Month: August 2018

Categories
News News Blog

County to Host Free Active Shooter Training

CREDIT: goir | Dreamstime.com

goir | Dreamstime.com

The Shelby County Office of Preparedness (SCOP) is offering two free active-shooter awareness and prevention trainings on Saturday, Aug. 18th.

Each session will be a 90-minute lecture in which attendees will learn how to react quickly and safely during an active shooting with the “run, hide, fight” strategy.

Dale Lane, director of SCOP said the training will provide a survival plan to stay alive during active shootings, which “can happen without warning and evolve quickly.”

“In an emergency, whether a disaster or an active shooter event, you are the first boots on the ground before emergency services have a chance to respond,” Lane said. “We offer free training to give you the knowledge, confidence, and skills to stay alive and to assist those around you until the professional first responders arrive on the scene.”

The training will be at the SCOP office on Mullins Station, beginning at 9 a.m. and then again at 1 p.m.

Additionally, the SCOP is recruiting for its Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), a group of citizens trained to handle potential hazards and threats in Shelby County. To become a member of CERT, one must attend two consecutive Saturday training sessions to learn basic, life-saving disaster preparedness skills.

The classes cover how to assemble a disaster kit, as well as skills for fire suppression, team organization, light search and rescue, medical triage, and first aid. There will also be information about terrorism, hazardous materials, and disaster psychology.

Once completing the two sesion, team members will be certified for two years. The classes will be on Sept. 22nd and 29th from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the SCOP offices.

Registration for CERT and the active shooter training is online or can be done by calling 901-222-6706.

Categories
Fly On The Wall Blog Opinion

Sinclair/Tribune Mega-Merger Collapses. What Does it Mean for WREG?

Race to the Bottom

The controversial, law-bending $3.9 billion merger of Tribune Media and Sinclair TV collapsed Wednesday, August 8th, when Tribune Media’s board voted to terminate the deal.

The merger, which seemed likely, given the FCC’s initial willingness to misapply the outdated “UHF discount” rule, became considerably less certain last month when the FCC criticized Sinclair, casting doubt on Sinclair’s proposed divestitures, which might amount to divestiture in name only. Or, per the actual concern, “sham transactions.”

[pdf-1]Historically, Sinclair’s content has been right-wing. Recently, it has become overtly Trumpian, with mandates for local stations to air editorial segments by Boris Epshteyn, the Russian-born Republican political strategist and investment banker who is now the “chief political analyst” for Sinclair. Epshteyn was also a senior advisor in Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Sinclair/Tribune Mega-Merger Collapses. What Does it Mean for WREG? (2)

The president has been more than happy to return the favor. 

Sinclair/Tribune Mega-Merger Collapses. What Does it Mean for WREG?

What made Trump’s endorsement especially troublesome — even for him — is the fact that Sinclair’s stations operate unbranded. So, in terms of affiliation, the Sinclair stations the president endorses often are actually affiliates of the NBC, ABC, CBS networks he criticizes.

And some Sinclair stations are FOX affiliates. Welcome to the media ownership funhouse.

While much attention is focused on the big, national networks such as CNN, FOX, MSNBC, etc., Sinclair has been creating a vast web of local, network-affiliated stations. Local TV news has more reach than all four major cable news stations combined.

In addition to ending the merger, Tribune is suing Sinclair.

The stake in this deal for Memphians was news station WREG Channel 3. It now appears that for the foreseeable future, Memphis’ Channel 3 will remain a Tribune Media property.

Bye, Boris. 

Boris Epshteyn — Not coming to WREG.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

I Am Not Your Enemy

“The Fake News hates me saying that they are the Enemy of the People only because they know it’s TRUE. I am providing a great service by explaining this to the American People. They purposely cause great division & distrust. They can also cause War! They are very dangerous & sick.” — President Donald J. Trump

I’ve purposely avoided writing about Donald Trump in recent weeks, choosing instead to focus on local issues. But enough is enough. The president of the United States is melting down, becoming increasingly unhinged. None of us can afford to ignore this stuff.

In the past week, via tweet, Trump has declared war on the free press; compared his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, to Al Capone; told his attorney general to stop the Mueller investigation; claimed the California wildfires are being caused by letting rivers run to the sea; launched a personal attack on LeBron James(!); and threw his own son under the bus by proclaiming that Junior — and other members of the president’s campaign team — knowingly met to get dirt on Hillary Clinton from Russian operatives but that it was “totally legal.”
This, even though Trump’s own lawyers have admitted the president dictated a cover letter claiming the meeting was to discuss Russian adoption issues. And the undeniable fact that the meeting was anything but “totally legal,” even though in the right-wing-o-sphere, “collusion is fine” is the new “no collusion!”

It’s hard to keep up, I know. It’s lie upon lie upon lie. It’s day after day. It’s mind-numbing. But the collusion — or conspiracy or treason or whatever name you give it — is right out in the open now, easy to see for anyone who’s paying attention.

And how do we pay attention? We watch the news. We read newspapers and magazines and news websites. And with the notable exception of America’s Pravda — Fox News — those media outlets are reporting things that make it clear the president’s campaign — and likely, the president himself — was thoroughly and completely entangled in the Russian meddling in our 2016 electoral process. And probably in money laundering before that.

This is why Trump’s last, best shot is to convince as many Americans as possible that they shouldn’t believe what they’re reading and seeing in the news and should instead just believe Fearless Leader. Trump knows the truth will not set him free. The truth will destroy him.

