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Mr. Music — Berl Olswanger

3d3d/1241751465-berlolswangerad-1963.jpg In the March issue of Memphis magazine, I tell the compelling story of Berl Olswanger, a remarkably talented gentleman — musician, composer, music store owner, teacher, talent agent, and so much more. I’m not going to repeat that entire story here, so don’t get your hopes up. You’ll just have to pick up a copy of our March issue, or read it online. And if you’re not a subscriber, then I don’t want to hear about it.

All I wanted to do here was share a couple of old advertisements I found for Berl Olswanger (taken from 1960s Key magazines, I believe), which focused on his music school and his talent agency. The music school on Union Avenue (promoted above) could teach you either the “traditional” or “easy” way — which I suppose means the traditional way was hard. And just look at all the instruments you could learn, including the “uke” — which was, of course, hepcat jive talk for that super-cool instrument that always attracted the ladies — the ukelele.

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The Warner Theater

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In 1926, one of the highest-paid performers in vaudeville appeared on stage in Memphis. He certainly hadn’t made his name as a singer or dancer, and he couldn’t play a note, but it was standing-room-only when the Sultan of Swat — yes, Babe Ruth himself — stepped into the lights at the Pantages Theater downtown and chatted about his amazing career with the New York Yankees.

Built in 1921 as part of a nationwide chain, the Pantages, which stood on the east side of Main Street between Monroe and Union, was considered the grandest theater in town. A brilliantly lighted marquee stretched the full width of the gleaming white, terra-cotta facade, and every inch of the interior was covered in ornate, gilded plasterwork. When the theater first opened, it staged vaudeville acts — W.C. Fields and Buster Keaton were other stars who played there — and showed silent films. In 1930, it was sold to Warner Bros. Pictures to showcase their new “talking pictures” and the name was changed to the Warner Theater. The first “talkie” Memphians saw at the Warner was General Crack, starring John Barrymore.

The 1,900-seat theater thrived for three decades, an especially popular attraction in the summer, when families drove downtown to enjoy the newfangled invention called “air conditioning.” But the Warner — and its sister theaters downtown, including the Malco, Loew’s Palace, and Loew’s State — began to struggle in the 1960s, when smaller theaters opened in the suburbs and audiences began to stay home and watch television. In 1963, Memphis Press-Scimitar columnist Edwin Howard observed that the Warner, “one of the important links in the Pantages vaudeville chain of the 1920s, [is] still going strong as a motion-picture palace.”

Just five years later, however, officials with the National Bank of Commerce selected that block of Main Street for a 33-story office tower. On December 8, 1968, after the showing of Coogan’s Bluff, the Warner closed. The contents were auctioned off, and bulldozers brought down the old vaudeville palace a few months later. NBC’s Commerce Square stands on the site today.

PHOTO COURTESY BENJAMIN HOOKS CENTRAL LIBRARY

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Lura Grubb’s Visit to Heaven

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The Reverend Paul Grubb was laid to rest in Memorial Park on Monday afternoon. Brother Grubb, as his many followers and friends called him, had been the pastor of Faith Temple on North Trezevant for more than half a century. He was also married to the Rev. Lula Grubb (left), and the obituary in The Commercial Appeal made no mention of his wife’s remarkable adventure — one that made her a national sensation in the late 1940s.

Lura Grubb died and visited heaven for five hours. Then she came back to earth to tell us all about it.

At the age of 17, while living on a farm in Mississippi, Lura supposedly “died” of meningitis. A doctor, she said, declared her dead. As she later recounted in her very popular book, Living To Tell of Death, she woke up in heaven, surrounded by angels who wore “unimaginably sheer, cobwebby robes.” During her brief visit, Lura says, “A fountain was opened above me, as if by the magic touch of a controlling switch on the arm of God’s throne. Then a warm, soothing oil began to run down over my body, healing me as it flowed.” Although she desperately wanted to stay in heaven, as you might imagine, Lura told believers, “God sent me back as a help and a warning to mankind.” All of her ailments, she claimed, vanished: “As the soothing oil of Heaven reached my internal organs, I had the sensation of a ball — the size of a baseball — uprooting in my abdomen and rolling rapidly upward until it came out of my mouth and disappeared.”

Sister Grubb spent the rest of her life telling this amazing story, and “she became the subject of wonder and firm belief from the pious farm folk.” That I can certainly understand. But what seems really strange is that Lura apparently visited stores across the country looking for the same material worn by the angels. “I’ve searched the stock of the hundred largest department stores and fabric centers, from New York to Los Angeles,” she told one newspaper reporter, “and have not yet found material to compare to the angel-spun robes of the sainted throng.” Why on earth would she think she could find such heavenly things — on earth?

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Ernestine Lomax and Her Tiny Toy Piano

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When Mrs. Ernestine Lomax told friends, “Sure, I play a little piano,” she meant that literally. The Memphis woman not only played a teeny-tiny toy piano, she became a national sensation by appearing on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour.

