MEMPHIS 1994. It's the latest in a series of dead Friday nights on Beale Street, and 11-year-old ``Little Momo'' Tabron, who's spent half his life playing drums for tips on Beale looks as if he'd much rather be playing video games or lying on the couch at home- anything but this drudgery. And yet he never drops the beat.
His father, Moses Tabron III, yelps the vocals and plays the trumpet as if this family trio (rounded out by wife/mother Laurie on keyboards) were a full-fledged R&B revue. Instead of headlining at the New Daisy Theatre, they're playing on the sidewalk in front, where three drunken guys, one in a cowboy hat, smile and sway to the mobile soul music.
One of the three guys puts a dollar bill in the tip jar, and Tabron stops singing, though Little Momo keeps slapping at the skins and Mom throws down a bluesy organ groove.
``Where you from?'' Moses asks, and the guy says he's from Texas. As Moses announces it over the mike, the three guys whoop it up. One of them has a song request and he motions for Moses, who leans over to hear him. Drawing up from the man, almost recoiling, Moses gives him a ``you must be kidding'' glance.
``Ah, man,'' Moses says with a laugh, ``You're in Memphis.''
It's anyone's guess what song the man in the hat wanted to hear, but you can be sure that it wasn't one of the thick, raw, soulful, greasy, heart-pumpin' songs that Memphis is known for. Save that “Friends in Low Places” shit for Nashville. This is the city that built both rock 'n' roll and sweet soul music.
The home of Elvis Presley, Sun Records, B.B. King, Carla Thomas, Al Green, Hi Records, Booker T. & the MG's, Junior Parker, Stax Records and Carl Perkins, Memphis is where straw-chewin' country music bellied up to gritty R&B and where the down-and-dirty blues went to church and came out screaming about R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Memphis is the mystical crossroads where the blacktop collides with the sky to create blessed percussion.
Built on a bluff, raised on the real thing
Those familiar with Memphis describe it as they might an exciting street corner, where intersecting ideas lean up against the lights and wait for something to happen ... and it always does.
"Bluff City" has long been a place that drew people. Before humans inhabited the area, animals flocked to the Chickasaw Bluff, on which Memphis is built. The main thoroughfare of Poplar Avenue, in fact, was once a buffalo trail.
Producer Jim Dickinson, who's worked with everyone from bluesman Furry Lewis to the Replacements, theorizes that the same force that makes people gravitate to Memphis makes its recording climate so special. ``Recording is just magnetizing tape, so whatever pull there is in the air can have an effect in the studio,'' he said in 1994. Dickinson passed away in 2009.
Led Zeppelin used to record at Ardent Studios. ZZ Top still does. Even alternative groups like Gin Blossoms, Tragically Hip, Afghan Whigs and Primal Scream have trekked to Memphis, hoping that some of the storied groove would rub off on them.
``Maybe it's got something to do with the flow of the Mississippi River and the town on a bluff and the Delta so close, but there's something else going on here,'' Dickinson said. ``I discovered that a few years ago when I compared tapes of (noted session piano player) Spooner Oldham playing in L.A., New York, London, Muscle Shoals and Nashville to the ones of him playing here, and his best playing, by far, was in Memphis. It's a looser groove here, and you'll try things here that you wouldn't try anywhere else.''
Despite its geographical detachment from the biz-heavy coasts, the music made in Memphis during the '50s and '60s is probably the most chronicled, in large part due to Elvis Presley, who continues to draw millions a year to his Graceland estate decades after his death.
Much of the saluting is of the cheesy variety, like the endless tell-all books from people who barely knew Elvis and the recent, garish ``Elvis Aaron Presley: The Tribute'' pay-per-view concert, which found the likes of Sammy Hagar, Kris Kristofferson and Michael Bolton butchering the songs of The King.
Two recent ``high-road'' embracements of the Memphis magic are Peter Guralnick's exhaustive, ``dirt-free'' bio, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley, and the three-disc Sun Records Collection from Rhino. An essential release, the Sun box captures Elvis in his prime, along with such other greats as Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Little Junior's Blue Flames, Jerry Lee Lewis and Billy Lee Riley. An unmatchable roster of talent shook the walls of the tiny Memphis Recording Service at 706 Union.
Guralnick's book starts off not with a vignette about Elvis, but with the meeting of Sun Records owner and producer Sam Phillips and jive-talking DJ Dewey Phillips, who were not related by blood, yet were interwoven in tighter ways.
``I started off with Sam Phillips and Dewey Phillips because I wanted to show that the foundation of what Elvis would become was already in place when he arrived,'' Guralnick said. ``It's not like he just sprung out of nowhere: What was going on at Memphis at the time had a lot to do with his story.''
