Yet another unplanned, theme-based part of the journey. Essentially, we found ourselves doing an musical archeology dig. From Rock & Roll to Country to Soul & Funk, and finally to the Delta Blues. And on top of that, we got some great barbeque.
After Alabama, we thought we'd head toward Memphis, but our good friends Sarah & Ken have JUST moved to Nashville, so we detoured back to the Music City to help them unpack and explore their new hometown. One of our first "dates" was to go to Sarah & Ken's wedding, but as things happen, we haven't seen them more than a handful of times over the last 27 years, so I'll admit we were a bit anxious about feeling like we were imposing on them. Well, we shouldn't have been. The 48 hrs we were there were sort of the conversation that wouldn't end. It was a terrific visit and, as Ken said so beautifully, one we were very very thankful for. Highlights included
Great barbeque at Martin's
A walk (for Joan & Sarah) and a run for Randy at Percy-Warner park near them. It's a huge, hilling park with hiking, biking, & riding trails criss-crossing the whole thing. And, of course, Randy got incredibly lost (it didn't help that most of the locals he met were ALSO lost), but Joan & Sarah were more than happy to fill the time with conversation. (I have this nagging feeling that they wish I'd stayed lost!)
A stroll up and down Broadway in Nashville. Lots of honky tonks with live bands and cowboy boot shops. Think Beale Street for cowboys.
A tour of the Country Music Hall of Fame, which is a great show, but seems to have approximately no blacks. Also, "country" was defined to include not just Elvis, but Taylor Swift, the Eagles, and Los Lobos. Color me confused.
There IS a museum of African American Music, but sadly by the time we found it, it was closed.
Sarah & Ken and their family are all tremendous musicians and really enjoy the outdoors, so I'm sure they'll fit in well in Nashville!
We had a couple days to kill meandering from Nashville to Memphis (only about 200 miles), so we detoured east to the towns of Carthage and Granville (the homes of both Alberts Gore, both senior and junior). Granville, where we camped for the night, is a cute, tiny town on the banks of the Cumberland river. They have bluegrass competitions, a spring festival, and you can tour just about every building in town.
For our second night, we took the backroads through the towns of Leiper's Fork (a bucolic "suburb" with some astoundingly large celebrity homes), Franklin (which a terrific selection of "antique" shops to wander through) and eventually the Merriweather Lewis Campground along the Natchez Trace trail. It's safe to say that we were at our most random, meandering best!
Memphis, TN
Our good friend John grew up in Memphis and so was particularly excited for us to visit his hometown. So much so that he put together an amazing laundry list of sites, neighborhoods, and restaurants to fill the weekend. Highlights included:
Elwood's Shack for a bbq lunch
A tour at Sun Records, the recording home of Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and many others.
The Peabody Hotel, which is fabulously beautiful AND has ducks swimming in the fountain inside the lobby!
Strolled on Beale street, stopping to take in some live Blues and a beer.
Took in a Univ of Memphis basketball game at the FedEx forum (also the home of the Memphis Grizzlies . . . and BTW, the whole of Memphis seems COMPLETELY bonkers about the Grizzlies. There are ads EVERYWHERE. Their dedication makes Warriors fans look pathetic.)
Some great Memphis BBQ at Central BBQ
Got a fabulous tour of Stax Records, home of Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, and Booker T & the MG's among many stars. We were particularly struck by the works of their sister organization, the Soulsville Foundation, especially their Charter school. (it was all we could do to keep Randy from barging in and asking if they needed a substitute!)
Lunch at the Beauty Shop restaurant. (we needed a break from barbeque and Joan had an AMAZING salad). Randy's developing an expertise in fried chicken sandwiches and the judged the Beauty Shop's version "world class".
Walking the Cooper-Young neighborhood and doing some fun thrift shopping.
Dinner at Itta Bena restaurant, above BB King's club on Beale Street. Definitely some high class food!
