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Music Music Blog

The 59th Anniversary of the Million Dollar Quartet

The Million Dollar Quartet was formed on this day in 1956.

On December 4th, 1956, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins sat down at Sun Studios and created one of the most iconic recording sessions in rock-n-roll history. The quartet cranked out an enormous amount of songs at Sun, making for an in-depth look at the music that inspired these unforgettable American songwriters.

Sun Studios tells us more:

“Elvis Presley was home for Christmas. Thirteen months earlier, Sun president Sam Phillips had peddled Elvis’ contract to RCA, and invested the proceeds in Cash and Perkins. 1956 had been a year of redemption for them all. Elvis was the most celebrated, vilified, and polarizing personality in American entertainment. One out of every two records that RCA had pressed that year was an Elvis record. Carl Perkins was trying to recapture the success he’d found in the early months of 1956 with “Blue Suede Shoes.” 

Johnny Cash had given up his job selling home appliances shortly before Christmas 1955, and his early records, like “I Walk the Line,” had become pop and country smashes. Jerry Lee Lewis’ first record had been out just three days on December 4, 1956, and he was desperate to join the company in which he now found himself. He was certain that he would soon eclipse them all.”

Listen to the entire Million Dollar Quartet recordings below.

The 59th Anniversary of the Million Dollar Quartet

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Music Music Blog

Jerry Lee Lewis’ 80th Birthday Celebration

‘The Killer’ himself.

On Saturday, September 26th, Jerry Lee Lewis will celebrate his 80th birthday at the Jerry Lee Lewis Café & Honky Tonk on 310 Beale Street. What began as a birthday kick off on September 7th at London’s Palladium, with Ringo Starr and Robert Plant serenading the legendary Jerry Lee Lewis with “Happy Birthday,” now returns to Jerry Lee Lewis’ hometown for a grand-piano-sized birthday celebration! The doors at Jerry Lee Lewis’ Café & Honky Tonk will open at 2:00 p.m., and the celebration continues into the night.

Joining Jerry Lee Lewis’ Café & Honky Tonk in the celebration are the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum, located at Third and Beale, and the Memphis Music Hall of Fame, located at Second and Beale, both of which owe much of their stories to “The Killer,” and his iconic role in the birth of rock ‘n’ roll. check out a classic Jerry Lee video below. 

More like a Whole Lotta Head Banging if you ask me…

Jerry Lee Lewis’ 80th Birthday Celebration

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Music Music Blog

Weekend Roundup Part Three

Jerry Lee Lewis

It’s time for another edition of the round up. Friday and Saturday provide lots of chances to rock before you become one with the couch on Super Bowl Sunday. 

FRIDAY JANUARY 30TH:
Hanna Star, 5:30 p.m. at Goner Records.

Weekend Roundup Part Three (6)

Will Sexton, 6:00 p.m. at Lafayette’s Music Room.

The Memphis Ukulele Band, 8:00 p.m. at Otherlands Coffee Bar, $7.00.

Mighty Souls Brass Band, 8:00 p.m. at The Cove.

Backup Planet, CBDB, 9:00 p.m. at the Young Avenue Deli, $5.00.

Youth Pastor Jason, Gopes Busters, Taylor Loftin, Rickie and Annie, 9:00 p.m. at the Lamplighter Lounge.

Taylor Loftin – Welcome Young Champions (Official Music Video) from Taylor Loftin on Vimeo.

Weekend Roundup Part Three

Motel Mirrors, 10:00 p.m. at Lafayette’s Music Room.

Weekend Roundup Part Three (2)


SATURDAY, JANUARY 31ST.

The River Bluff Clan, 11:00 a.m. at Lafayette’s Music Room.

Jerry Lee Lewis, 8:00 p.m. at Sam’s Town Tunica, $40.00.

Manateees, Overnight Lows, Nowhere Squares, 9:00 p.m. at the Hi-Tone Small Room, $5.00.

