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Seventh Heaven

CREDIT: Christian Patterson

Now that Beale Street has been renovated, and neon warms its coldest nights, it’s hard to conjure up the feeling that must have greeted 37-year-old Calvin Newborn when he returned there after making his name in the jazz world.

“I came back to Memphis in 1970,” he told author Robert Gordon. “Beale Street was being torn down. I couldn’t find no place to play. … [I was] playing with Hank Crawford every six months in California. And when I came back to Memphis, I would stay inebriated. It broke my heart, you know, to come on Beale Street and it wasn’t there. So I just went to the liquor store. When they finally tore it completely down, I thought that was the end of Beale Street, you know. But they started to rebuilding, you know, slowly.”

Christian Patterson

Calvin Newborn

Newborn had dealt with heartbreak before, over the years, in many forms. Happily, he did eventually resume his rightful place as one of Beale’s star attractions. Now the heartbreak’s all ours, since he passed away on December 1st in his adopted home of Jacksonville, Florida. And for lovers of music history, his death marks the loss of more than one man and musician, great enough in his own right. Calvin was the last of the epoch-defining Phineas Newborn Family Showband.

Photo Courtesy of Jadene King

Herman Green

Family Ties

“When I hear stories about Elvis going and hearing [Calvin’s] dad’s band in the Flamingo Room, and borrowing Calvin’s guitar and sitting in with their family band, I think that Elvis probably got a lot of his feel from their family band. I can see how that was an influence on Elvis,” reflects musician and producer Scott Bomar, who worked with Calvin. “It was quite a band. I think Calvin and his family are that missing link between Sun Records and Stax. They were playing on Sun sessions, and you look at all the people that came through that band. William Bell, George Coleman, Honeymoon Garner, Fred Ford, Charles Lloyd, Booker Little. That whole Newborn Family Band was a cornerstone of Memphis music. It’s a chapter that I don’t think has gotten its due.”

Saxophone legend Charles Lloyd recently tried to give the Newborns their credit, when asked to recall his formative years in Memphis. “I was also blessed that Phineas Newborn discovered me early and took me to the great Irvin Reason for alto lessons. Phineas put me in his father — Phineas Senior’s — band. Together with Junior and his brother, Calvin, we played at the Plantation Inn which was in West Memphis. Phineas became an important mentor and planted the piano seed in me. To this day he still informs me.”

Photo Courtesy of Jadene King

Calvin with brass note on Beale honoring the Newborn family.

Of course, Phineas Newborn Jr., or just “Junior,” was Calvin’s older sibling, who some would later call “the greatest living jazz pianist.” Their parents, Phineas Sr., or “Finas,” and Mama Rose Newborn, raised them to love and play music, always hoping to carry on as a family band (with Finas on drums). And, for a time, they did. But, ultimately, Junior was too much of a genius on the ivories to be contained by such ambitions. Indeed, Calvin grew up in the shadow of Junior’s gift, something he apparently did not mind one bit. Though the brothers won their first talent show early on as a piano duo, that moment also brought home Junior’s genius to Calvin, who soon after began guitar lessons on an instrument that B.B. King helped him pick out.

Beale Street held a fascination for the whole family, who would initially make the long trek on foot from Orange Mound just to be there, until they moved closer. Finas turned down opportunities to tour with Lionel Hampton and Jimmie Lunceford just to be near his family and the promise of playing music with them. At that time, a flair for music was often a strong familial force. Dr. Herman Green, master of the saxophone and flute, went to Booker T. Washington High School with Calvin. “We grew up together. We been knowing each other since we were babies,” Green says. “The Newborn family, and the Green family, and then the Steinberg family. We had a lot of families together at that time that were musicians, you know? So we came up together, ’cause we had to go to the same school.”

Steve Roberts

Calvin Newborn, Chuck Sullivan, Richard Cushing, Robert Barnett (back). Dr. Herman Green & Willie Waldman (front) in FreeWorld. ca. 1990.

Though both brothers were soon proficient enough to tour with established acts (as when Calvin hit the road with Roy Milton’s band), by 1948, their father landed the family group a residency at the Plantation Inn in West Memphis. Green, too, joined the band, as did a young trombonist named Wanda Jones. For a time, Finas’ dream flourished. “Oh, we all was good, man!” recalls Green. “We was playing with his daddy. We had some good singers, like Ma Rainey.” Before long, they moved to the Flamingo Room in Downtown Memphis, and then collectively hit the road with Jackie Brenson, who was touring behind his hit record, “Rocket 88,” recorded (with Ike Turner’s band) by Sam Phillips.

