art-deco lighting fixture in the front hall that is original. The other six apartments are also well-appointed with retro-style furnishings and funky accents.

The hallway running the length of the second floor serves as a museum of sorts, with a mishmash of artifacts from the early days of Delta Grocery & Cotton Co. Among the items are Delta Grocery cancelled checks from the early 20th century; letters to Delta Grocery from various vendors, also from the early 1900s; a cotton sample box, c. 1948, which was shipped to prospective buyers around the world; a cotton sample table, c. 1950; a 1953 Coca-Cola vending machine; the original, single toilet from the building; and most curious of all, from 1938, an all-in-one kitchen appliance that incorporates a stove, a sink and faucet, a refrigerator and freezer, and even a timer. Conceivably, with the "General Chef L-K," you could cook, clean and store your leftovers without taking a step.

Probably the biggest advantage of the Delta Cotton Co. Apartments, and depending on how you look at it, also its biggest drawback, is their location above Ground Zero. What could be more convenient, or safer, than the short walk home after a night of juking? Of course, that also means that you'd better be there to party, because anyone wanting to hit the hay early will hear every note 'til the last musician leaves the stage, most nights of the week. And, if that's a problem, like their website says, "Shame on you for not going downstairs to party!" DM

Call (662) 645-9366 or (662) 621-9009 for availability.