BB King Blues Museum, Indianola, Mississippi

Not allowed to take photos inside the display rooms of this excellent museum unfortunately. I don't know that BB King was necessarily the best of the electric blues men originating from the Mississippi Delta, as claimed here, but he was certainly among the other greats. His life story is revealing of the life experiences of many, although he was fortunate to be able to escape a hard life farming thanks to a white farming family who took him in and encouraged his pursuit of music. 
Until we'd planned this trip I was confused by the 'Mississippi Delta'. It's not really a river delta, it's an inland area of flat river valley, often flooded and with numerous side-channels and oxbow lakes, stretching between Memphis and Natchez in Mississippi and Arkansas states. Not cleared until after the Civil War when it was found to be perfect for growing cotton. Most of the workers were ex-slaves or their descendants, tied into white-owned farms through the sharecropping system. Driving through the Delta now we saw virtually no-one in the cotton fields, just the odd tractor here and there.