If the family band was tight, Calvin and Wanda were getting even tighter. As Green remembers it, “Wanda, yeah — I’m the one that put ’em together. She was the vocalist with Willie Mitchell. I heard her, and I told Finas Sr. about her. And then we ended up using her for quite a while there. Now, Calvin was my right-hand buddy, man. Junior was in and out of there, you know, but me and Calvin were very close. He told me he was getting ready to get married to Wanda. I said, ‘Well, congratulations.’ He said, ‘Well, you ain’t heard the rest.’ I said, ‘Well, what is it?’ He said, ‘I want you to be my best man.’ And then we lived together in my daddy’s house, when he got married.”

The Phineas Newborn Family Showband was the toast of Memphis, with a plethora of future jazz and soul greats rotating through. And Calvin was distinguishing himself with a talent that his gifted brother did not have: showmanship. As Calvin told author Stanley Booth, “You’d have guitar players to come in and battle me, like Pee Wee Crayton and Gatemouth Brown, and I was battlin’ out there, tearin’ they behind up, ’cause I was dancin’, playin’, puttin’ on a show, slide’ across the flo’.” And flying, as captured in an iconic photo of Calvin in mid-air, his eyes fixed with fierce determination on his fretboard, his legs angled high in a mighty leap.

The Elvis Connection

As their reputation grew, the family band began to notice a young white kid at their shows, watching Calvin’s moves like a hawk. As Calvin recalled to Gordon, “I would see him everywhere, he used to come over to the Plantation Inn Club when we was over there.” That kid was Elvis Presley.

“Elvis used to be there, show up every Wednesday and Friday night to see me do Calvin’s Boogie and Junior’s Jive. I’ll be flyin’ and slidin’ across the dance floor [laughs] and I think that’s when he … started to flyin’, too.” Almost as a footnote, Calvin adds, “but he went on and made all that money, made millions of dollars, and I went to the jazz mountaintop and almost starved to death.”

But through it all, Presley remained close to the Newborns. It went far beyond studying their moves and their sounds at the club, as Calvin’s daughter, Jadene King, tells it. In describing her father’s prolific writings, she notes that he penned an as-yet unpublished volume with “a lot of the history between him and Elvis in it.” Titled Rock ‘n Roll: Triumph Over Chaos, “there’s an enormous amount of unspoken-of history of my dad and Elvis’ relationship. Actually, Elvis’ relationship with my entire family,” King says. “A lot of people think he was a prejudiced kind of human being, and from a very bigoted family, but that’s not true. He spent a lot of his life with my father and my uncle, at my grandmother’s home. They were very close. He ate many meals with my dad and my uncle, and my dad was the one that was responsible for a lot of his moves and a lot of his musical talent, as far as teaching him a lot of what he knew. They were very close.”

The Jazz Mountaintop

Family and Elvis aside, Calvin was more concerned with climbing to the jazz mountaintop, especially once the extent of Junior’s deep genius on the piano became widely known. After brief stints in college and the army, Junior was back in Memphis when Count Basie and the great talent scout John Hammond happened to visit, and heard him play. In that moment, the ring of opportunity became the death knell for Finas’ dream of a family band. By 1956, Junior and Calvin had moved to New York, playing in a quartet with two legends-to-be, Oscar Pettiford and Kenny Clarke, and recording for Atlantic and RCA.

Before long, Junior would go his own way, and deal with his own demons, leaving Calvin to deal with his. At first, the jazz mountaintop offered an escape from the South’s rampant racism. “I think that’s the main reason why I left Memphis, you know,” he told Gordon, “to play jazz. Because jazz seemed to have put it on an even keel, because a lot of white people respected jazz. And that was the bebop era, you know, and I admired Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday and all the jazz artists, so I was, that’s one reason I was so glad to get away from Memphis.”

But he also fell into the traps of bebop life, as did Wanda. As Booth writes, “Calvin began working with Lionel Hampton, then joined Earl Hines. His wife, who had become a narcotics addict, had convulsions and died in her sleep, and Calvin began using heroin himself.” And yet, he managed his addictions well enough to keep playing, building his reputation every step of the way. As the 1960s wore on, Calvin ended up working with Jimmy Forrest, Wild Bill Davis, Al Grey, Freddie Roach, Booker Little, George Coleman, Ray Charles, Count Basie, Hank Crawford, and David “Fathead” Newman.

Meanwhile, Junior’s eccentricities were turning into full-blown mental anguish, and he spent time here and there in mental institutions, recovering from his alcoholism in hospitals, or simply convalescing in the family home. Still, he would perform and record.

In 1965, Finas, now suffering from heart problems in spite of his then-clean living, ignored his doctor’s warnings against performing and joined his eldest son onstage in Los Angeles. It was the closest he’d come to recapturing the Newborn family band’s glory days. And he died of a heart attack as soon as he walked off stage. Still, Mama Rose kept her home in Memphis, and Junior stayed there more and more.

Thus was the state of his life and his family when Calvin returned to see Beale Street in ruins. He was once again based in Memphis, but toured often. As his daughter recalls: “The first thing I remember as a little girl was him being in the Bubbling Brown Sugar tour. That had him over in Europe for several years, and he lived in Holland, London, Paris.”

