Mississippi blues promoter and raconteur Bill Luckett dies

Bill Luckett was an attorney, small-town mayor, candidate for Mississippi governor, storyteller, blues promoter and business partner and friend of Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman

JACKSON, Miss. -- Bill Luckett was an attorney, small-town mayor, candidate for governor, blues promoter, friend and business partner of Morgan Freeman and irrepressible teller of tales about the people and culture of his beloved Mississippi.

Luckett died Thursday at 73, a year after being diagnosed with cancer. He will be remembered Tuesday at a party he ordered up and would have loved to host.

Instead of a funeral, his family is having a celebration of Luckett's life with free music and entertainment at Ground Zero Blues Club — the joint that he, the Academy Award-winning actor and others had owned for two decades in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

The club's name refers to the the birthplace of the blues: Legend has it that early blues guitarist Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads in the Mississippi Delta. Clarksdale stakes its claim with huge guitars marking the intersection of U.S. highways 61 and 49. Nearby Rosedale also claims to be the site of Johnson's Faustian bargain. Luckett shrugged and acknowledged the devil's crossroads promotion was good for Clarksdale, a place that relies on tourism to support an anemic economy.