Two stops I made this week took me to some of my favorite music spots in the Delta region; not because of tunes wafting through the air but because of the music heritage of the area.

On Thursday, I shot video for a story near Nutbush, Tenn. As I drove the winding road from the cotton field, I could picture little Anna Mae Bullock — later known as Tina Turner — skipping along the sun-dappled pathways or throwing rocks into the bar ditches.

As a kid, I watched her and Ike Turner hit their cues on black and white television screens. There was always something disturbing yet somehow appealing to me about her mannerisms and manic dancing. She had talent, but her kinetic energy made me think there was something much deeper than the front she was putting on. Then of course, her performance as the Acid Queen in the 1975 The Who-inspired film “Tommy” scared the heck out of me.

It wasn’t until I saw her walking down the street in the music video for her 1984 hit, “What’s Love Got To Do With It,” that I knew she had reached her real potential. I was kind of in love with her from there on.

When I moved to Tennessee and started visiting cotton gins in the area, I would drive through the little town and think of the contrast between that little girl growing up in Nutbush and the fame she eventually attained.

The other stop I made later in the week was at Stovall Gin, outside of Clarksdale, Miss. I pulled over one day almost a decade ago because the pecan trees growing across the street and the shade they offered, just a stone’s throw from the Mississippi River levee, were just too inviting not to stop at and enjoy.

Given history, climate and pace of the area, it’s no wonder that some of the greatest blues musicians of our time came out of that part of the Mississippi Delta. Blues legend Muddy Waters grew up on Stovall Plantation and made his first recording on the farm in 1941 before moving to Chicago and influencing what would later become rock and roll.

The old Stovall Gin is home of the Stovall Store, the site of monthly juke joint events and the annual Mighty Roots Music Festival in the fall.

But I especially enjoy the empty site on lazy afternoons in autumn when the leaves are falling and the only thing you hear is the occasional truck on Mississippi Highway 1, bird calls and maybe a cotton picker running off in the distance.

Nutbush and Stovall are both places we can appreciate for their musical influence.