For my three or four young readers, perhaps I should explain the nature of this memorable show. From 1948 until 1970, Ted Mack hosted what was one of America’s first “reality” shows — an hour-long production, aired on both radio and television networks, that was essentially a talent showcase. Contestants sang, danced, juggled, whistled, played all sorts of musical instruments, and did just about anything they could to win valuable prizes and college scholarships. If I recall correctly, viewers mailed in ballots, voting for their favorite performers.

I’m sorry to say that I was unable to locate any tapes or recordings of the remarkable appearances of Ernestine Lomax, who appeared on Ted Mack several times in the mid-1950s — playing a cheap little toy piano, not (as you might suspect) just a miniature version of a real one. The story goes that Ernestine gave her daughter a “Ring-A-Round-A-Rosy” brand toy piano some 15 years before. When the little girl grew tired of it — or simply outgrew it — the mother began plinking away at the keys one day and discovered she could bang out some pretty good tunes. And she wasn’t the only one who thought so. A Memphis Press-Scimitar article noted, “Soon she could play any tune after hearing it a few times. She got such tuneful, tinkling music out of that little baby grand piano that it amazed and captivated her audiences.”

I should point out that Ernestine did not actually sit down on a tiny bench to play her tiny piano. That would look silly! Instead, she tucked it in the crook of her left arm and played it with her right hand, just like in the photo above (that kid is another Ted Mack contestant).

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Chickasaw Gardens’ Magnolia Tribute Circle

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Now that the weather is nice, it’s time to get outside and do some exploring. I’m not talking about ME; I’m saying that’s something YOU should do. And there’s no better (or nicer) place to start than by crawling underneath all those lovely magnolia trees in Chickasaw Gardens.

What are we — I mean, you — looking for around all those trees? Remnants of the little copper plaques stuck in the ground that identified the various people who were included in the Magnolia Tribute Circle. And when the Chickasaw Gardens security patrol asks what the heckfire you are doing, just tell them Vance sent you. They will laugh and laugh as they haul you off to jail.

Seriously, though: All those grand magnolias were planted in the 1930s around Chickasaw Gardens Lake, and the adjacent roads, once a part of Clarence Saunders’ famed Pink Palace estate. In 1931, Mrs. E.G. Willingham, chairman of the City Beautiful Commission, came up with the idea for the Magnolia Tribute Circle. Each year, four or five trees would be dedicated to prominent Memphians whose names were submitted to a secret committee who “selects those deemed worthy,” according to an article in The Commercial Appeal. This was a tough crowd, it seems. No selections were made in 1939 “because the committee felt nominees did not meet the requirements of outstanding public and community service without remuneration.” No doubt this explains why there is no marker devoted to the Lauderdales. An outrage, to be sure. But those who did meet such high standards over the years included Commercial Appeal editor J.P. Mooney, Temple Israel Rabbi Harry Ettelson, civic leader Mrs. Brinkley Snowden, philanthropist Abe Goodman, and Mrs. E.G. Willingman herself — “done as a surprise to her, and over her protests,” according to one newspaper story. Oh sure, I bet.

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Firestone Tire & Rubber Company

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One of the Mid-South’s largest manufacturers opened here in 1936, moving into a massive factory in North Memphis vacated by a wood-products company, and greatly expanding it. Over time, Firestone Tire & Rubber Company’s huge, ultra-modern facility would cover almost 40 acres, and its soaring white smokestack was visible for miles.

Run by Raymond Firestone, the son of company founder Harvey Firestone, the Memphis plant served more than 25,000 tire dealers in a marketing region that stretched from Key West to southern Illinois. During World War II, the plant even produced rubber life rafts, gas masks, and raincoats for servicemen.

By the late 1960s, Firestone was rolling out more than 20,000 car and truck tires a day. On July 1, 1963, the company celebrated a remarkable milestone — the production of its 100 millionth tire in Memphis. That’s right: ONE HUNDRED MILLION TIRES. Beginning with just a few hundred employees, Firestone had grown into the biggest industrial employer here, with a work force exceeding 3,000. The Memphis plant, in fact, was the largest tire manufacturer in the company’s entire worldwide operation.

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A Strange Death in Court Square

a2d8/1242008564-court-square-fountain-1912.jpg Of all of our city’s parks, downtown’s Court Square probably seems the unlikeliest place for anybody to die by drowning. After all, it’s blocks away from the Mississippi River, and the square’s historic fountain is too shallow to be a hazard. Besides, there’s a cast-iron fence around the entire basin.

But when the massive fountain was unveiled back in 1876, topped with the statue of Hebe, that octagonal basin was actually a concrete moat more than six feet deep, often stocked with catfish, turtles, and — if you can believe some accounts — a couple of alligators. And there was no fence around it. If anybody thought the showpiece of Court Square was a hazard, they never worried about it until the afternoon of August 26, 1884.

