Memphis
I’m going to Memphis, Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee…
The guy on the plane next to me was in the Air Force. He got a call last night to deploy to Tennessee to fire satellites. I asked him if he was afraid of being killed. He told me he put himself in the line of fire so I didn’t have to.
Whew!
No guilt, just a sense of duty. Thank god for people like this.
So I’m on the only direct flight from L.A. to a city that’s located in Tennessee but might as well be in Mississippi. That’s what my driver told me. That the city is located in the southwest corner of the state, Arkansas is across the river and Mississippi is only a hop, skip and a jump away.
In other words, I’m in the south. Where everything’s just a little bit slower and the blacks outnumber the whites and you probably can’t get a decent pastrami sandwich within a thousand miles.
But if it’s soul food you’re looking for, barbecue…
I’m here for Folk Alliance. Which I’ve heard incredible tales about, but one of the reasons I said yes was because I’ve never been to Memphis before.
And I’m stunned, it’s more like Tallahassee than Nashville.
So this driver, he’s got a ’55 Cadillac. He put in a Chevy engine, but most of it’s still sixty years old. And when I start asking him about what to see, where to go, he asks me if I want to take the long way home.
OF COURSE!
Turns out he’s a tour guide. I heard the whole story. From Kansas to the University of New Mexico to teaching English in Saudi Arabia to deciding to get into the tourism business in Memphis because he loved the blues.
I just spent an hour with Tad and he’s my new best friend. You know how some people are just easy to talk to? How the music connects you?
That’s him.
Hell, I decided to take him out to dinner, at Alcenia’s, the joint he made a detour to point out. But he couldn’t, he was off to see James McMurtry, because the music comes first.
And it does in Memphis.
He drove me by Stax.
This is where it happened. Sam & Dave. Rufus Thomas. THIS IS WHERE THEY CUT SOUL MAN! When confronted with greatness your jaw drops, you’re speechless…this is where it all went down?
And Tad drives me past Rufus Thomas’s high school. And the soul food place where they all went during studio breaks… It’s the Four… I can’t remember the name, but it’ll never leave my mind’s eye. Across the street was a juke joint, looked like you could fit maybe thirty people inside. These are not the AEG and Live Nation "clubs" that hold thousands, they’re barely bigger than living rooms.
And he’s telling me all about Booker T., Jones, who played the organ, and Washington, whose name is on the aforementioned high school.
And Steve Cropper went to high school across town. At Messick.
I could just see these guys working it out, it seemed like fun. That’s what’s gone from too much music today, in the dash for cash, the fun’s been squeezed out.
Then, after driving through the projects, we drove by Sun Studios. Laughing, Tad said he was gonna do the full-on tourist trip, he pulled up "That’s All Right" on the CD player.
I shivered.
I was never a big Elvis fan. But hearing this rootsy music, I got it.
And then we drove down to Beale Street. Which is touristy, but still has decent music.
And then by the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot.
It’s just a low-rise sixties model. It’s a civil rights museum now. Tad pointed out the window across the street where James Earl Ray took his shot. Hell, Martin Luther King, Jr. was outside his room discussing the music for that evening’s event when he was cut down.
And on the other side of the building was 422 Main Street. Where James Earl Ray ran out after doing the deed. Big man with the rifle was a coward after the fact.
And then down to the Mississippi itself. Ole’ Man River, absolutely.
It was all about cotton. And when the industry became mechanized, the workers went north, that’s what brought the blues to Chicago.
And now Memphis is most famous for being a distribution center. It’s the home of FedEx, and the warehouses nearby set for instant delivery.
But first and foremost it’s a music town.
Maybe not the only home of soul music, but probably the foremost.
And it’s such a revelation, such a head-turner in a modern economy where everybody prays to the almighty dollar to think back to a time when the music was not only enough, it was more than enough, the grease that got us through.
I would have driven with Tad all night. He had stories galore, he made the history come alive.
You see it all comes down to people. Not the famous ones, but the Americans who industriously do it their way.
If you’re ever in Memphis hire this guy.
Not because I want to pay him back, but because he makes the city come ALIVE!
P.S. I looked it up, that soul food restaurant by Stax is called the "Four Way":
