Tag: BB King

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News The Fly-By

Third Street May Become B.B. King Blvd.

CREDIT: Alaina Getzenberg

Most would agree that, without B.B. King, Beale Street could not have achieved its glory. And likewise, King had Beale to thank for much of his success.

Now the two might literally intersect if a proposal is approved to change the name on part of Third Street to B.B. King Boulevard.

A proposal to change Third, from E.H. Crump on the south to Chelsea on the north, to B.B. King Boulevard has been sent to the Land Use Control Board for approval. The application will be voted on by the board on Thursday, August 13th.

The idea of dedicating a street to King, who passed away on May 14th at the age of 90, came from Southern Heritage Classic founder Fred Jones Jr. Jones wrote a Facebook post on May 18th suggesting that a street renaming occur on Third all the way to the Mississippi state line. The post gained traction and attention from Mayor A C Wharton’s office and Congressman Steve Cohen.

Alaina Getzenberg

Beale and Third

At the end of May, around the time of a celebration that occurred in King’s honor in Memphis, City Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Maura Sullivan submitted the official application on behalf of the mayor’s office.

“We had a lot of support for the name change as soon as it was announced,” Sullivan said. “We even heard from as far away as London. People were excited to see Memphis reaching up and stepping out to honor B.B. King, someone who meant so much to the city of Memphis.”

Not everyone immediately jumped on board, however.

Third Street was given a memorial designation as James L. Netters Parkway in 1991 in honor of civil rights advocate Reverend James L. Netters. Upon the announcement of intentions to name the street B.B. King Boulevard, Reverend Netters, Shelby County Commissioner Eddie Jones, and some citizens of Memphis expressed concerns that the designation already given to the street would be taken away.

So a compromise was reached. Netters Parkway is designated from Crump to the Mississippi state line, and B.B. King Boulevard, if approved, will run from Crump north to Chelsea.

Some have suggested that a different street be renamed, but Jones says the symbolism that Third provides cannot be ignored.

“Third Street is a part of Beale and Highway 61 — the Blues Highway,” Fred Jones said. “It is the route that not only B.B. King came out of the Delta on, but other blues musicians did as well. Third is through the middle of town and takes you right past Beale Street.”

Renaming Third Street will require the replacement of 35 metro street name signs and 35 post-mounted street name signs, a change that will cost $24,500. In addition, the name change will require businesses along the route to make a change in address. However, the Memphis and Shelby County Office of Planning and Development received no objections from the 92 notices that were mailed out to property owners.

While changing the name of a street for only three miles may not have a massive physical impact, the hope is that what it symbolizes does make a difference.

“I hope that B.B. would be very honored and pleased,” Sullivan said. “Just being able to pay honor to a man whose music and story was so important to the City of Memphis is such an amazing thing.”

Jones thinks King would be pleased.

“I’ve known B.B. King since the ’70s,” Fred Jones said. “He was very appreciative of everything, and he would be thrilled to have his name at an intersection of Beale.”

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News News Blog

Convention & Visitors Bureau Celebrates Memphis Tourism Increase

Kevin Kane

If you weren’t at the Peabody Hotel on Tuesday, you missed one big show celebrating Memphis. That’s when the who’s who of Memphis tourism gathered at the Peabody for the Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau’s (CVB) annual luncheon meeting.

With hundreds in attendance, from Mayor A C Wharton to the ducks from the historic hotel, the Convention & Visitors Bureau celebrated their accomplishments in flashy style. Multiple awards were given out throughout the lunch, including one given posthumously to B.B. King to celebrate his contributions to Memphis and what he meant to the city. His granddaughter and drummer accepted the award on his behalf.

The event celebrated the progress the city has made in increasing revenue from tourism, including hotel occupancy increasing by nine percent last year. In addition, Memphis attractions had five million visitors last year.

Throughout the event, videos showcasing Memphis neighborhoods and positive city reforms were screened. This included a video celebrating the success of Overton Square in Midtown.

