On the surface, downtown Clarksdale, Mississippi, looks largely the same as it did decades ago: a collection of historic brick buildings lining wide avenues faded to postcard sepia. But local Bubba O'Keefe has a retort ready for visitors to his hometown who eye the city's aesthetic as anything but authentic Southern charm. "People come here and say, 'Oh my gosh, this place is going down,'" says O'Keefe, the tourism director for this Mississippi Delta city of 14,000, with an implied wink. "I say, 'Well, you should have seen it 25 years ago. We're on the way up.'" Jokes aside, he makes a solid point. It was a Saturday night in Clarksdale 25 years ago that inspired blues aficionado-turned-Clarksdale champion Roger Stolle to move to town. Somehow, in a city with a deep blues history that claimed to be the home of the legendary crossroads — where according to lore, Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil under cover of darkness for his dazzling slide-guitar chops — he couldn't find a li...