Month: November 2003

Categories
Music Music Features

Sound Advice

The Bo-Keys have quite the resume. When you listen to Rufus Thomas’ “Do the Funky Chicken,” that’s Bo-Keys keyboardist Ronnie Williams playing the piano. When you listen to Isaac Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul, that’s Bo-Keys drummer Willie Hall laying down the beats. Sax player Jim Spake has backed everyone from Ike Turner and Al Green to Jerry Lee Lewis and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. And if the awesome wah-wah guitar at the beginning of Isaac Hayes’ “Theme from Shaft” has ever put a grin on your face, you’ve got the Bo-Keys’ effects-obsessed guitar player Skip Pitts to thank for it. The Bo-Keys may have come into existence as an ad-hoc backing band for “Mustang Sally” author Sir Mack Rice, but the group has evolved over time into their own thing. The Royal Sessions, the Bo-Keys’ first CD, for Yellow Dog Records, is a rock-solid example of (mostly) instrumental soul in the spirit of Booker T. & the MGs. Their sound is a little more laid-back and a little less urgent than the Stax bands they pay homage to but every bit as funky. Let’s call it a cocktail groove. The CD-release party for The Royal Sessions is scheduled for Saturday, November 8th, at 9 p.m. at the Blue Monkey’s Midtown location on Madison. Word has it that certifiable soul royalty Carla Thomas will be making a special guest appearance. You can’t beat that. — Chris Davis

A couple of middle-American bands in local clubs this week are eminently worth checking out. For starters, alt-country icons The Jayhawks will perform at Young Avenue Deli Saturday, November 8th. I lost track of these Minneapolis country-rockers after their solid early-’90s stretch of albums —Blue Earth, Hollywood Town Hall, and Tomorrow the Green Grass –and after co-founder Mark Olsen split. But they’ve kept on, reportedly in a direction that’s more classic rock than country. In their day, they were like Uncle Tupelo’s more reserved and more melodic big brothers, playing their Gram Parsons fixation straight instead of with a punk-rock chaser. With singer-songwriter Gary Louris still leading the way, I imagine they still put on a fine show. Toronto roots-rockers The Sadies will open.

Also this week, over at the Hi-Tone CafÇ, Oklahoma’s The Starlight Mints will perform Tuesday, November 11th, with La Guardia. Following fellow Sooners the Flaming Lips, the Starlight Mints are an eclectic alt-rock band with a strong psychedelic bent, which you can hear on their fine new album Built for Squares. —Chris Herrington

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We Recommend We Recommend

I Want To Sing

Sometimes I can be a diva,” Paula Newberry says shrugging bashfully, with only the tiniest hint of wickedness flashing in her eyes. She’s not about to say how, of course. But for all her protestations, the lifelong Memphian doesn’t seem to be anything like your stereotypical soprano. For starters, she’s positively petite, a characteristic that belies her powerful lungs. Her speaking voice is so soft and melodic, it’s impossible to imagine that, when in the mood to do so, she can rattle even the highest rafters. And wonder of wonders, she’s shy.

“In my opinion,” Newberry says, “a true diva is someone who sticks to exactly what the composer wrote. You have to be a servant to the composer and you have to serve the music. If you do that, then you can’t go wrong.” By all outward appearances, the effectiveness of the young singer’s rather humble recipe for success would be difficult to refute. She’s performed all over the world, from Mississippi to Austria. Her recital on Sunday, November 9th, at the Beethoven Club is just a warm-up for her debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall in December. And just how did the Memphis singer get to Carnegie Hall? You guessed it: practice, practice, practice.

“Actually, I booked the show [at Carnegie] myself,” Newberry says. “Of course, they don’t just let anyone perform there.”

According to the singer, the New York concert was an inevitability. It was something that she had to do both for herself and for her father who passed away in 2001 while Newberry was performing in Salzburg.