To close off the event, CVB President and CEO Kevin Kane issued a call for improvements to the Cook Convention Center, so that even more people and groups would be attracted to Memphis.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Memphis Has the Blues

It’s Saturday morning and Memphis has the blues.

The rain is coming down, slow and persistent from a low gray sky. It soaks the grass, fills the gutters, and falls hard on the flowers left on the Beale Street sidewalk outside of B.B. King’s club.

The King of Blues left us on Friday, gone after 89 years, one of the last living links to a long-ago Memphis — the era of WDIA and the old pre-tourist Beale Street — an era we’ll never see the likes of again.

And on that same Friday, just a block away on the now-booming Beale Street, our beloved Memphis Grizzlies were eliminated from the NBA playoffs. Grit ‘n Grind came up short against the flashy, splashy hotshots from the Golden State.

It’s Saturday morning and Memphis has the blues. A double shot.

I’d spent that Friday on a 12-hour drive back from a vacation in Western Pennsylvania. I listened to the radio all day, and on almost every show — from NPR to sports-talk radio — B.B. King was discussed and eulogized. His music was everywhere; past interviews were replayed. His humanity and humility came through as clear as one of his signature guitar lines. He spoke as he played — with elegance, dignity, and perfect timing. He was seen, without question, as a national treasure. And he belongs to Memphis.

Now, Mayor Wharton is suggesting that we honor B.B. King by naming a street after him. This is a great idea, and certainly not unprecedented. One of our major thoroughfares is named after Danny Thomas, who founded the world’s greatest children’s hospital, St. Jude. Another is named after Elvis Presley, the king of rock-and-roll. B.B. King deserves no less.

The mayor has suggested Third Street, which runs through the east side of downtown before trickling into a hodge-podge of less-than-stellar retail mini-malls and decaying urban sprawl, before it hits the I-240 loop south of town. I think we can do better for the King of the Blues.

We should rename Riverside Drive for B.B. King. It’s one of our most beautiful and iconic streets. Coming from the South, from the bluff, you get a wonderful view of the Mighty Mississippi and Tom Lee Park below, and the M-Bridge in the distance. It runs along the riverfront, past the boats and the harbor and the cobblestones, where cotton from the fields was once loaded and unloaded — and where the blues were born. It’s the best way to enter the city, the way I drive all my first-time-in-Memphis visitors from the airport.

I’d like to see a statue of B.B. King in Ashburn-Coppock Park, just before the street that would bear his name descends to the river, a river named for the state where King was born.

Lots of cities have a Riverside Drive. If Memphis is going to have a B.B. King Boulevard, let’s do it up right. We’re Memphis and we can have the blues every day.

And in this case, that would be a very good thing.

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Editorial Opinion

B.B. King, the Maestro

CREDIT: Randy Miramontez | Dreamstime.com

Randy Miramontez | Dreamstime.com

B.B. King

For all that has been written about Memphis as a popular-music foundry, as the major originating point of blues and rockabilly and soul and so much else that the world now takes for granted, there is one aspect of the city’s endemic sound that is often overlooked, even in otherwise reasonable and authoritative accounts. 

That has to do with the elements of precision and control that underlie all the city’s characteristic musical products. From the tightly energized backing given to Elvis Presley’s earliest Sun recordings by Scotty Moore’s electric guitar and Bill Black’s bass to the massed harmonics of the Memphis Horns over at Stax/Volt, our city’s musical exemplars would pioneer in all the ways in which the raw and elemental stuff of life can be captured live and contained. That, if you will, is “the Memphis sound.”

No one represents this defining characteristic better than B.B. King, the maestro of the blues guitar, who died last week at age 89 and rightly received plaudits and eulogies from all over the globe. What distinguished B.B.’s playing was his unique single-string style, in which notes were played one at a time, rather than in ensemble or chord form, and each note sang its own song of sadness or joy or playfulness or indefinable longing. Each note — held or clipped, bent or played straight, isolated or in sequence — was an infinite universe of meaning.