The scariest part of all this is not the president’s behavior, though his mendacity, crassness, and xenophobia are certainly beyond the historical pale. No, the scariest part is that so many Republicans who know the truth — who know this is wrong — are remaining silent. The best-case scenario you can make for them is that they fear alienating Trump’s base. The worst-case scenario is that they — like the NRA — have dirtied their hands with Russian money. The coming months will test the republic.

Meanwhile, Trump’s impulsive and reflexive tariffs are backfiring on manufacturers and farmers in the heartland (including Tennessee). Gas prices are rising. And Trump’s foreign policy skills make Sasha Baron Cohen look like Kissinger: Little Rocket Man got concessions then went back to building nuclear weapons; Iran’s leaders are basically calling him an empty suit; and Putin works him like a Dollar Store yo-yo.

All Trump has left is to hold increasingly smaller and more desperate rallies, where he can weave tales of his greatness and demonize the bearers of all this fake bad news. But the bad news isn’t fake, and he knows it. And the angry know-nothings in his audience (and your clueless friends on Facebook) can’t save him from the long arm of the law. Or the upcoming mid-terms.

Finally, even though Trump has labeled people like me an “enemy of the people,” I’d like to help him out. There are a couple of errors in the president’s tweet above. Using my skills as a professional editor, I’ve written a more accurate one:

“I call the press the Enemy of the People only because I hate the truth. I am providing a great disservice to the American People by creating division & distrust. I can also cause War! I am very dangerous & sick.”

There. That’s better.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Breakfast With Books

On Sunday mornings, when the Memphis sun blesses us with just the right amount of brilliance, my parents will have breakfast in the park. They’re regulars now, and along with their small dog, they’ll take a walk around the park before sitting down to read, eat pastries, and drink mate. (Yerba mate, as it is otherwise commonly known, is a pre-Columbia tea that is consumed in several regions in South America.)

Some days, I’ll join them and hear about what they’ve been reading recently. Papá is reading the anthology ¡Presente! Latina Immigrant Voices in the Struggle for Racial Justice, and Mamá is reading La Transmigración de los Cuerpos, navigating through the Mexican vernacular employed in the borderlands narrative.

Books have always been invaluable treasures in my family. Somewhat ironically, this affinity for books was sparked by a blown fuse in an old TV we had growing up in Argentina. To fill the time, my folks subscribed to the Thursday and Sunday newspapers, the two days of the week that promised the most content for the buck. From there, they found a list of best-selling books, and in the late 1990s, Harry Potter was at the top of the list. And so, a single copy of Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosafal rotated around the family and was read and reread.

Back then, buying books was a luxury we could not afford. As a photographer, Mamá would take my 7-year-old sister and a 3-year-old me to the photo shop to get her rolls of film developed. While we waited, we went to the bookstore nearby where my sister and I would read any and all books that we could reach — well, my sister would actually read, and I would mimic her. The commute to the shopping center was $20, so we could never drop another $20 for books.

Mamá recalls that the first thing she bought with her first pay in Florida was books, which included Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. After work, she went straight to the Barnes & Noble that was on the route home. She passes me the mate. “I remember they were hard-covered books, too,” she tells me. “We never could buy a hard-covered book in Argentina.

Today, books are stacked in mix-matched shelves across the hall in their home. My collection drawn from my frequent trips to the used bookstore in the Memphis public library is in there, my favorites: Baldwin, Kumashiro, Morrison, and Ehrenreich. There are a few sets of German and French language learning cassettes and books, too. Do I know how to speak German or French? No, but I can count to 20, which for now is good enough for me.

Today, I can bring books to them as they did to me when I was young. It’s a beautiful switch in roles in many ways. Together, we also bring our love of reading and learning to Desayuno con Libros, a free breakfast and literacy program organized by Comunidades Unidas en Una Voz, Centro Cultural, and the C-3 Land Cooperative. The volunteer-run program, like its sister program Books and Breakfast in Westwood, receives donations of books, which then are given to families in the community. These books range in genres and many include books with Spanish text that may often not be found in public libraries with limited resources. For young children growing up in spaces that often discriminate against their mother’s tongue, this visibility is important in order to pass on their language and knowledge.

Growing up, we had a few children’s books, but we read those books over and over again, wearing down the binding each time. Seeing children sprint to the tables with books reminds me of our trips to the bookstore, except here, they can actually take the books home and read and come back for more. These books can take them to other worlds, exposing them to lives that aren’t always visible to them on television. They can imagine themselves in the experiences that they read about, and even create new ones on their own.

If you want to be a part of this, of expanding the worlds that young people can experience, you can contact Desayuno con Libros Memphis on Facebook. Books are the tools, and these kids are the future.

Aylen Mercado is a brown, queer, Latinx chingona and Memphian pursuing an Urban Studies and Latin American and Latinx Studies degree at Rhodes College.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Vermouth Truth

Last week my fellow Spirits columnist Andria Lisle wrote about a bottle of Tribuno vermouth left by a departed father who was, evidently, a first-rate bartender. It reminded me when, in college, I’d carted some girl to New Orleans to meet my godparents. For all the city’s great food, Aunt Pouff (And no, I’m not making that name up) admitted that her favorite meal was “A bowl of salty treats and a martini with more vermouth than you children like these days.”

Which made her the first person I ever met who actually liked vermouth … or had lived 75 years entirely on hors d’oeuvres.

We all know the dry martini recipe that calls for whispering “vermouth” over ice-cold vodka. But as Pouff pointed out, “That’s not a martini; that’s just a cold hooker of vodka.” She then remarked that “martinis are made with gin.”
It’s likely that the reason most of us don’t like much, or any, vermouth in a martini is because nine times out of 10 the stuff we’re drinking is rancid. And if you are using vodka, the funk is all you will taste.

