(MONEY Magazine) – American Jazz Museum, Kansas City, Mo. 816-474-8463; www.americanjazzmuseum.com. Listen to recordings by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker or sit in on twice-monthly lectures by living artists. On Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Monday evenings, the museum turns into a working jazz club.

Delta Blues Museum, Clarksdale, Miss. 662-627-6820; www.deltabluesmuseum.org. Located in the town an hour south of Memphis, where blues legends Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson made their names, this museum's guitar collection includes one of B.B. King's 16 Lucilles. Its annual Blues Festival is scheduled for Aug. 10 through 12.

Motown Historical Museum, Detroit. 313-875-2264. The museum is housed in Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr.'s former home turned studio, where from 1959 to 1972 stars such as Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder recorded.

--SANGITA MALHOTRA