B B King Museum Delta Interpretive Center

The thrill is gone at many attractions across the country as recession-mired tourists stay home, but in Indianola, Miss., a favorite son is packing 'em in at the B.B. King Museum. A year after its opening, the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center has drawn about 30,000 visitors to the Mississippi Delta town roughly 100 miles northwest of Jackson, where the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter-guitarist once made his living on a cotton plantation. Attendance exceeded a first-year projection of 25,000, despite the museum's opening last fall amid hurricanes, high gas prices, economic woes and the end of the traditional summer travel season, said Connie Gibbons, the museum's executive director.

B.B. King returned to his hometown of Indianola for the aptly titled "B.B. King Homecoming Festival." "It is something that I have been doing for 42 years, playing free for the kids," the 81-year-old blues legend said. "Watching them grow." With his trademark guitar that he named "Lucille," King is one of the nation's most influential blues musicians. His long list of hits includes "The Thrill Is Gone," "Every Day I Have the Blues" and "You Upset Me Baby."

He started out here 60 years ago, singing the blues on a street corner for dimes. Now, less than three blocks from that corner, the legendary B.B. King will soon have his own museum. The B.B. King Museum & Delta Interpretive Center is set to open Sept. 13, three days before his 83rd birthday. The museum honors the man who Rolling Stone magazine says "is universally recognized as the leading exponent of modern blues." It is but one in a surprisingly long list of attractions in the Mississippi Delta -- surprisingly long only if you've never visited the region.

B.B. King is full of it. Humility, that is. Listen to what the blues master has to say about the $15-million museum bearing his name that's slated to open Saturday in the small Mississippi Delta town where he sweated for a few cents a day picking cotton nearly eight decades ago. "When you're running track, they pass you -- I don't know what you call it . . . -- the baton. I just picked up the baton and kept running with it. But guys like Robert Johnson, Jimmy Rogers, Memphis Slim, Roosevelt Sykes, and I could name you many, many more -- they are the ones that were the base," King said last week during a stop in L.A. "They could have picked any one of them to name the museum after."