Vermouth isn’t a liquor; it’s fortified white wine — the light and dainty cousin of port or madeira. If refrigerated, it will last longer than a bottle of pinot gris, but the experts suggest you ought to throw the stuff out after a couple of months. It’s made from grapes such as Clairette Blanche and Bianchetta Trevigiana and a few others that you’ve never heard of — mainly because they don’t make very good wine. If they did, no one would be hiding the flavor with herbs, roots, and tree bark.

So yes, vermouth is made with regrettable white wine, to which is added a neutral grape spirit, and sometimes sugar water, which is poured into the aforementioned dry ingredients in a barrel and rolled around a bit. The first variants were made with wormwood, which the Germans called “wermut” and the French called that “vermouth.”

The Chinese were doing this 3,000 years ago, but, in 1786, a sweet wine was introduced to the royal court in Turin, Italy. They went wild and you really can’t buy word-of-mouth like that. A generation later, a pale, drier French version evolved. Both were aperitifs as well as medicine — which is as good a cure as any for sobriety. It would be another 100 years before it was so closely associated with cocktails and liquor. And, unfortunately, it got stuck behind the bar as opposed to being put in the fridge.

If you are going to stick to the classics — like martinis, Manhattans, and Rob Roys — a Tribuno or Martini & Rossi are hard to beat. Noilly Prat is a little darker and bolder, so be warned.

When the expatriates and the professionally fabulous were famously sipping vermouth on the Riviera, they weren’t drinking the stuff off the bottom shelf — and there is a difference. If you want to break out and be a little creative, Dolin has a Vermouth de Chambéry; a large bottle retails for $15. My personal favorite, a blanco Vermut Lustau, retails for $25. These are both clean and very crisp, and Vermut Lustau doesn’t have the vague bitterness that generally puts people off.

Last month, when the heat was really starting to get uppity, a friend introduced me to the following: One measure of vodka, one measure of Vermut Lustau, with tonic and a squeeze of citrus over ice. Not a twist or a thin wedge, you want a solid squeeze here, but just one. It works beautifully with gin as well, but the vodka lets the Lustau do what it does without the botanicals. As summer drinks go, this is one of the best I’ve discovered in a long time — it just floats over the weather.

And Pouff, if you can read this from that palm-lined boulevard in the sky, I use more vermouth than the children like these days.

Categories
Book Features Books

Inman Major’s Penelope Lemon: Game On!

My esteemed colleague and friend, the late Leonard Gill, in these pages, said this about an earlier novel by Inman Majors: “Until Wonderdog‘s climactic scene, expect the unexpected: unstoppered sarcasm laced with real feeling from the mind and mouth of Devaney Degraw, a wise guy whose catalog of complaints runs just this side of stream-of-consciousness (punctuation optional) in a funny, full-tilt second novel from the author of the underrecognized Swimming in Sky.”

It’s not a bad introduction to Penelope Lemon: Game On! (a clunky title), Majors’ newest. The sarcasm is still ripe and the surprises still fresh. In this, his fifth novel, the author attempts something mildly audacious: He sees through his protagonist’s feminine eyes. It’s as if Majors is channeling his inner Jodi Picoult. It works because he keeps it blithesome and because he convincingly gets inside the sensibility of a middle-aged woman. It’s a noteworthy job of literary ventriloquism.

Penelope Lemon is a recently divorced 40-year-old woman who lives with her parents and works at a faux-western restaurant called Coonskins. She has a young son, who is the worst player on his little league baseball team, and who is bullied. He craves attention at school and seeks it in any way possible, including sequential farting. Penelope’s friends are married and have little sympathy for her. Enter Missy, the mother of another little leaguer. She is brassy and blunt and, basically, a lot of fun. She’s a breath of fresh air for Penelope. This friendship, written with a surprisingly empathetic comprehension of how women interact, forms the turning point in the book, the fulcrum between rising action and falling action. And stodgy Penelope, when teamed with reckless Missy, begins her quest, the one given all heroes and heroines, to find her true self.

Penelope Lemon: Game On! is a sort of redneck Anne Tyler story. Many of the denizens of Lemon’s North Carolina town of Hillsboro are blue collar workers, good time Charlies, chipper housewives, trailer park dwellers, men and women who watch Matlock and have never suffered an existential crisis. Literature is never mentioned. Walmart is. Video games are. Applebee’s and Outback are and are characterized here as good grazing spots for newly single middle-age women.

Majors writes: “On the way to Coonskins, Penelope took in the ambience of her hometown, the Walmart and Applebee’s and Target that had replaced the local employers of her youth.” He knows this milieu like he knows his audience. The book often seems to be winking at the reader, nudging him or her with a grin and the promise of a good joke. And Majors also knows the parameters of a good yarn. His broad sense of humor, some observational and some jokey, and willingness to put his characters through rough patches, that are both absurd and hilarious, makes the book a diverting page-turner. A chapter set in Coonskins, on a night when everything goes pear-shaped, is a comical set-piece that could have come from a superior episode of Designing Women.

Missy is a catalyst for the change in Penelope as well as a way of supercharging the narrative. She puts the novel’s foot on the gas. One can sense that Majors is relishing his character’s wit, outlandishness, and lack of fear. It’s the kind of character authors live for, part scoundrel, part savior. Most of Missy’s ideas are bad ones, but they keep on coming. She’s like an NC-17 Peppermint Patty.