Though B.B. King was no academic scholar, his knowledge of musical properties was profound and arose both from the gigs he did and from his path-finding service in the late ’40s and early ’50s as a disc jockey on Memphis’ WDIA-AM, the nation’s first all-black radio station. 

It was as a performer, though, that he was best known and will remain so, through recordings that will be played as long as there are means to hear them and places on earth where people are free to do so. B.B. King was not just a musical maestro, he was an emissary of civilization itself. God willing, he is one thrill that will never be gone.

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News News Blog

B.B. King Dies at Age 89

Blues legend B.B. King died in his sleep Thursday night at the age of 89.

The “King of the Blues” had struggled with diabetes for some time. He died peacefully in his sleep around 9:40 Pacific Time in his Las Vegas home, where he was in hospice care, according to his attorney Brent Bryson.

King was born in Mississippi, but he later called Memphis home. He rose to fame in the 1950s, and he’s since won more than a dozen Grammy’s. He’s also received the high honors of being named to the Blues Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. King has recorded more than 50 albums and continued to tour throughout his 80s.

This morning, Mayor A C Wharton issued the following statement about B.B. King’s passing:


“People who don’t follow national politics are familiar with the name of John Kennedy. Those who know nothing about basketball have at least heard of Michael Jordan. There are certain individuals who are absolutely transcendent – their personalities become bigger than the field in which they are best known. Such is the case with B. B. King. Those who never heard or had the blues knew his name.

We have our own Memphis Music Hall of Fame because this city has been foundational in the careers of icons like Elvis Presley, Al Green, Johnny Cash, and Isaac Hayes to name a few. Even among other musical legends, B. B. King was a giant in terms of his influence.

This loss is particularly hurtful for our city because B. B. and Memphis had a longtime love affair. The fact that Beale Street Blues Boy is the origin of the nickname B. B. is the type of authentic connection that will never die.

It is altogether fitting that we will mark the life of B. B. King on Beale Street this weekend. Some earn titles through elections and others through military conquest. But people all over the world have agreed for many years that B. B. was and will always be the KING OF THE BLUES – a title earned through music and performance, not according to his family name.

We will all miss this American icon. But, B. B. King’s legacy and music will live on.”

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant (September 4, 2014)

There was a time when Beale Street was known as the “Main Street of Negro America.” Considering the city’s past, black Memphians have every justification in believing that the institution of a midnight $10 cover charge is another attempt to discourage young black men from congregating. Quotable business owner, Randle Catron, of the Beale Street Development Corporation, claims the $10 fee discriminates against the underprivileged. “The majority of people that own places on Beale Street [are] white,” Catron said, while preparing to file a federal lawsuit. “The majority of folks that are here late at night are black. Now, who do you think they’re targeting?”

Ty Agee of the Beale Street Merchants Association said the cover charge is not about race: “It’s strictly … trying to help people, and not getting anybody else hurt … There was no hidden agenda there.” The cover charge was introduced by the merchants as a response to the video of a man lying in the street, beaten and bleeding, while a group of indifferent sub-humans stood around and took pictures. The merchants say the income from the cover charge will go to pay for additional security.

New Orleans has the rowdiest street in the nation, yet they still manage to employ enough police officers to maintain order and sweep the drunks off the street at closing time. It would seem that if this city were to continue to prosper from the legendary entertainment district, it’s in their best interest to see it properly policed.

Still, charging people to walk on a public street, despite the possible necessity of its purpose, is still a reminder of the city’s long history of lounge entrepreneurs attempting to keep white nightclubs from being overrun by fun-seeking black people. Conversely, the traditional “black” clubs of my youth, like the Club Paradise, were always welcoming to white patrons. Even in the insane disco ’70s, white club owners tried numerous ways to discourage black clientele.

