David Meany
Rock and Soul/Memphis Music Hall of Fame - jukebox
As William Faulkner wrote, “The past isn’t dead. It’s not even past.” No truer words could apply to Memphis music. Here, all roads lead to the blues, and the best blues are played by those who learned them as a family tradition.
Blues Music Award winner Cedric Burnside carries on the tradition of his father, R.L. Burnside. Sharde Thomas keeps her late grandfather Othar Turner’s Rising Star Fife and Drum Band marching. Beale Street, of course, offers a smorgasbord of music on any given night, played by a dizzying, shifting lineup of local blues talent. Blind Mississippi Morris, the Rev. John Wilkins, and Earl Banks are among the best, and the Ghost Town Blues Band are among the most successful; but you might stumble across something more primitive, such as the cigar-box guitar playing Johnny Lowebow, or old-timer Zeke Johnson, who played with the late Furry Lewis. And for some live blues with more edge, look no further than Wild Bill’s, where you buy beer by the forty and the dancing gets freaky.
The great Stax Records certainly had a heap of blues in its trademark soul sound. Though the original studio was demolished in the 1980s, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music was built from the original blueprints. Stax Music Academy student bands play throughout the year, even touring internationally, and classic Stax alums like Booker T. Jones or David Porter will instruct or even perform with them. One local band, the MD’s, specializes in the music of Booker T. and the MG’s, and original hitmakers the Bar-Kays still perform nationally, having scored a hit as recently as 2012. The Grammy William Bell earned for his 2016 record, This Is Where I Live, speaks volumes about the continued relevance of Stax. Another case in point: the rise of Southern Avenue, a band who went from winning the International Blues Challenge to being signed to the rejuvenated Stax label in less than a year’s time.
Sun Studio’s success was initially based on its museum as well, but several years ago, Matt Ross-Spang outfitted it with vintage equipment, enhancing its appeal as a working studio. And while Sam Phillips Recording Studio has been run as a studio since it was built in 1960, the death of its visionary head engineer and manager, Roland Janes, prompted a renewed determination to draw new artists. Ross-Spang stepped in at Phillips as well, producing, engineering, and mixing a wide range of projects, including Way Down in the Jungle Room (featuring his remixes of Elvis Presley tracks from 1976).
Another studio celebrates a different kind of Memphis Sound: 1970s power-pop innovators Big Star, a band that found most of its success after breaking up. Ardent Studios, managed by Big Star drummer Jody Stephens, pulls in talents who, among other things, love recording on gear once used by the legendary band. Stephens also plays occasionally with Big Star Third, an all-star ensemble that recreates the original group’s moody swan song album. And, as evidenced by this year’s re-release of Big Star’s Third and Alex Chilton’s A Man Called Destruction, the Ardent vaults continue to yield fresh outtakes for reissues rich with bonus tracks.
As vinyl LPs and analog recording hold their own, other studios dating back to Memphis’ heyday are also keeping things current. The Hi Rhythm Section (most recently heard on Robert Cray’s new album) works largely out of the late, great Willie Mitchell’s Royal Studios, now overseen by his son Boo Mitchell. Since the stunning success of “Uptown Funk,” recorded in its hallowed halls, Royal has received a jumpstart and now encompasses a record label, a radio station app, and a series of shows this summer and fall celebrating its 60th anniversary. One of these will feature the Bo-Keys, Scott Bomar’s longstanding project, equally adept at funky soul instrumentals and backing up classic singers like Percy Wiggins or Don Bryant, who wrote and sang for Hi Records in its heyday.
Boo Mitchell also engineered the new album by the North Mississippi Allstars, Prayer for Peace, a recent Billboard blues chart topper. The Allstars, of course, are the living embodiment of local legacy, Luther and Cody Dickinson being true heirs to the wisdom and talent of their father, producer/musician/writer Jim Dickinson. When not touring, the younger Dickinsons can also be heard with their comrades, under the name Sons of Mudboy. As the moniker implies, they are all fellow progeny of seminal 1970s rockers Mudboy and the Neutrons, whose members included Jim Dickinson, Lee Baker, and Sid Selvidge. The latter’s son, Steve Selvidge, a celebrated guitar-ringer in his own right, can often be heard with the Sons of Mudboy or leading his own band.
Aside from the ongoing influence of the above legends, reunions of older local heroes abound. Depending on your timing, you could catch one-off shows by 1970s and 1980s mavericks like Tav Falco’s Panther Burns or the Klitz, genre-breakers like Human Radio, Snowglobe, or Big Ass Truck, politically edgy rockers like Neighborhood Texture Jam, or garage pioneers like the Oblivians. Indeed, Jack Oblivian can still be heard regularly with his slamming backup group the Sheiks. “The past isn’t dead. It’s not even past.”