King, whose mother was an Italian immigrant whom Calvin met at Coney Island, but who grew up in Jacksonville, goes on: “That’s my first memory of daddy being gone for a long period of time. That was in the mid-1970s. And he did that for a while. He was constantly gigging and touring during most of my childhood, but he would always come to Jacksonville to see me, or I would go to Memphis and spend time with him at my grandmother’s house. Mama Rose’s.”

Staying at the family home or on his own, Calvin would help with Junior’s care and began playing more with his old classmate, Herman Green. The quartet recordings they made as the Green Machine still stand as some of the finest jazz that Memphis has produced. As the 1980s went on, Calvin joined Alcoholics Anonymous, cleaned up his act, made the occasional solo album, and began working with younger musicians. When Green fell in with the funk/rock/improv group FreeWorld, Calvin was not far behind. “Calvin was a member of FreeWorld for about two years, and his guitar virtuosity brought us all up several levels, musically speaking,” says FreeWorld founder Richard Cushing. “Herman and Calvin would occasionally start playing off each other in the middle of a song, pushing each other, cutting heads as only two old-school masters can do.”

Mike Brown

Working in the studio.

New Born

Memphis musician and producer Scott Bomar also treasures his time with Calvin, first as pupil and then as the producer of his phenomenal album, New Born. “I had to put a band together to back Roscoe Gordon, and I asked Calvin to play guitar. That was the beginning of our friendship and the beginning of us doing gigs together. Some of the most amazing musical settings that I’ve had the good fortune to be part of were with Calvin. At one Ponderosa Stomp show, the Sun Ra Arkestra actually played with Calvin and me. That’s one of the most intense audience reactions I’ve ever seen at a concert. And every time I’d talk to Calvin, he would still talk about it. The last time I spoke to Calvin, he was still talking about that performance. It was a tune of his called ‘Seventh Heaven,’ and that was a very, very special performance.”

Even as the next century approached, Calvin had a flair for showmanship. Bomar goes on: “When he got on stage, he had this energy that not many people I’ve ever played with have. He was electric. He could hit his guitar in a way that got people’s attention. His tone — I love his rawness. Of course, he had this deep musical knowledge and was very melodic, but he also had this kind of raw, rock-and- roll edge to his tone and his playing. His tone was always on the edge of distortion.”

By 2003, there was less to keep Calvin here in Memphis. Junior and his mother, Mama Rose, had left this mortal coil behind. And so he settled in with his daughter, adapting to the Sunshine State and a more contemplative life. “My dad had various levels of spirituality, and he studied every religion known to man. He studied Islam, he studied Jehovah’s Witnesses, he studied Judaism, he studied Hinduism. My father was just a brilliant individual. He’s read the Koran three or four times. He’s read the Bible many times. He was just a very well-versed man, and I would say the last 10 years of his life he completely went over to Christianity.”

Calvin also continued to perform at the Jazzland Cafe and the World of Nations festival in Jacksonville, not to mention many area churches. And he remained as feverishly creative as ever. “He has several unpublished compositions that I have,” notes King. “I have several plays, several books, and tons of lyrics and scores for new music, new songs. He had just finished scoring a musical project that he wanted to take to New York and record.”

And then, in the spring of this year, romance came back into his life, in the form of one Marie Davis Brothers, who he had known for decades. “I’ve known her my whole life, for over 43 years,” says King. “Originally, they were together for 12 years, and they separated and were apart for 20 more years. In 2017, they started communicating again. They’d been talking over the phone for a little over a year, and then in April she moved here from Memphis. And in May they got married and they moved into their own apartment.”

Photo Courtesy of Jadene King

Calvin Newborn at the Memphis Music Hall of Fame induction of his brother Phineas.

The Final Chapter

No one expected Calvin Newborn to die this month. “He had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) from the years and years and years of smoking and drinking and just the jazz life, but he’d been sober and clean for over 35 years, and he was doing very very well,” says King. “Just in the beginning of November, his oxygen levels weren’t what they needed to be, but he just went from not having oxygen to wearing a little Inogen [portable oxygen] machine. And then toward the end of the month, that stopped giving him the levels that were needed, and here we are.”

Just before the end, he was still giving his daughter new writings to type up. “In my father’s last couple of months, he wrote a poem called ‘Seventh Heaven.’ It was based on a dream where he saw his great-granddaughter, who he called Bliss, looking out into what he called seventh heaven, and everyone was at peace. There was no more hatred, there was no more racial divide. There was no more poverty. Everything had been leveled out. It was a beautiful world. I guess if my father had an epitaph, it would be ‘Seventh Heaven: There’s no race, just the human race.'”

In Calvin Newborn’s heaven, there’s room enough for everyone to fly.