My band was hired to play at a hot disco in Whitehaven called the New Yorke Time that alternated live music with a DJ playing the latest hits. Considering the club was appropriating black music, dance, and culture, the managers seemed surprised when young, fashionably dressed African-American night-clubbers showed up to see what the fuss was all about. Concerned that his “white” club was becoming a “black” club, the owner instituted a series of punitive dress codes aimed at black customers.

They erected a sign-board at the entrance listing the new policies. The first rule was “No Hats,” a must-have fashion accessory of disco attire. When they discovered that this wasn’t achieving the desired results, they imposed a “No Platform Heels” policy. Even the Osmond Brothers wore platform shoes in the ’70s. When customers objected, the bouncer-goons explained it was for insurance purposes, and that they didn’t want to be held liable if someone should trip on the dance floor — as opposed to tripping-out on the dance floor, which the disc jockey encouraged. Ultimately, the club succeeded in chasing away customers, both black and white, and joined that dreaded category known as the “redneck” bar. Attendance plummeted and the owner took a well-deserved bath.

During the same time period, there was a music showcase on the top of the Mid-City Building at Union and Cleveland with a revolving stage. I saw Little Richard and Fats Domino play there in front of mixed-race audiences, before they ripped the whole thing out and turned it into a disco with blaring, throbbing music and a lighted dance floor on one side, and a more intimate lounge with acoustic music on the other. Since I was employed to do a solo show, I had no help hauling all the sound equipment to the top floor and hooking it up. The load-ins and tear-downs are what musicians get paid for — the music’s free.

When I returned in the evening, the place was already packed with dancers gyrating to the disco beat. I was carrying my guitar toward the lounge when the manager called me into his office. I would mention him by name, but luckily for him, I’ve forgotten. “Listen,” he directed, “I want you to go out there and play country music tonight.” I was startled and objected: “That’s really not what I do.” “It’s what you’re gonna do tonight if you want to get paid,” he proclaimed. I asked, “Why would you want me to play country music?” He stated bluntly, “There’s too many blacks in here. Play country music, and they’ll stop coming.”

I was in a moral quandary. I needed the money, but I didn’t want to participate in this asshole’s racist scheme. When I took my seat onstage and looked out, my entire audience was black. I promptly launched into a six-song, Jerry “The Ice Man” Butler medley, ending with a version of “I Stand Accused” that so moved one lady that she sprang up from her table and ran toward the stage to give me a hug, but tripped and ended up knocking me and my guitar over backwards. I suggested that this might be a good time to take a break and got rousing applause from those assembled. When I walked by the manager’s office, he called out to me, “Hey! You’re fired.” It was the proudest firing I ever endured.

These bullshit games have never worked, and regardless of intent, neither will the cover charge on Beale. Merchants have already reported taking a financial hit, although the tourists don’t seem to mind paying the fee. Other methods are already under consideration to ensure safety on the street and beyond. All I hope is that someone doesn’t get crazy and embarrass us all by erecting a giant billboard that says, “No Hats Allowed.”

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Music Music Features

Blues News

Life of Riley screens at the Brooks Museum of Art on Thursday, May 29th, at 7 p.m.

This documentary from director Jon Brewer renders B.B. King and the blues in an unsentimental and unsettling manner. The film opens with Bill Cosby, who emphatically rejects any romantic notions of the music or of King’s life. It’s a powerful opening to a great historical document.

King’s life is set in place as he is interviewed in recent footage at the site of his birth. There are moving interviews with many of his old friends and family members. Those are cut against interviews with Bono and Eric Clapton. But the man who emerges is one who never stopped moving through a half century of extreme social change.

The notoriously hard-touring King, now 88, was orphaned, went to a one-room schoolhouse, and then into the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta. The horrors of the system are powerfully depicted. He witnessed a lynching, worked under armed guard, and ran away twice to Memphis before the musical life took hold. Music aside, the first-person history of 20th century plantation life is worth watching. What King accomplishes from this appalling situation is one of America’s greatest artistic legacies.

