When people talk about Memphis, invariably they think of Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, Graceland, Sun, Sam Phillips, Rock and Roll. What is generally overlooked, by those of a certain age I should add, the original ‘Baby Boomers’, is that Memphis is also the self styled ‘Home of the Blues’ as well as the capital of Soul Music.
Rock and Roll it is said, was the baby of the blues.
Indeed, the city is synonymous with the Blues. Going back to the Mississippi cotton fields, slavery, racial segregation, the Civil Rights movement, the blues singers of the early 20th century. Furry Lewis, Sleepy John Estes, Sonny Boy Williamson. Then B.B.King, Howlin’ Wolf, and two who borrowed the city’s names, Memphis Minnie and Memphis Slim. Just a few of a long list of blues legends from the Mississippi Delta.
So today, I was intent on visiting some of these iconic places that is associated with Memphis; Stax Studio, the Martin Luther King Museum, Beale Street.
The humidity again was intense this morning with temperatures expected to reach well into the 90s by the afternoon, I decided to start my journey early, a taxi to McLemore Street where siblings Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton had opened up the Satellite Record Shop in 1957, the name coined from the Russian sputnik launched that year. In 1961 the label changed its name to Stax Records and opened the recording studio.
Research told me; ’In 1975 Stax was forced into bankruptcy and the building left to decay. After a decade of neglect, the Southside Church of God in Christ tore down the original studio in 1989 and over a decade later the Stax Museum of American Soul Music was constructed at the site and opened in 2003.’ (Wikipedia)
Although I can’t profess to being a ‘Soul’ fan back in the 1960s, I was still a Beatles, Stones, Yardbirds fan, it was hard to imagine, standing outside this building thinking of all the great recordings made here, Otis Redding, Booker T and the MG’s, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, Rufus Thomas.. You recall the age you were when you first heard My Girl, In The Midnight Hour, where you were, who you were with. Watching these stars on Ready Steady Go, Top of the Pops, they seemed to have come from another planet.
A Change Was Gonna Come sang Sam Cooke in 1964. Sam wasn’t talking about the music industry, but that’s another story..
The museum is full of all the usual artefacts and souvenirs, maybe they are cashing in but it was still a far cry from the Graceland Amusement Park. The costumes, instruments, photographs..brilliant. Even though this building was rebuilt you still get the sense of history that was made here, and you are standing on the very same spot where these guys created it. Backed by the ‘house’ band Booker T and the MG’s, the Memphis Horns..Similar feel to Sun Studio in that effect.
Made me think of when I spurned the opportunity to meet MG’s guitarist Steve Cropper just a couple of years back, in Biggleswade of all places! How do I regret that! Steve was guesting with The Animals at a Bank Holiday festival and I was asked if I wanted a ticket. A friend of mine had access to backstage. For some reason and I really can’t quite recall, I had something else on. I had met the Animals before when Spencer Davis was guesting with them on tour, nice bunch of guys they were, particularly keyboard player Micky Gallagher and Spencer.
Outside of the studio I got talking to a guy and his wife whilst waiting for a taxi to turn up. They too were from England and doing the same rounds as myself. Both agreed about my observations of Graceland and Sun. The guy had an expensive looking camera though he told me he’d left his better one at home; “In case somebody nicked it over here” he said. Seemed a bit negative to me but all the same he revealed that he’d taken over a thousand photographs since they had arrived a week earlier.
I was taking photos on my iPad and aware that if I took too many, I’d bore everybody to death with them when I got home! Bet his friends can’t wait.
The taxi duly arrived and took me to the Lorraine Hotel, scene of the Martin Luther King assassination in 1968 and now part of the Civil Rights Museum. The driver was very informative, telling me about the events of that infamous day when James Earl Ray gunned down the Civil Rights Leader.
Standing on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel, King was fatally wounded by a single rifle bullet fired by Ray from a house across the street.
The assassination sparked civil disturbances throughout the United States, ‘the, greatest wave of social unrest America had experienced since the Civil War’.
And here I was, looking up at the balcony where Martin Luther King fell. Trying to imagine what it must have been like that day.
The taxi driver had told me that the two limousines parked outside the motel, directly under the balcony, had been there ever since. “I don’t know if they still go” he chuckled. They did look as if they could do with a clean I thought.
It really is hard to take in when you visit places like this. We’ve all seen the images and newsreels down the years, Martin Luther’s speeches, the civil rights marches, King’s assassination, the riots and unrest that followed. This country was in a real mess back then. And lest we forget, it was at the height of the Vietnam War.