Weekend Roundup Part Three (3)

Switchblade Kid, Bruiser Queen, The Leave Me Be’s, Brother Lee and the Leather Jackals, 9:00 p.m. at the Buccaneer Lounge, $5.00.

Weekend Roundup Part Three (4)

Buck Wilders and the Hook-Up, 10:00 p.m. at Bar DKDC.

John Nemeth, 10:00 p.m. at Lafayette’s Music Room.

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 1ST: 
The Joe Restivo Four, 11:00 a.m. at Lafayette’s Music Room.

John Paul Keith, 9:00 p.m. at The Buccaneer, $5.00.

Super Bowl XLIX, 7:00 p.m. on NBC.

Chicago Bears Super Bowl Shuffle – 1985 from ASU Alumni Association on Vimeo.

Weekend Roundup Part Three (5)

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Book Features Books

Rick Bragg’s Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story

“Didn’t I hear once that you …” But he cuts me off.

“Yeah,” he says, “I probably did.”

No “probably” about it. In 1975, Jerry Lee Lewis was convicted of assault and battery and fined $25 for “attacking” a waitress at Bad Bob’s lounge in Memphis. The weapon was a fiddle bow, and the waitress later sued him for $100,000. But Lewis ignored the lawsuit — and, in time, so did everybody.

Then there was the time in 1976 when at his wife’s house in Collierville, Lewis fired a .357 at a Coke bottle, and when it shattered, his bass player got hit by the flying glass. Lewis was charged with shooting a firearm within the city limits, but the incident was judged an accident. No accident, there was drinking going on that night — “unconsolable drinking,” Lewis later said. But it was the bass player who not only got injured, but got an earful from Lewis’ fourth wife, Jaren, for ruining her white shag carpet.

Then there was the night Lewis was on his way home to Nesbit, Mississippi, in his white Rolls-Royce. He took a wrong turn and ended up behind a long line of trucks. The truckers looked at Lewis like he was nuts. But he wasn’t. He was, again, drunk. Which explains why he continued, waving, onto the scales of the weigh station.

At least that night he was right side up. Not so the time Lewis was in the Rolls with Jaren and speeding through Collierville. The car ended up upside down. No serious injuries — unless you count the car, which was traded in for a white Lincoln Continental, the same car Lewis was driving when, at 3 in the morning, he hit the front gate at Graceland. He was there because Elvis had invited him. That Lewis was drunk is a no-brainer. That he stepped out of the car brandishing a pistol as if to threaten Elvis if Lewis were not allowed through the gate was more open to question. Still is. And, frankly, Lewis is sick of talking about it.

“I don’t know … everybody got carried away with that,” Lewis tells writer Rick Bragg in Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story (Harper). “They wanted a big story out of that. They wanted to know the real truth about it.” So Lewis had to keep talking about it, until: “I’d get up to a certain extent, [then] I’d say, ‘Aw, I just can’t tell no more. That’s as far as I go.'”

Well then, let’s move on to some positive notes — back to the time when Lewis met John Lennon, who knelt and kissed Lewis’ feet. Or when Lewis met James Brown, who kissed Lewis on the cheek.

What’s way more important, let’s not rehearse here the marriages and the scandals, the career highs and lows. Let’s look to the man and the music he made and still makes — music that drove Lewis’ fellow students at Southwestern Bible Institute, according to the dean, “crazy” (it was an up-tempo version of the old gospel tune “My God Is Real” that got Lewis instantly expelled); music that in 1964 shook the Star-Club big time in Hamburg, Germany (which left the place, according to Bragg, “trembling”); and music in 1969 that made it to the moon (thanks to Apollo 12 astronaut Charles Conrad Jr.). Let’s also keep in mind what mattered and still matters most to Lewis: the show.

“I want to be remembered as a rock-and-roll idol, in a suit and tie or blue jeans and a ragged shirt, it don’t matter, as long as the people get that show,” Lewis tells Bragg. “The show, that’s what counts. It covers up everything. Any bad thought anyone ever had about you goes away. ‘Is that the one that married that girl? Well, forget about it, let me hear that song.’ It takes their sorrow, and it takes mine.”