King’s guitar playing is idiosyncratic to say the least. His stylistic efficiency relates to his lifestyle of working and moving fast with a light footprint. His ex-wife’s story of him fishing in a silk suit has a funny aspect to it. But his response, “It’s all I have,” is that of an orphan who had nothing, had to depend on himself, and who couldn’t let himself stop working. This is what Cosby wants us to bear in mind. This film should be shown in our schools. Life of Riley goes to video on demand on June 1st.

• KWEM, the West Memphis-based radio station that launched “Memphis” music, is powering up again. Mid-South Community College in West Memphis received a license to operate a low-powered FM transmitter. The signal will go live in about 90 days on 93.3 FM and might reach parts of Memphis. But the programming will be streamed online at kwemradio.com.

KWEM was a music-production think tank at the dawn of electrified blues. In the film discussed above, B.B. King mentions the exposure and experience he gained through his sponsored work on KWEM. The deal was you could pay to play on the air or get a sponsor.

Howlin’ Wolf, born Chester Burnett, had a connection to the station that ran for half a decade: Burnett was the station’s first African-American host. In 1951, Sam Phillips heard Wolf on KWEM, recorded him in Memphis, and sold the records to Chess. Everybody thought things were going along smoothly. However, Ike Turner, pianist and frequent collaborator with Phillips, took Burnett across the river to record at KWEM for the Bihari brothers, owners of the Modern label in Los Angeles. Although Wolf eventually went on to a productive relationship with Phillips and Chess, Joe Bihari and Ike Turner recorded four tracks on Howlin’ Wolf at KWEM in 1951 and several the next year.

Burnett, James Cotton, Junior Parker, Hubert Sumlin, and Elmore James worked or performed at KWEM. Bill Black and Scotty Moore played there. Johnny Cash made his broadcast debut and hosted a show.

Jim Dickinson — Memphis’ Dr. Johnson — was emphatic on the issue that Memphis music had its roots at West Memphis’ Plantation Inn. He insisted that Packy Axton was the funky Prometheus who brought the sound back across the river. Between Phillips and Sun’s reliance on KWEM and the Stax/Mitchell connection to West Memphis live scene, it’s a wonder we don’t call it West Memphis Music.

• Memphis Blues stalwart Daddy Mack has a new album and will celebrate its release at the trolley stop of the Center for Southern Folklore on Saturday, May 21st. The show will be recorded for a Beale Street Caravan broadcast and will include tracks from Daddy Mack’s latest album, Blues Central. If you’ve never heard and met this band, you’re missing out big time.

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Cover Feature News

A Hall of Our Own

CREDIT: Deanie Parker Collection. Center for Southern Folklore Archives.

On the constellation of Memphis music attractions, the Smithsonian Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum doesn’t burn quite as bright as Graceland, Sun Studio, or the Stax Museum of American Soul Music. But since its founding more than a decade ago, the museum has served a useful purpose in pulling the different strands of the Memphis music story into one narrative.

This month, with the launch of the first Memphis Music Hall of Fame, Rock ‘n’ Soul steps into the spotlight.

The general idea of a Memphis-specific Hall of Fame has been in the air for decades, but the current realization — with an inaugural class of 25 inductees that was announced last month and will be feted at the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts next week — has its origins in a Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum strategic planning meeting roughly seven years ago.

The museum had incurred debt in its original setup at the Gibson Guitar Factory and then relocation costs when it moved to its current home at FedExForum. It took awhile to get those issues under control.

“As we were feeling like our head was coming above water, we were able to really focus on what is our mission,” says museum executive director John Doyle. “And we felt like this was something that’s an extension of our mission to preserve and tell the story of Memphis music and to perpetuate its legacy.”

Kevin Kane, the head of the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau, who also serves as the chairman of the Rock ‘n’ Soul board, was a big proponent of the project.

