By now we know the photo of the guy who took his sex doll to dinner was likely not at the Applebee’s on Union. The photo was claimed by others across the country to show their local Applebee’s, too. I mean, who wouldn’t?
Lesson from Chef Tam
Chef Tam’s Underground Cafe urged vaccines and mask-wearing for COVID-19 precautions as “the Delta variant is rising all around us.”
“There’s a strong probability that you’ll contract this virus and not recover!” Chef Tam wrote. “I love y’all real big and I wanna see what God has in store for you, but I can’t see it if we finna experience slow singing and flower bringing cause y’all tired and wanna party and wanna be out in the world!!!”
Wayback machine
Posted to Facebook by WEVL
Volunteer radio station WEVL FM 89.9 reminded us in a cool post last week that “65 years ago today, 24-year-old Johnny Cash took baby Rosanne Cash to the Memphis Zoo.”
Mike McCarthy with his clay sculpture of Johnny Cash, before casting.
Wednesday, June 12 at 5:00, Memphis will finally behold the culmination of years of planning and painstaking work, with the unveiling of a statue of a young Johnny Cash. The larger-than-life likeness at 999 South Cooper will stand only a few feet from where Cash played his first paid performance at Galloway Church with Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant in December, 1954.
I spoke with Mike McCarthy, better known for his underground comics and films, about the process of making his original vision a reality, and his experience with working in the new medium of sculpted clay.
Memphis Flyer: How did this all come about? Many people don’t even realize that Johnny Cash played at what was then called Galloway Church.
Mike McCarthy: So seven years ago, I thought to myself, ‘Cooper-Young needs a Johnny Cash statue. And Galloway Church needs to be saved.’ Then I met this strange cast of characters that took me on this journey that, seven years later, amounts to a statue. I’m extremely happy. And maybe I’m amazed, to quote Paul McCartney. Because I can’t believe that it actually happened. These things take time. At one point, we were in a moment of crisis where, if I didn’t do the sculpture myself, it wasn’t gonna happen. And frankly it was an honor and a privilege, and I would have done it for free. Many people don’t even know I did it. They think I’m affiliated with it, but they don’t understand that I actually sculpted it. At the end of the conversation, they’re like ‘Wait a second, you actually sculpted it?’
I have said that Memphis is under-statued. And it’s becoming more under-statued. So why don’t we replace these statues or create new statues that are rockabilly-oriented, blues-oriented, 70s rock-oriented. Create an entire milieu of Memphis music history with statues, so American Dream Safari, say, can drive by that. We need more statues of historical musical legends in Memphis. That’s why I helped start Legacy Memphis. Then, when I became the sculptor, I stepped down from that nonprofit. From the beginning, our motto was ‘Every neighborhood has a hero.’
You usually work in other media. How did you rise to the challenge of sculpting?
Thirty-five years ago, I had a sculpture class at the [then] Academy of Art with John McIntire, and you can read about him in Robert Gordon’s It Came From Memphis. After I read that book, it all made sense to me, the beauty of the man who is John McIntire. When you move here from Mississippi to do your thing, you’d be best off just being quiet and soaking it all in, and go ahead and do whatever someone like McIntire says.
So I had that experience, and I knew I was up to the task of this project. I sculpted it in oil-based clay in my living room for about ten months. It was here in my house over Christmas. We strung Christmas lights on it. For me, having a piece of public artwork that supersedes anything I thought I would ever be able to accomplish, after coming from film and comics and other underground things I’ve done, is very gratifying.
I tend to be very philosophical about these things. Having something that was spawned out of my living room, that my kids were around and watched take shape, and can still go see after I’m gone, is wonderful. They’ll always be able to drive by that statue, and that means a lot.
How did things proceed once you finished the clay sculpture?
Then it was cast into bronze at the Lugar Foundry. One of the nicest things to occur out of all this is my friendship with the Lugar family, with Andrea and Larry. I’m sure the Flyer readership is very familiar with their statues: Chief Seattle at the zoo, Bobby Blue Bland downtown by the Chisca Hotel, Elvis on Beale Street. When I went out to see the statue at the foundry in Eads the other day, I was extremely gratified. I’m very happy to have worked with all these people to have made this happen.
Johnny Cash Statue & Historic Marker Unveiling, Wednesday, June 12, 5:00-7:00 pm, 999 South Cooper; with refreshments and music by Roy Cash and Thomas Gabriel (Johnny Cash’s oldest grandson).
