Planning to visit Memphis for some music? Then now would be a good time. For this year marks the 50th anniversary of one of this musical city’s most famous exports — the hand-clapping, finger-clicking, foot-stomping, get down y’all music of Stax records.

Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Eddie Floyd, William Bell, Booker T, the Staple Singers and scores of other great black music acts cut their classic songs at the label’s studio, a convertred cinema in McLemore Avenue.

When the company went belly up in the late Seventies the studio was sold and worse still, demolished in the late 1990's. But the continuing worldwide appeal of the music showed that Stax still meant something to a very large number of people. An exact replica of the studio was rebuilt and turned into Soullville USA, the Stax museum of American Soul. Now comes the news that Concord Music Group, the current owners of the Stax catalogue plan to reactivate the label with “a slate of new signings”, including soul singer Angie Stone and Isaac Hayes, one of the label’s most famous and successful sons.

There are also going to be a host of special events in the city to mark the anniversary.

But the city’s most famous thoroughfare, remains Beale Street. “I’d rather be in Beale Street than any place I know,” wrote W.C. Handy, the father of the blues, in Beale Street Blues, one of his most famous compositions. In recent years however, it’s become a shadow of the pulsating, open-all-hours music hub it was in the days when young and eager stars such as B.B. King, Johnny Ace and Bobby “Blue” Bland called themselves the Beale Streeters and performed there nightly.

One local guide book claims it’s now better known for “overpriced drinks, mediocre food and a generally idiotic, drunken crowd”. But B.B. King’s Blues Club still offers some greats nights of live music. Sessions by acclaimed Memphis blues guitarist and vocalist Preston Shannon are a regular higlight.

Nearby at the Rum Boogie Cafe, James Govan and the Boogie Blues Band have been the resident band since 1994 and have cut a couple of live albums at the club. A quick visit to the club last year found them in good form in front of a strong crowd.

Things are changing though. A $52 million entertainment project based in Beale Street called Lee’s Landing, including a 202-room hotel with a top floor fitted out with oversized rooms for professional basketball players and a Ground Zero Blues Club is due to open this year. “People want to hear the real Delta blues, and we’re going to offer that,” said Bill Luckett, a co-owner with actor Morgan Freeman, of the original Ground Zero in Clarksdale.

Anyone going to Beale Street also needs to visit Schwab’s Dry Goods Store. It’s been a Memphis landmark since the 1890s when it opened with the motto: “If you can’t find it at Schwab’s, you don’t need it.” Walking in today and it’s as if things haven’t changed much since then. You can buy everything from a washboard to voodoo herbs. When Muddy Waters sang about “John the Conqueror root”, he probably bought his supplies here.

And finally, for those desperate to go to Memphis to tread the boards where Elvis, Otis Redding and Al Green once performed — the advice is don’t.

According to Kreature Comforts, the best-informed guide to all things musical in the city, the situation has become “intolerably bad” lately. “We cannot count the number of times some Johnny Winter wannabe has ruined a pleasant evening of music by inviting himself up on stage,” claim the magazine’s editors. “While you may think it’s fun, it is so only for you.”

www.soulsvilleusa.com
www.oncordmusicgroup.com
www.memphis.bbkingclubs.com
www.rumboogie.com
www.memphisrocktour.com/kreature_comforts.php

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