“This should have happened 20 years ago. If any city deserves it, it’s Memphis,” Kane says. “We felt like we were the obvious entity to do this. Us or the Music Commission or Music Foundation. It makes sense for it to be us. We’re that portal to tell an overarching story that transcends Sun, Stax, etc. And we have a facility, unlike the commission or foundation. People walk through on a daily basis. We have a footprint.”

Doyle says he and the museum’s planning committee consulted other music attractions in town before launching the project.

“We wanted to make sure it wasn’t a faux pas to do this,” he says. “No one was biting at the bullet to do this because it takes a lot of work, and it takes a lot of money to do it right. We felt like we were the people to do it, because we tell the complete Memphis music story. But we’re not looking to pound our chest and say Rock ‘n’ Soul’s doing this. We think it’s something that’s right for the city.”

The Parlor Game

In order to make this idea a reality, Doyle assembled a 12-member nominating committee of music professionals only partly rooted in Memphis, a group that included, among others, authors Peter Guralnick and Nelson George, former Commercial Appeal music critics Larry Nager and Bill Ellis, former executive director of the national Rhythm & Blues Foundation Patricia Wilson Aden, and former Smithsonian curator and Southern historian Pete Daniel.

This May, on the weekend of the annual Blues Music Awards, Doyle brought most of the group to Memphis for a two-day session in a suite at FedExForum, where, facilitated by the Recording Academy’s Jon Hornyak and former Stax Museum director Deanie Parker, they came up with the first class of inductees for the first Memphis Music Hall of Fame.

It was the best Memphis music parlor game ever, with, after several rounds of initial nominations, 52 names arranged on a wall, whittled down to an inaugural class (see sidebar on p. 21) after two days of deliberations.

“We limited it to 25, which was more than we’ll do in other classes,” says longtime journalist and music-industry executive David Less, who was on the nominating committee and in the room for live deliberations. “We may do five names next year, but if you do five in the first year you don’t really have a hall of fame. You just have five guys. So we wanted to frontload it a little, but we didn’t want to say here’s everybody.”

“They wanted to know from the planning committee standpoint what we wanted from them,” Doyle says of the process. “Their first question was, Do you want the expected list of nominees? And I said I want what you consider the right list of nominees.”

There were no longevity guidelines. No “birth requirement.” No separate categories for non-performers.

“We set all of that aside,” Doyle says.

The class of inductees that emerged included obvious names (Elvis Presley, W.C. Handy), obscure names (Lucie Campbell, William T. McDaniel), and controversial names (Three 6 Mafia, ZZ Top). With the knowledge that this is meant to be an ongoing process, the group produced a representative list of key players in Memphis music history rather than 25 definitive names.

“We went around the group once and had everybody nominate somebody and observed that no one picked the four people we all knew other people would pick,” Less says. “No one wanted to waste their vote on Elvis or Sam Phillips or W.C. Handy or B.B. King. So after the first round we just said, these four people, let’s put them up there. We know they’re going to be there, so that frees us all up and we don’t have to talk about them anymore. We all agreed that those would be the ones who in any scenario had to be there.”

“Some of the big names on that inaugural list are there because they’re the biggest names,” says Ellis, who wasn’t in town for the meeting but contributed via e-mail and conference call. “But then outside of that is where we all sort of bring our own perspectives and fight for somebody, like a Jimmie Lunceford or a Lucie Campbell or even a Memphis Minnie, who was as important a blues pioneer as Muddy Waters in a way.”

Ellis pushed for gospel pioneer Campbell, while both he and George made a case for Three 6 Mafia, the youngest inductees. Less was a booster for jazz sideman George Coleman and educator William T. McDaniel.

“Music is more than just the stars, right? It’s a collective achievement, especially in a place like Memphis, where so much of what’s happened of historical merit has happened outside the purview of the hits, and there have been plenty of those,” Ellis says. “But the chart and sales success doesn’t explain the significance of a Lucie Campbell or a W.T. McDaniel. I was thrilled to be involved if only to see Campbell and Three 6 Mafia make the inaugural inductee list, the past and the future broadly laid out there.”