“When you audition and you audition and audition and audition, you get to this point where you have to say, ‘Okay, enough. It’s time I took my career into my own hands. I’m going to do this myself, and I’m going to make [the audience] come to me,'” Newberry says confidently. “And, you know, before I perform I talk to my dad. And when I get to New York I can actually say to him, ‘I did it. Your baby girl made it. She’s at Carnegie Hall.’ It’s like a dream.”

Newberry didn’t start her formal voice training until she was 13, but her talents made themselves obvious much earlier.

“When I was 2,” Newberry says, “my mother knew that I was musically inclined because I used to be antsy and really uneasy [at church]. I always wanted to get to the organist’s pit. I couldn’t wait to feel the music and start tapping my feet.” It was after a vocal performance in church that the organist suggested that the 12-year-old singer begin professional training. “That’s when I was introduced to the classical repertoire,” she says, “and I’ve been singing it ever since.”

According to Newberry, singing became a way of life. Sometimes she used her voice as an instrument to honor her family; sometimes she used it as a weapon.

“If my brothers did something that made me mad,” she says mischievously, “I would sing at them. I would get loud too! As loud as I possibly could! Eventually they would learn. Eventually they would leave me alone.”

It was after hearing Leontyne Price, the vocally astounding African-American singer whose raw talent battered away at long-standing cultural barriers and who dominated the classical stage from the 1950s through the 1970s, that Paula Newberry decided she would become a professional singer. She took to practicing on the patio, emulating her favorite singer in the backyard. She would pretend that the grass was her audience. “And I would sing,” she says. “And I would say, ‘I’m gonna make it, Mama. I really am. I’m gonna make it.’ I would say that over and over again.”

Newberry says she prefers the concert stage to performing in operas, though she has done both. And she prefers the classical repertoire to popular standards and spirituals. But she does it all.

“Before my father passed,” she explains, “he used to come to all of my concerts. You see, his mother sang opera, and I didn’t know this. I just thought the family had been brought up in Mississippi. But every time I sang opera it reminded him of his mother.”

In spite of her preferences, Newberry’s forthcoming recital, which is also a fund-raiser for her Carnegie Hall appearance, will include not only selections by Mozart and Bellini but also a number of holiday songs and such spirituals as “Steal Away Jesus” and “Balm in Gilead.” She performs the songs because audiences love them.

“I used to shy away from singing spirituals,” she says, “because I thought it was kind of stereotypical. But they seem to be what people relate to best. It gives balm to the soul. Most people go around with a smile on their face, but they are hurting inside. The spirituals touch that healing place inside of them. It touches your soul. It’s like going to church.”

Paula Newberry performs at the Beethoven Club (263 S. McLean, 274-2504) 3 p.m. Sunday, November 9th.

E-mail: davis@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

The Numbers Game

Everybody’s getting into the act. This 2003 U of M football season has been a numerologist’s dream, something right out of Harper’s magazine’s famous “Index.” Playing with confidence, operating with machine-like efficiency on both sides of the ball, the Tigers are keeping the stat-freaks among their fans extremely well occupied. Their third consecutive lopsided victory — this one in the Liberty Bowl last Saturday, over East Carolina, 41-24 — has had everybody, it seems, reaching for their calculators.

Just about every time Danny Wimprine and DeAngelo Williams touch the football, for example, another U of M record goes by the boards.The junior quarterback and sophomore running-back sensation already hold and keep breaking the team’s single-season passing and rushing records, respectively. Barring injury, by the time their collegiate careers are over, “Danny and DeAngelo Do Football” may well need to be the subtitle used on the cover of the Tiger record book.

Math has become so fashionable, in fact, that the CA‘s Geoff Calkins, my favorite sportswriter in the world, built his entire Sunday column around thenumber “six,” six being of course the bowl-eligible number of wins that the U of M has now recorded. Since everyone’s getting into the act, here’s my take on some other important numbers worth considering as the season heads into the home stretch:

1976 –Think Jimmy Carter getting elected president; think the Bicentennial; think (very possibly) stuff that happened before you were even born. And yes, that was when a U of M football team last went into the final month of a season having won twice as many games as it had lost. This should explain why Tiger fans who have been around that long are going slightly bonkers this week. November “games that matter” and “Tiger football” are not usually concepts that find themselves in the same sentence.