One of Lewis’ own idols, Hank Williams, taught him that. Over the course of many interviews inside Lewis’ home in Nesbit, Lewis taught his Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer a thing or two as well.

“Writing this book was as long as a bad dream some days, longest book I’ve ever done,” Bragg admitted in a phone interview with the Flyer. “I thought a good book should be 350 pages or so, about as thick as a good ham sandwich. But this one was something else, because there was just so much life. And no, Jerry Lee never said to me, ‘I’m not gonna talk about this, about that.’ There were times, though, he’d physically turn away — not that he was ashamed of something he was telling me but because it was about the death of people he cared about. He’s not asking anybody in the secular world for approval or forgiveness. If you think that, you don’t know anything about Jerry Lee Lewis. He’s preparing himself for a better ending.”

In Jerry Lee Lewis, Bragg takes us back to the beginning, with Lewis right there with us, present tense and on the page, recalling the bottomland of Ferriday, Louisiana, and his upbringing: son of a mama who adored him and of a father who tried his best to make ends meet, even if it meant prison time for the money he made running whiskey during the Depression.

Elmo and Mamie Lewis knew their second son showed early talent at the keyboard. More than talent, it was a natural-born genius for absorbing and adapting the sounds that surrounded him: rolling, bottom-heavy gospel inside the Assembly of God church the family attended; the latest country, folk, swing, anything on the radio, so long as the radio’s batteries held out; pounding blues inside Haney’s Big House in the black section of Ferriday, which is where Lewis says he got the “juice” he was to pour into his own music-making and where he got a firsthand look at folks having a damn good time. And just across the Mississippi River, in Natchez, there was the Blue Cat Club, where Lewis played, a boy of 13, 14, 15 — except on those nights when police raided the place, Lewis would report being 21, and the police would laugh and let it slide. Nights in a Benzedrine blur would come soon enough.

Bragg calls Lewis the schoolboy “a student of mischief” and describes Lewis the performer this way: “Some men outgrow their boyish devilment. Others only polish it.” Lewis polished it to such a shine that he could play keyboard with his foot — and still stay in key. Anything, again, for the show, because the people who pay good money to see it deserve it.

Lewis turned 79 on September 29th. He’s beyond proving he can, in Bragg’s words, “outplay, outdrink, outfight and, well, out-everything anybody.” But proving anything to anybody was never the point. Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story makes clear the better point, and the Killer said it himself: Elvis had the Colonel, but “don’t nobody — nobody — manage Jerry Lee. Don’t nobody handle Jerry Lee. I can’t be handled.” But he can sure as hell play on.

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Sing All Kinds We Recommend

Jerry Lee Lewis at the Cannon Center

There’s a whole lotta writing about the Killer going on. The greatest performer in the history of American music is going to perform and talk with his official biographer Rick Bragg on Friday night at the Cannon Center. See this week’s Flyer for Leonard Gill’s interview with Bragg. As for Jerry Lee, you can watch this video of him playing at a casino back in July of this year. He’s old as Hell. But watch the face of his longtime guitar player Kenny Lovelace, who watches over Lewis’ performance like someone helping an elderly person walk. But there is a moment when the old man swells the piano up like a wave at Mavericks. It’s a volcano of sound that many piano players would feel ashamed to try. It’s purely improvised and catches Lovelace off guard. You can watch him smile and marvel at the wild spirit that animates this elderly incarnation of Huck Finn. You can’t do that. 

Jerry Lee Lewis at the Cannon Center

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Sing All Kinds We Recommend

Roland Janes Memorial Tribute Jam

On Monday, June 30th, friends and colleagues of the late Roland Janes will jam in his honor at the Levitt Shell. The free event is the work of Janes’ friend and collaborator J.M. Van Eaton. Both men were session musicians at Sun who became rock royalty when another day’s work resulted in “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On” and unleashed the Killer on polite society. Friends from Roland’s life and career will honor him as a guitarist, an engineer, a businessman, and as friend. He was that and much more to so many. The list of invitees tells the tale.