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News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1556

Verbatim

“I want to get away from here and think about it, I mean this is an every-day-in-the-hallway question, right? I want to get away from here and think about that.” — Tennessee Senator Bob Corker to MSNBC on whether or not President Donald Trump should face a primary challenger.

“I think it’s important to remind people that we’re going through an anomaly right now as it relates to much of the standard Republican focus that’s been around for a long time,” he continued, almost as if he’d failed to notice he was being replaced by outgoing U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn.

On The WREG

2018 has been suspenseful year for media watchers.

Would conservative media powerhouse Sinclair become more powerful through the acquisition of Tribune Media, including Memphis’ WREG? That controversial merger didn’t happen.

But now with the similarly gigantic Nextar poised to acquire Tribune, is the whole process starting over again? And has ownership uncertainty had an impact on local stations?

“Given the circumstances of the year, when I think it would have been easy for our stations to be distracted, they weren’t,” Tribune senior VP of news Bart Feder told trade magazine Broadcasting & Cable, in a column titled, “Owners Come and Go, But Tribune Stations Stay Local.”

MLK Next

ProPublica, the Pulitzer-winning digital newsroom focused on investigative journalism in the public interest, has selected Wendi Thomas and her MLK50 Justice Through Journalism project to join its Local Reporting Network. Thomas describes the announcement as a “vote of confidence in the importance of this work.”

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News The Fly-By

Liquor Fight

CREDIT: Institute for Justice

A Memphis couple will fight the Tennessee liquor lobby before the U.S. Supreme Court next month, refuting a state law that many, including a past Tennessee Attorney General, have said violates the U.S. Constitution.

State law now requires anyone seeking a license to operate a liquor store to be a resident of Tennessee for at least two years before they can get a license. That law says that since these stores sell products with higher amounts of alcohol, it “is in the interest of the state of Tennessee to maintain a higher degree of oversight, control, and accountability” over the people who have liquor-store licenses.

Institute for Justice

The Ketchums outside Kimbrough Towers Fine Wine

But the law was twice deemed unconstitutional by Robert Cooper when he served as the Tennessee Attorney General in separate opinions issued in 2012 and 2014. In 2012, Cooper wrote, “yes,” residency requirements here “violate the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution.” The clause, broadly, empowers Congress to regulate commerce among states. Cooper repeated his opinion in 2014.

“A number of courts, including the United States Supreme Court, have rejected the argument that a state’s need for greater oversight with alcohol-related licenses can be served only by favoring residents over nonresidents,” he wrote in 2014.

But the law remained.

Fast forward to 2017. Doug and Mary Ketchum bought Midtown’s Kimbrough Towers Fine Wine & Spirits. They bought it because their daughter, Stacy, who has cerebral palsy, had a lung collapse when temperatures changed quickly in their home in the Salt Lake valley. To save her life, according to the group representing them, they had to find another place to move.

The opportunity to buy Kimbrough came along, and the Ketchums thought the move to Memphis would allow for a better climate for their daughter’s health and owning the store would allow them more flexibility to care for her.

They applied for a license to operate the liquor store. But the Tennessee Wine & Spirits Retailers Association threatened to sue the state Alcohol Beverage Commission if the Ketchums were approved, citing residency requirements in state law. All of this is according to the Institute for Justice, the group representing the Ketchums in court. The group describes itself as a “legal advocate for economic liberty.”

A federal district court in Tennessee ruled for the Ketchums and later, too, did the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. State officials did not seek a stay of the district court’s injunction, which allowed the Ketchums to get their liquor license and buy Kimbrough in the summer of 2017.

But the liquor lobby aims to prove its case in court, and now oral arguments are slated for January 16th before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Three separate parts of Tennessee’s law will be argued. One, the two-year residency requirement to get a liquor-store license; two, a 10-year residency requirement to renew liquor-store licenses; three, that corporations cannot get such licenses here unless every member of the corporation, its directors, and stockholders have lived in-state for at least two years.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Labyrinth at Pink Palace

How is it possible that a movie starring David Bowie in the world’s tightest pants and the galaxy’s biggest mullet flopped at the box office? In spite of enormous pre-release hype, Labyrinth, a dark and dream-like fantasy, written by Monty Python’s Terry Jones and directed by Muppet creator Jim Henson, was just a little too weird for 1986 and made back less than half its $25-million budget. The story of Sarah, a fantasy-obsessed teenage girl, and her quest to rescue her infant brother from Bowie’s Goblin King, didn’t find its audience until it came out on home video the following year. Here’s a short list of things you’ll want to watch for now that this longtime staple of the small screen is getting blown up bigger than ever when it screens at the Pink Palace’s Giant Theater.

• The Bog of Eternal Stench smells so bad nobody who ever touches its dark, brackish waters can ever wash away the stink. Judging by the Bog’s physical appearance and the gassy sounds it makes, the Bog of Eternal Stench might have been alternately named the Pond of Belching Buttholes.