Security was tight at the Civil Rights and Slavery Museum next door. Bags checked, body scanned, nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide though. The museum is set out in chronological order, beginning with prints and sketches of the slave trade, a replica slave boat with black slaves crammed in like sardines, wailing and whipping the soundtrack. Harrowing. Re-produced and enlarged letters from people to newspaper editors desperately seeking family members who had been kidnapped and sold to land owners. You can’t help but feel humbled, shocked, disbelief that humans can treat people so badly just because of the colour of their skin.
You progress into the 20th century and the Montgomery bus boycott campaign that followed an incident on December 5th 1955. Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat on the bus to a white person by two police officers and placed in custody. It was a seminal event in the Civil Rights Movement, instigating a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama that lasted for over a year.
The actual bus is in the museum.
Under the system of segregation used on Montgomery buses, white people who boarded the bus took seats in the front rows, filling the bus toward the back. Black people who boarded the bus took seats in the back rows, filling the bus toward the front. Eventually, the two sections would meet, and the bus would be full. If other black people boarded the bus, they were required to stand. If another white person boarded the bus, then everyone in the black row nearest the front had to get up and stand, so that a new row for white people could be created.
Civil Rights Leader Leader E.D. Nixon was there when Parks was released on bail later that evening of December 5th. Nixon believed the event could spur a boycott of the area's bus lines and be processed via legal channels, convincing Parks of the power of her case. He also enlisted the aid of a new, young preacher Dr. Martin Luther King to lead the boycott.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted for more than 380 days, with the African-American community enduring a host of travails that included harassment and violent attacks. Nixon's home was firebombed two days after King's, and he was indicted for violating a state anti-boycott statute. Yet the boycott persevered and the city was eventually forced to lift its bus segregation laws.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was significant on several fronts. First, it is regarded as the earliest mass protest on behalf of civil rights in the U.S., setting the stage for additional large-scale actions to bring about fair treatment for African Americans. Second, Martin Luther King emerged as a prominent national leader of the civil rights movement while also solidifying his commitment to nonviolent resistance. King’s approach remained a hallmark of the civil rights movement throughout the 1960s. Shortly after the boycott’s end, he helped found the Southern Christian Leadership that worked to end segregation throughout the South. The SCL was influential in the civil rights campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, in the spring of 1963, and the March on Washington in August of that same year, during which King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. The boycott also brought national and international attention to the civil rights struggles occurring in the U.S., as more than 100 reporters visited Montgomery during the boycott to profile the effort and its leaders.
It was all heavy stuff and leaving the museum I felt like lightening things up. I walked back to the Sheraton which was a good distance, past the Orpheum Theatre and Autozone Park Baseball Stadium, other well known landmarks in Memphis.
A couple of hours to unwind and I went out in search of some live music. And Beale Street. It was buzzing. Bars, restaurants, flashing neon, music. I bought another T-shirt from a souvenir shop and browsed around taking in the atmosphere. This is a street which was infamous back in the day for murders, assaults, robberies. It was allowed to become rundown, ramshackle. Murders were so commonplace in Memphis during the early part of the 20th century that the mayor attempted to camouflage the situation by claiming that many were natural or tragic accidents. It was a dangerous place to be and Beale Street was at the epicentre. As it happens, in May this year a teenage mum was murdered in Beale Street. Which I didn’t know about until I came home but tonight thankfully there didn’t appear to be any threat, people just happy to be there, enjoying the food, the music.
I went into B.B.King’s Blues Bar, it was packed, a terrific atmosphere with a band on stage belting out R & B numbers. This felt like the real McCoy. I got myself a beer and perched myself on a stool by the bar, alongside a row of folk, mainly elderly women who were enjoying a good gab and almost oblivious to the music. A fellow on the stool next to me turned round from trying to get a word in edge ways with the ladies and introduced himself; “Riley King the 3rd” he said, shaking my hand. Taken aback, I couldn’t help but smile and thought about telling him I was Clive the 1st but replied; “Clive from England”
“Pleased to meet you” he said with a nice smile and then turned back to his women.
‘Well, Riley King the 3rd” I mused. ‘Is he trying to tell me he’s the great B. B. King’s grandson?’ Who knows? Seemed chuffed about himself and the bar. Of course the great man died earlier this year so maybe the 3rd has inherited something.
A couple of pints of beer called Fireside and a Catfish meal with some great live blues going on was a perfect way to finish my brief time in Memphis. Next morning I was having to get up early to catch the 06.50 City of New Orleans train to the place they call The Big Easy. A long 9 hour trip beckoned but I was looking forward to it.
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