Sun-era stalwarts George Klein, Travis Wammack, Sonny Burgess & the Legendary Pacers, and Hayden Thompson. Smoochy Smith, who moved to Stax after working at Sun, went on to write “Last Night,” the song that broke Stax nationally. Smoochy’ll be there.

Van Eaton and Janes were old friends and participants in the birth of rock and roll.

“Roland and I started at the same time in the music business,” Van Eaton says. “I was still in high school. Tech High School. Billy Riley had just got a record deal with Sun and I met Roland at the studio one day when I had my little school band in there. They heard me play and Riley didn’t have a band. So he started putting his band together and he asked me if I wanted to be a part of his band. Roland was the guitar player. The bass player in that band was Marvin Pepper. Billy hired him and that was the original Little Green Men for ‘Flying Saucer Rock n Roll.’ So I met Roland back in 1956, probably.”

Billy Lee Riley’s Little Green Men: Riley, Roland Janes, Marvin Pepper, and J.M. Van Eaton

Soon after, the backing band made history.

“We’d probably been together about two or three months and Jerry Lee Lewis walked in. He didn’t have a band. So they called us to the studio to back up Jerry. We thought this was an audition to see if he had any talent. Man, we cut this song called “Crazy Arms,” which was his very first record, and that took off enough that they wanted to do the second one. The second one was Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On. So we both played on that. To fast forward to when that kind of played out, Roland and I played in band together in Millington at Fleet Reserve. This was a club band. We got a picture. He had already started Sonic Studio by then. But we played three nights a week for five years at this one place out there. We were packing them in every night.There were four of us in that band, and three of us are still living. We’re gonna bring those guys in.”

Also on the bill are several artists who Roland produced. John Paul Keith was one of Roland’s last real sessions before his death last year. Jon Hornyak was one of many Missourians who found their way to Memphis to work with Janes. His band Interstate 55 will also play.

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Cover Feature News

Sun Studio Makes a Comeback

Sun Studio is the body around which Memphis music orbits — and where it all began. Jim Stewart at Stax saw Sam Phillips selling records and bought his own recorder. Two of the founders of Hi Records came from Sun. Phillips showed everybody the way. The radio engineer from north Alabama set Memphis music in motion from 706 Union Avenue.

“There are a lot of people who think the music is magic, and it does have a magic quality to it,” says Jerry Phillips, Sam’s youngest son. “But my dad always said it’s who you’ve got in there. Who knows how to operate the equipment and place the microphones? You’re not necessarily going to have a hit because you’re in that room. Or get that sound at all.”

The person operating Sun Studio today is Matt Ross-Spang, who was a Germantown High student when he set his sights on the room that Phillips opened as the Memphis Recording Service in January 1950. Ross-Spang is finishing a years-long effort to return the hallowed studio to its original condition, complete with period-correct equipment and all the discipline that old gear forces onto engineers and artists alike. It’s not the sort of task a typical person assumes, but Sun Studio was never a place for typical people.

“He’s a young man with an old soul. Matt’s got a lot of Sam Phillips in him,” Jerry Phillips says. “He loves that equipment and the simplicity of it all.”

Sam Phillips was famous for his ability to sense the emotional content of a recording and to anticipate how listeners would respond. Phillips’ intuition came from a childhood exposure to African-American sounds that he heard in the cotton fields of north Alabama. His love for music drew him into the radio business, where he learned to work a nascent technology through which he commanded the airwaves, electronic signals, and a generation of American teenagers to dance to those sounds. Phillips had a gift for musical intuition, but he was also an engineer.

