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On Location: Memphis
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BY TOM DUNKEL
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Tad Pierson's '55 Caddy in front of Sun Studio; the Memphis skyline seen from the Mississippi River.
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Baltimore-based writer Tom Dunkel firmly believed that everyone had to visit Memphis some day—and he couldn't explain why he still hadn't. Then this assignment came along.
Ensconced behind the wheel of his big-finned Cadillac, Tad Pierson waits for a stoplight to turn green.
A bland sedan pulls up on his left, and a man pokes his head out the passenger window. "What year is it, bro?"
"Nineteen fifty-five," replies Pierson, accustomed to the attention his classic car receives. "Hey, somebody's gotta do it!"
Pierson has agreed to give me a condensed version of the beyond-Beale-Street music tour he offers Memphis visitors through his tour company, American Dream Safari (americandreamsafari.com).
HOW WE ROLL
Thanks to Pierson's Caddy, we're ridin' in style through the south side of Memphis. As we glide past an apartment complex on Poplar Avenue, Pierson notes that it replaced the Depression-era housing project (communal toilets, anyone?) where Elvis Presley was raised. A few blocks later, he shows me the red-brick Humes High School. Elvis graduated from the school in 1953 and Pierson tells the story of the future King being roughed up by football-team goons for not being a sufficiently macho Southern boy.
Friends keep telling Pierson, a Kansas transplant, that he could make a fortune if he conducted his tours dressed like Elvis. Sideburns and sequins? The very thought makes him cringe.
WILD NIGHTS
Memphis's musical heart lies here in these working-class neighborhoods and juke joints, a few miles away from the famous downtown clubs. Pierson points out a nondescript frame house whose bushes could use a trim. It belongs to Blind Mississippi Morris, he says, an old-but-still-kicking harmonica player. Other equally nondescript, low-slung buildings have their own stories to tell. Come weekends, hole-in-the-wall clubs like One Block North and Hughes Town explode with live music. "Local bands, local audiences," says Pierson.
We stop by Wild Bill's, an R & B institution at 1580 Vollintine Avenue. Wild Bill died not long ago, and his widow Lurleen now runs the show. I'm struck by how tiny the space is, no bigger than a pizza parlor. The walls and rafters are covered with hundreds of photos—not of musicians, but of customers cutting loose.
"What do you have to do to get your picture on the wall?" I ask Lurleen.
"Just come to the club!" she says, beaming.
IF THEY SAY WHY
Pierson knows most of the town's musicians and club owners on a first-name basis. So it's easy for us to slip into a practice session at Club Superior (1459 Elvis Presley Blvd.), where Don Valentine, a drummer the size of an NFL lineman, is hunkered down with his trio. They're working on a bluesy instrumental arrangement of Michael Jackson's "Human Nature."
No more than a half-dozen guests are scattered inside the dark, windowless club. The bass thumps. The guitar gurgles. Valentine's drum brushes swish. It's Memphis music in the raw, a timeless sound.
If only someone would come up to me and ask, "What year is it, bro?"
"Nineteen fifty-five," I'd tell them.
NOTE: Information may have changed since publication. Please confirm key details before planning your trip.
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Published: November 1, 2009
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Photos: American Dream Safari; Jupiter Images
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