The Delta Music Museum is a museum located in Ferriday, Louisiana. It offers exhibits on sixteen rock and roll and blues musicians from the Mississippi River delta country. The museum opened with a grant from the State of Louisiana and is operated by local volunteers. There is no admission charge; the facility relies on the sales of souvenirs. Visitors from all over the United States have signed the guestbook since the museum opened in the spring of 2002. A scaled-down version of the museum, called simply the Ferriday Museum, had begun operations at another location in 1995.
There are also exhibits on two well-known former Ferriday personalities not affiliated with the music industry: former CBS and ABC commentator Howard K. Smith (1914–2002) and Ann Boyar Warner (1908–1990), second wife of Warner Brothers studio mogul Jack Warner. There is a mural drawn in 1991 presented by Monterey High School in Concordia Parish.[1]
The first exhibit one encounters in the museum is a sculpture of the three Ferriday cousins at the piano: singers Mickey Gilley of Branson, Missouri, Jerry Lee Lewis and Jimmy Lee Swaggart, the last an evangelist based in Baton Rouge. Other honorees are blues trombonist Leon "Pee Wee" Whittaker, a native of Newellton in northern Tensas Parish.[2]
Contents |
In 2001, Louisiana State Representative Bryant Hammett of Ferriday secured legislation to bring the museum under the jurisdiction of the Louisiana secretary of state, then Fox McKeithen. The museum has been actively promoted by current Secretary of State Jay Dardenne, who has secured state funding and regularly appears at the annual Delta Music Festival. The museum is located at 218 Louisiana Avenue, the main street of downtown Ferriday. The museum building was the former post office, built in 1939. It contains the inscription of James A. Farley, the Postmaster General at the time. The museum is across the street from a Ferriday Garden Club green space and is adjacent to the restored Arcade Theatre.
The original Arcade was built in the latter 1920s, burned in the 1950s and was permanently closed in the 1970s. On March 12, 2008, Dardenne presided at the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Arcade, along with Mickey Gilley and one of Dardenne's predecessors, former Secretary of State and Insurance Commissioner James H. "Jim" Brown, a Ferriday native. That night Dardenne and Gilley joined the group Easy Eddie and the Party Rockers in the maiden performance in the new Arcade. The rebuilt Arcade, which cost $1 million, was funded by Dardenne’s office. Prior to the restoration, the building had been a pawn shop. The sign at the Arcade is a replica of the original.[3]
Bobby Jones (born ca. 1927) of Ferriday recalled having swept the Arcade for $1 a day. A graduate and football player at nearby Ferriday High School, Jones also recalls five-cent popcorn and nine-cent movie admission. “Those were the days. Nothing was real expensive. I always had money in my pocket,” Jones reminisced for the Concordia Sentinel.[4]
Gaye Clark of Vidalia, the seat of Concordia Parish, said that she worked at the Arcade as a cashier in 1954. "I have so many memories of the Arcade . . . Working there and being given the responsibility of being cashier gave me a work ethic that has stayed with me my entire life . . . ", Clark added.[5]
Dan Ratcliff of Natchez recalls that each year the Arcade had three free movie days prior to Christmas. "Each showing was packed, and I remember they mostly showed Elvis Presley or Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin movies.[6]