“He took a course at Alabama Polytechnic Institute and an engineering course at Auburn. I don’t think he went to Auburn, but it was through the mail” Jerry Phillips says. “Of course, when he got to his recording studio days, he installed his own equipment, hooked it all up, built the speakers. I wouldn’t necessarily call him a gear-head, but he was a gear-head by necessity. He had to do the things he was capable of doing, because he didn’t have much money. As a general rule, he was very interested in equipment and technology.”

Phillips worked in audio when audio was new. He became a radio engineer in Muscle Shoals in the late 1940s. At that time, music was cut onto lacquer discs by a lathe. It was not until after World War II that Americans became aware of recording to magnetic tape, a technology developed by the Germans. “Tape recording” as we know it was originally funded in the U.S. by Bing Crosby, who saw that the possibility of recording sound to the quieter, longer-format medium would allow him to spend less time in the broadcast studio and more time on the golf course. Crosby spent $40,000 to bankroll the Ampex tape corporation in 1947. Phillips opened Memphis Recording Services two years later.

Matt Ross-Spang sits in the control room of Sun Studios, surrounded by machines that seem to have come from a 1950s sci-fi movie. On the other side of the glass, a large tour group sings along to Elvis’ “That’s All Right.” The tourists peer through the window at Ross-Spang as he talks about his job.

“Sometimes its like being in a zoo. You’re in the cage,” Ross-Spang says. His “office” is historic, a fascinating place. But it’s also a working recording studio as well as something of an ad hoc mental health facility. Like Sam, Ross-Spang has to understand both human and electronic circuitry.

“When people come to [record at Sun], they are freaked out. You have to let them Instagram and calm down. If you’re not a sociable, welcoming guy, they’ll be puking or freaking out. You won’t get anywhere.”

Ross-Spang asked for these problems. He’s had Sun on his sonar since he was a kid.

“I recorded here when I was 14,” Ross-Spang says. “I did this god-awful recording, I mean god awful. It was so bad. I played acoustic and this guy played a djembe drum with eggs. That’s how bad it was. But I met James Lott, who had been the engineer for 20 years at the time. So, to me, it was like the coolest thing in the world being in Sun. A lot of people get captured by sound. I wasn’t captured by sound at that point, but when I watched him manipulate the sound, I was like ‘You can do all of that?’

“Trying to save what I did out in the studio, I just bugged him a bunch, and he told me to come back and intern with him,” Ross-Spang says. “I came back when I could drive. So I came to work here when I was 16. The other intern didn’t last that long. I started interning for him when I was about 17 or so. After high school, I would come down and do tours as a tour guide. And then I’d intern until about two or three in the morning. I did that for about six or seven years and then took over as head engineer about five years ago. I’m one of the few people who figured out what they wanted to do really early on. And it was Sun Studio.”

Long before Ross-Spang arrived, the facility had been abandoned by the Phillips (who never owned the building) in 1959. It sat empty, then housed other businesses. According to Jerry Phillips, a combined effort by Graceland, the Smithsonian, and Sam himself saved the place from the typical Memphis fate of abandonment, demolition, and dollar store. The studio was rebuilt according to Sam’s memory before being purchased by Gary Hardy in the late 1980s. The current owner is John Schorr. But Ross-Spang is the driving force behind rebuilding the room to Sam’s specs.

“It’s fantastic that [Ross-Spang] has pursued this with such scholarly devotion,” says Peter Guralnick, author of the definitive, two-part Presley biography, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love, who is currently at work on a biography of Sam Phillips. “Sam was systematic in thinking about sound and gave great thought to it — no square angles; the tiles. In addition, he felt there was something unique about the room at 706 Union. He didn’t know it when he rented it. To have reconstituted it is an exercise in creative archeology.”

Ross-Spang is certainly diligent, but there were some lucky (and unlucky) breaks along the way.

