History,  Music,  North America,  Photography,  Tennessee,  USA,  World food

Walking In Memphis, Singing The Blues

May 7, 2024 /

“Hey guys, how you doin’”, calls the guy on the corner of Beale Street as we wander out to explore Memphis for the first time. “Well”, he continues when we tell him we’ve just arrived, “Memphis is about four things. There’s barbecue, there’s the blues, there’s Elvis Presley and there’s Martin Luther King”. Interesting that he says barbecue first.

Beale Street in Memphis Tennessee
The home of the Blues

You know, when learning about a new place on our travels, we often feel as if we’re unravelling history to piece together what has made that town or city what it is today. Memphis is to turn out to be the exact opposite: our time here is all about learning that the different stories and different people, the significant changes and momentous events, are all so entwined as to all be part of the same story. It’s fascinating, if complex, to put it all together.

Blues bars in Beale Street in Memphis Tennessee
Beale Street Memphis

Such is the huge context of the Memphis story, the times around the 1950s and 1960s, the Civil Rights movement, the unjust times of the Jim Crow laws, that it would be banal for a couple of amateur travel bloggers to try and squeeze it all into one post, but we can at least try to convey what we’ve learned here. And how those stories and histories are ingredients in the same melting pot.

Trolley in Memphis Tennessee
Trolley Interior
Elvis Presley statue in Memphis Tennessee
Elvis statue, Downtown Memphis

Like the guy on the corner, let’s deal with the barbecue first. Ask for recommendations here and you’ll most likely get the response that such things are pointless when “we got over a hundred great barbecue restaurants”. Indeed, the Barbecue World Championships are held here annually; what’s more, so are the Chicken Wing World Championships and the Rib World Championships. Didn’t know there were such things? No, nor did we.

BBQ food in Beale Street in Memphis Tennessee
BBQ food Beale Street in Memphis Tennessee
Steak in Beale Street in Memphis Tennessee
Fried pickles in Beale Street in Memphis Tennessee
Memphis BBQ’s

Whether we eat on Beale Street, elsewhere in Midtown or Downtown, the compliments are justified, this is exceptionally good barbecue food. It is absolutely all about the meat – side dishes are just token gestures. Pork ribs are so, so tender that they start to fall off the bone if you so much as look at them: put a knife in your hand and the meat makes the journey from bone to mouth all on its own. It’s THAT tender. Well nearly. The barbecue coating is sticky, spicy, sweet and smoky all in one go – simply great food. Just when we think we’ve already hit the jackpot, we eat at Central….and it just goes from heavenly to sublime.

Central BBQ in Memphis Tennessee
Central BBQ in Memphis Tennessee
Central BBQ in Memphis Tennessee
Central BBQ in Memphis Tennessee
Central BBQ, Memphis

Anyway, on to the more serious stuff as we go through that process of finding just how the stories and histories of Memphis all merge into one. The city is rich with places to study the past: the vibrant Beale Street which is the designated “home of the blues”, Sun Studios where a teenage Elvis made his first demo and started the journey towards immortality, the Rock’n’Soul Museum, the Stax museum and the Civil Rights museum to name but a few – as well as the theatres and street memorials each contributing another piece to the story. And, of course, there’s Graceland.

Arcade restaurant in Memphis Tennessee
Arcade restaurant in Memphis Tennessee
The Arcade, one of Elvis’s favourites

Arcade restaurant in Memphis Tennessee, Oldest cafe in Memphis
Inside the Arcade
Arcade restaurant in Memphis Tennessee, Oldest cafe in Memphis
Elvis Presley sat here in Arcade restaurant in Memphis Tennessee, Oldest cafe in Memphis
Elvis in the Arcade

1950s in the southern US states was a time when segregation was the norm, operating under the auspices of the notorious Jim Crow laws which effectively forbade any crossover between the lives of whites and non-whites. The mantra of the Jim Crow years was “separate but equal”, borne out of the belief that whites and non-whites should be segregated in everything: not just education, but transport, restaurants, cafes, cinemas…..you name it, it was one for whites and one for “coloureds”, to use the words of the time.

Beale Street in Memphis Tennessee
Beale Street

It was separate and it was segregated but it sure as hell wasn’t equal. The 50s rumbled with the discontent which was to explode in the 60s. Out in the cotton fields and plantations, labour was poorly paid and badly treated, still tied to employers six decades after the abolition of slavery. Realistically unable to leave the plantation, workers were forced to obtain essential supplies, including clothing, from shops owned by the plantation, so amassing debts so large that leaving the employment was all but impossible.