• Protagonist Sarah falls into a hole where she is tormented by faces made entirely of hands. It’s a fantastic example of Henson’s boundless creativity as a puppeteer. It’s also nightmare fuel.

• Henson built so much anthropomorphic detail into the world of Labyrinth, even the moss has eyeballs, and it’s everywhere.

• Most of Labyrinth‘s world is handcrafted, but the film is also regarded as Hollywood’s first use of “realistic” CGI animation.

• The crystal orbs the Goblin King spins in his hands are inspired by paradoxical drawings by artist M.C. Escher. They are manipulated by juggler Michael Moschen, not Bowie. The final confrontation occurs in an impossible Escher-like landscape made of stairs that travel in every direction — meant to be viewed on the biggest screen available.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Scotched!

So, it happens the last Thursday of every month until, well, it stops happening. And you’ll need reservations. And tickets. But there is no good reason not to do it. After the success of his Irish Whisky tastings last year, D.J. Naylor over at the Celtic Crossing is now picking out some the best Scotches he’s ever had to share, taste, and talk Scotch whisky.

This isn’t just “drinking Scotch” as wonderful as that is — it is a production in praise of good Scotch … while drinking a tot here and there, or course. Ah, and aren’t you glad that I didn’t say a “wee dram”? Tasting is different from drinking, or more to the point, “drankin’.”

Scotch tastings in Memphis can be tricky. The day before, it was 40 degrees and I was all set to wear my tweed and drink some wooly Scotch. Then it turned out to be 70 degrees and I wore my tweed anyway becausee I’m bloody-minded and thought it would help me sweat the toxins out. As D.J. said: “We’re here to educate — to increase your purchasing power. We’re not here to taste a $1,000 bottle of whisky.”

At half-time during the tasting, reservation tickets included a smoked salmon appetizer and a bit of Scotch egg — which is a hard-boiled egg wrapped in sausage and deep-fried. It lacks finesse, I’ll admit, but it is wonderful. Now, here’s what we tasted.

Glenfiddich Single Malt Scotch, 14 Year Bourbon Barrel Reserve, Dufftown, Baniffshire, Scotland $50, ABV 43%

As the name might suggest, this is a homage to U.S. bourbon — the Scotch is aged in used bourbon barrels and finished in deep-charred new American oak, which is a little different from the usual process. This is a light golden Highland Scotch — it’s malty, it’s got some spice to it, with little hints of toffee and vanilla. If you are a little nervous or wary of those peat-fire Scotches, this is a good choice for you.

Bruichladdich — The Organic Scottish Barley, Isle of Ilay, Argyll, Scotland, $100, ABV 50%

Pronounced “Brook-laddie” because, of course it is. Bruichladdich was bound to happen: The Scots went all organic. It is the localvore Scotch, using all local ingredients from three counties that no one on this side of the Atlantic ocean can pronounce. Bruichladdich has no pesticides and no artificial coloring. This last bit really threw me because I always thought that the original “water-of-life” was that rich golden brown on its own. I thought this because like a lot of people, I crave order in a disturbing universe. So it looks lighter than its counterparts, but at 100 proof, this can be misleading. It is the color of hay and has fine, oily legs when swirled in the glass. There is some sweetness to it and a hint of spice for the big feel of this most virtuous of scotches.

With a high-proof scotch, you can really see how diluting with a little water changes the taste, if not the character of a whisky. Here a little bit of water in a whisky neat really opens up the flavors. For one thing, undiluted spirits at that strength will pretty much overpower the senses.

Ardbeg Corryvreckan, Isle of Islay, Argyll, Scotland, $90, ABV 57.1%

D.J. says, “If you are a peat-head, this is a most enjoyable peat whisky.” In 2010, the year Ardbeg introduced its Corryvreckan (pronounced: Ahh … do we really care at this point?), it won “World’s Best Single Malt Whisky” and “Single Malt of the Year.” It has been likened to Laphroig 10-year, but I don’t see it. They are in the same ballpark, but Laphroig is the more smoky peat-fire of the two. One wonderful thing about the Ardbeg is that is has a lot of spice from the French oak casks, but because it’s distilled close to the sea, it has that certain iodine, seawater brine character. Which, I know sounds nasty, but it really is the hard-to-press-down quality that, for me, makes a great Scotch.

Macallan Extra Rare Cask Edition, Craigellachie, Banffshire, Scotland, $300, ABV 43%

This is just ostentatious. Wonderful but ostentatious. And I’m not just talking about the $300 price tag or the awesome red box it comes in that viewers of The Crown know looks suspiciously like those dispatch boxes the queen gets her official business in. This Scotch is blended from whiskies drawn from 16 Sherry cask styles. It leaves me asking, “Why?” Is it to justify the $300 price? Don’t get me wrong, this was an epic snort of whisky, but I’ve had much better at $70. It is dark gold in color, with flavors of Sherry and oak and a long dried fruit finish.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Traditional tea service at TreeLeaf Tea Room.