“I became the head engineer at Sun Studio when I was 22. I didn’t have any money. I had one guitar. It was a beautiful, big Guild. It was signed by Robert Plant, Elvis Costello — people I’ve met over the years and hung out with here. One night, while I was away, it got smashed, and I got an insurance check from the studio for it. It was a huge chunk of money for me. The whole time I’ve been at Sun, I’ve wanted to put the original stuff in. Sam used this old 1930s RCA tube console. But you could never find those things. People just threw them out in the 1960s. But one popped up on eBay, two days after my guitar was smashed. The only way I could have bought it was with the insurance check. To this day, I think my X-Men ability is that if I need something and I think about it hard enough, it pops up on eBay. I bought that, and the studio bought other stuff. It’s taken about five years, but now it’s all here.”

Ross-Spang bought a 1936 RCA radio mixing console, the same model Phillips paid $500 for when he opened Memphis Recording in January 1950. Phillips originally cut records onto discs with a lathe and switched to analog tape in late 1951.

“I’ve got the same 1940s Presto lathe that I can cut 45s on. All the Ampex, all the microphones are period-correct to what he used in the day. It’s becoming exactly like it was in 1956.”

In 1956 at Sun, Johnny Cash recorded “I Walk the Line.” Orbison cut “Ooby Dooby.” Billy Lee Riley recorded “Flyin’ Saucers Rock & Roll.”

“Mark Neil, who did the Black Keys’ Brothers album, is a huge Sun fanatic,” Ross-Spang says. “He helped me locate stuff and figure out how Sam did it. Back then, there was no ‘normal’ way to do things. A lot of the stuff was homemade. We really had to use our ears and listen to records. There were only five pictures in the studio back then. It’s not like the Beatles, where we know exactly on June 2, 1966, George Harrison sneezed. We don’t have any of that kind of info. A lot of the old guys don’t really remember. Scotty Moore was an engineer after Sun, so he remembered a lot more than anybody else. But even then, Scotty might say one thing, somebody else might say another.”

Moore, who played guitar on all of the better Elvis records before the late 1960s, proved to be more than a historical resource for Ross-Spang.

“I’m lucky enough to have known the Sun guys for a long time,” Ross-Spang says. “I’d go visit [Moore] every couple of months in Nashville. Once, Chip Young was there and they both busted out guitars. Chip brought out his Gibson Super 400. Chip Young is one of my favorite guitar players of all time. He played with Elvis and some other people. So they are all playing at Scotty’s, and then they passed it to me.”

For Ross-Spang, who plays guitar in the Bluff City Backsliders, it was terrifying: “I’m thinking ‘What am I going to play in front of y’all?'”

The job and the friendship with Moore later put Ross-Spang in an awkward place.

“A year or two ago, I did a record with Chris Isaak here. And, this January, the BBC wanted to do an interview with Scotty, but about his life, not about Elvis. They called me up and we kind of got some things together. We got Chris Isaak to host it. Then about a week before the producer called and said, ‘Hey, we thought it would be great if they cut the Elvis songs again.’ That’s great, but Scotty hasn’t played guitar in like five years; he just doesn’t do it anymore. They said, ‘That’s fine, you do it.’ I was like, ‘Great, you’re going to make me play my hero’s guitar licks in front of him in the place where he did it.’ Of course, I know all his licks. I’ve stolen them a thousand times. He’s saved my butt on sessions. But I’ve never had to do it front of everybody. And to make matters worse, I had invited Jerry Phillips, J.M. Van Eaton, everybody.”

But things got even weirder.

“A side funny thing was that Chris wanted to do the songs in E,” Ross-Spang says. “If you’re a guitar player, you know they’re in A. You can play them in E, but they don’t sound the same. I’m setting up the mics and I hear ‘Let’s try this in E.’ I’m going, ‘crap.’ I told Chris, ‘You know these songs are in A,’ and he says, ‘E is better for me.’ I’m wondering how I’m going to save my butt. I’m just thinking about me at this point. I know one person in this room who can get him to go with A.

“I said, ‘Scotty, Chris is talking about doing ‘That’s All Right’ in E.’ He was like, ‘What? Why?’ I said, ‘You should go talk to him.’

