Days 40 and 41: Memphis

Days 40, 41: Memphis

Driving an hour or so from Nashville to Memphis, we stopped on the way at Stax recording studio.  This is the main studio that blues music came out of and it now houses a really informative museum devoted to blues music and its origins. It displays really well how music moved from gospel through to soul and blues.  Big names familiar to us recorded at Stax – Otis Redding, Ike and Tina Turner and of course Gladys Knight and the Pips who sang one of my favourites, ‘Midnight train to Georgia’.

A theme running throughout the information boards at Stax was that it was very much a studio where colour didn’t matter.  Black and white Americans worked side by side, hand in hand, a concept that was very different from general American society.

But when Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1967, that all changed.

“The assassination of Dr King brought in a lot of frustrations as far as the black people in the company were concerned. But, up until that time there was a very close relationship among the people in the company.”   Jim Stewart, Stax co-founder.

The next stop was at Sun recording studio in Memphis.  This studio is known as the birthplace of Rock ‘N Roll. It was here that Ike Turner cut what is recognised as the first Rock ‘N Roll record.  From here we were right into Elvis and remained so for the next day and a half.

We saw here also a radio control booth from the 1950s where the ‘Red, hot and blue’ radio shows were broadcast from.

            A single track reel-to-reel recorder from the 1950s

We learned a great story about how Elvis got his start:

Apparently at school he was a bit of a loner.  He was different from the other kids – awkward and dressed differently, wore his hair differently and loved his sideburns which definitely were not an ‘in’ facial feature.  He had a friend who acted as his protector from the bullies.  That was Red West, who later became Elvis’ bodyguard.  At his High School prom in 1953, the girl he accompanied wanted to dance but Elvis said that he couldn’t dance!  This was little wonder when the main hit tune of the day was ‘How much is that doggie in the window’!

In his early after school days he started trying his hand as an amateur singer.  Memphis has a sound shell and one time Elvis was billed as the opener for a big name in town.  He sang first ‘That’s alright Mama’ with little but polite response from the audience.  Then he went into ‘Blue moon of Kentucky’, a lovely, gentle song that would have been very well known to the audience. However, in singing it, he jazzed up the tempo and no doubt added some of his now signature movements.  Apparently the crowd went crazy – well as crazy as crowds went in those days.  They clapped and cheered, but Elvis thought that they were boo-ing him offstage.  He rushed off the stage and apologised to the stage manager who convinced him that in fact the crowd loved him.  Within a year of this even, Johnny Cash was the opening singer for Elvis at that same sound shell.

Shortly after, he visited Sun studio and asked if he could put down a record for his mother’s birthday present.  This was the time when such a thing was possible – an individual could just pay for a single recording session.  He paid $3.98 and sang one of his mother's favourite songs, 'My happiness' 

but the studio’s owner, Sam Philips didn’t do the recording because he had to go to a previous engagement.  The recording of the track was left to the secretary, Marion Keisker, who of course has now gone down in history as the first one to record Elvis.

That particular recording was done well after Elvis' mother's birthday, such was the impoverished state that Elvis was in at the time.

Sun studio is still an active recording studio.  U2 record there as have several other groups and individuals over the years. 

This drum kit belongs to U2 who use it for their recording sessions.

A series of autographed guitars, one of them belonging to  (?), tells the story of some of the big names who have recorded in this humble little building in Memphis.

Before leaving the studio we had an opportunity to be photographed with the microphone used by so many big names from the past. 

We then booked into our hotel, a brand new one right next to Graceland.  Apparently Priscilla Presley is on its board of directors and had direct say in the furnishings which are based on those over at Graceland.  Like the Nashville hotel, it has hundreds of rooms over three wings.

 This rather gauche staircase is a replica of the one at Graceland.

We had dinner in Memphis’ famous Beale St.  This is the Memphis equivalent to Nashville’s Broadway.  It is the street where blues musicians have traditionally hung out and so is iconic for blues music.  At night there are two blocks of it closed to traffic and the place jumps big time – far too noisy for us, so we did not choose to stay on until late in the night as some others did. 

At dinner there was live music from an African American blues singer/guitarist.  Sitting there on his stool playing away while we ate, he was the epitome of what one imagines as a blues singer – very large and very black but with a great voice and terrific guitar skills.  

Shop window display on Beale St, Memphis.  Is there any doubt that we are in the Bible belt?