I've discovered a fantastic book about the weird rock music scene in Memphis in the 1960s & 70s. It's called "It Came from Memphis" (1995) by Robert Gordon, a Memphian. It has an introduction by Peter Guralnick and features lengthy interview excerpts with the late great Memphis singer/guitarist & songwriter Alex Chilton (The Box Tops, Big Star).
Dig this grisly little taste, from Gordon's description of a bizarre mid-1970s cinema verite-style documentary called "Stranded in Canton," mostly shot in Memphis. It describes a scene in which a pair of circus geeks square off in a chickenhead-biting contest on the streets of New Orleans:
"The disappointing part of seeing a human being bite the head off a live chicken is the ease with which the chicken's neck disengages from its body. Geeks don't so much 'bite' the head off as, with the chicken's head in their mouth, they pull the head and neck loose, kind of like sucking your thumb but yanking it all the way off."
Now that's what I call journalism you can use. God, I miss the weirdness of the South sometimes.
Showing posts with label Memphis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Memphis. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Stax soul, Dream Boogie & a Memphis Boy: the Muse gets inspired
A devotee of both pop culture & highbrow art, your friendly neighborhood Muse of the Weird can find inspiration almost anywhere. I got enough thrills this week to last about a month - at a movie & pair of museums, no less. I'll try to translate my enthusiasm into entertaining, web-text for the Attention Deficit Generation.
The Stax Museum of American Soul Music (SMASM) sits grandly on McLemore Avenue in a rundown part of Memphis - bluesman Memphis Slim's old home is a crumbling ruin just across College Street. Sadly, Soulsville USA has become yet another struggling Mississippi River city attempting to re-brand itself (justifiably) as the Birthplace of Rock 'n' Roll. Located adjacent to a new music academy for high schoolers, SMASM treats visitors to a wealth of memorabilia & interpretive info about soul music, a worthy complement to 1960s rock 'n' roll & pop. Soul artists like Ray Charles & James Brown clogged the R&B charts as well as the pop hit parade with innovative songs circa 1959 to the early '70s.
After a brief introductory film, I was captivated by SMASM's initial exhibit: an evocation of a Sunday gospel service using weathered wooden slats, pews & the granite cornerstone (dated 1906) salvaged from Hoopers Chapel (TN) A.M.E. church, along with videos of preachers, singers & celebrants moved by the spirit to dance & shout. Gospel music, of course, provided the foundation for country music as well as the soul sound. Several important artists, including Sam Cooke & Aretha Franklin, crossed over from sanctified singing to soul stardom. If secular blues is the devil's music, as the old taboo would have it, then you can book my ticket to Hell right now.
While covering the notable work of such Memphis labels as Hi & Goldwax, with nods to Motown & other out-of-towners, SMASM focuses on the unlikely story of Stax/Volt Records, established & operated (along with the Satellite Records shop) by an unmusical white brother & sister. Jim Stewart & Estelle Axon had the good sense to hire a loyal bunch of talented Memphians, including writer/producer (later performer & so-called savior) Isaac Hayes. Even when forced to use crude 2-track tape recorders in a renovated movie theater, Stax's resourceful studio staff managed to produce some of the most unforgettable wax tracks ever made.
Booker T & the MGs, a harmoniously integrated group (2 whites & 2 blacks), made irresistible dance music ("Green Onions," "Time is Tight," etc.) that facilitated the death of segregation in the South. This instrumental group (which John Lennon satirized as "Book a table & the maitre D's") was the Stax house band, backing such stars as Sam & Dave and the overpowering Otis Redding, whose untimely death in a Madison (WI) plane crash in 1967 foreshadowed the demise of Stax half a decade later. In the replica Stax studio room, you can get within inches of Booker T. Jones's Hammond M-3 organ, Andrew Love's baritone sax, Al Jackson Jr.'s drumkit, Duck Dunn's bass & Steve Cropper's Fender Telecaster.
Sensory overload looms along every corridor as records play, producers reminisce, gold records shine & Tina Turner's slinky mini-dress & stage shoes beckon. Videos of '70s Soul Train TV dancers, projected on a large wraparound screen, invite you to find your own groove on a polished dance floor. It was a time of black pride & nearly universal appreciation. The ecstatic crowds attending Stax's revue tour of Europe in 1966 simply blew the musicians' minds.
Back home, Stax artists ruled the streets of Memphis. As funky Rufus Thomas bluntly put it: "If you were black for one night on Beale Street, you never would want to be white anymore." As proof of soul music's enduring popularity, I needed look no further than the Sarratt Cinema on the Vanderbilt University campus Wednesday night (Feb. 10): a packed house attended the "Sam Cooke: Legend" documentary, introduced by writer-in-residence Peter Guralnick, author of "Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke," a detailed biography by a master interviewer & fine prose stylist.