“We did them in A, and it sounded great. It came out really well. But I had bought a tube tape echo because of the one Scotty had at his house. Afterward, he said, ‘You know I’ve got one of those.’ I said ‘I bought one because of you.’ He said, ‘Well, hell, I’ll just give you my old one.’ About a month or two later he called me up and asked ‘When are you going to come get this thing?’ I wasn’t about to bug him about it. So I went up there as fast as I could. He gave me whole live rig setup from the ’90s. It had his tube echo. He used [effects] to try to simulate the quirks of tape. They all have his hand-written notes on them. It was one of the greatest days of my life. It’s like Yoda giving you his light saber.”

Working with the limitations of the last century might seem like a pain, but Ross-Spang, who was recently named governor of the producers’ and engineer’s wing of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences’ Memphis chapter, appreciates the discipline it takes to record an entire group’s performance without stopping — an art many consider lost.

“When you look at old pictures of Willie Mitchell and Sam, they’re kind of crazy looking,” Ross-Spang says. “They’re smoking, and they’re hunkered over a big piece of metal and knobs. Nowadays, if I get tagged in photos, it’s me hunkered over a mouse. Why would you take a picture of that? The magic is gone when you go all digital.”

Recording a whole room to mono means everybody has to get their parts right. You can’t fix a mistake. Perhaps the reason Al Green, Johnny Cash, and the Killer keep selling records 60 years later is that they made great music together at the same time.

“I love that way of making records. Everyone has to pay attention to each other instead of themselves. It’s a team effort, including me,” Ross-Spang says. “It’s not very forgiving. But I think one of the reasons people come here to do that is because it makes them a better musician. With the computer, you can play five solos, go home for the day, and the engineer will make a solo for you. But here, if you don’t get a solo right, you may have just wasted a great vocal take. There’s so much more on the line. But that makes you play better too. It’s the only way I like to work now. People hire me to work in other studios, and I try to take the same mentality. It doesn’t always work, because they’ve got booths and headphones. You say, ‘Can you turn your amp down.’ They say, ‘Can I just put my amp in the booth?'”

He shakes his head.

“If you give a mouse a cookie, it wants a glass of milk.”

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

After every Memphis Grizzlies game, my brother-in-law is fond of getting online and posting, “I am a Grizzlies maniac,” with several exclamation points, depending on the closeness of the game. As of this writing, the opening series of the NBA playoffs is still undecided, but win or lose, how exciting has this been for Memphis?

It’s a wondrous thing to see this city come together and rally around a common cause. Just think, if we could only get the City Council to do the same.

For this community, the Grizzlies mean so much more than basketball. They are a focal point around which all Memphians can unite, and those occasions have proven so rare, it’s worthy that we celebrate when it happens. My only problem is, with three overtime games in a row, the Griz are fixing to throw me into cardiac arrhythmia. Thank God for Obamacare.

I now understand how, once you know a player’s background and watch his attitude on the court, you become more invested in the games and individual performances. Your spirits rise and fall throughout the season until the storyline plays out. Judging from the past couple of games at FedEx Forum, Grizzlies fans’ spirits are pretty damn high. My wife has attended several games this season, while I am content to watch from the couch. It’s tinnitus. My ears just can’t take it anymore. But the entire Forum nearly burst right through the flat screen the other night. It’s no wonder the Grizzlies were named “best overall professional sports franchise” by ESPN The Magazine. And that includes baseball, football, and hockey. 

The city’s adopting of this team and these players is nearly as heartwarming as all the work these guys seem to so happily do for the community. This group has a workmanlike ethic for a blue-collar town and the fit seems just right. The league needs a team like this precisely because they play as a team. I just hope the new owners don’t screw it up and try to turn the Griz into the run-and-gun Lakers. Why mess with a good thing?

