LITMIR.BIZ

       1 ‘Why do you come so far?’

       Memphis, TN. Pre-1960

      Unlike many US cities, Memphis has a rich and varied history.¹ Wounded by civil war, it has survived widespread yellow-fever epidemics² and been forced through the reconstruction and reform movements. But Memphis is best known for its music. The city is considered as the ‘Birthplace of the Blues’; it was a major player in the evolution of rock’n’roll and it has long been a hotbed of soul music. Many factors have contributed to the musical history of the city, with its geographical position³ and racial mix being two of major ingredients.

      At the head of the Mississippi delta, as the river runs north to south – from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico – the city of Memphis spreads east from the river’s banks. Its position meant that it picked up a large amount of passing trade from migrating workers and entertainers travelling between Chicago and New Orleans.⁴ With drugs and drink easy to acquire and Beale Street’s thriving back-room gambling culture, the extra ingredient for patrons wanting a little excitement in their lives was sex. Memphis’s burgeoning whorehouse district was one of the only places where black men could sleep with white women. These establishments operated a white man’s curfew. At around two in the morning the whites went home and blacks were allowed in for the rest of the night.

      By the turn of the twentieth century, Memphis had become the murder capital of the United States, even though its population barely exceeded 150,000. The drinking culture of the downtown area coupled with hundreds of gambling rooms created this chilling statistic. At this time the music there was mainly of the rowdy alehouse variety but that soon changed, thanks in large part to a man by the name of W.C. Handy.

      W.C. Handy moved to Clarksdale, Mississippi, just south of Memphis on Highway 61, in 1903. Around Clarksdale were thousands of blacks working the cotton fields in the stifling heat. Their ‘hollers’ in the day and their singing on shantytown porches at night caught the ear of the twenty-year-old who was an accomplished cornet player. Legend has it that while waiting for a train he was transfixed by a young man plucking away at a battered guitar and singing the blues. Two years later he moved to Memphis and was soon a regular player on Beale Street, helping to bring the blues to a wider audience. In 1909 his ‘The Memphis Blues’ became a massive hit: it is credited as being the first blues song actually committed to paper. Handy’s dragging of the blues away from the cotton fields and into places where a white audience could hear them was a major step, changing Beale Street and Memphis forever.

      While liquor and drugs formed an underground economy for much of Memphis’s local government, Beale Street was the only place in the south that allowed the black population to be actively involved in any business ventures, even if most of them were illegal.⁵ For black businessmen the Beale Street region was the financial and social epicentre of the south if not the whole country. Cocaine had spread through western Tennessee when the Coca-Cola company set up a bottling plant nearby and, though cocaine was removed as an active ingredient in 1905, the local dealers had already set up direct links with South America for their supplies.

      The collision (and collusion) of black and white cultures spilled over into music. The 1920s saw a second wave of blues men. Walter ‘Furry’ Lewis (who in 1975 would open for the Rolling Stones in front of fifty thousand people) and ‘Sleepy’ John Estes further entrenched the city as ‘Home of the Blues’ while just down the road Robert Johnson was supposedly making his pact with the devil. The Great Depression was fast approaching but the effects of the still-thriving cotton trade helped to soften the economic burden on Memphis. Prohibition was introduced but the drinking didn’t slow down, it just became less visible.

      Outside the Beale Street area, Memphis was still cut in half by colour restrictions. Most hotels, restaurants, public toilets and cinemas were white only. This was manageable while the blacks were in the minority but a great flood in 1937 meant many thousands of black farm workers lost their homes and moved into the city. World War II boosted the Memphis economy with the building of the Millington Naval Air Station, an Army depot and the Mallory Air Force Depot. The fact that cotton prices rose steeply during wartime also helped the local economy.

      The mayor eventually clamped down on the Beale Street vices, which put many black businessmen out of business or forced them just across the river into West Memphis, which was actually over the state line with Arkansas and out of his jurisdiction. Anyone wanting a night out with an edge to it now had to cross the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge that was built in 1949.

      Much of the music that the night-clubbers crossing the bridge were going to listen to was a new mix of Memphis jazz and blues played on the newly electrified guitars that were becoming more popular. The resultant sounds were christened ‘rhythm and blues’. At the time record labels were still somewhat mystified by the new forms of music and used terms such as ‘race music’, ‘ebony music’ or ‘sepia music’ to define and catalogue the rapidly growing market. Despite the politically incorrect naming of the product, rhythm and blues and its offspring – rock’n’roll – would cross all racial boundaries and sweep young America off its feet.

      This was never more apparent than on Memphis radio. The white owners of the WDIA station, John Pepper and Bert Ferguson, made the earth-shattering decision to change to an all-black play format. It was the first black station in America and ensured that Memphis had a dedicated blues station. Soon after the broadcasts started, a young man by the name of Riley King walked in off the street and asked for a job, which he got, later changing his name to ‘Blues Boy King’ or ‘B.B. King’. He went on to become a blues legend in his own right, with his first chart-topping single, ‘Three O’ Clock Blues’, coming along in 1952. WDIA proved one

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