The Musicians Hall of Fame & Museum (MHFM), in contrast to SMASM, awaits a merciless wrecking ball in shining downtown Nashville, alias Music City USA. A poor stepchild of the nearby Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum, MHFM has the misfortune to be located on the footprint of the city's controversial new convention center. It is stuffed with equally riveting items donated by members of such legendary studio collectives as the Nashville A Team, the Memphis Boys, Detroit's Funk Brothers & LA's Wrecking Crew. Those gentlemen played on too many great country, pop & rock records to mention. I had the good fortune to shake hands with humble 70ish drummer Gene Chrisman, who was wearing his Memphis Boys jacket as he strolled with his family inspecting the exhibits, including a snare drum he'd autographed.
I learned that Gene Chrisman played on the first 45-rpm record I ever bought, Elvis Presley's 1969 hit "In the Ghetto" (written by Mac Davis) as well as on one of my favorite blue-eyed soul/pop tunes of all time, the Box Tops' "Cry Like a Baby" (1968; by teen-aged genius singer/songwriter Alex Chilton). Even as the MHFM's director, another fella named Joe, handed out trophies & medallions to the likes of DJ Fontana, Elvis' drummer for 14 years, a different kid of wrecking crew was busy demolishing the building next door. "It's a damn shame they're tearing it down," DJ said in his brief acceptance speech, referring to the MHFM.
Amen, brother. Even the greatest musicians are too often relegated to the shadows cast by big stars.
The Stax Museum of American Soul Music (SMASM) sits grandly on McLemore Avenue in a rundown part of Memphis - bluesman Memphis Slim's old home is a crumbling ruin just across College Street. Sadly, Soulsville USA has become yet another struggling Mississippi River city attempting to re-brand itself (justifiably) as the Birthplace of Rock 'n' Roll. Located adjacent to a new music academy for high schoolers, SMASM treats visitors to a wealth of memorabilia & interpretive info about soul music, a worthy complement to 1960s rock 'n' roll & pop. Soul artists like Ray Charles & James Brown clogged the R&B charts as well as the pop hit parade with innovative songs circa 1959 to the early '70s.
After a brief introductory film, I was captivated by SMASM's initial exhibit: an evocation of a Sunday gospel service using weathered wooden slats, pews & the granite cornerstone (dated 1906) salvaged from Hoopers Chapel (TN) A.M.E. church, along with videos of preachers, singers & celebrants moved by the spirit to dance & shout. Gospel music, of course, provided the foundation for country music as well as the soul sound. Several important artists, including Sam Cooke & Aretha Franklin, crossed over from sanctified singing to soul stardom. If secular blues is the devil's music, as the old taboo would have it, then you can book my ticket to Hell right now.
While covering the notable work of such Memphis labels as Hi & Goldwax, with nods to Motown & other out-of-towners, SMASM focuses on the unlikely story of Stax/Volt Records, established & operated (along with the Satellite Records shop) by an unmusical white brother & sister. Jim Stewart & Estelle Axon had the good sense to hire a loyal bunch of talented Memphians, including writer/producer (later performer & so-called savior) Isaac Hayes. Even when forced to use crude 2-track tape recorders in a renovated movie theater, Stax's resourceful studio staff managed to produce some of the most unforgettable wax tracks ever made.
Booker T & the MGs, a harmoniously integrated group (2 whites & 2 blacks), made irresistible dance music ("Green Onions," "Time is Tight," etc.) that facilitated the death of segregation in the South. This instrumental group (which John Lennon satirized as "Book a table & the maitre D's") was the Stax house band, backing such stars as Sam & Dave and the overpowering Otis Redding, whose untimely death in a Madison (WI) plane crash in 1967 foreshadowed the demise of Stax half a decade later. In the replica Stax studio room, you can get within inches of Booker T. Jones's Hammond M-3 organ, Andrew Love's baritone sax, Al Jackson Jr.'s drumkit, Duck Dunn's bass & Steve Cropper's Fender Telecaster.
Sensory overload looms along every corridor as records play, producers reminisce, gold records shine & Tina Turner's slinky mini-dress & stage shoes beckon. Videos of '70s Soul Train TV dancers, projected on a large wraparound screen, invite you to find your own groove on a polished dance floor. It was a time of black pride & nearly universal appreciation. The ecstatic crowds attending Stax's revue tour of Europe in 1966 simply blew the musicians' minds.