That day, 10-year-old Claude Pugh, described as “a newsboy and small for his age,” was sitting on the stone rim of the fountain, playing with a toy boat in the water. He leaned too far over and tumbled in, and since the bottom of the fountain was sloped, and slippery from algae, he couldn’t regain his footing.

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Shelby Farms Graves – Revisited

d410/1242007991-driveway.jpg Back in September, I talked about a visit to Shelby Farms, where I investigated a corner of the park that contains several mysteries: an ancient gravestone, the remains of an old cemetery, a tumbledown barn or stable, and even a pair of wrecked cars. Since then, several readers have suggested that other oddities exist in that area, so I hopped in my Daimler-Benz and decided to make another exploration.

After traipsing back and forth over the entire northeast corner of the park, this is what I discovered. First of all, stretching northward from Walnut Grove, about 100 yards west of Germantown Parkway, is an almost-overgrown stretch of asphalt that was once a driveway leading to a 1930s house on the property that everyone calls the “ranger’s house.” There was no park ranger when this house was occupied, however; it was actually the residence of a county agricultural agent, back when the park was the Shelby County Penal Farm.

The house was demolished years ago, but if you look closely, you can find some concrete walls that were apparently part of the basement, lots of bricks, and even some cast-iron pipes. That’s all that remains of the house. Nearby are plants that you normally wouldn’t find growing in the wild: rows of daffodils, yucca plants, and even a huge (but quite dead) prickly-pear cactus — apparently all that is left of a garden.

The driveway stops just past where the old house once stood, but if you keep following a trail into the woods (as I did), you eventually come to the ruins of the barn I discovered back in September. It’s much the worse for wear, but still standing, and if you follow the path a bit farther, you eventually come to the mysterious gravestone propped against the base of an ancient tree, inscribed with the birth and death dates of Robert and Mary Mann. As I said back in September, I don’t think anyone is actually buried here; for reasons we may never know, this fine grave marker was moved to this place. The stone was cracked when I first found it, and it’s now barely held together with a rusty metal brace bolted to the back.

I did make a new discovery this time: About 20 yards west of this mysterious marker is the base of another tombstone, almost overgrown with weeds. But I found no traces of open graves or brick-lined vaults, which some readers say they found in the area years ago. If they are still there, they are so overgrown (or filled in) that I couldn’t see them (and boy, I walked all over that area).

I should mention that I’ve done some other research as well, but came up empty-handed. A three-volume book on Shelby County cemeteries (which even includes solitary burials here and there in the countryside) does not include any mention of the Mann gravestone. And a search of Shelby County death records (online through the Shelby County Assessor’s Office) has no listing for Robert or Mary Mann in the late 1800s.

So it comes to this: My several visits to Shelby Farms have revealed just about all the physical clues that exist. But they have, unfortunately, brought me no closer to the basic question that was asked so many months ago: Who were Robert and Mary Mann, and why were they buried in such a lonely spot?

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The WHBQties – Wow!

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Where, oh where, is Debbie Haggard today, I wonder?

Years ago, when I was weary of wandering the lonely halls of the Lauderdale Mansion, I cheered myself up by fiddling with the broken aerial on our only working television, and tuning in to the coolest show in town, namely Talent Party, hosted by longtime disk jockey and tv/radio personality George Klein. But I didn’t stare at the TV to watch George, or even to see (and hear) some of the newest bands in town.

Nope, it was to gape at the gorgeous go-go dancers they called the WHBQties. They were called that since the show was aired on WHBQ Channel 13, you see.

The half-hour program premiered in 1964, and many years ago, Klein told me that he got the idea for the dancers from the old Shindig television series. It was a simple enough concept: Pretty go-go dancers in miniskirts and boots — recruited from local high schools — would dance with the local bands showcased on each program.

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Another Terrifying JOHNSON & JOHNSON Ad

e762/1241749474-jjad-bicycle1.jpg “No — he’ll never ride a bicycle again.”

So begins another installment in a series of terrifying, guilt-inducing advertisements that the Johnson & Johnson company ran in national magazines in the 1940s. And boy, did they lay it on.

Just look at the image: A young boy — on crutches! — stares wistfully at a dusty bicycle in a garage. The caption reads: “AND NOW THERE IS A BICYCLE FOR SALE.” My goodness, what has happened here? Why won’t he ever ride it again, you wonder?

Very simple. Because his parents foolishly, stupidly, and carelessly forgot to use Johnson & Johnson bandages. Read on:

“For the rest of his life, he must pay the penalty for something that needn’t have happened. He merely cut his foot — just as thousands of active boys do. And his mother bandaged it, lovingly, as has been the way of mothers since the world began.

“The bandage looked clean, too. But it wasn’t. And infection set in and spread . . . infection that crippled.