Inman Majors is an entertainer. Penelope Lemon: Game On! is mostly jokey and light-hearted, but Majors is also capable of some tender writing, especially having to do with the bond between Penelope and her nine-year-old son, Theo. And the relationships with both her exes, including Theo’s father, are engagingly and authentically rendered. Penelope is a well-drawn character, an interesting protagonist, who carries the story with her charm and aplomb. Her counsel to her son about baseball is at the book’s heart, and advice she is, simultaneously, giving herself: “Swing every time. Baseball is more fun if you’re just letting it rip. Everything’s more fun if you let it rip.”

Inman Majors signs Penelope Lemon: Game On! at Novel Thursday, August 16th.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

BlacKkKlansman

Spike Lee is many things, but subtle is not one of them.

Some directors like to seduce you into their world by offering up a figure with whom you can relate, then putting them in jeopardy. As the relatable hero feels threatened, so do you, and the thing which threatens them becomes, by proxy, your enemy, too. When Clint Eastwood opens American Sniper with his hero killing Iraqi women and children in order to “protect his brothers,” he assumes that you will identify with Chris Kyle because he’s a red-blooded American Navy SEAL.

Lee has never been like that, even when he’s doing a traditional war movie like 2008’s Miracle at St. Anna. A Lee hero is faced with an ethical dilemma and spends the film either weighing both sides before deciding to act, or explaining why he made his decision. The classic example is Mookie, the protagonist played by Lee himself in Do the Right Thing, but you can also see the same dynamic in 25th Hour. The central question is not “will our hero prevail?” so much as “will this person choose to act heroically?” The fact that, decades later, people still debate whether or not Mookie did the “right thing” speaks to the intellectual and moral power of Lee’s approach.

But while Lee’s approach to heroism is nuanced, the way he presents his heroes’ worlds and their choices is stark, bold, and in your face. Some directors are afraid to do anything that might puncture the veil of realism. Lee’s concern is immediate emotional impact. If a split-screen is what’s needed to drive the point home, Lee’s gotta have it. If he thinks an exaggerated, stagey performance will create the emotional beat he’s looking for, he’ll rev up his actor: Compare Giancarlo Esposito’s manic turn as Buggin’ Out in Do the Right Thing to his stoic, richly textured portrayal of Gus Fring in Breaking Bad. When it works, we get the majestic sweep of Malcom X. When it doesn’t, we get the disjointed, barely watchable Chi-Raq.

With the republic under siege by Trumpism, the time for subtlety has long passed. Lee rises to the occasion with BlacKkKlansman. When we meet Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), he’s fresh out of the police academy when he gets a job at the Colorado Springs Police Department. At first, he’s assigned to the evidence room, but when Kwame Ture (aka Stokely Carmichael, played by Corey Hawkins) comes to town to speak at the university, Stallworth is assigned to infiltrate the local campus activists, because he’s the only black man on the force. Stallworth just wants to keep his head down and do his job, but the speech pricks his conscience. When he meets the supposedly menacing black radicals, they turn out to be nerdy kids led by beautiful student Patrice (Laura Harrier). Lee’s impressionistic presentation of Ture’s speech — and Stallworth’s awakening — is the film’s first transcendent moment.

John David Washington and Topher Grace in BlacKkKlansman

To deepen Stallworth’s dilemma, his superiors are so impressed with his first undercover assignment that they promote him to detective. While perusing the newspaper at the office one day, he happens across a recruitment ad for the Ku Klux Klan, and on a lark, calls the number. Expecting to hear a recorded message, he’s shocked when someone actually picks up the phone. Stallworth was not raised in the South and his years among cops at the academy have helped him perfect his code switching, so he sounds white enough to convince the Klan recruiter to set up a meeting. It’s all so unexpectedly easy, he makes a rookie mistake: He gives out his own name instead of making up a cover identity.

Since Stallworth’s giant natural haircut won’t exactly fit under a Klan hood, he has to send in a ringer, in the person of Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver). Flip finds that the local blood-and-soil types aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, and is instantly accepted into the haters club, despite the fact that he is clearly Jewish. Meanwhile, Stallworth works the phones until he’s on a first-name basis with the Grand Wizard himself, David Duke (Topher Grace).

In Washington and Driver, Lee finds two actors who understand his methods and deliver exceptional performances. If Lee is unsubtle, it’s because he’s trying to point out America’s racial blind spots to half his audience. His didactic tendencies that came off as too preachy in the Obama era seem all too timely now. Personally, I would have cut the coda that ties the “for real shit” of BlacKkKlansman to last year’s deadly neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, leaving it to the audience to make the connection on their own. But this is a Spike Lee joint, and the great director wants to be damn sure you understand.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1537

Listed!

Cold comfort seems like the wrong way to describe this latest news. But as we sink into August and the dog days of Summer, maybe we should all be thankful to live in Memphis, and not one of the nine American cities even beastlier, according to a new list of America’s sweatiest cities created by Honeywell Fans with Environmental Health & Engineering consultants.

The winners are: 1. Orlando, Florida — As hot and bug-infested as Walt Disney’s Orlando World may seem, it’s easy to maintain a smile and cheerful demeanor by reminding yourself that you’re not in Tampa. 2. New Orleans, Louisiana — Nothing produces more sweat for less effort, than standing roadside on Carrollton, waiting for a streetcar. But at least it’s not Orlando. 3. Phoenix, Arizona — Where dry heat meets dry heaves. 4. Dallas, Texas — Like a prison movie where the sadistic warden punishes inmates by locking them in a boiler room. 5. Las Vegas, Nevada — Like somebody covered Dallas in glitter and feathers and stuck it in a sauna. 6. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma — Heat like a blazing fist that reaches down your throat and rips out your tongue. 7. Kansas City, Missouri — Forget the heat, try the brisket. 8. Austin, Texas — Cooler than Dallas in most regards. 9. Atlanta, Georgia — Would be one of America’s most miserable rush hours if not for a proper bar at every exit. 10. Memphis, Tennessee — Paradise (comparatively). And besides, who’s got time for weather talk when there are Bird Scooters to complain about?