Back home, Stax artists ruled the streets of Memphis. As funky Rufus Thomas bluntly put it: "If you were black for one night on Beale Street, you never would want to be white anymore." As proof of soul music's enduring popularity, I needed look no further than the Sarratt Cinema on the Vanderbilt University campus Wednesday night (Feb. 10): a packed house attended the "Sam Cooke: Legend" documentary, introduced by writer-in-residence Peter Guralnick, author of "Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke," a detailed biography by a master interviewer & fine prose stylist.
The Musicians Hall of Fame & Museum (MHFM), in contrast to SMASM, awaits a merciless wrecking ball in shining downtown Nashville, alias Music City USA. A poor stepchild of the nearby Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum, MHFM has the misfortune to be located on the footprint of the city's controversial new convention center. It is stuffed with equally riveting items donated by members of such legendary studio collectives as the Nashville A Team, the Memphis Boys, Detroit's Funk Brothers & LA's Wrecking Crew. Those gentlemen played on too many great country, pop & rock records to mention. I had the good fortune to shake hands with humble 70ish drummer Gene Chrisman, who was wearing his Memphis Boys jacket as he strolled with his family inspecting the exhibits, including a snare drum he'd autographed.
I learned that Gene Chrisman played on the first 45-rpm record I ever bought, Elvis Presley's 1969 hit "In the Ghetto" (written by Mac Davis) as well as on one of my favorite blue-eyed soul/pop tunes of all time, the Box Tops' "Cry Like a Baby" (1968; by teen-aged genius singer/songwriter Alex Chilton). Even as the MHFM's director, another fella named Joe, handed out trophies & medallions to the likes of DJ Fontana, Elvis' drummer for 14 years, a different kid of wrecking crew was busy demolishing the building next door. "It's a damn shame they're tearing it down," DJ said in his brief acceptance speech, referring to the MHFM.
Amen, brother. Even the greatest musicians are too often relegated to the shadows cast by big stars.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Black Power! Vietnam vets exhibit at the NCRM in Memphis
After following the "Music Highway" stretch of I-40 from Nashville to Memphis this weekend, I visited the National Civil Rights Museum (NCRM), located at the old Lorraine Motel near downtown Soulsville USA. My favorite exhibit was not the permanently displayed assassination paraphernalia (eerily placed in the former rooming house where Ray fired the fatal shot at Dr. King on April 4, 1968), but rather the NCRM's moving temporary exhibit about the bitter experiences of African-American veterans who served in large numbers in Vietnam from 1965 to 1973.
I learned so much in that single small room, laid out around a recreated "hootch" (i.e. hut where soldiers bivouaced awaiting combat, from the Japanese "uchi" or house). For example:
* I dug the video demonstrations (from file footage & vet testimony) of "dapping," a complex system of hand/fist touch-signals used by black soldiers to communicate such information as how long they'd been on patrol & how many assaults they'd endured.
* Mau Mau was a black nationalist organization established on U.S. military bases in West Germany (including the Heidelberg Army HQ where I was born) in the 1960s, which quickly spread to 'Nam; a few black-red-green MM-type flags - rich in war & peace symbolism, some featuring Swahili slogans - were on display, along with several photos & filmclips of troops giving the black-power salute, occasionally alongside sheepish white guys trying to look hip to the brothers.
* Civil-rights hero & Nashville native Julian Bond authored an anti-war comic book called "Vietnam" (with stylish illustrations by T.G. Lewis) at age 27 in 1967 while appealing his expulsion from the Georgia House of Representatives for opposing the war & the military draft; he was ultimately exonerated by the United States Supreme Court (see Bond v. Floyd, 385 U.S. 116), which ruled that the state legislature had violated Bond's free-speech rights by refusing to seat him.
* NAACP attorney (later U.S. Supreme Court Justice) Thurgood Marshall attended Pres. Truman's ceremonial signing of Executive Order No. 9981, ordering desegregation of the Armed Forces, in May 1948; Marchall stands tall & dignified as ever behind the beaming but seated "Buck-stops-here" Harry with an expression that conveys both well-deserved pride & appropriate skepticism.
* Pres. Lyndon Johnson, in cahoots with then-warmonger/Defense Sec. Robert McNamara, authorized "Project 100,000" in 1966, lowering the Armed Forces' qualification standards so as to instantly raise available troop levels, i.e. to summon more cannon fodder for LBJ's Vietnam Disaster.
* The Selective Service System suspiciously issued Orders to Report for Induction even to 26-year-old activists with student deferments who dared to drop out of school in order to work for civil rights in the South; sometimes SSS induction orders were sent in clusters to black neighborhoods.
* African-Americans suffered about 40% of the combat casualties in Vietnam, despite comprising just 10% of the U.S. population at the time.
* The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) officially came out against the Vietnam War in 1966; Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. followed in 1967, upsetting even Bobby Kennedy, who didn't dare publicly oppose the war until early 1968.