7 — That’s the number of games actually won by those 1976 Tigers (captained by current radio color-commentator Bob Rush), who lost two of their last three and finished 7-4. That’s the last time a Tiger team bagged seven victories, which is what the 2003 Tigers will need to do, too, if they actually plan to go bowling.Sorry, Geoff, six may be special, but nobody will want a .500 team coming off three straight losses, despite the next number …

38,718 — The average Liberty Bowl announced attendance after five home games and the major reason those Conference USA-connected bowls are all rooting for Memphis to run the table.I’ve been saying this for years now: Nowhere in America is there a Division I football program with a non-winning tradition that gets anything close to the fan support the U of M Tigers have historically gotten. Give the Memphis faithful a regular winner, and there’s no telling how big Tiger football can and will become in this town.

10.5 — The number of offensive starters due to return for the 2004 season. Darren Garcia, who splits time at the receiver position, is the only senior departing from an offensive unit which recorded its third consecutive 40-point effort last Saturday. The mind boggles at how good these guys might get in 2004. Bring on UT!

0 — The number of times before this season that the Tigers have had both a quarterback and a running back ranked simultaneously in the national Top Twenty in passing and rushing yardage. Wimprine is 18th in passing this week; Williams is 4th in rushing

15 — Perhaps the most important number of all. This is how many extra practice days the NCAA allows for those teams that qualify for bowls. In practical terms, this works out to three extra weeks of practice for bowl-going teams.

Ever wonder how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer in Division I football? This, I submit, is a big part of it. Go to a bowl every year and you’ve got over three month’s worth of extra practice per player over a four-year career. That’s a huge advantage when push comes to shove. Let’s hope these Tigers finally get to find out just how valuable that extra practice time can be.

E-mail: letters@MemphisFlyer.com

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Good Times, Bad Times

I have heard what may be the most horrible sound in theater: the sound of military dog tags hitting the ground, one at a time. It’s a thin sound, a tinny sound, not loud at all but impossible to ignore. It sounds like death. It sounds like torture. It sounds like a thousand awful things that can only happen in a faraway land and in the hands of an abstracted foe known to you only as “the enemy.”

In the closing minutes of Good Time Speech, a timely play written for Our Own Voice Theatre Company by frequent OOV contributor Randy Youngblood and adapted to the stage by director Alex Cook, Eileen Townsend, a young, school-aged girl, trembles like a shell-shocked veteran in her combat fatigues. The dog tags fall from her trembling hands. Not far away a character known as Daddy Combat, played by John Rutkauskas, pours fake blood from a clear pitcher into a drinking glass sitting atop an oil barrel. It spills out of the glass and onto the barrel. It spills off of the barrel and onto the floor. It seems as if the pitcher is bottomless, that the blood will never stop pouring. It seems every bit as likely that the sound of falling dog tags will never stop ringing. It’s a powerful sensory collage. The grim, increasingly pertinent message rings out loud and clear.

The number of soldiers killed in combat situations since President George W. Bush donned a military flight suit, stood beneath a banner reading “Mission Accomplished,” and declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq, has now surpassed the number of soldiers killed prior to this pompous and certainly premature declaration of victory. Of course, the White House thinks it’s foolish for the media to concentrate on dead soldiers and has even made the ridiculous statement that the ongoing bombings and guerrilla attacks prove just how successful the United States’ efforts to bring freedom to Iraq have been. Hardly a day passes that we do not get a message from our leaders imploring us not to dwell on death and destruction but to rejoice because Iraqi children have returned to school. This bizarre “up-is-downism” is at the heart of Good Time Speech.

Youngblood’s stream-of-consciousness writing style can be difficult to follow at times but not in this case, due in no small part to director Cook’s detailed staging. We are presented with a topsy-turvy world where the irrational is rational, where patriotic songs fill the void created by death, where families mourn and politicians celebrate. One often-repeated line: “I had to put the flag in the washing machine to get all the dirt out of it.” That just about says it all.