“My feeling is that it’s pretty easy to go Elvis, B.B. King, Isaac Hayes,” George says of pushing for Three 6 Mafia. “But I wanted to embrace the panorama and have it not just be people from the ’50s. And the Mafia winning the Oscar, that was a historic event.”

The curious-to-some inclusion of ZZ Top also seemed to emanate from a desire for a more contemporary presence in the initial class of inductees.

“ZZ Top, in truth, kept Ardent Records alive,” Less says in defense of the choice. “All of their first records were recorded here. They lived here while they were recording. You can’t count Sam & Dave if you don’t count ZZ Top.”

No one thinks the list is perfect, of course. Not even members of the committee that made it.

“I nominated Carla Thomas, but we decided you can’t put Rufus and Carla in the same year,” says longtime Memphis broadcaster Henry Nelson. “But Carla’s gotta go in the second year.”

Ellis, for one, echoes the common refrain about Johnny Cash’s absence from the list.

“Johnny Cash?” Ellis asks, with a hint of incredulity. “I can’t speak for the committee, but he’ll be on the next list.”

“Where’s Johnny Cash? Where’s Justin Timberlake? Where’s Carl Perkins? That doesn’t mean we don’t think they’re great or they won’t be in a Memphis Music Hall of Fame,” Less says. “It’s just the first blush, it’s not the last look. It’s not a definitive list. Our charge was not to produce the obvious, definitive people.”

Follow Through

Starting a hall of fame and picking a list of inductees is one thing. Making something of it is another, and where exactly this endeavor heads is still somewhat unknown. A website, including inductee profiles written by nominating committee members Guralnick, Ellis, Nager, and Robert Gordon, launched when the inductees were announced last month.

Next week, an induction ceremony will be held at the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, produced by Willy Bearden, who will try to tell the story of the 25 inductees in roughly two and a half hours, including a series of musical performances with a house band of ace Memphis session musicians backing some of the living inductees as well as some of their children and artists they’ve influenced.

“It’s a tough thing to do, but I think we’ve been able to approach this in a little different way,” Bearden says. “There won’t be people standing at a podium inducting people. I can guarantee that this is going to be a really good show.”

Some time next year, according to Doyle, the Rock ‘n’ Soul will open an interactive Memphis Music Hall of Fame exhibit inside the current museum, while Kane says the group is exploring other avenues for some kind of “external public tribute.”

Left open is the prospect of a more extensive physical space for a Memphis Music Hall of Fame, either on its own or as a component of a larger Rock ‘n’ Soul space, something of which nominating committee members seem to be in favor.

“If there’s a way to incorporate it into the Rock ‘n’ Soul, that would be great,” says Less, who helped with the Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum’s initial launch. “I’m a proponent of synergy. I don’t think you make people go to two locations for essentially the same thing. Rock ‘n’ Soul is a limited story of Memphis music. When we started it, we set the parameters of it with the Smithsonian, and I think it’s a definitive portrait of that time frame. I think the Memphis Music Hall of Fame expands that conversation a little bit, but why send people to two places?”

“Will it be a separate building? We think that’s something the community needs to decide more than us, but it’s definitely not something that needs to happen immediately,” Doyle says. “It’s usually a 10-year process, because you’ve got to have that many inductees in order for it to be a compelling exhibit. Plus, here in Memphis, you’ve got icon buildings such as Sun Studio, Graceland, Stax, as well as our own museum. So we don’t know that there’s a need for another building.”

“If it warrants it or the opportunity presents itself to open another facility, we’ll look at that,” Kane says. “We’re not married to anything. With technology, you don’t need [as much space].”

Whatever road this project takes, it’s already been a conversation-starter.

“The great thing about a hall of fame is that everybody wants it. The bad thing is you can never do it right,” says Doyle, who is already planning to reassemble his nominating committee next spring to select a new class of inductees. “People are so passionate about music. But this will be decades for us. Ten years from now, we’ll be inducting Grammy winners and chart toppers.”