CREDIT: Photographs by Justin Fox Burks

Morgan Lee moved to Memphis from L.A. to pursue teaching. The city surprised her, as it wasn’t super Southern-y, as she was expecting. About a year later, her mother Stacy Brooks joined her and, together, the pair opened TreeLeaf Tea Room in Bartlett in mid-August.

TreeLeaf offers Cream Tea ($5.99) with a pot of tea and a scone served with Devonshire cream; Light Tea ($10.99) with a pot of tea, the scone, and assorted savory snacks; and Afternoon Tea ($16.99) with a pot of tea, the scone, savory treats, dessert, and fruit. A plate on a recent visit included finger sandwiches, a sandies cookie, melon and grapes, and a pie bar.

Photographs by Justin Fox Burks

Morgan Lee (left) and Stacy Brooks of TreeLeaf Tea Room

Teas include black and herbal. There are the classics — Earl Grey, English Breakfast. There are also seasonal teas like a cranberry hibiscus. There are a dozen offerings in all.

The prices are kept affordable. They want everybody to feel like they can stop in for some tea. For comparison, the afternoon tea at the Peabody is about $45.

Lee says she was too much of a tomboy to be into tea sets when she was a kid, but Brooks says she loved to play house. She liked serving people, and she liked cleaning. This extends to present day in the tea room, which is pristine and pretty with linens and tea sets, many bought at thrift stores.

While Lee manages the business side of the tea room, Brooks is in charge of the overall experience — how the space looks and how the table is set and how the food is placed on the plate. Lee laughs that when she plates the food, her mother tends to move it, even just a little. “It’s got to look nice,” insists Brooks.

The pair initially thought about a cookie business as Brooks loves to bake, but then the idea branched out to include a place to eat the cookies. Lee was taken to a tea room in L.A. as a birthday present from her sister. The idea set in.

Brooks says she figured out how to do the tea room by watching YouTube and checking out Pinterest.

Brooks stresses that it was God who put her on this path, steered her toward Tennessee, and led her to use her talents in this manner.

TreeLeaf is named after Brooks’ favorite psalm. She knew it was divine intervention when she came upon the idea and was ready to call her daughter, who had been bugging her about the name. But, first, she played a game on her phone. One of the questions from the game had to do with trees and leaves. Lee was just happy to have a decent name. “Sounds good to me,” she responded to her mother.

Brooks raised eight children in L.A., and there were plenty of struggles. But the mother-daughter relationship is relaxed and not fraught. “It’s a good thing we like each other,” says Brooks. Lee says even their squabbles are productive.

“Morgan sacrificed her life to help me with this,” Brooks says.

“It’s time for her,” answers Lee. “She sacrificed many, many times for her children. It’s a very small price to pay.”

TreeLeaf Tea Room, 2780 Bartlett Blvd. (512-5936), treeleaftearoom.com

Drunk Competition

After Miles Kovarik put up his post for a spelling bee event at a local bar, he was a bit astonished by the response. He says about 1,000 people were interested. “I thought we were onto something,” he says.

He then set about creating similar, nontraditional events for bars. Events he calls intellectual or boring.

And, thus, he established Drunk Competition, which puts on these events at Taylor Berger’s bars, Loflin Yard, Maciel’s, and Railgarten, about twice a month at each establishment.

The next event is Drunk Debate at Loflin Yard, December 27th.

The competitions begin with the easiest questions and increasingly get more difficult as they move along. At a recent math competition, Kovarik says that the first questions were of the most basic, two-plus-two variety, but the last question, he thought, was darn near impossible. But someone solved it.

Kovarik imagines all the directions Drunk Competition could take — Drunk Connect Four, Drunk Pictionary, Drunk Charades. The possibilities are endless.

Kovarik notes that you don’t actually have to be drunk to compete, it’s just whatever gets you comfortable enough to be in front of a crowd. “You can be drunk on water,” he says. “The emphasis is to have fun in your own capacity.”

But, if you want to drink, so be it. The bar usually offers drink specials, and the winner of the competition gets $100, “for more alcohol, if you like,” says Kovarik.

Sign up to compete via Facebook or eventbrite.

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News News Feature

Shop Local Suburbs

This holiday season, we’re encouraging our readers to support local businesses by shopping right here at home. Consider these Memphis-area establishments for your gift-giving needs.

Buff City Soap

Pamper your giftees with handmade products crafted in-store at Buff City Soap. Made with natural ingredients like hemp seed oil and rosemary and without detergents and harsh chemicals, their soaps, lotions, and bath bombs leave skin soft and clean. This three-piece gift box ($23) covers all the bases. Available at Buff City Soap locations (3000 Kirby Whitten Road, Bartlett; 101 S. Main; 944 S. Cooper, and others) and buffcitysoap.com.