Our Own Voice is, hands down, Memphis’ most interesting theater company, capable of creating world-class art with virtually no financial resources. If you miss Good Time Speech, you’ve missed the most important piece of work this increasingly innovative company has staged to date.

At TheatreWorks through November 9th

Ken Ludwig’s Lend Me a Tenor is a classic farce of mistaken identity in the screwball spirit of Preston Sturges. Sadly, and in spite of a fantastic ensemble cast, Theatre Memphis’ production falls flat. Blame it on that elusive thing called chemistry, because this show’s failures have nothing to do with a lack of skill, consideration, or energy. All are there in abundance.

LMAT tells the story of a famous Italian tenor who misses a production because he is dead. Well, the opera company that hired him thinks he’s dead, and to avoid refunds, they send in an impostor. Things seem to be going remarkably well, until the real tenor wakes up from his deep, drug-induced sleep and all the metaphorical door-slamming begins.

John Moore, who plays Max, the (professionally and sexually) ambitious impostor, seems to channel the comic physicality of Eddie Bracken, whose understated pratfalls were the hysterical heart of such films as Hail the Conquering Hero and The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek. As the tenor in question, Keith Salter is likewise the very picture of bombastic understatement. Under the direction of Tony Isbell, the farce moves along quickly enough, hitting all the right marks, but somehow hilarity never ensues. Then again, maybe I just caught the cast on an off night. These things happen, and the performances seemed too good for the show to really be that bad.

At Theatre Memphis through November 9th

E-mail: davis@memphisflyer.com

Categories
News

Leaving Alaska

The sport fishermen, for all their Alaska brochures and magazines and fly-fishing dreams, weren’t prepared for what awaited them in King Salmon. They expected mountains, glaciers, eagles, clean air, pure water — in a word, majesty.

But there’s no majesty at the King Salmon airport. King Salmon is a two-bar dump with no mountains in sight and water like the Mississippi. And all around the lobby, the tarmac, and the four-car parking lot on this day was a nervous herd of filthy, unshaven, hungover or still-drunk refugees from the local canneries, cussing and drinking and fighting over the available seats on the plane. Their luggage was mostly boxes held together by duct tape, and they reeked of diesel and dead fish. They — well, we — had just stumbled off of boats, out of machine shops, and away from “slime lines” with our pockets filled with money and our heads filled with visions of women, beer, or both.

The sport-o’s, as we called them, clung to each other by the baggage claim, waiting for their thousand-dollar rods to arrive so they could catch their ride to the lodge. They had come in swapping stories about big fish and wild rivers, and they were trying to maintain their enthusiasm in the face of this ugly reality.

We had already taken turns buying rounds in Eddie’s Fireside Inn across the road and most of us had gone for the “liquid breakfast” on the boat that morning, so the party was rolling along as we were herded toward the plane.

When we hit the security gate at the airport, my skipper set off the alarm, so he emptied his pockets — coins, money clip, knife, watch, can opener, Leatherman tool — then set it off again. This time he took off his monstrous belt buckle, which he wears on the side of his hip, then dumped another pile of metal goodies into the tray. Off went the alarm again, and this time my skipper, a near-60-year-old man who looks like he’s been on the sea for 100 years and was up to a canter in his drunkenness, looked at the airport staff with the face of a little kid who just did not understand why he kept getting into so much trouble. The sport-o’s exchanged some glances and chuckles, and half of our herd stared them down. Our collective thought was “Laugh not at a real man of the sea, O ye of the weak big-city variety.” He took off his hat with the big Alaska Fisherman’s Union pin on it, and this time he made it through without a sound. The sport-o’s got their gear and fled.

