The Sky Shack at Hopson Plantation
The Peabody it still ain’t, but here’s how the Shack Up Inn keepers are putting a little swank in their shacks, inside The Cotton Gin Inn on Hopson Plantation

by Maude Schuyler Clay

The disclaimer on the Shack Up Inn web site will either make you laugh out loud or run for the nearest Hampton Inn.

Guy Malvezzi, one of Shack Up’s owners, says they prefer guests who “get it.” Some of the many people who have “gotten it” are Robert Plant, former Led Zeppelin guitarist and solo artist, whose early blues influences included Robert Johnson, Bukka White, Skip James, and Sleepy John Estes; Elvis Costello; Samuel L. Jackson and Mary Louise Parker.

What is the attraction of a bunch of shanty shacks plunked down in the middle of historic Hopson Plantation? For those into blues, culture, food, history or the civil rights trail––a lot. For one thing, the buildings themselves have all been saved from the “natural erosion” that occurred when most of the Delta’s field churches, mule barns, cypress sheds, and tenant houses were either torn down to make way for more crops or they simply fell down. Each shack, redone in a modest but modern style, has a bathroom, refrigerator, microwave, air conditioning and heat, and clean sheets with a MoonPie on the pillow. All the shacks came from the cotton fields stretching a three-to-35-mile radius of Hopson, where they now have a new life and purpose.

Now, in addition to the individual shacks and a quasi-motel section called The Cotton Gin, there’s The Sky Shack in the gin. The Cotton Gin was built in 1933, abandoned in 1972, and “rebirthed” as a music stage in 2004. Finished in the spring of 2009, the Sky Shack is an “upper end” dream: a 500-plus- square-foot suite with a big screen TV, leather recliners and couches, and its very own porch overlooking the main music area. It’s a front-row ticket to the Clarksdale blues scene. Guests can literally “rock” (in chairs) to the sounds of the blues while never leaving the terrace-porch. 

The price of the Sky Shack is $140 Sunday through Thursday, and $165 on Fridays and Saturdays, and it has been rented well over 60 percent of the time it’s been available. There are also current plans in the works to build a new “village” of shacks that are “green”––complete with solar panels and on-demand water heaters. In this case, it does take a village!

Shack Up Inn is a world in itself––you can spend all your time here, or it’s just a five-minute ride to the Crossroads of the Delta. In downtown Clarksdale there’s the Delta Blues Museum, a cultural gem that, in addition to Muddy Waters’ actual house from Stovall Plantation, always has an interesting photo or art exhibit (most recently William Ferris’s, Give My Poor Heart Ease); a fantastic world-class restaurant co-owned by Morgan Freeman, as well as several other restaurants; blues clubs, including Ground Zero and Red’s Lounge that feature living blues legends; and the austere fact that Clarksdale was the home of Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Ike Turner and a host of other important blues players. In other words, there’s plenty to do and see if you want to. People have been coming to Clarksdale on pilgrimages for many years, but it’s only since 1998 that they have had such a place as the Shack Up Inn to, well, “shack up.”

More than 10,000 guests came to stay at Shack Up in 2008. One guest, a Fortune 500 bigwig who shall remain nameless (let’s just say he has the world’s “third largest hedge fund”), told a reporter that he “comes every year to Shack Up, totally incognito, and those guys don’t have a clue who I am. And even if they did, they wouldn’t bother me. That means a lot.”

How do people the world over know about the Shack Up? Mostly by word of mouth, repeat customers, and the famous Shack Up Inn t-shirts that have been spotted on folks from London to Japan to Berlin to Norway to Timbuktu. And they have had phenomenal press: USA TODAY, The New York Times, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, to name a few, have done multiple, glowing reviews over the years. People just can’t seem to get enough of The Shack Up Inn. It’s a huge asset and draw to Mississippi Delta tourism and to Clarksdale.

The Shack Up’s motto, “The Ritz we ain’t and never will be,” continues to attract the curious, the countercultural, and those in need of a genuine unique experience. It’s laid back, it’s totally cool, and it’s fun. It’s not for everyone, but if you think you might “get it,” go to the web site and see if they can book a room for you.

By the way, there is a two-night minimum, a neat expanded gift shop and Guy’s admonition that “drunken frat boys need to stay away.” DM
See www.shackupinn.com for more information.