Truffle Pig

This design and lifestyle boutique offers a variety of gift options, jewelry, home decor, and art, including items made by local artisans. The 2019 Bicentennial Memphis Calendar ($38) created by mixed-media artist Erika Roberts celebrates our city with watercolor paintings of Memphis landmarks, along with notations for dates that are of importance to Memphians. Visit Truffle Pig at shoptrufflepig.com or 9056 Poplar Pike, Suite 201, Germantown.

Bella Vita Gifts & Interiors

Featuring art and pottery, frames and furniture, bath and bedding essentials, dinnerware, and more, Bella Vita can help with your gift list. This bracelet set (starting at $219) from the exclusive Debbie Segal line made in East Memphis, is among the jewelry offerings within. Check out their Debbie Segal Trunk Show December 21st through 23rd. Visit Bella Vita at 3670 Houston Levee Road, Suite 101, Collierville, or shopbellavita.com.

Categories
Book Features Books

Edward Carey’s Little.

Edward Carey’s first novel, Observatory Mansions, announced the coming of a new American fabulist. It may have been the best first novel since Steven Millhauser’s Edwin Mulhouse. And like Millhauser, Carey’s inventiveness was joyous and full of marvels, like a bookish visit to Aladdin’s cave. His second novel, Alva and Irva, only cemented his reputation as a new Calvino. Little is his first adult novel in years, after a well-received Gormenghast-like young adult trilogy.

This new novel, as they say in a film’s opening credits, is based upon a true story. But the literary magic, the supreme storytelling, the novelistic pacing and design belong to Carey, and he dazzles. The Dickensian tale begins in Switzerland, in the 1760s, when a young orphan girl, Marie, becomes apprenticed to a Doctor Curtius, who has washed out of medical practice, only to begin an eccentric career based on making figures in wax. Marie is under five feet in height and becomes known as Little, a moniker at times affectionate, at times demeaning. “Little ill-facedness, little minor monster in a child’s dress … little thing … little howl … little crumb of protruding flesh … little statement on mankind,” one nasty man calls her. Little’s story is fraught with horrors, then becomes a mix of horrors and enchantments.

Little is voiced in first person by Marie, and she is an engaging narrator. She says, “This is the story of a shop. The story of a business, of its highs and its lows, of its staff coming and going, of profit and loss, and sometimes of the outside world and the people that came knocking on our doors. So then. Let me explain.” She also illustrates her tale with chiaroscuro drawings, demonstrating the craft she has learned from the doctor, though the pupil soon outstrips the educator. Carey is an accomplished artist, and his illustrations add to the strange and eerie luster of the tale. The book’s pages are as lovely as a rill; the words wind around these intricate and arresting sketches. They remind me of the illustrations in some of John Gardner’s novels. I met Gardner once and asked him why he liked visuals in his novels, and he said, “Because every time you open one it’s like Christmas.”

Curtius’ art takes them to Paris where they take lodging with the Widow Picot, in her home called the Great Monkey House. She is one of the novel’s antagonists, an unpleasant woman who takes an immediate dislike to Marie and sets about to make her young life a living hell. “I loathed her utterly, then and always,” Marie says. “Can I describe my hatred for her? It would poison these pages.”

Meanwhile, the waxworks they’ve begun in the widow’s house have become a popular attraction. She wants to exhibit only the best people — she is a terrible snob — while Curtius is drawn to the criminal and the insane. The exhibition is yin and yang, heroes and villains, dark and light. It is this seesawing back and forth that propels the story, as Marie attempts to come into her own. It’s a bildungsroman, with the added twist that the hero is a woman, who must not only battle her tormentors but also the prejudices of a male-centered universe. Carey adds just the right amount of gothic seasoning to his tale. One can feel a bit of Bronte behind his descriptions of the various households and plain and fancy folk whom our protagonist finds herself among.

The historical background for this tale is the French Revolution, the same as A Tale of Two Cities. Carey’s version, seen through the eyes of a young woman coming into her own, is a masque with a colorful cast of real people, from Marie Antoinette to Jean-Paul Marat and Jacques-Louis David, from Rousseau to Robespierre. Carey’s vividly painted setting and equally vivid rendering of characters makes Little the kind of book you feel you are living within. When I finished, I immediately missed it. I wanted to listen to Marie a little longer. It’s also a story too large and rich for a 700-word review.

Little is the best piece of new fiction I’ve read this year. It is a marvel. It is like a Christmas present. Give it to yourself.

Categories
News News Blog

Community Greenspace Planned for Edge District

CREDIT: Dalhoff Design Studio

Dalhoff Design Studio

Rendering of The Ravine between Union and Madison

A new public gathering and green space, dubbed The Ravine, is coming to Downtown, leaders with the project announced Wednesday.