Once on the plane, we ordered two Bloody Marys each, and, those being consumed, took a nap. An hour later we were in Anchorage, the closest thing Alaska has to a city and a “normal” airport; it’s about a third the size of Memphis. We had 25 minutes to catch our plane to Seattle, so we found some of our brethren in a bar. There were four or five of them, each with a mixed drink and all being watched carefully by waitresses in little red-and-blue uniforms. It looked like someone had let the farm animals into the house.

I ordered myself a two-foot-tall beer and looked at the clock: 17 minutes to departure. It was rough sledding, but I made ‘er.

We hit the next security gate about four minutes before departure, and this time my skipper shed about 12 pounds of metal before any hassles could develop. While he was doing that, I said something to the security man about how many problems all this technology creates. I was flying high and meant it purely as small-talk, but he looked at me with all this sincerity in his eyes and said, “Well, that’s nothing compared to what the government is doing.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well sure. I read this book — we sell it in the store — about how the government is building this electronic shell over the whole planet and starting to control our minds with it.”

And this guy was with security.

The plane took us out over Prince William Sound, and I was glued to the window, lusting after the blue water, the endless coves and inlets, the long, winding glaciers running down to the ocean, and the scattered bergs spreading out from their faces. This, I thought, was what the sport-o’s had come to see — not that they’d really appreciate it.

By the time we got out over the water, I had a beer in front of me, my skipper had two more Bloody Marys, and the flight attendants were nervous. The skipper had already proposed that the U.S. should buy British Columbia, “since those damn Canucks don’t know what the hell to do with it,” and the two of us were just giddy with our new freedom. I was sort of worried things might get out of control, especially after my skipper bragged about the time a flight crew refused to serve him after he and some other fishermen incited a food-riot in the air.

But I also decided that all the other people on the plane — the nervous flight attendants, the tourists with their whiny kids, the pale-skinned losers with their slick, new Alaska sweatshirts — looked hopelessly full of it and could use an encounter with a genuine, drunk Alaskan sailor. Not one of them will ever see water coming over the bow with a full load of fish in the hold! My skipper sized up one couple and said, “Well, they’ve been to Alaska, they’ve driven around for a week, and now they’re gonna write a goddamn book about it!” When the plane landed, he yelled, “All right, folks, we’re back in Seattle! It’s time to stir up whatever shit you want!”

Most of them, I thought, wanted nothing stirred up at all.

E-mail: paul@paulgerald.com

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Opinion Viewpoint

Wrong Quagmire

Anti-war commentators are saying that the U.S. occupation of Iraq threatens to turn into a quagmire like Vietnam. But the commentators have the wrong quagmire. The more appropriate historical analogy for what the U.S. faces in Iraq is a different war: the one the Soviet Union tried to fight in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. Consider:

A superpower, in defiance of most world opinion, invades an Islamic Middle Eastern nation. The superpower is hoping to effect regime change and, citing an “imminent threat,” declares the invasion “an international duty.” Initially, the invasion goes well. Within weeks, all organized military opposition in the invaded nation appears to evaporate, and the invading superpower basks in its success, praised by its domestic media for its military prowess. The superpower imposes its own government on the invaded nation and settles in to oversee a comfortable, presumably temporary occupation.

But almost immediately, resistance forces begin to coalesce and the guerrilla war begins. The superpower’s convoys are attacked. Its soldiers are killed one, two, 10 at a time. Galvanized by religious zeal and nationalist pride, the guerrillas begin to attract fighters sympathetic to their cause.

The superpower’s casualties grow, and, although the superpower brings the body bags home quietly, out of the spotlight, the people back home begin to notice. The national media begin asking questions. Why are our soldiers still dying? Is this war worth it? Who decided to fight it and why? Commissions are called to look into the justification for the war. The political leadership claims the military and intelligence agencies are responsible. The military and intelligence agencies claim they warned the politicians that the war might be a mistake; the generals, in fact, claim the politicians quashed any intelligence that contradicted their own (the politicians’) preset policies. Meanwhile, the superpower is obliged to keep a rotating force of over 120,000 men in the invaded nation, and the resistance forces continue to grow, swelled each day by zealous international fighters called to “jihad” in order to force out the infidel invader. Quickly the invaded nation becomes a cause for Muslims throughout the world. Sound familiar?