* Wallace Terry, a journalist who covered the war up close as Time magazine's Saigon bureau chief starting in 1967, wrote a classic book called "Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War," which focuses on African-American combat troops; in 1957, at age 19, Terry disguised himself as a waiter in order to get an interview with Arkansas' segregationist Gov. Orville Faubus - the story caused a sensation when it hit the front page of the NY Times.
Perhaps the most moving items at that NCRM exhibit, however, were a pair of telegrams sent by the Dept. of Defense to the family of sailor Leroy Mudd in 1970: the first, dated June 29, states (in cold bureaucratic, typo-riddled language) that Mudd was missing & presumed drowned after diving into a river in pursuit of a football that had gone overboard; the second, dated July 1, notes that Mudd's body had been recovered, adding that the government would pay up to $500 to cover any private burial costs. Mudd, 18, had only been in 'Nam for a few months.
"Afghanistan," as I like to remind friends with whom I correspond through the U.S. Postal Service, nearly rhymes with "Vietnam." The Masters of War just can't seem to inflict enough violence & mayhem on humanity. Sorry, Bob - your 1963 protest song has fallen on too many deaf ears, even all these years after the Cold War ended.
I learned so much in that single small room, laid out around a recreated "hootch" (i.e. hut where soldiers bivouaced awaiting combat, from the Japanese "uchi" or house). For example:
* I dug the video demonstrations (from file footage & vet testimony) of "dapping," a complex system of hand/fist touch-signals used by black soldiers to communicate such information as how long they'd been on patrol & how many assaults they'd endured.
* Mau Mau was a black nationalist organization established on U.S. military bases in West Germany (including the Heidelberg Army HQ where I was born) in the 1960s, which quickly spread to 'Nam; a few black-red-green MM-type flags - rich in war & peace symbolism, some featuring Swahili slogans - were on display, along with several photos & filmclips of troops giving the black-power salute, occasionally alongside sheepish white guys trying to look hip to the brothers.
* Civil-rights hero & Nashville native Julian Bond authored an anti-war comic book called "Vietnam" (with stylish illustrations by T.G. Lewis) at age 27 in 1967 while appealing his expulsion from the Georgia House of Representatives for opposing the war & the military draft; he was ultimately exonerated by the United States Supreme Court (see Bond v. Floyd, 385 U.S. 116), which ruled that the state legislature had violated Bond's free-speech rights by refusing to seat him.
* NAACP attorney (later U.S. Supreme Court Justice) Thurgood Marshall attended Pres. Truman's ceremonial signing of Executive Order No. 9981, ordering desegregation of the Armed Forces, in May 1948; Marchall stands tall & dignified as ever behind the beaming but seated "Buck-stops-here" Harry with an expression that conveys both well-deserved pride & appropriate skepticism.
* Pres. Lyndon Johnson, in cahoots with then-warmonger/Defense Sec. Robert McNamara, authorized "Project 100,000" in 1966, lowering the Armed Forces' qualification standards so as to instantly raise available troop levels, i.e. to summon more cannon fodder for LBJ's Vietnam Disaster.
* The Selective Service System suspiciously issued Orders to Report for Induction even to 26-year-old activists with student deferments who dared to drop out of school in order to work for civil rights in the South; sometimes SSS induction orders were sent in clusters to black neighborhoods.
* African-Americans suffered about 40% of the combat casualties in Vietnam, despite comprising just 10% of the U.S. population at the time.
* The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) officially came out against the Vietnam War in 1966; Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. followed in 1967, upsetting even Bobby Kennedy, who didn't dare publicly oppose the war until early 1968.
* Wallace Terry, a journalist who covered the war up close as Time magazine's Saigon bureau chief starting in 1967, wrote a classic book called "Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War," which focuses on African-American combat troops; in 1957, at age 19, Terry disguised himself as a waiter in order to get an interview with Arkansas' segregationist Gov. Orville Faubus - the story caused a sensation when it hit the front page of the NY Times.
Perhaps the most moving items at that NCRM exhibit, however, were a pair of telegrams sent by the Dept. of Defense to the family of sailor Leroy Mudd in 1970: the first, dated June 29, states (in cold bureaucratic, typo-riddled language) that Mudd was missing & presumed drowned after diving into a river in pursuit of a football that had gone overboard; the second, dated July 1, notes that Mudd's body had been recovered, adding that the government would pay up to $500 to cover any private burial costs. Mudd, 18, had only been in 'Nam for a few months.
"Afghanistan," as I like to remind friends with whom I correspond through the U.S. Postal Service, nearly rhymes with "Vietnam." The Masters of War just can't seem to inflict enough violence & mayhem on humanity. Sorry, Bob - your 1963 protest song has fallen on too many deaf ears, even all these years after the Cold War ended.
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