Marco Pavé
Which brings us inevitably into the present. Innovators are springing out of the Memphis woodwork these days, most famously in hip hop. Just this year, Marco Pavé may have dropped one of the genre’s most innovative albums. The scene also boasts IMAKEMADBEATS, the mastermind behind the Unapologetic collective. Mining similar sonic and political territory, the Iron Mic Coalition also works jointly. There’s a current crop of producers as well, including Kenneth Wayne Alexander II and Teddy Walton. Of course, the current king of Memphis rap is Yo Gotti. But earlier rappers who put Memphis on the map haven’t disappeared, with Al Kapone, Kingpin Skinny Pimp, Gangsta Pat, and Three 6 Mafia/Da Mafia 6iX still releasing material.
Meanwhile, other modes of sonic power, poetry, and rage are gestating in the city’s garages and clubs, where the spirit of punk is thriving. Goner Records, with its record label and annual Gonerfest, is encouraging newish bands like perennial favorites Aquarian Blood or Nots. Others, like Pezz, forged a staying power in pre-Goner days. But like the blues, punk can refract into a million directions, shading into metal and thrash. Some, like James and the Ultrasounds, may prefer more boogie in their sound. And do we call local kings of the road Lucero country/punk or punk/country? Either way, Ben Nichols’ ever-advancing songwriting always echoes a grittier Memphis.
Singer/songwriters are thriving in the Bluff City. Some are born to the Mid-South, from veterans like Cory Branan, Rob Junkglas, John Kilzer, Paul Taylor, Grace Askew, and Linda Heck, to new faces like Mark Edgar Stuart, Chris Milam, or Julien Baker. Other songwriters, like yours truly, have the Mid-South thrust upon them, including notable transplants Mike Doughty, duo Amy LaVere & Will Sexton, and the trio Deering & Down (featuring Memphis native Doug Easley). Some of our local writers play mostly as leaders of crack bands, such as John Paul Keith, Dan Montgomery, Marcella Simien, Jeremy Scott, Robby Grant, Kelley Anderson, or the indefatigable Graham Winchester, each group plying a unique ensemble chemistry. Some bands are even more tight, sharing songwriting, arrangements, and vocals in a thick musical weave — such as the eight-piece Dead Soldiers, complete with four-part harmonies.
Jamie Harmon
Dead Soldiers
While larger bands tend toward longer jams and instrumental gems, where they take it from there is unpredictable — as with such disparate groups as FreeWorld, Devil Train, Hope Clayburn, or the folksier Bluff City Backsliders. One newcomer to the large band scene, while not as jam-o-centric, is the Love Light Orchestra, whose full horn section backs vocalist John Németh in a tribute to the great soul/blues artists of the 1950s and 1960s.
Though elusive, pockets of jazz can still be found in Memphis. Apart from more ad hoc groups, established bands range from the funkiest little trio in town, the City Champs, to the larger Detective Bureau, to the Mighty Souls Brass Band, who take tuba-driven street parade music in unexpected directions. Most Memphis jazz emphasizes funky grooves over swinging bop, but on the more traditional side there’s the Django Reinhardt-inspired Le Tumulte Noir. On the more experimental side, we have MonoNeon, the avant garde bass virtuoso who can be heard on the internet more than in clubs.
And finally, we have the largest ensemble of them all, the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, which has survived since 1960 against all odds. Classical music has a devoted core following here, even with shifting audience numbers. The MSO (also including the Memphis Symphony Chorus and the MSO Big Band), can range from grandiose thunder to the lightest, swinging-est Duke Ellington jaunt, as it does fluidly every year when accompanying the New Ballet Ensemble’s Nut-Remix, a Memphis-flavored, eclectic take on Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. There are even more adventurous outfits, such as the PRIZM Ensemble and the Blueshift Ensemble, who lean more toward edgier, contemporary chamber music.
Oddly enough, such intense listening veers into the same territory as more experimental Memphis groups, such as Duet for Mellotrons, the light-activated tones of >manualcontrol<, or the local sonic adventurers comprising the newly inaugurated Memphis Concrète Festival. Which, in its own eerie way, may bring all this diversity back full circle, to the lonely atmospherics of solitary blues, played on a diddly-bow broomstick wired to a cabin wall: All of us are haunted by the history.