In the end, it took 10 years and the death of 25,000 of its young men at the hands of the Afghan mujahedin fighters before the Soviet Union decided to give up the fight and leave Afghanistan.

In dozens of articles, some recently declassified, analysts in the U.S. military and in the intelligence community have examined what went wrong for the Soviets in Afghanistan. One such article is a 1996 U.S. Army document out of the Foreign Military Studies Office. Called “The Soviet War in Afghanistan: History and Harbinger of a Future War?,” it is by General (Ret) Mohammad Yahya Nawroz, Army of Afghanistan, and LTC (Ret) Lester W. Grau, U.S. Army. It reads in part: “Guerrilla war, a test of national will and the ability to endure, negates many of the advantages of technology. [I]t is in the best interests of U.S. military professionals to review the lessons of the last guerrilla war in which a super-power was involved. Afghanistan is both past and prologue .

“A guerrilla war is not a war of technology versus peasantry. Rather, it is a contest of endurance and national will. The side with the greatest moral commitment will hold the ground at the end of the conflict. Battlefield victory can be almost irrelevant, since victory is often determined by morale, obstinacy, and survival.”

I hope George W. Bush — or whoever does his reading for him — is studying the analyses of the Soviet-Afghan war. I wonder if he and Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz possess a “national will” and a “moral commitment” that goes beyond the election of 2004. And I wonder if our soldiers will still be fighting and dying in Baghdad in 2013.

Ed Weathers writes a weekly column for MemphisFlyer.com.

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News The Fly-By

HEADLINE OF THE WEEK

On Friday, October 31st, The Commercial Appeal introduced the paper s new director of advertising with the following headline: Veteran Lackey new ad director. Now our esteemed daily could have run a headline reading Brad Lackey named ad director or perhaps something simple like CA names new ad director. Those would have been fine. But no, they went with Veteran Lackey new ad director. And what s wrong with that? Hey, if you want readers to think your hire s only qualifications for the job are his ability to fetch coffee and say yes on cue, nothing at all.

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We Recommend We Recommend

thursday, 6

My, my, my. There s so much to say about George W. Bush s little rally at the DeSoto Civic Center on Saturday helping out his fellow Republicans get elected while we were having the bloodiest battle against American soldiers since the Iraq war began I just don t know where to begin. I guess with, Rats! Close but no cigar!, regarding the woman who headed for his limousine with her car, broke through a couple of police barricades, and slammed into the building just as said limo was taking off. I cannot wait to find out the real story behind this one. I think it s odd that she did this but the Secret Service is saying there was no intent to harm the president and that he was never in any kind of danger. The woman was trying to plow into his limousine, for Pete s sake. And just because she did that, I don t think the authorities should have instantly brought up questions about her mental state. I don t think what she did necessarily mean she s crazy. Put that one in your file, John Ashcroft. And what about The Commercial Appeal s coverage? Fabulous. The headline W does DeSoto sounds a lot like Debbie Does Dallas to me. What was even better, and was so good that it s too bad the national media didn t get in on it, was the fact that numerous people were hold up signs that read TROJANS FOR BUSH. Amen to that one. If Papa Bush had taken that advice long ago we wouldn t have this little man in office. And if Bush himself had done this twenty-something years ago, maybe he wouldn t have those little redneck twins. All of which brings up a hideous and nerve-damaging mental image: George W. Bush having sex. Eeeeeewwww. And now to the gentleman from Nashville who, in his letter to the editor in this paper last week, called me an organic liberal and told me I should realize that George W. Bush is one of the greatest presidents in American history. For starters, my definition of organic is something that has not been exposed to any chemicals, so you might as well wake up from that dream, brother. And as for you thinking George W. Bush is one of the greatest presidents in American history, you might want to think about taking a few chemicals yourself so you can stop hallucinating. Have you ever traveled to another country? You might want to try that before coming to your conclusion, because the man is universally despised in almost everyone place other than America, and he s not that loved that much here either. Have you never looked at the Internet? But every America has the right to his or her own opinion, now matter how grossly misguided it may be. So keep those letters coming and be glad your president s buddies at Halliburton are getting plenty of work in Iraq. In the meantime, here s a look at some of what s going on around town this week. Tonight, there s an opening reception at The Crescent Club for works by Pamela Craig. At The Vine on Madison Avenue, today s Art For Hope is a fund-raiser for Hope House (helping children with AIDS) and includes art for sale by more than 40 artists. The 15-piece Cuban orchestra Orquesta Aragon is at the Buckman Performing and Fine Arts Center. Liz Phair is at the New Daisy. And Rev. Billy C. Wirtz is at Stop 345 tonight through Saturday.