Carlene Carter was sitting on her porch when the call came in. Even if she hadn’t said so, I might have guessed because I could hear the sound of geese and turkeys coming through the phone. She said there were parakeets inside the house too, as more avian sounds intruded, like Martin Denny was producing our interview, or Jerry Byrd.
I knew I was going to enjoy talking to Carter when, first thing, she told me she was touring with Chris Casello on guitar. Casello’s a telecaster wizard and compulsive entertainer. His band The Sabres has been on heavy rotation in my car for the past year, at least. So, like others in her famously musical family, she has a knack for surrounding herself with great players. I’m starting with these images, because it’s all present tense. And when you’re talking to Country music royalty, it’s too easy to get hung up on the past.
We talked about her band, life, and what it means to be part of the First Family of Country Music, as well as the ongoing challenges of being an independent female artist.
For Carlene Carter Where She Comes Is Where She’s Bound (2)
Memphis Flyer: Tell me about the show you’re bringing to The Halloran Centre.
Carlene Carter: I’m coming as a trio. I’m bringing my keyboard player who also plays harmonica and guitar, Al Hill. And Chris Casello.
I’m going to stop you already to geek out. Casello’s just a tremendous player, I met him at the Ameripolitan Awards a few years back. I know some great surf and rockabilly players and still — if it’s the same guy — he just makes you step back and rethink everything you know.
He was probably at Ameripolitan. He’s kind of a big deal. I met him when I came back from California in 2005. I did a musical based on my mom and the Carter family called Wildwood Flower. And Chris was in the house band and played Faron Young. We’ve been playing together on and off since then and he’s my go-to guy. I met Al Hill through Chris. We have a full band too. But I’d been out doing a lot of these shows by myself, and just wanted to add a little energy. Otherwise, it’s all kinda the same. I tell a lot of stories about life and growing up the way I did and what influenced me. I even tell about my mom saying the first record I listened to was when she danced with me to “Mystery Train.” I try to let people know a little more about what it was like on the inside, being a young Carter girl.
That sounds great. And a good group for playing all the traditional stuff and your own songs.
Obviously, I’ve had a long career and a lot of different kinds of music has come out of me. But I’ve always returned to the music I grew up with and that was Carter Family Music. People can say it’s country music, and yeah it is. But it’s timeless to me. And I have a certain amount of energy that I still have at the age of 63, so I can still rock a little bit. It drives the guys all crazy because I never have a set list until right before a show. Sometimes I go, “You know, I’m just going to wing it.” I think it keeps us on our toes. It keeps me really fresh instead of being where I have just one show that I do.
I’m going to play this recording for my band the next time they’re pressing me for a set list.
It keeps you really fresh. Keeps everybody on their toes. It’s good to have a set list when you’re playing with a full band. But in the situation we have, we can just jam like we want to. I’m really fortunate that I have a good duet partner in Al Hill. You never know what’s going to happen. It’s fun.
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I remember seeing an interview with you when you were just starting out, maybe. People would assume you knew everything about country music, but you didn’t because you were just inside this musical world. It was just your family and your life. It was a kind of disconnect.
Yeah. I didn’t listen to country radio except for the Grand Ole Opry. And that’s because I want to go see my mom and my aunts and my grandma on there. People I grew up with like Minnie Pearl, who would babysit me on the side of the stage sometime at the Ryman. It was just a conglomeration of all these folks I just knew. So, because of that, I don’t think I really understood the extent of the stardom they had. Even my father Carl Smith. And Johnny Cash. You know, he just did Johnny Cash. That’s one of the things I inherited. I was encouraged to not pay so much attention to a lot of stuff, and to do what makes you feel right and do what’s real.
That seems in the family spirit. Cash always introduced new sounds and artists. A.P. wandered the countryside asking people about the songs their families sang. Looking back and forward at the same time.
Gathering. Gathering information. Gathering stories. So much of what I do is about my life. A lot of my songs are autobiographical. They’re not necessarily story songs, but I can fill in the blanks.
Exactly.
I’m really looking forward to coming to Memphis because it is a place I’ve always felt connected to. It’s down the road from Nashville and now that I live in Nashville, I’m so happy to be coming there. I can just get my car in the morning and drive on down then play. To me that’s what it’s all about. That’s how I grew up — “Let’s go pick a show!” And you drive and get there and play and get in the car and drive back. That’s just how I roll. Although I’ll probably spend the night, I’m thinking.
