Grammy Museum Branching Out With Site In Miss.

Bob Santelli, executive director of the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, announced Thursday that the museum’s first branch outside California will be built in Cleveland, Miss.

“The state of Mississippi is the cradle of American music,” Santelli said.

He announced the project in Jackson during the annual meeting of the Mississippi Economic Council, a state chamber of commerce. He received a standing ovation from Gov. Haley Barbour and more than 1,000 business people.

Santelli said no timetable has been established for the new museum, which has an estimated cost of $10 million to $12 million.

Mississippi already has a Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale and a B.B. King Museum in Indianola. Both are near Cleveland.

The state is also home of several noted blues clubs, including Ground Zero in Clarksdale, which is co-owned by actor Morgan Freeman.

Over the last several years, Mississippi has been encouraging blues tourism by placing historical markers at juke joints and other sites that were pivotal to development of the genre.

The state is the birthplace of several Grammy winners, including gravelly voiced blues pianist Pinetop Perkins, who died at age 97 last month at his home in Austin, Texas. Perkins, whose real first name was Willie, grew up playing in clubs set among the Delta’s cotton fields.

The Grammy Mississippi museum will form a partnership with the Delta Music Institute at Delta State University in Cleveland, Santelli said.