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News

JAMIESON, ONLY GOP HOPEFUL, OUT OF RACE FOR 89

Apparently, the old phrase “tantamount to election”– which in antique times applied to all local Democratic primary contests– can be taken out of mothballs and applied to the forthcoming special election to succeed Carol Chumney in District 89 of the state House of Representatives.

Chumney, a Democrat who opposes Republican George Flinn in next week’s nominally bi-partisan runoff election, recently resigned her legislative seat just before a cutoff date that would have required the GOP-dominated Shelby County commission to appoint a successor.

It is no secret that Democrats, at both local and state levels, were importuning Chumney to do so in order to facilitate their chances of holding on to the seat.

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And, with several Democrats in the running and with Thursday’s filing deadline looming, it now appears that Republicans won’t even contest the issue. At least temporarily, that became the case when Republican Jim Jamieson, who had been the earliest declared candidate for the seat, even before Chumney’s resignation, said Tuesday he was withdrawing from the campaign.

In a news release, Jamieson took Chumney to task for timing her resignation so as to force the special election. “Had Ms. Chumney resigned the seat in August, the special election could have been placed on the October and November ballot and would have saved the taxpayers about $100,000. Instead, she resigned just before the November 4th deadline that would have prevented the County Commission from naming a replacement. Her reasoning for this was to make sure a Republican would not get the appointment. She followed the Governor’s office suggestions and is now costing the taxpayers another $100,000.”

Jamieson continued: “After long and emotional discussions with various citizens of District 89 and advisors of mine, I cannot with good conscience be a part of this wasteful spending Ms. Chumney has caused the citizens she claims to be so concerned about. I therefore announce that I will not be a candidate for the Tennessee State House of Representatives, District 89 in the upcoming special election.”

Although such other Republicans as Henry Loeb Jr. and former state Representative Tim Joyce had talked up a race, there have been no GOP filings yet to match those of Democrats Jeff Sullivan and Kevin Gallagher, with one from Beverly Robison Marrero and, potentially, filings from toher Democrats expected Thursday.

Jamieson’s explanation for his departure may be stretching a point, but, as local GOP chairman Kemp Conrad pointed out, District 89 is not an ideal venue for a Republican candidate. Al Gore defeated George W. Bush there by a margin of two-to-one in 2000 and Democrat Bob Clement prevailed over Lamar Alexander, the eventual winner, in last year’s U.S. Senate race.

Moreover, despite the state Republican Party’s proclaimed emphasis on gaining control of the Tennessee legislature, the party hierarchy in Nashville has not designated the District 89 position as a “target” seat. No funds have been set aside to support a Republican aspirant in 89, and the local party, which has concentrated on city election contests, also has a limited to non-existent budget for the purpose.

Categories
News News Feature

CITY BEAT

WEALTH INDEX

From all the publicity about the loss of manufacturing jobs, layoffs, dire government budget deficits, and the need for tax incentives and other forms of corporate welfare, you might think former executives are out on the street selling apples.

Relax, they’re still buying bigger Bentleys. By one unofficial but revealing index, the Memphis economy is as healthy as it’s ever been.