Categories
Cover Feature News

Elvis Week Celebrates the 50th Anniversary of the “’68 Comeback Special”

CREDIT: Photo Courtesy Graceland/Elvis Presley Enterprises

Here’s a thought exercise. As rock-and-roll fans descend on Graceland for the double celebration of Elvis Week 2018 and the 50th Anniversary of Elvis’ “’68 Comeback” TV special, try to imagine what Memphis might be like today had Singer Presents … Elvis (as the career-defining NBC special was officially named) been a wholesome Christmas variety show instead of the juggernaut rock and gospel performance that it was. Imagine if Presley’s manipulative manager, Colonel Tom Parker, had gotten his way: There would have been no iconic black leather suit. There would have been no gospel medley backed by Darlene Love and the Blossoms. And no reunion of Elvis and his original Sun Studio guitarist, Scotty Moore and drummer DJ Fontana.

Photo Courtesy Graceland/Elvis Presley Enterprises

If the Colonel had gotten the TV special of his dreams, the alleged King of Rock-and-Roll would have crooned his way through seasonal favorites like “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and an old Frankie Laine song called “I Believe.”

“To this day, I don’t know why he thought ‘I Believe’ was a Christmas song because it’s not,” says the show’s producer/director Steve Binder, in recounting his first awkward encounter with Parker.

Binder had been a logical pick to handle Elvis’ return to TV, having helmed the landmark The T.A.M.I. Show, a 1964 rock and soul concert film with a dozen emerging British and American acts, including The Rolling Stones, James Brown, The Supremes, The Beach Boys, and Marvin Gaye.

Photo Courtesy Steve Binder

Steve Binder

Still, credentials aside, the young director had to make a good impression on ths Colonel. Otherwise the manipulative Parker wouldn’t permit a private one-on-one meeting with Elvis.

“I truck out to MGM Studios, where Elvis had just finished a movie, and where the Colonel’s offices were,” Binder told the Flyer in a recent telephone interview. “And the Colonel hands me a quarter-inch audio tape of 20 Christmas songs that Elvis had recorded and sent out as a gift to disc jockeys all over America as a present. It’s got a picture of Elvis surrounded by holly and berries. He told me, ‘This is the show that NBC and myself have decided on.'”

Binder had other ideas.

Photo Courtesy Graceland/Elvis Presley Enterprises

Steve Binder (left) and Elvis Presley on the set of Singer Presents …

“In my head, instantly, I knew this was a show I’m not going to do,” he says. “So I wrote off the meeting. Drove back to my offices on Sunset.”

By the time Binder arrived back at an office he shared with his partner, music producer Bones Howe, there was a surprise message waiting for him: “Elvis is going to be in your office tomorrow at 4 p.m.”

“If you’re looking for trouble, just look right in my face,” Presley snarls in the tight opening shot of Singer Presents … . And it’s not like the audience watching at home ever had any real choice in the matter, since the singer’s famously sullen mug is framed in an extreme close-up, floating in pitch black background with just a splash of red at his throat.

Photo Courtesy Graceland/Elvis Presley Enterprises

This is nobody’s Christmas show; it’s Elvis daring fans and critics alike to judge him — to gaze into the bright, blue, bedroom eyes of a massively disruptive artist from the previous decade, and determine whether or not he was still the rebel rocker from Memphis, or if he’d become Hollywood’s toothless Teddy bear, cranking out another round of cheap, non-threatening product.

You’d never know it to look at him, as the camera pulled back and the tune changed from Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller’s “Evil” to Jerry Reed’s “Guitar Man,” but nobody wanted to know the answer to this question more than Elvis.

“What if it fails?” Elvis asked Binder during the first closed-door meeting with his new director. Money for making Elvis movies was drying up, and the special had only come about in the first place as part of a deal the Colonel had struck with NBC while seeking backers to make more.  

Photo Courtesy Graceland/Elvis Presley Enterprises

“If it fails, your career is over,” Binder answered, bluntly. “Nobody will forget the success you had in your early recording career and your movies, but TV is instant. The minute you appear on TV, everybody has an opinion the next morning. If you’re successful, all the doors will open and you’ll have any choice you want. But it’s a gamble, and I can’t promise you it’s going to be successful.”

Presley distrusted TV. The medium had burned him in the past, abetting the moral panic that followed rock-and-roll’s big bang in the 1950s. But he was also frustrated in his role as King of B Musicals. He trusted Binder’s unvarnished answer and felt comfortable in the director’s office. Gold records on the wall, from Howe’s work with groups like The 5th Dimension and The Association, made Elvis feel comfortable enough to drop an unsurprising confession. “The recording studio’s my turf,” he told Binder, allowing that he’d always felt more at home behind a microphone than in front of a movie camera.

“You make a record,” Binder said. “I’ll put pictures to it.”  

Elvis had one personal request. He wanted to put “These Boots Are Made for Walking” arranger and session guitarist Billy Strange in charge of the special’s music. Binder agreed instantly.

“This was really the first thing Elvis did outside the womb,” Binder says, explaining why he didn’t hesitate in regard to his star’s one major request. “[Elvis] joined our world instead of me joining his.”

There was one small problem with Elvis’ first choice though. Strange was working on an album with Nancy Sinatra, and the studio was pressuring him to complete it as fast as possible. When, after several prompts, the over-extended Strange still failed to deliver Elvis’ lead sheets in time to start rehearsals, Binder fired him.