The $5 million project will transform an undefined corridor in the Edge District between Union and Madison into a “vibrant and activated space” with distinct areas that could include a retail plaza, kid-friendly play area with water features, flexible seating, an amphitheater-style performance venue, event spaces, and restaurants, officials said.

Ethan Knight, spokesperson for The Ravine and vice president of development for the real estate firm behind the project, Development Services Group (DSG), said the space will be designed for “community, recreation, and artistry,” and will seek to engage every type of visitor.

“The Edge District currently lacks a true public gathering point,” Knight said. “The Ravine will fill the void and set a national example by converting unused and largely unknown space into a public-private asset.”

Dalhoff Design Studio

Current view of the project’s future site

Dean Thomas, principal of Dalhoff Design Studio, design partner for the Ravine, said in a city, it’s important to have spaces for people to interact and gather throughout the day.


“The design for The Ravine provides this for users of all backgrounds and abilities through a diversity of experiences woven within a relaxing green space for daily use, a lively retail plaza, opportunities for play, and an entertainment destination,” Thomas said. “We are extremely excited to bring this vision for the park to life.”

The multi-phase project got the green light and a $400,000 incentive Wednesday from the Downtown Memphis Commission’s (DMC) economic development board to move forward with the first phase of the project.

President and CEO of the DMC, Jennifer anticipates The Ravine creating improved connectivity within the Central Business Improvement District (CBID), an area identified by the DMC as requiring special redevelopment attention in order to ensure the economic growth and vitality of the entire community.

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The CBID is generally bounded by the Wolf River on the north, Crump Boulevard on the south, the Tennessee state line on the west, and Danny Thomas Boulevard on the east, with an extension between Poplar and Linden to Watkins to encompass the Medical District.

“We believe in the vision behind this project and in investing in connectivity throughout the CBID,” Oswalt said. “This is a prime example of a development that meets the DMC’s two-fold goal directly: to increase the volume of people engaging in activities in Downtown and to increase commercial property values across the CBID.”

Totaling $1.7 million, the first phase will include hard construction and infrastructure and is slated to be completed by May 2019.

Dalhoff Design Studio


The second phase includes the completion of all hardscaping and landscaping, as well as installing lighting, seating, a performance stage and related equipment, gateway arches, salvaged bakery silos, slides, and other features.

Phase two is expected to begin by October 2019 and wrap up in early 2020. A third and final phase will include art, interactive play structures, commissioned sculptures and murals, bridge connections, and more enhanced lighting.

Leaders of the project say funding for the future phases will require a substantial public-private partnership and will be sought from local and national foundations, corporations, and individuals.

Tommy Pacello, president of the Memphis Medical District Collaborative, said the Edge district is a largely forgotten about area of the city, but The Ravine will help change that by connecting the area to the rest of the city.

“This project is the latest example of the transformation of a largely forgotten area of our city into what will be a surprising public space, rich in texture and experiences,” Pacello said. “Ethan and his team are creatively blending private real estate investment with the public good. When combined, The Ravine and the redevelopment of adjacent buildings will better connect the Edge to the rest of the city while also creating a valuable public asset.”

Categories
News News Blog

Public Input Wanted for Comprehensive City Plan

CREDIT: City of Memphis

City of Memphis

There’s a new comprehensive plan to guide the city forward as it approaches its bicentennial and officials want to know what you think.

A little over 400 pages long, the Memphis 3.0 plan took two years to devise and is a combined effort of city officials, local nonprofits, community partners, and more than 15,000 residents.

The plan largely focuses on “building up, not out,” aiming to support existing residents, attract new residents and visitors, and reduce inequities. In the past, city leaders focused on annexation and expanding the city limits, but that led to resources being spread thin and had adverse effects on the core neighborhoods, according to the document.

The idea is to improve and invest in the city’s core and surrounding neighborhoods in order to create dense, walkable, connected communities.

The plan has eight specific goals that fall under three categories: land, connectivity, and opportunity. The goals include creating:

•Complete, cohesive communities

•Vibrant civic spaces

•Sustainable and resilient communities

•High performing infrastructure

•Connected corridors and communities

•Equitable opportunities

•Prosperous and affordable communities

•Engaged communities


The document also details specific strategies for nurturing, accelerating, or sustaining certain neighborhoods within the city’s 14 planning districts. For example, the plan suggests that The Edge neighborhood should be accelerated by increasing its cultural identity and incentivizing the rehab and adaptive reuse of structures.

The plan also touches on transportation, safe streets, housing, parks, the environment, as well as access to fresh food, jobs, and education.

The public has until February 8th to submit feedback on the plan via email to info@memphis3point0.com, via mail to the Office of Comprehensive Planning, or fax at 901-636-6603.

The plan is slated to go before the Memphis and Shelby County Land Use Control Board for adoption on February 14th, followed by the Memphis City Council and Shelby County Commission.

If adopted, the Memphis 3.0 plan will guide future policies, investments, and partnerships made by the city over the next 20 years.