Obviously, there are a lot of advantages to growing up in this world where music is woven into everything, but was there also obligation? Sometimes it’s hard to grow in the shade. June Carter, Carl Smith, Johnny Cash — these are some pretty long shadows.
I know what you’re saying. I get this question quite a lot, really. And I never considered it either until people start asking me about it since, pretty much back at the beginning of my career. When your parents are iconic performers, you don’t really know. They were all four of them — Goldie, Carl, Johnny, and Mom — very down-to-earth people. We had a normal kind of life in a lot of ways. We swam and we fished and we’d work in the garden and we did things that other people did. And then we picked a show. I learned a lot from that. And I’ve got so much respect for my grandma. What I learned from her was a great work ethic, and a great balance between being a person and not a superstar. I never really got to the point where I had to handle that though.
But you’ve had hits, and a career.
And I feel responsibility for a lot of it now particularly since my mom passed away. I was told very early on, “when we’re all gone you’ll have to carry on the music, keep it alive to the best of your ability, and add to it.” I took that very seriously. I always try to tip my hat to my heritage. Also whenever I didn’t know what to do musically, I went back to Carter Family music. I’d sing it, and play it, and get back in touch with what is in my DNA. Because I really do believe there’s DNA involved here. So when I got around to doing Carter Girl in 2014, it’s a record I always knew I was going to make someday.
I don’t know how you pick a record’s worth of songs out of a catalog of so many songs.
The songs would change drastically from week to week. It would change all the time. And I’m trying to write. I kept thinking I could do that for the rest of my life. And that’s kind of what I am doing. And I want to pass it down to my daughter and my granddaughters. I don’t know if the boys want to be Carter boys, but the girls are leaning that way. If I can only get them singing. There’s an age where they don’t really want to sing. They want to play, which is great.
I don’t want to focus too much on the past.
One of the things I accepted a long time ago was anytime anybody wrote about me there was going to be a full paragraph about who I was related to — “And now, Carlene!”
I’m sure. And you get it from all sides having been married to Nick Lowe.
And the huge influence he had on me. Howie Epstein too. I just had good teachers. I did. And I soaked up everything I could from people who really knew how to make records. Nick would always tell me, just remember to always practice your craft. He’s coming to Nashville in May and I’m going to see him because he still inspires me.
For Carlene Carter Where She Comes Is Where She’s Bound
You talked about how picking shows is just in your DNA. But — and I might be wrong about this. But when Carl Smith finally retired, didn’t he basically give up being Mr. Country Music and decide to just be a regular guy?
He had a long career. It was like 30 years. He burned up the road, and burned up the charts, and everything he touched turned gold. And by that point, he’d done it all. At that point in his life he said, “I want to concentrate on being home and working with horses.” He wanted to focus on horses and he did. A lot of people who had the success my daddy had would never dream of walking away from it, but he did. A lot of people say they’re retiring from the road, but then they come back because they can’t stay away from the action, or the feeling they get when they’re performing, or the music. Daddy was happy on his horse whistling and singing his heart out in a field counting cows. In the last couple years of his life, I spent more one-on-one time with my dad than I ever had. I always saw him, of course, and my stepmother was very much a part of that. She made sure she was the one who would call and say, “Does Carlene want to come out this weekend?” Daddy wasn’t one of those kinds of dads, but he was always glad to see me. And I had my sister and brothers out there and that was really a much more normal life than I had, particularly after Mom married John.
Oh, I’m sure.
After mom married John, things changed for us in terms of being in a fishbowl and being seen, and being on the cover of The National Enquirer, as a kid.
For Carlene Carter Where She Comes Is Where She’s Bound (4)
National Enquirer — yeah, that’s got to be completely surreal.
Daddy gave it up the year I started making records, 1978. So he never took us on the road like the Carters did or Cash did. That was a traveling family. But Daddy, he went to work. Even so much so that my brother, when he was little, they asked him in school what his dad did for a living, and my brother Carl said, “Oh, he works at the airport.” Because he was always going off to the airport! I never got to see him perform very much. I saw him one time in Las Vegas when I was about 16. So he retired in 1978, and that was the same year my grandmother passed away. So it was the start of something for me, but the end of Daddy’s musical career, and the end of Grandma’s musical career. And her not being there for advice I counted on. I counted on her for a lot of that stuff. She always had time for all of her grandkids. She’d teach about anything, and she loved playing with us no matter what, whether we were good or not. Though, she’d give you the evil eye if you were on stage and messed up. I’ve tried to carry the best of everything with me. Sometimes I show my ass on stage and made big sweeping statements I wish I never said. But I love playing to a live audience and the engagement I have with them. It’s very personal for me. By the end of the show, I think people know me.