Memphis has two locally based Fortune 500 companies Ñ FedEx and AutoZone. Within the last week, the stock of both companies hit an all-time high. That’s all-time high, not a 52-week high, signified by a little “u” in the stock market tables. FedEx sold for $76.38, while AutoZone topped out at $103.53. This at a time when the Dow Jones Industrial Average is still 2,000 points away from its all-time high.

If you play the market but don’t own either of these stocks, you might want to skip the next paragraph.

A little over a year ago you could have bought FedEx for $43. And in the spring of 2001 you could have bought all the AutoZone you wanted for $24.

These corporate giants aren’t the only Memphis companies enjoying a stock market boom. First Tennessee is selling for around $47, only $1 off its all-time high. Mid-America Apartment Communities is going for $32, within a buck of its all-time high. Same for Fred’s Discount Stores at $38. Other companies of local interest hitting all-time highs last week include Wright Medical and E.W. Scripps.

All in all, a pretty diverse slice of the economy Ñ shipping, auto parts, banking and finance, real estate, budget retail, surgical supplies, and media.

The point is that executives aren’t the only ones doing well. Tens of thousands of Memphis-area employees of these companies own stock in them through their retirement plans or in ordinary brokerage accounts. Thousands more Memphians invest in them just because they are local sentimental favorites. This rising tide has not lifted all boats but it has lifted a lot of them.

Of course executives and big institutional investors have profited the most. They take the biggest risks and make the toughest decisions.

According to proxy statements, FedEx CEO Fred Smith owns 19.5 million shares worth $1.48 billion. AutoZone founder J.R. Hyde III owns 797,000 shares worth $78 million. Fred’s CEO Michael Hayes owns 1.9 million shares worth $72 million (and pays himself a mere $200,000 a year, far and away the lowest salary of local CEOs).

For anyone interested in stocks or ownership of Memphis companies, it’s well worth taking a closer look at proxy statements, an annual disclosure listing such things as executive salaries, stock ownership, and stock performance versus industry peers. Thanks to pressure from shareholder advocates and the Securities and Exchange Commission to make corporate disclosure more useful and understandable, this is far easier to do than it was five or ten years ago.

On the Internet, use Edgar Online or the stocks service on your browser. The proxy is sometimes listed as DEF 14A under “SEC Documents”. Don’t make the mistake of looking only at the annual report. It includes balance sheets, but the text is apt to include a lot of corporate puffery and optimistic “forward-looking statements.”

You can learn, for example, how family trusts and investment firms with board representation to match own huge chunks of companies like AutoZone, Scripps, and Wright Medical. Edward Lampert, head of an investment firm for wealthy investors, owns 25 million shares of AutoZone worth roughly $2.5 billion. The five-year chart shows that AutoZone’s stock languished between $20 and $30 for years until Lampert and new CEO Steve Odland began asserting themselves in 2001.

E. W. Scripps , owner of The Commercial Appeal, is headquartered in Cincinnati and has lucrative cable television stations in markets across the country. A Scripps family trust owns 29 million shares, or 87 percent of the stock. But little guys get a shot, too. When I worked there several years ago, employees were offered stock at $15. No, I didn’t.

Wright Medical, headquartered in Arlington, makes surgical devices including artificial joints. CEO F. Barry Bays owns 845,000 shares worth $25 million, but the biggest owner is Elizabeth Weatherman. Turns out she is a director and head of medical technology investments for the New York firm Warburg Pincus. They own 14.3 million shares worth $425 million. Quit your griping. You could have jumped in yourself in February for $14.

Certainly, not everyone shares the wealth. There are thousands of night workers laboring on the sorting line at FedEx for $11 an hour who don’t own stock. Hundreds more took the buyout offer and face an uncertain future. The AutoZone clerk who hooks up your new battery isn’t getting rich. Fred’s has serious union labor issues. And all stock market investors are in trouble if the market tanks the way it did from 2001-2003 Ñ or worse.

But stock market wealth in Memphis is good news for everything from philanthropy to luxury homes to bass boats, and it should not be overlooked.