The 2022 Beale Street Music Festival was a success in its first year back after a two-year pandemic hiatus. One of the things that set this year’s festival apart past editions — other than the supposedly temporary move to Liberty Park in Midtown — was the record number of Memphis acts on the bill. From our coverage of the BSMF 2022 weekend, Bluff City’s finest turned out to be huge crowd pleasers.
One of the local bands on the stage was Tora Tora. The ’80s metal sensation consisting of singer Anthony Corder, guitarist Keith Douglas, bassist Patrick Francis, and drummer John Patterson exploded out of Memphis with their 1989 album Surprise Attack, which peaked at number 49 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Their hit single “Walking Shoes” was a little more bluesy than most of their hair metal contemporaries. Wikipedia claims the black-and-white video was the first from Memphis to be played on MTV, but that’s not quite true. The New Wave novelty song “Dog Police” appeared on Weird Al Yankovic’s MTV show five years earlier. But “Walking Shoes” was definitely the first Memphis video to land in hit-making heavy rotation on the video channel. In the video, watch for some Downtown Memphis landmarks, like the Tennessee Brewery, which have changed considerably since then. Rock on with Tora Tora!
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