How can you help but admire these guys, especially the Grindfather himself, Tony Allen? This guy is everywhere. Statistics can’t begin to show what he adds to this team. I am hesitant to admire him too much, however, for fear that they’ll trade him. His defensive play is an art, and speaking of the same, I’d like to add a word about defense. When you speak of, say, the secretary of defense, or say a game was a “defensive struggle,” the accent is always on the second syllable. So why does a sports crowd always scream “DEE-fense?”

Because Memphis is supposed to be different, I’d like to urge our citizens to be the only fans in all of sports to shout, “de-FENSE!” That will mess with the other teams’ minds. That aside, the past two games, the Forum was rocking with chants of “Z-Bo,” and I thought I saw paint chips falling from the ceiling after Mike Miller went on a three-point tear. Even before we learned the name, Beno Udrih, Melody and I were screaming, “Way to go, new guy!” at the television screen. What’s better than watching Mike Conley’s calm under pressure? And we definitely got the right Gasol.

Reuters | Bernadett Szabo

Jerry Lee Lewis

A year ago, I wrote a column that said the Grizzlies were great, but the music sucked. Since then, I’ve heard Willie Mitchell, Curtis Mayfield, Isaac Hayes, and James Brown over the arena’s speakers. So, all praises to the tune selector, and I hope my rant helped. Now, if I could just make a couple more suggestions. If a player on the opposing team travels, play a snippet of Rufus Thomas singing, “Justa, justa, justa walkin’.” When our big men block an opponent’s shot, Elvis’ “Return to Sender” would be appropriate. And when one of our guys hits a three-pointer, play Jerry Lee Lewis singing, “Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire.” Also, the Bar-Kays’ “Soulfinger” needs to be the team’s fight song, only the crowd can scream, “Go Grizzlies,” where they shout “Soulfinger,” in the original recording. One more thing. Why must they play that same inane chant in every arena right before tip-off? Let’s chant “Na, Nas” with Wilson Pickett’s “Land of 1000 Dances.” While we’re at it, “We Will Rock You” is one of the worst grooves in popular music and is awkward for Memphis folks used to clapping on the two-and-four. And were you aware that every time that heavy, guitar-drenched song where everyone yells, “Hey!” is played, you are profiting Gary Glitter, a sexual deviate so depraved that they kicked him out of Thailand?

Keep it simple, fellas. It might be enjoyable to watch an entire arena full of crazed fans doing the “Funky Chicken.” Even more fun to be there doing it.

Randy Haspel writes the “Born-Again Hippies” blog, where a version of this column first appeared.

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Beale Street Tonight

Judging by the handprints in the cement alongside his honorary brass note in front of Blues City Café on Beale, Jerry Lee Lewis has small hands. That didn’t hinder “The Killer” from pioneering a fiery rock-and-roll piano sound. Confident and broke, Lewis drove to Memphis for an audition at Sun Studios in 1956. The owner, Sam Phillips, signed Lewis as Elvis Presley’s replacement after selling Presley’s contract to RCA. Lewis awed audiences with “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and “Great Balls of Fire,” and his unique style made a mark, not just in Memphis but across the world.

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Jerry Lee Lewis Honored By Hall of Fame

Jerry Lee Lewis, one of the first inductees into the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame, will be the focus of its “American Music Masters” series to be held in early November. Lewis is the first living performer to be recognized in this series.

The 12th Annual American Music Masters series “Whole Lotta Shakin’: The Life and Music of Jerry Lee Lewis” is being held at the Cleveland museum and at Case Western Reserve University. from November 5th through November 10th. Among the events are “Jerry Lee Lewis from Every Angle,” an academic look at Lewis’ piano-playing; a presentation on Lewis’ appearances on film and TV; and a daylong conference featuring Peter Guralnick as the keynote speaker.

The series culminates with a concert on November 10th that willl include performances by Chrissie Hynde, George Thorogood, Shelby Lynne, Kris Kristofferson, and others. Lewis’ cousin, the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, will also make an appearance at the concert and will play the piano.

For more information, go here.