Memphis One: More About Memphis

Attractions, News, What to Do

The Peabody - Memphis

Peabody Marching Ducks
There are a series of 3 videos of the ducks out for their daily stroll!

Marc Cohn sings "Walkin' in Memphis", one of the more than 1,000 songs with the name "Memphis" in the title or in the lyrics.

Cher's version of Walkin' in Memphis

Map - Sun Records, Stax, Graceland

SOULSVILLE, USA - A bustling neighborhood where Aretha Franklin was born, where Al Green recorded his 1970s super hits at Willie Mitchell's Royal Studios. It is also the location of a little ole record shop that turned into Stax Records, where in 1959, the face of music was changed forever. Stax launched the careers of Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Booker T and the M.G.s, Sam and Dave, Rufus and Carla Thomas, the Bar-Kays, Johnnie Taylor, Isaac Hayes, the Staple Singers, and many others.

Tour the museum online, and then visit in person. It truly is an amazing story. Some highlights:

Otis Redding

"Having released more than 800 single 45s and nearly 300 LPs during its 15-year run - picking up eight Grammys and an Oscar along the way - Stax created music that has reverberated throughout the world in many ways, and continues to play a major role in the music industry. It helped usher in a genre that the world came to love, and had a major impact on generations of music fans and artists. At the core of the Stax Museum of American Soul Music's mission is to be sure it continues to impact future generations forever."

Booker T and the MGs!

"Today, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, located at the original site of Stax Records, pays tribute to all of the artists who recorded there with a rare and amazing collection of more than 2,000 interactive exhibits, films, artifacts, items of memorabilia, and galleries designed to keep Stax alive forever. Because it is the only soul music museum in the world, it also spotlights America's other major soul music pioneers, including the sounds of Muscle Shoals, Motown, Hi, and Atlantic Records, spotlighting the contributions of such soul pioneers as Ike & Tina Turner, Aretha Franklin, The Jackson Five, Ann Peebles, Al Green, Sam Cooke, James Brown, Ray Charles, and many others."

Soulsville USA - Experience the Legacy of Stax Records

BIRTHPLACE OF ROCK 'N' ROLL! SUN RECORDS
Elvis - Carl - Johnny - Jerry Lee

You might say that Sam Phillips was in the right place at the right time! And his mind wasn't cluttered with things that didn't matter. He made all the mistakes that changed music forever!

"If music was a religion, then Memphis would be Jerusalem and Sun Records its most holy shrine!"

Sun Studio was opened by rock pioneer Sam Phillips at 706 Union Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee, on January 3, 1950. It was originally called Memphis Recording Service, sharing the same building with the Sun Records label business. In 1951, what has come to be labeled as the first rock-and-roll single, Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats' "Rocket 88" was recorded there with song composer Ike Turner on keyboards. History would come to claim the studio as the birthplace of rock & roll. Blues and R&B artists like Howlin' Wolf, Junior Parker, Little Milton, B.B. King, James Cotton, Rufus Thomas, and Rosco Gordon recorded there in the early 1950s.

Rock-and-roll, country music, and rockabilly artists, including unknowns recording demos and others like Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Charlie Feathers, Ray Harris, Warren Smith, Charlie Rich, and Jerry Lee Lewis, signed to the Sun Records label recorded there throughout the latter 1950s until the studio outgrew its Union Avenue location. Sam Phillips opened the larger Sam C. Phillips Recording Studio, better known as Phillips Recording, in 1959 to take the place of the older facility. Since Sam had invested in the Holiday Inn Hotel chain earlier, he also recorded artist starting in 1963 on the label Holiday Inn Records for Kemmons Wilson.

In 1969, Sam Phillips sold the label to Shelby Singleton, and there was no recording-related or label-related activity again in the building until the September 1985 Class of '55 recording sessions with Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash, produced by Chips Moman.

In 1957, Bill Justis recorded his Grammy Hall of Fame song "Raunchy" for Sam Phillips and worked as a musical director at Sun Records.

In 1987, the original building housing the Sun Records label and Memphis Recording Service was reopened by Gary Hardy as "Sun Studio," a recording label and tourist attraction that has attracted many notable artists, such as U2, Def Leppard, Bonnie Raitt, and Ringo Starr.