“You can’t fire me,” Strange told Binder. “I’ve known Elvis a lot better and for a lot longer than you.”

“Fine,” Binder answered. “Then I’ll be gone and you’ll be there. But one of us is not going to be there.”

Colonel Tom backed the original plan and said Elvis wouldn’t show up for rehearsal if Strange wasn’t there. Nevertheless, Binder moved forward, convincing New York composer/conductor Billy Goldenberg to take over.

“That changed Elvis’ musical life, period,” Binder says. Before that, Elvis had never sung live with an orchestra before. He’d go into the studio to record movie soundtracks with his rhythm section only. Then, additional musicians would be brought in to overdub all the parts.

“He loved every note he heard, and he bonded with all the musicians,” says Binder, who hired Phil Spector’s favorite studio musicians, the Wrecking Crew, and brought in The T.A.M.I. Show and Shindig alums the Blossoms to sing backup.

Blossoms singer and Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame inductee Darlene Love remembers meeting Elvis in the recording studio. “That’s where we met Elvis and became friends with him,” she told the Flyer. “Especially me because of my gospel background.”

During spare moments, Elvis, who’d already cut a pair of acclaimed gospel albums (How Great Thou Art and His Hand in Mine) grabbed his guitar and asked the Blossoms what their favorite sacred songs were.

“We’d be over in the corner with Elvis just having a good time, and I think sometimes everybody got a little bit angry with us for taking all of his time,” Love says. “He loved what he called ‘the hymns of the church.’ Songs like ‘Precious Lord Take My Hand’ and ‘Amazing Grace’ and ‘How Great Thou Art.’ He would sing the leads and we’d do the background. He would ask us, ‘Is this key all right?’ And you know, whatever key it was in was all right with us.”

Binder was fascinated with the Elvis he saw backstage, singing with the Blossoms or casually jamming in his dressing room with friends.

“I said to myself, instantly, this is better than all the big production numbers we’re doing on stage,” Binder recalls. “We’ve got to get a camera in there.”

But the Colonel, still expecting “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” to show up in the set, inserted himself again. He wouldn’t allow cameras into the dressing room under any circumstances.

“It was insane,” Binder says. “This was the magic! I knew if we were putting out a disc, this is the one that would go platinum. So I just kept pounding the Colonel and hounding him every day. And finally he broke down. I don’t think he was happy that he did it. But he said, ‘Okay, Bindel [sic], if you want to recreate it on stage, you can try that. But I won’t guarantee it’ll get into the show.'”

“I don’t think they realized that part was going to be so big,” Love says of the musical improv reuniting Elvis with Moore and Fontana on numbers like “That’s All Right Mama.”

When Singer Presents … first aired in 1968, it was an hour special cut down to about 48 minutes for commercials. Ratings were gigantic. “It was the first time, in primetime, that one guy did the whole show himself without guest stars,” Binder says.

Though he still had a few feature films left in him, Singer Presents … marked Elvis’ transition away from Hollywood and a return to his roots, touring and recording. He’d take lessons learned from the TV special on the road with him, all the way to Vegas.

When Elvis died in Memphis in 1977, NBC decided to produce a tribute show with Viva Las Vegas co-star Ann-Margret hosting. “They sent a gopher down to the studio catacombs to track down the Elvis Presley special,” Binder says. In a twist of fate, the guy who went down to the basement pulled Binder’s 90-minute director’s cut version off-the-shelf. “That’s when they started airing the 90-minute version,” he says. “A lot depended on luck and fate. I couldn’t be happier.”

Recently, there was a loud buzz about the Elvis era finally drawing to a close. Las Vegas was losing interest. First-generation fans were dying, changing the market, as rare collectables became less rare. The Sun Records television series failed to earn a second season. But 2018 brought a pair of critically acclaimed documentaries — HBO’s exhaustive two-part The Searcher, and Eugene Jarecki’s identity-obsessed The King. And between its fancy new facilities and the most ambitious Elvis Week schedule in the event’s history, Graceland also seems to be ready for another closeup, daring us all to look Presley in the eye one more time.

Binder, Billy Goldenstein, Darlene Love, and other artists connected to the “Comeback Special” are coming to Memphis to participate in Elvis week events at Graceland.

To read the full interviews with Steve Binder, Darlene Love, and Elvis friend and country hitmaker T.G. Sheppard, see Memphisflyer.com.

Darlene Love

Love Connection

A Q&A with
Darlene Love of
the Blossoms

Darlene Love may not be a household name, but the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame-inducted vocalist can be heard on some of the most iconic recordings of the rock-and-roll era. As a member of the Blossoms, she was a regular on the seminal TV show Shindig and performed in The TA.M.I. Show. She and fellow Blossoms Fanita James and Jean King can be seen performing alongside Elvis during the “’68 Comeback Special” gospel medley. Love will perform an Elvis week concert Monday, August 13th.

Flyer: I know the Blossoms wanted to be recording stars in their own right, but was there some sense of security in working sessions and singing backing vocals?

Darlene Love: That’s very accurate. Because there weren’t really any black groups at the time that were doing this. It was unheard of for them to be doing session work. Most of the sessions were contracted through our union, AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists), and most of the people in AFTRA were white singers. They’d call them and put together three or four girls. They didn’t have groups. But we already had a sound. So they could depend on us to have the sound they wanted. Therefore, we became bigger than life doing session work.

Phil Spector hires the Blossoms to sing “He’s a Rebel,” then releases it as a Crystals single.