Visited the Crosstown Concourse. This is a terrific public/private partnership to upgrade and re-use the very old Sears, Roebuck building (which was HUGE) to create a tremendous community space. This was easily Joan's favorite part of Memphis.
Running/Walking several times at Shelby Farms. This is John's favorite running spot in Memphis and it's a great one. Lots of water, animals, a little hill, some terrific trails, and Randy didn't get lost!
Breakfast at Brother Jupiter's. A fabulous finish to our time in Memphis.
That may seem like a lot, but there were actually more bars, restaurants, and neighborhood walks. By the end of our time in Memphis we were exhausted. We'll definitely have to go back.
On Music: Lord knows Randy couldn't carry a tune if it had a handle, so take the following thoughts with a grain of sand. However, it was at Stax that I first started feeling this idea of musical archeology. The Nashville music scene was fun, but despite some really great country, we just had a hard time connecting to a lot of it. There were old tyme country ditties and, well, electric country and if you dug particularly deep you found folk music. Yet the too much of Nashville music was sweet, clean and commercial. If I squinted just right, I could always conjure up that Bo Burnham country music parody song (see here if you've never heard it).
The quote above from the singer/songwriter Chris Stapleton puts the blues at the center of the American musical universe. In Nashville, you get a little of that in people like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, or Dolly Parton. However, in Memphis we got a much better feel for what he meant. Sam & Dave, Booker T & the MG's, Isaac Hayes, or Otis Redding. They just stuck with us. If you don't believe me, try listening to the Isley Brothers "It's your thing" and see what you think. They didn't come from Memphis (Cincinnati, actually), but they grew up singing gospel and then, well, branched out.
Here are some of the pics from Memphis.
The Memphis Civil Rights Museum and the Thought for the Day:
To continue the thread from last time, we continued to mix both "light" and "heavy" experiences. If you're in Memphis, in spite of all the fun and music there is to be had, you have to stop at the Memphis Civil Rights museum. Although it may seem like we've "done" so much Civil Rights studying this month, the museum at the Lorraine motel is special and deserves a big block of time.
In case you don't know, the Lorraine is the hotel where Dr. King was assassinated and it's been turned into a museum of the whole Civil Rights movement. The location in the Lorraine is special and moving, and it serves as a jumping off point to give visitors a thoughtful and detailed overview of the almost everything from Brown v. Board in 1954 through the assassination in 1968. More than anything, it helped us get our heads around the timeline and the emotional journey of those days.
What we kept coming back to though was this. What did we do wrong that it took 90 years after the Civil War for all of this to happen? Maybe it's just as simple as a confluence of people and place -- Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 coinciding with the lives and talents of people like Dr. King, James Farmer, John Lewis, Diane Nash, & Ella Baker. Or maybe it was the advent of television so that white America could finally see the violence that Black America was living with? Or maybe we bungled the end of the Civil War. Or maybe it was all of the above? Whatever the reason, it's hard not to marvel at the energy, emotions, strategies, heroism, and results that, 90 years after the Civil War, ripped through the American consciousness from 1954 to 1969. Was it maybe these decades, and not the Civil War, that marked the beginning of our finally coming to terms with what it takes to be a multi-racial society?
Note from Randy: I particularly loved the section of the museum covering the Freedom Summer. While the effort to teach civil rights resistance and to register voters was a complex and fraught effort, filled with violent clashes with white supremacists, it was the training of the teachers that really struck me. It seems to me that sentiments in the plain black & white document above are just as pertinent today as they were then.
Memphis was a critical piece in the development of Blues, Soul, Funk, and Rock & Roll, but we still had one more layer of music history to dig through. Mississippi and the birthplace of the Blues.
But first, we took a quick trip through what turned out to be our most surprising state, Arkansas. That's next time.
I was fortunate to work on the Stax Record Reunion as a video engineer. Isaac Hayes, Percy Sledge and all of the Booker T and the MG’s were still alive. It was a great event to work in Memphis.