In May 2009, Canadian blues artist JW-Jones recorded with blues legend Hubert Sumlin, Larry Taylor and Richard Innes for his 2010 release at the studio. In July 2009, John Mellencamp recorded nine songs for his album "No Better than This" at the studio.

Sun Records - Where it all began!

Jerry Lee, Carl, Elvis, Johnny

MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET:
"Million Dollar Quartet" is the name given to recordings made on Tuesday December 4, 1956 in the Sun Record Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. The recordings were of an impromptu jam session among Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash.

A smash, award winning Broadway musical celebrating this iconic quartet has been playing to rave reviews.
Million Dollar Quartet - The Musical

MAP - Stax/Soulsville, Sun Records, Rock n' Soul Museum, Graceland

MEMPHIS ROCK N' SOUL MUSEUM
The Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum’s exhibition about the birth of rock and soul music, created by the Smithsonian Institution, tells the story of musical pioneers who, for the love of music, overcame racial and socio-economic barriers to create the music that shook the entire world.

According to the Smithsonian Institution, the finest museum system in the world, “Rock ‘n’ Soul: Social Crossroads” is the story of the body of music that had the most influence on the culture and lifestyles of the world during the middle 20th Century unto this day. It affected the way we walked, the way we talked, the way we combed our hair and the way we dressed – not only in Memphis or the nation, but the entire world.

In August, 2004, the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum became established as one of the city’s most prominent museums when it became a part of FedExForum, Memphis’ premier sports and entertainment venue, home to the NBA Memphis Grizzlies, located at the corner of legendary Highway 61, “The Blues Highway,” and world famous Beale Street. Memphis Rock n' Soul Museum

Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips

DJ DEWEY PHILLIPS - Show RED, HOT AND BLUE!
Daddy-O" Dewey Phillips (May 13, 1926 – September 28, 1968) was one of rock 'n' roll's pioneering disk jockeys, along the lines of Cleveland's Alan Freed, before Alan Freed.

Starting his radio career in 1949 on WHBQ/560 in Memphis, he was the city's leading radio personality for nine years and was the first to simulcast his "Red, Hot & Blue" show on radio and television.

Phillips' on-air persona was a speed-crazed hillbilly, with a frantic delivery and entertaining sense of humor. However, he also had a keen ear for music the listening public would enjoy, and he embraced both black and white music, which was abundant in post-World War II Memphis, a booming river city which attracted large numbers of rural blacks and whites (along with their musical traditions). He played a great deal of rhythm and blues, country music, boogie-woogie, and jazz as well as Sun Records artists. In July 1954, he was the first DJ to broadcast the young Elvis Presley's debut record, "That's All Right/Blue Moon Of Kentucky" (Sun 209), and got Presley to reveal his race in an interview by asking which high school the 19-year-old singer attended (knowing that, because of segregation, his audience would readily know what race attended which schools).

Phillips briefly hosted an afternoon program on WHBQ-TV/13 in the mid-1950s. It mostly consisted of Phillips playing records while he and others clowned around in front of the camera.

Though Phillips was not involved in the payola scandals of the time (as was Freed), he was fired in late 1958 when the station adopted a Top 40 format, phasing out his freeform style. He spent the last decade of his life working at smaller radio stations, seldom lasting long. A heavy drinker and longtime drug user (mainly painkillers and amphetamines, which contributed to his manic on-air behavior), Phillips died of heart failure at age 42.

The Tony award-winning "Memphis, The Musical" is loosely based on Dewey Phillips' life and career. Source: Wikipedia

Memphis The Musical web site - Tour info

Web site for all things Beale and Memphis
World Famous Beale Street - Memphis

A fan's photo tour through Graceland - Feb. 2010
I happened upon this little blog, and loved the author's commentary about her trip to the King's castle!

More Best Sites for what to see and do in the Bluff City:

Memphis Visitors Bureau - Comprehensive Info Things to Do

Johnny Rivers, born in New York in 1942, his family moved to Baton Rouge when he was 5. an American rock and roll singer, songwriter, guitarist, and record producer. His styles include folk songs, blues, and revivals of old-time rock 'n' roll songs and some original material. Rivers's greatest success came in the mid and late 1960s with a string of hit songs (including "Seventh Son", "Poor Side of Town", "Summer Rain", and "Secret Agent Man"), but he has continued to record and perform to the present.

Memphis, TN - Wikipedia

Beale Street