We didn’t go in there to do it as a group. We went in as a session. And I got paid extra for singing the lead on it. We knew it was going to be a Crystals record. It wasn’t a surprise. The surprise was when we signed with Phil, it was supposed to be my record. But he put that one out under the name of the Crystals too.

But it was a surprise to the Crystals, also, right?

A big surprise. They were out on the road working, and the record was on the charts. They didn’t even know the record was out.

Can you tell me about how Elvis would improvise with singers and musicians between takes or after rehearsals?

It was his down-time. Like going to your room and watching TV. It takes a while to come down after you’ve done a show like that. And [the musicians] would all just sit around and sing gospel songs. Not rhythm and blues or rock-and-roll, but gospel. I’ve been invited to come to the 50th anniversary with my group and my singers. We’re going down to Graceland to celebrate the “’68 Comeback Special.” And most of that show’s going to be gospel.

Elvis Week Calendar:

Thursday, August 9th

Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist Contest Showcase

1 p.m. Guest House Theater, Guest House at Graceland. $20

Friday, August 10th

Tupelo, Mississippi – Birthplace of Elvis Presley Graceland Excursion

Departs The Guest House at Graceland at 8:30 a.m. and returns by 3:30 p.m.

$99/adults; $79/children ages 5-12; children under 5 are not permitted.

Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist Contest Meet ‘n’ Greet
11 a.m.–1 p.m, Guest House at Graceland Ballroom.
Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist Contest Semifinal Round
7 p.m. Graceland Soundstage, Elvis Presley’s Memphis. $219, $139, $35

Saturday, August 11th

Mississippi Delta Blues Tour

Departs the Guest House at Graceland at 8:30 a.m. and returns by 6:30 p.m. $119/adults; $89/children ages 5-12; children under 5 are not permitted.

36th Annual Elvis 5K Run Benefiting Livitup

8 a.m. Run starts and finishes at gates of Graceland.

Listening Party for Where No One Stands Alone Album Release featuring Lisa Marie Presley

1 p.m. Graceland Soundstage, Elvis Presley’s Memphis. $30

ELVIS: The Greatest Hits Ultimate Tribute Artist Show

7 p.m. Graceland Soundstage, Elvis Presley’s Memphis. $219, $139, $59

Sunday, August 12th

Elvis Presley Fan Club Presidents’ Event

10 a.m. Graceland Soundstage, Elvis Presley’s Memphis. $25

The Auction at Graceland  

12:30 p.m. Guest House Theater, The Guest House at Graceland. Free to attend; must register to bid.  

Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist Contest Final Round

7 p.m. Graceland Soundstage, Elvis Presley’s Memphis. $219, $139, $59

Monday, August 13th

Fan Reception

10 a.m. – noon. Elvis Presley Memorial Trauma Center at Regional One Health, 877 Jefferson Ave., Memphis. Free.

Elvis Fan Reunion

1 p.m. Grand Ballroom, The Guest House at Graceland. $10

Darlene Love in Concert

7 p.m. Graceland Soundstage, Elvis Presley’s Memphis. $55

Elvis Week Dance Party

9 p.m. – 12:00 a.m. Grand Ballroom, The Guest House at Graceland. $25

Tuesday, August 14th

Conversations on Elvis: Co-stars

10 a.m. Graceland Soundstage, Elvis Presley’s Memphis. $25

Inside the Archives

3 p.m. Guest House Theater, The Guest House at Graceland. Free.

The Founders Reception

5 – 6 p.m. Founders Room, the Guest House at Graceland. Event reserved for Founders only.

The Gospel Music of Elvis Presley Celebration Concert

7 p.m. Graceland Soundstage, Elvis Presley’s Memphis. $55

Wednesday, August 15th

Conversations on Elvis: Gospel

10 a.m. Graceland Soundstage, Elvis Presley’s Memphis. $30

A Musical Salute to Elvis

4:30 p.m. Graceland Soundstage, Elvis Presley’s Memphis. $25

Candlelight Vigil

8:30 p.m. Graceland Front Gate.

Thursday, August 16th

Conversations on Elvis: ’68 Special

10 a.m. Graceland Soundstage, Elvis Presley’s Memphis. $25 Featuring “’68 Comeback” producer/director Steve Binder, music director Billy Goldenberg; writer Allan Blye; guitarist Mike Deasy; and Tanya Lemani George, the belly dancer who performed during “Little Egypt.”

Annual Elvis Memorial Service

Noon. University of Memphis Main stage in the Theatre Building. Free. Limited seating availability.

NIKO Live in Concert

3 p.m. The Guest House at Graceland Theater, Guest House at Graceland. $15.

ELITE Package Holder Evening Reception

5 p.m. Grand Ballroom, Guest House at Graceland.

Reserved for ELITE package holders only.

’68 Special 50th Anniversary Celebration

7 p.m. Graceland Soundstage, Elvis Presley’s Memphis. $55

Friday, August 17th

Conversations on Elvis: Elvis Connections

10 a.m. Graceland Soundstage, Elvis Presley’s Memphis. $25. Special guests include: Ann Moses, editor at Tiger Beat Magazine from 1965-1972; gospel singer Billy Blackwood, “In the Ghetto” harmony singer Donna Rhodes Morris; and country star TG Sheppard.

Party at Elvis Presley’s Memphis

7:30 p.m. – 9:30 PM. Elvis Presley’s Memphis. $45

Saturday, August 18th  

Elvis Week Brunch

9:30 a.m. Grand Ballroom, The Guest House at Graceland. $45  

TG Sheppard and Kelly Lang in Concert

3 p.m. Guest House Theater, Guest House at Graceland. $25.

