Editor’s note: Publications are rife with lists of people who have notched impressive achievements before reaching certain milestone ages. If you miss out on 20 Under 30, you can hold out hope for 40 Under 40. After 40, though, sorry: You’re on your own. And we don’t think you should be. So, this month, we’re spotlighting local notables who are making inspiring contributions to our community — and who happen to be over the age of 70. Because precociousness is great, but so is perspective.
photograph by jamie harmon
A deft singer firmly rooted in jazz, Joyce Cobb will often reel off the jazz greats who’ve emerged from Memphis — Jimmie Lunceford, George Coleman, Phineas Newborn, Jr., Charles Lloyd, etc. — by way of calling out the need for a Memphis Jazz Museum. “My dad was a Kansas City guy and he was into the bebop like Monk, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Stan Getz,” she says. “I grew up with all that and heard it almost daily. So I learned that book.”
“Book,” of course, is jazz lingo for an artist’s repertoire, and Cobb has walked the walk as well as talked the talk. Despite her mastery of both the history and the artistry of jazz, she’s always been stylistically eclectic. That’s only fitting for a singer who first came to Memphis from Nashville to record country music for Stax Records.
“Jim Stewart [co-founder of Stax] was trying to start a subsidiary label for country music called Truth,” says Cobb. “He was far ahead of his game, and wanted to sign me and O.B. McClinton. But during that time, which was [around] 1975, Stax folded and that was the end of that dream for Jim Stewart.”
Nonetheless, after Stax’s demise, Cobb stayed here, becoming a Memphis institution in her own right. As it turned out, she finally did get a hit single, 1979’s “Dig the Gold” on Cream Records, a funky, politically charged jam that borders on Afro-Pop, recorded at the now-legendary Shoe Productions.
“It hit 42 on Billboard and it kind of surprised everybody,” she says. “That was a big deal. I got paid and put a down payment on our house that I’m still living in today. That was the biggest moment I had in the music business, and it was when I realized that you could make money writing songs.”
Yet she mostly wanted to simply perform, and loved being in Memphis. “When I came here, I fell in love with jazz,” she explains. “I fell in love with Phineas and Calvin Newborn and Sidney Kirk and all the old Stax artists who had gone underground. Memphis was kind of bohemian then. I hung out in Midtown, and a lot of liberal people were there, all into music.”
She met WEVL manager Judy Dorsey, who invited her to bring her own LPs to the radio station. “At that time, it was only 10 watts,” she says. “But I enjoyed the fact that you had no program director telling you what to play. Now I’ve had several shows on WEVL for close to 40 years.”
Her radio programs — World Music Dance Party, Voices, and Songs for My Father — as much an institution as her live performances, are marked by eclecticism, and she counts that as one of her greatest strengths. Today, one can still hear her sing every Sunday at Boscos in Overton Square, among other places, drawing on her remarkably broad tastes.
“I had a lot of nurturing in Nashville, hearing pop music and theater and Opryland, where it was show time every day. That made me ready for Memphis,” she reflects. “The way I’ve made a living was by being diverse.”