The precursors to the rockin' revolution that Elvis would instigate are there in the Rhino reissue, which doesn't even have a Presley track until disc two. The first CD consists of the gospel and blues that entered young Elvis' soul and didn't let go.
As with the early Elvis tracks, the bluesy ``race records'' by such acts as Howlin' Wolf, Jackie Brenston and Rufus Thomas were mostly produced by Sam Phillips, a white man who craved authenticity in music. A decade later, such white musicians and producers as Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, Dan Penn, Chips Moman and Reggie Young would be essential players in the Stax Records story.
``I think that racial collusion, as I call it, had a lot to do with the Memphis sound,'' Dickinson said. The enthusiasm to tap into a rootsy, soulful groove overruled an often racist climate. The musicians who were close enough to feel the explosion of rock's birth or the gospelization of R&B (which came to be known as soul) didn't care about any societal enclosures; they wanted to get as close to that sound as humanly possible, even if it meant crossing boundaries. Especially if it meant crossing boundaries.
Even as Memphis earned a national reputation for creating thrilling sounds, the city fathers discouraged its image as a center of black music and culture, Dickinson said. Under the auspices of urban renewal, much of W.C. Hardy’s Beale Street was torn down in the '70s. And the old converted theater on East McLemore Avenue that housed the legendary studio and offices of Stax Records met with the wrecking ball in the late '80s.
``It's just a case of the city getting rid of black history,'' Dickinson said. ``They were always embarrassed that Beale Street had this wild reputation, so they tried to erase it. And the ironic thing about Stax being torn down is that it was done by the black church that owns the land. There were no plans to put up anything else, they just wanted it gone so they wouldn't be reminded of the sinful music that came out of that building. It's awful to think about just how much has been lost.''
Dickinson said that in the past few years, the city leaders have tried to embrace the Memphis musical legacy, realizing that it's the city's No. 1 attraction to visitors. But it's nostalgia that's thriving, at the expense of contemporary sounds.
``The music scene has never really recovered from the failure of Stax,'' he said. The label went belly up in 1975. ``You'd see all these incredible musicians go into that building Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, the Staple Singers, Isaac Hayes, Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn and all those amazing songs would come out. It all seemed like magic, but when it all went under, everybody was reeling. `How could it be? Hey, if Stax can't make it, none of us can.'''
The first Blues Ball
They call the historic and upscale Peabody Hotel ``where the Delta begins,'' but it's really where it ends, where those who have escaped the oppression of poverty hope to one day sip white wine in the lobby bar while the ducks march out to the fountain on the red carpet. The Peabody represents having arrived at a better place, and on this night, the best place to be is the two-tiered Blues Ball, a $150-a-plate celebration of the music that made Memphis famous.
``Gospel, blues, rock 'n' roll and jazz are the four main forms of music that were invented in America, and all of them have heavy roots in Memphis,'' said party co-organizer Isaac Tigrett, the founder of the Hard Rock Cafe and the House of Blues, who grew up in nearby Jackson, Tenn. The entertainment at the Blues Ball reflects Tigrett's assertion, with an emotional set by the Olivet Baptist Church Sanctuary Choir kicking things off, followed in quick, steamy succession by the Marvell Thomas Trio, Rufus Thomas, William Bell, Mavis Staples and the glorious Ann Peebles, who would've stolen the show if it was that kind of package concert. More than a musical event, the Blues Ball was a making amends, of sorts. Remarkably, it was the first time that Memphis society had recognized the contributions that people like Rufus Thomas, Isaac Hayes and Bobby ``Blue'' Bland had made in enriching their city. As co-host Hayes said in his introductory speech, ``This is a long-overdue night.''
When Tigrett spoke, he emphasized the future of Memphis music. ``There's no use in celebrating the past,'' he said, ``if we're not prepared to make commitments to the music of today and tomorrow.''
Indeed, Memphis needs to get busy if it wants to eradicate the fact that it’s last big hit was ``Disco Duck'' by Rick Dees.
``Beale Street goes through spurts,'' Moses Tabron says after his family's last set, ``but right now it's sputtering. The people just ain't comin' out like they used to, and the feeling ain't there.'' He counts the night's take- about $100- while Little Momo breaks down his drum kit and Mom packs up her keyboards.
``Beale Street's comin' back,'' he says, as if to convince himself. ``There's just too much history here, too many memories. You know, it'll always keep comin' back.''
Tabron looks over at his station wagon and gives the ``on my way'' signal to Momo, who drums the dashboard and shoots back an ``any day now'' look. He just wants to go home.
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