Elvis Live in Concert – with an All-Star Band

7 p.m. Graceland Soundstage, Elvis Presley’s Memphis. $55

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Most Shelby County Election Results Were Predictable

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Republicans were not the only ones dismayed at the results of the August 2nd election. To be sure, the GOP took a licking in races for countywide positions, and they lost a swing district on the Shelby County Commission, giving Democrats a decisive 8-5 majority for the next four years.
But, with the exception of Democrat Michael Whaley‘s win in District 5, a city swing district, Shelby County Republicans held their own in localized one-on-one competition. On a countywide scale, though, the GOP fared less well, even in nonpartisan races. Two judicial candidates bearing Republican endorsements — David Rudolph and Jennifer S. Nichols — went down in defeat, despite having the advantage of being incumbents, albeit as recent interim appointees.

In a general way, the law of averages is what determined the outcomes. Yes, there are in theory more Democrats than Republicans in Shelby County; this year, unlike the case in 2010 and 2014, there was a general consensus in both parties that, quality-wise, Democratic candidates were as good as — if not better than — than their Republican counterparts, and, for a change, adequately funded. Crossover voting in the GOP’s direction, a factor in the previous two elections, was virtually non-existent this year. 

Similarly, there is the related fact that there are more African Americans in Shelby County than whites, and, while post-racial results have been known to occur in local elections (think Steve Cohen or, when he still had a bloom on, A C Wharton), it would seem to be human nature that, all else being equal, people will vote for their racial group-mates. Accordingly, in relatively close races between blacks and whites, the racial factor tilted toward African Americans.

Finally, in local politics as in state and national elections, women have steadily become a more active force, and people, including other women, who in the binary sense are yet another majority, have no compunction in voting for women.

Taking those three factors into account — party, race, and gender — a fairly reliable rule-of-thumb can be stated that, where any two are present, they can be decisive for the candidate on the majority side of the ledger. 

Thus, Democrat John Boatner Jr., a white candidate in the primary for Congress in the 8th Congressional District, was at a disadvantage in his contest with Erika Stotts Pearson, an African American. And, while Boatner had more money and was clearly the more active of the two candidates (omnipresent at campaign events, and with several large yard signs bearing his name on upscale sections of Walnut Grove Road), he was a first-time candidate, and, as a white male contending with an African American female, was on the wrong side of the arithmetic. (In his case, too, the power of the city vote, where Democrats are numerous, out-did the party’s rather scanty presence these days in the West Tennessee counties that comprise the rest of the district.)

A few other upsets reflect various versions of the Democratic/black/female tilt.

Circuit court Judge Rudolph had, by general consent, performed well after his 2017 appointment by Governor Haslam to fill the vacancy left by the retirement of Judge Robert L. “Butch” Childers, and his diligence as a candidate, often in the company of his personable wife, Elizabeth, an administrator at the University of Memphis Law School, could not be faulted. The scion of an East Memphis family, educated at MUS and Vanderbilt, he was well-financed, to boot.

But he was felled by Yolanda Kight, an equally impressive and diligent young black woman from a humble background in South Memphis, who had risen very much by her own efforts to attain the lesser judicial rank of magistrate. Aided also by the “upset” factor which can generate sympathy in an electorate, she ended with a narrow win over Rudolph. 

Another such case was the victory in a Democratic state Senate primary race of Gabby Salinas, whose Bolivian family had immigrated to Memphis so that young Gabby could be treated for childhood cancer at St. Jude. On the threshold of being a scientist in her own right, she survived three different bouts with the disease, and, though she was faced with a better-financed opponent, the able and equally appealing Le Bonheur chaplain David Weatherspoon, her backstory may have made the difference. Her next challenge will be, as an advocate of Medicaid expansion, against Republican state Senator Brian Kelsey.

There were other unexpected outcomes. The victories of Joyce Dorse-Coleman and Michelle McKissack over Shelby County Schools Board incumbents Mike Kernell and Chris Caldwell conformed to the above-mentioned formula, though McKissack’s in particular also owed much to her support from charter-school advocates. Though hardly a novice in politics, the oft-controversial city Councilwoman Janis Fullilove, victorious as a Democrat over Republican Bobby Simmons for Juvenile Court Clerk, was expected to be shut out of the white vote entirely. Further analysis will determine whether she wasn’t or whether she was but was able to prevail anyhow.

Most outcomes on August 2nd conformed to the form sheet. It was a Democratic year, not so much because of a better-than-usual turnout but because their candidates were measurably better than in previous years, staving off the customary flow of crossover Democratic voters to Republican candidates that had marked prior elections. 

In the marquee local races, State Senator Lee Harris for county mayor was clearly an able political figure, as was Chief Deputy Floyd Bonner for sheriff, both of them sufficiently so to attract crossovers of their own to augment what was already their majority standing.  

The Democratic blue wave was no surprise. In the vernacular, this was how it was ‘sposed to be.

Ford Canale‘s win for a a vacant city council position was due to his maintaining establishment support against a field of several candidates breaking up the dissident vote. In the statewide contests, Republican Bill Lee won his gubernatorial primary by being himself; Democrat Karl Dean won his through superior resources and fidelity to a centrist party message. The U.S. Senate primary wins of Democrat Phil Bredesen and Republican Marsha Blackburn were no-brainers.

The final win of the mid-summer election season occurred Monday night at Shelby County Republican headquarters, where a small caucus of steering committee members from the state House District 99 of late state Representative Ron Lollar elected onetime state Senator Tom Leatherwood, outgoing as register and a loser in his race for Circuit Court Clerk, as a compromise choice to run against Democratic nominee Dave Cambron in November.