Any meaningful discussion of American music must devote at least some time to Memphis. “The home of the blues” and “the birthplace of rock-and-roll” are more than just slogans invented to drive tourism — and they barely scratch the surface. From blues to rock-and-roll to gospel to soul to rockabilly to hip-hop to punk, the little city on the Mississippi River bluffs has more than earned its reputation as a music city, a catalyst for sonic creation. By some trick of geography or society, Memphis calls on performers, both transplants and those native to it, to create and innovate. Though there is no shortage of scholarly tomes seeking to examine, in detail, the various permutations Memphis music has taken over the years, from Sun to Stax and back again, one new book, Memphis Mayhem by David Less, takes a wider view, spreading its focus over a century’s worth of Memphis music.
“So much has occurred in Memphis that influenced the world,” Less tells me. “When I started the book, my premise was there were three times that world history hit Memphis and took a turn. Two of those three were based on music, and all three of them were based on race. And once it happened it never came back. History turned and things changed and they never changed back. For that to happen in a small, Southern, sleepy town like Memphis is remarkable.”
As Less tells it, the first instance was when composer and bandleader W.C. Handy notated the blues. The second was Elvis Presley bringing rock-and-roll to a wider audience. “It has to do with race. It was Black music out into the white world. Handy was the first time; Elvis was the second time. The third instance was the assassination of Martin Luther King,” Less says. “It really told the world of the righteousness of what was going on with civil rights. And white America couldn’t ignore it anymore.”
Memphis Blues
The blues were played long before Handy set the style to sheet music. In fact, the blues represents perhaps one of the best examples of the strength of music born of an amalgamation of different cultural traditions. “In the South, the people freed from slavery introduced their African heritages to European-trained musicians and, conversely, learned European-devised musical concepts,” Less writes in Memphis Mayhem.
David Less
Handy’s reworking of his composition “Mr. Crump” into the now-famous number “Memphis Blues” in 1912 is considered by many historians to be the first official publication of blues music. “When he did that, he took what was regional music and brought it to a wider public. That was before phonograph records were a big deal,” Less says. At the time, most households had at least one family member who could play a little piano. And so, in sheafs of sheet music carried by U.S. postal workers, a formerly regional style known as the blues made an entrance into American homes outside of the South.
To Memphis and Delta residents, the blues song structure would likely have been familiar, but to the public at large, the arrival of blues in their homes must have felt like a sea change. Sales of the sheet music of “Memphis Blues” confirm that the song was a commercial success. The prevalence of blues structures as scaffolding for all varieties of songs forever thereafter illustrates the long-lasting cultural effects of Handy’s song and its publication.
“It’s become the bedrock of music that followed,” Less says of the blues. Jazz, rock-and-roll, and even gospel incorporated blues forms, and music the world over has never been the same since.
That’s All Right
In setting up the importance of Elvis Presley in introducing the wider world to rock-and-roll, Less first speaks of WDIA. The Memphis-based radio station helped launch the careers of notable musicians such as B.B. King and Rufus Thomas, who were DJs there, and left an indelible imprint on a young Elvis Presley.
“We had a great disc jockey here in Dewey Phillips,” Less says. “When WDIA in 1949 became a Black station with African-American DJs playing Black music, it really changed everything. You’ve got to remember television wasn’t really a thing in the early ’50s. It was there, but it wasn’t ubiquitous in the way it is now.
“I quote Larry Raspberry, a great Memphis musician and a really smart guy, and he refers to Elvis as the tributary of Black music into white America,” Less says. “When Elvis came and told them it was okay, it opened their eyes.”
The author invites me to compare Presley’s arrangement of Big Mama Thornton’s hit “Hound Dog” to, for example, Patti Page’s take on Bob Merrill’s “(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?” The contrast could hardly be more stark. Though both songs are about dogs, at least ostensibly, and both are rooted in folk traditions, the similarities seem to end there. Page’s version is a waltz. Presley’s “Hound Dog,” released just three years later, features bass and drums, electric guitar, and a toe-tapping 4/4 beat. If one had to pick a song to soundtrack a dance, the choice, it would seem, is clear.
“The Sun records broke out, but they didn’t break out in the way that he did when he went to RCA,” Less continues. “It changed things not only in America but overseas as well. Keith Richards and those guys talk about hearing Elvis and it changing their lives. John Lennon said no Elvis, no Beatles.”
Memphis Soul Stew
Less devotes time and pages to a wider range than space allows discussion of here. And he does not constrain himself to a linear telling of the ongoing saga of Memphis music. Memphis Mayhem is not a history, its author reminds me over the phone — and again and again on the pages. Less weaves a delightful narrative made all the more interesting by its winding ways, unconstrained by chronology. Though Memphis Mayhem is remarkably well researched, it is clear that, for all his professional bona fides, Less is as much an avid fan of Memphis music as any tourist to Sun Studio or the Stax Museum or up-and-coming band reveling in the history as they cut their first track at Royal Studios or Sam Phillips Recording Studio.
“The story of music in Memphis is full of intersecting moments and the subsequent developments. There are heroes and bystanders, villains and victims, country bumpkins and slick confidence men in a cast of characters that defines the independent spirit,” the author writes in Memphis Mayhem. “Memphis is not a company town. It’s a place where there are independent labels and independent artists. Independence is really a big part of how musicians make the music,” Less says.
That Memphis-brand independent spirit certainly owes some thanks to the Bluff City’s status as a crossroads, a place of intersecting identities. It is a place where city and country folks, white and Black musicians, the devout and the salacious live together. That, Less argues, more than anything else contributed to Memphis’ status as one of the most important incubators for American music. “While many of the instruments and techniques of African-American music have a direct link to Africa, the music itself emerged from age-old African and European traditions as they endured in the United States,” Less writes. The story of the blues — and of American music on a grander scale — is the story of cultural exchange. Of European musical scales played over African rhythms, of ballads and call-and-response songs. For many years, Memphis was a focal point of that exchange.
“Certainly Memphis had always been a place that people came to shop and spend money, from Arkansas and Mississippi and even Missouri. It was always a center for entertainment,” Less explains. “People would come here, and they would sell their wares. So they had money and they wanted to be entertained. Memphis was the center for all that. The country mouse came to town and often left with little. They’d sell their stuff and leave with little left, but had a good time.” The Bluff City was a hub city long before FedEx, and that helped to make it a place where ideas were exchanged, where the “country mice” come for entertainment, and where there was usually work for musicians.
Memphis in the Meantime
Because they’re two focal points of Memphis Mayhem, much focus has been devoted here to Handy and Presley, but Less’ story is broader. The Box Tops, Hi Records, Carla Thomas, Booker T. & the M.G.’s, Jim Dickinson, The Well, the music program at Manassas High School, the Plantation Inn in West Memphis — Less weaves a tapestry that shows off seemingly disparate threads of the Memphis music scene. While excellent histories of Stax, Sun, and other Memphis institutions exist, Memphis Mayhem shines brightest when it gives readers a bird’s-eye view of the river city and its long and ongoing history as a music town.
“I think it’s a misconception to think that Memphis music is a history. I think there’s great music still being made. It’s part of the culture, part of the DNA of the city,” Less concludes. “It’s not a completed history. It’s an ongoing process.”