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You’ve said some things about how women who wanted to do their own thing and didn’t fit a package got labeled difficult.
I remember going to my label in the nineties, and they said, “You need to realize that you can’t have the kind of record sales men have.” Like 80 percent of the market is women and women don’t buy women’s records.I just thought that was insane. It made no sense to me. I bought women’s records most of my life. I love Etta James. I love Janis Joplin. Linda Ronstadt was a huge influence. It made no sense to me. And that you might get 20% of sales because you’re a woman made no sense to me. So I decided early on, I’m not going to let them get me down. I’m going to be the highest energy female act, and I’m going to make people happy.
I know this is an impossible question, but is there any one image or anecdote that really illustrates what it was like growing up in the Carter Family?
Probably the biggest thing in my mind that I always go back to, is being a young girl who wants to be a songwriter, and sitting in our music room on the lake in Hendersonville, and looking around the room and seeing Roy Orbison and Paul McCartney sit down at the piano and play “Lady Madonna.” And Kris Kristofferson was there. And Mickey Newbury. And George and Tammy are there. And we have this real thing of having people just eating together. And then sharing together in such an intimate way. It’s such a reminder of why we make music.
Carlene Carter celebrates her family tradition Saturday, April 13th at The Halloran Centre.
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Last week, a tour bus idled next to Sam Phillips Recording Studio. Police vehicles stood by, lights flashing. Seeing Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland appear, a bystander might have thought a foreign dignitary was visiting. But no, this dignitary was all-American: Producer/director Ken Burns was in town to promote his new eight episode series, Country Music, due to premiere on WKNO and other PBS affiliates September 15th.
Not every Ken Burns premiere gets such a buildup, at least in Memphis, but the Bluff City figures heavily in his new project. By Burns’ own reckoning, 70 percent of the series’ 16 hours takes place in Tennessee. Indeed, the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development is one of the show’s major investors. Hence the tour bus. A whole entourage, including Burns’ co-producers, Dayton Duncan and Julie Dunfey, was in the midst of a four-city Tennessee blitz, bringing word of what was to come. It’s a tale that may surprise many by its diversity.
“Our first episode is called ‘The Rub,'” Burns explained over the barbecue luncheon. “And ‘the rub,’ with all due respect to the Rendezvous, is not about barbecue; it’s about the friction that takes place between black Americans and white Americans in the South. The banjo is an African instrument. The fiddle comes from Europe and the British Isles. And when they meet in America, the friction that’s given off produces many different offspring. One of them is country music. You can take the Mt. Rushmore of early country music greats, from A.P. Carter to Jimmie Rodgers to Bill Monroe to Hank Williams to Johnny Cash, and all of them have an African-American mentor who took their chops from here to there.”
Ken Burns
Nowhere are the diverse underpinnings of country music more apparent than in Episode Four, which comprised the bulk of the preview segments shown in Memphis last week. As Duncan noted, “This thing we call country music came from a lot of diverse groups. Ballads, hymns, the blues, minstrel shows. It was always mixing and mingling. And this isn’t a film about rock-and-roll, but it makes the point that rock-and-roll has a connection to country. It’ll be a surprise to many that what Elvis was doing early on was going out and fronting for Hank Snow.”
Even more revelatory were the segments on the early days of Johnny Cash, whose first years in Memphis spring vividly to life, thanks to newly discovered footage. “Archivists will dig deep for us. People will haul out the black plastic bag of photos from their attic and basement and let us go through them,” Dunfey said. “The Cash daughters just said, ‘We have all these family home movies.’ And actually they had never looked at a lot of it. They just handed little canisters to us.”
What the producers found was brilliant color footage of Johnny, first wife Vivian, and their daughters, picnicking in the Memphis area, not to mention films of Cash clowning with Elvis and Carl Perkins. Beyond the visuals, the episode highlights the impact on Cash of African-American jug band leader Gus Cannon.
With all the talk of diversity and “the rub” between cultures, I asked Burns what role anthropology plays in his work. “My father was a cultural anthropologist. He was telling you how people lived and interacted and what their language and their dress and their music said about who they are and how they interrelated with other people. My father was also an amateur still photographer. And my very first memory is being in the dark room he built in the basement of our tract house in Newark, Delaware, where he was the only anthropologist in the entire state of Delaware, and watching that magic alchemy, in that weird light and that horrible smell of those chemicals, holding me in one arm with his left hand, and with the right hand manipulating those tongs on a completely blank sheet of paper, in water, that suddenly appeared with an image. And so I can permit you, with the anthropology and the photography, to infer the rest.”
