Morgan Freeman’s second Ground Zero Blues Club is opening on the MS Gulf Coast
Twenty years after the first Ground Zero Blues Club opened in Clarksdale, Mississippi, a second is coming to downtown Biloxi.
Posts on social media announce the second club at The District on Howard, a mixed-use complex being developed to bring back the look and atmosphere of the once thriving downtown.
Part of that Biloxi history is the blues.
The new location will be in the former Kress Building, where Kress Live operated as an entertainment venue for two years until 2016. The 25,000-square-foot building at 814 Howard Ave. is on the north side, just down the street from the Barq Building and around the corner from the historic Saenger Theatre, both of which are big parts of the downtown renovation.
Academy-Award winning actor Morgan Freeman, who starred in “The Shawshank Redemption,” “The Bucket List” and many other blockbuster movies, is co-owner of the Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale. Other owners are attorney Bill Luckett and Memphis entertainment executive Howard Stovall.
The club got its name because Clarksdale is considered “ground zero” for where the Blues style of music began. The club was named one of the “Top 100 Bars and Nightclubs in America” in 2005 and voted 1 No. 1 blues club in the nation by bestbluesclub.org.
The Blues in Biloxi
Part of the challenge in creating a second Ground Zero is to keep what has made the Clarksdale location so successful and capture Biloxi’s contribution to the Blues.
“How do we bring that feel and give it that Biloxi flair,” is part of the conversation, said Bobby Gillon, director of marketing and leasing for The District on Howard.
“It has to feel like Mississippi,” he said. “That’s how the magic happens.”
A Biloxi marker for the Mississippi Blues Trail is found just north of Howard Avenue, off Main Street, at the entrance to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park.
The marker recalls a “flourishing nightlife” on the Coast during the segregation era.
“While most venues were reserved for whites, this stretch of Main Street catered to the African American trade, and especially during the boom years during and after World War II, dozens of clubs and cafes here rocked to the sounds of blues, jazz, and rhythm & blues,” the plaque reads.
“Biloxi was strutting to the rhythms of cakewalk dances, vaudeville and minstrel show music, dance orchestras, and ragtime pianists by the late 1800s, before blues and jazz had fully emerged,” it reads.
In the 1940s, downtown Biloxi was bustling with business, clubs featured traveling acts, local bands, jukeboxes and slot machines, the marker says. Many of the top blues artists played Biloxi clubs over the decades.
Ground Zero food and music
The Ground Zero website shows a menu featuring traditional Southern foods, some with a twist. Fried pickles are among the appetizers along with fried green tomatoes.
A catfish BLT is among the sandwiches. Diners can choose a Delta veggie plate and their choice of four sides. or go with Mississippi fried chicken.
Live blues music is scheduled at the Clarksdale club Wednesday through Saturday.
The District bringing food, apartments to Biloxi
Ground Zero Blues Club is the newest tenant revealed for The District on Howard. Design work is under way for Bilocchy, a 1920s craft cocktail bar and restaurant, going into the Barq Building.
Gillon said the opening of the new venues are being staged to open at or near the same time over 2 to 3 months. He expects that to begin within the next 60 days.
While the infrastructure in the empty buildings is updated and the build-outs begin, The District Green already is hosting events and bringing the community back downtown.
On the fourth Saturday morning of each month — next on July 24 — an artist and farmer’s market fills the District Green with vendors and shoppers.
An open mic event is scheduled for the last Sunday of the month, in the late afternoon and early evening, in partnership with the Juke Joint in Ocean Springs. Musicians can warm up in Biloxi, Gillon said, then go perform at the popular Juke Joint open mic night.
The first big event comes July 31, when an arts and music festival will take over the District Green and surrounding area with vendors, bands and food.
Moving downtown
Part of the promise of The District on Howard is a large number of apartments that are coming for those who want to live downtown and walk to these new businesses and events.
Gillon said he thinks the first residential units will be ready in the next 12 months, and the first block of units in the Barq and JCPenney buildings will open in the next 18 months.
He has a waiting list of people who want to be notified when rates are set and floor plans are ready, he said, as interest keeps growing for a new downtown.