Among the names mentioned by various committee members as potential future inductees are Cash, Thomas, Timberlake, Big Star, the Blackwood Brothers, the Memphis Jug Band, Chips Moman, and on and on.

“There are only a handful of cities that could do this,” Less says. “Chicago. Detroit. New York. Los Angeles.”

“It’s another piece to providing a sustainable identity of Memphis as a major music capital and not just for the tourists,” Ellis says. “But for those who live in the city and take great pride in being part of something much larger than themselves.”

First Class …

The 25 Inaugural Inductees to the Memphis Music Hall of Fame.

Jim Stewart & Estelle Axton

The brother/sister duo who put the “St” and “ax” in Stax as co-founders of the city’s signature soul label.

Bobby “Blue” Bland

The soul-blues titan who honed his craft alongside other future stars in the 1950s vocal group the Beale Streeters.

Booker T. & the MGs

The Stax house band and hitmakers-in-their-own-right who embodied one version of the Memphis sound.

Lucie Campbell

The gospel composer who was a contemporary of the more famous Thomas A. Dorsey and who helped shape the black gospel sound of the pre-soul era.

George Coleman

The Memphis jazz great who was a saxophone sideman for B.B. King before joining up with the Miles Davis Quintet.

Jim Dickinson

The producer/sideman/bandleader who was a musical sponge and bridge between distant eras of Memphis music.

Al Green

The last soul legend who was the purest Memphis vocalist since Elvis Presley — and remains productive.

W.C. Handy

The “Father of the Blues” whose published compositions popularized the regional form.

Isaac Hayes

A Hall of Famer even before Shaft and Hot Buttered Soul who evolved from essential sideman/songwriter to superstar.

Howlin’ Wolf

The Delta-bred blues powerhouse who cut classic sides with Sam Phillips before migrating north to Chicago.

B.B. King

The “Beale Street Blues Boy” who started his career on radio and on stage locally before becoming the blues’ biggest modern star.

Jerry Lee Lewis

The piano-pounding revolutionary who traveled up from Louisiana and was introduced to the world via Sam Phillips’ Sun label.

Jimmie Lunceford

The Manassas High School gym teacher who evolved into the King of Swing.

Prof. W.T. McDaniel

A segregation-era music teacher at Manassas and Booker T. Washington high schools who trained multiple generations of Memphis musicians.

Memphis Minnie

The “Queen of Country Blues” who first hit Beale Street as a young teen and emerged as one of the signature blues artists of her era.

Willie Mitchell

The bandleader and producer who forged the sophisticated Hi Records soul sound and “discovered” Al Green.

Dewey Phillips

The original wild man of rock-and-roll radio who gave Elvis Presley his first spin.

Sam Phillips

The idiosyncratic producer and Sun Records founder who cut classic blues sides and then presided over the great wedding ceremony, marrying country and blues to create rock-and-roll.

Elvis Presley

The kid from Tupelo who waltzed into Sun Records and announced that he sang all kinds. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.

Otis Redding

The soul man supreme who gave Stax Records its first true superstar and then left us too soon.

The Staple Singers

The family band who blended soul and country, gospel and blues into a distinctive sound — and had something to say.

Rufus Thomas

The prankster, patriarch, and pop-cultural preacher who drove Memphis music from the Rabbit Foot Minstrels to WattStax.

Three 6 Mafia

The Southern rap pioneers who graduated from selling self-made mixes out of their trunk to claiming Oscar gold on behalf of crunk.

Nat D. Williams

The “Beale Streeter by birth” who took the mic at WDIA to become the first black disc jockey on the country’s first all-African-American radio station.

ZZ Top

The dusty Texas blues band that honed its sound and emerged as superstars out of Memphis’ Ardent Studios.

The Memphis Music Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony

Cannon Center for the Performing Arts

Thursday, November 29th • 7 p.m.

Tickets are $100, $50, or $30.

memphismusichalloffame.com