A Schwab, oldest shop in Beale street Tennessee
Oldest shop on Beale Street

Two music genres collided in the cotton fields as the country music of the white population met with the black peoples’ gospel music. As more and more machinery was introduced to the harvesting process, so workers became dispensable and migrated in huge numbers from rural settings to cities in search of work. When they arrived in Memphis, the melancholy of blues music had already taken root, especially in Beale Street, where the strumming of guitars wiled away the day and lyrics reflected the challenging and downbeat lifestyles.

Beale street bars and guitars, Memphis Tennessee
Beale street bars and guitars, Memphis Tennessee
Beale street bars and guitars, Memphis Tennessee

Inside the Blues bars of Beale Street

Now, there are suddenly three music styles which clash: gospel, country and the blues, and, as a mural in Central Barbecue puts it….. 

“The blues had a baby and named it rock’n’roll”

The Sun Studios tour is absolutely excellent and completely awe inspiring to stand in the spot where, truly, rock’n’roll was born – in fact, arguably the point where the course of music history was altered and everything I came to love in the world of music began. We learn how Sam Phillips, boss of Sun, first rejected the young Elvis and how his assistant, Marion Keisker, saw something special and kept a note of his name.

Sun Studio in Memphis Tennessee
Where it all began
Sun Studio in Memphis Tennessee
Sun Studio in Memphis Tennessee
Sun Studios

We hear Elvis’s first ever demo, followed by the first ever single, “That’s All Right”, and a wonderful recording of Elvis and his two fellow band members, Scotty Moore and Bill Black, jamming in the studio unaware that the mikes were still on. Fabulous.

Sun Studio in Memphis Tennessee

Sun Studio in Memphis Tennessee
Inside Sun Studios

Possibly most inspiring of all was learning just how far ahead of his time Sam Phillips was – perhaps that’s why he was open to discovering such talents as Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Rufus Thomas as well as The King himself and many other famous names. Phillips was a rarity: a man who created a recording studio open equally to black and white artists, setting up the world’s first all female radio station and flying right in the face of the Jim Crow laws by promoting bands of mixed race. “It can’t be done”, was one narrator’s comment on hearing that Booker T & the MGs had both black and white members.

Sun Studio in Memphis Tennessee
Inside Sun Studios
Sun Studio in Memphis Tennessee
Sun Studio in Memphis Tennessee
Inside Sun Studios

Phillips was obviously a proper pioneer, arguably the Godfather of everything that transpired in the story of rock. 

Yet rock’n’roll wasn’t the only child of the fusion of the three genres and before long soul music was growing in the same city from the same sources. Whilst Detroit was giving birth to the polished sounds of Motown, Memphis and in particular the Stax record label was creating a more earthy, raw soul sound more closely linked to its roots. 

Stax in Memphis Tennessee
Stax in Memphis Tennessee
Stax in Memphis Tennessee

Stax Museum

Isaac Hayes gold plated car, Stax in Memphis Tennessee
Isaac Hayes’ gold plated Cadillac
Discs Stax in Memphis Tennessee
Stax discs

Again, tours of both Stax and the Rock and Soul museum are fascinating and informative, especially the videos of stars reminiscing and describing just what it was like to be part of the start of something so special, so new. An era of music history which by definition can never be replicated.

Beale Street Memphis Tennessee
Beale Street
Beale Street Memphis Tennessee
Beale Street Memphis Tennessee

And so back to Beale Street, home of the blues, birthplace of the blues. Beale Street isn’t a tourist gimmick even though nowadays it’s a destination : this was genuinely where musicians sat and played, wrote lyrics reflecting their challenging lifestyles and their sorrows and trials as well as their everyday events, long before blues was known to the rest of the world. It was soon to become the place to be for any aspiring blues musician. 

Beale Street Memphis Tennessee
Beale Street Memphis Tennessee
Beale Street Memphis Tennessee
Beale Street Memphis Tennessee
Beale Street Memphis Tennessee

The neon signs of Beale Street

Less manic than Bourbon Street and nowhere near as sleazy, Beale Street is all about the music, and still mostly about the blues. Choose any bar and lose yourself in the atmosphere, down local beers and swoon over the barbecued meat, get into the groove and dance the night away in BB King’s bar. We do it all.

BB King’s Club, Beale Street Memphis Tennessee
BB King’s Club, Beale Street Memphis Tennessee

BB Kings Blues Club, Beale Street

Beale Street Memphis Tennessee
Beale Street

And of course we visit Graceland, home of the King, and the Civil Rights Museum. Two very different places but, as we said at the outset, chapters in the same story rather than isolated tales.

More on Memphis to come….

Sunset in Beale Street Memphis Tennessee
Sunset in Beale Street Memphis Tennessee
Sunset on Beale Street

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