His final comments, too, revealed more than a little anthropology: “We are operating in this really unique space, that is between ‘us,’ that two-letter, lower-case plural pronoun, and the capitalized ‘U.S.’ And all the intimacy of us, and we and our, but also the complication and contradiction and controversy, as well as the majesty, of the U.S. We’re dealing with questions of freedom and race and gender, no more so than in this film.”
It’s the calm before the storm this week at Memphis movie theaters, as the end of October and the beginning of November bring two film festivals to the Mid South.
Wednesday night, Indie Memphis and Rhodes College presents Johnny Cash at Folsom, a documentary by Bestor Cram. Cash’s 1968 comeback album, recorded live in front of a captive audience at the infamous Folsom Prison in California, became an all time classic of American music. This film tells the remarkable story of how the record came to be, and the lives it touched in the 50 years since. The show will start at 7 p.m. at McNeil Concert Hall, and tickets are available at the Indie Memphis website.
This Week At The Cinema: Johnny Cash and Twilight
Then on Thursday, Oct. 18, comedian Michael Jr.’s stand up comedy special More Than Funny: Everyone Has A Punchline plays for one night at the Malco Paradiso and Collierville theaters. Take a look at some of Michael’s punchlines here.
This Week At The Cinema: Johnny Cash and Twilight (2)
At the Paradiso on Sunday, Oct. 21 at 2 p.m., the enormously popular Twilight series celebrates its 10th anniversary. It’s the franchise that launched the careers of actors Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, both of whom have grown into great actors since their start as lovelorn young girl and lovelorn ageless vampire.
This Week At The Cinema: Johnny Cash and Twilight (3)
Artist Mike McCarthy contemplates sharing his Cash with the world.
Mark Lovell, who has partnered with Darrin Hillis in running the Delta Fair since it began in 2007, has a soft spot for Johnny Cash. This year, the fair will host a Johnny Cash Family Reunion. But that’s not the half of it: Lovell is also the current owner of the former Galloway United Methodist Church on Cooper and Walker. The fact that the building witnessed Cash’s first ever performance with band mates Marshall Grant and Luther Perkins, in 1954, is not lost on him.
Indeed, since early 2017, preparations have been made for a larger-than-life statue of Cash to be erected on or near the church grounds. Local auteur Mike McCarthy, who is as adept with clay as he is with paper, pen, and celluloid, has recently completed the work, which occupied a place of honor in his living room as he worked on it for over a year.
Leigh Wiener
Johnny Cash
“While I am no longer involved in the daily goings-on of Legacy Memphis (the non-profit I co-founded),” says McCarthy, “I believe there is an effort to unveil the statue, perhaps as early as November, in front of the new apartment building between Stone Soup and Galloway United Methodist Church.”
Most of Midtown has been abuzz about the work since McCarthy was contracted to create the work last June. Here, at long last, the Memphis Flyer presents an exclusive preview of McCarthy’s work: the clay form from which a bronze statue has already been cast by the local Lugar Foundry. The work is based on a period-appropriate photo of Cash, from early in his career. Of course, the bronze version won’t sport those red buttons, which McCarthy lovingly lifted from one of his late mother’s dresses.
Imagine, if you can, that you’ve never heard of Johnny Cash.
It’s nigh impossible, especially here in Memphis, where he lived for years while recording his first hits. As with Elvis, Nashville lays claim to him, too, but really, he’s everywhere. Yet now and then you may meet a stranger who’s just learning of the legend.
Brian Oxley was just such a stranger. His father, a Marine in World War II, was so moved by the atomic devastation he witnessed in Japan that he settled there permanently to raise a family and assist in the country’s reconstruction. He also did well for himself, getting in on a growing business called ServiceMaster. Cut to the 21st Century, when Oxley, having grown up in Asia all his life, found himself in a Chicago record shop. “Who’s that?” he asked the clerk, pointing to a photo on the wall.
“That’s President Jimmy Carter,” was the reply.
“No, the other guy.”
“What, you’ve never heard of Johnny Cash?” said the clerk. Presidents come and go, but Cash is forever. He promptly loaded Oxley up with a few choice CDs, and a new obsession was born.
Indeed, as Darrin Hillis, one of the organizers behind the upcoming Delta Fair & Music Festival, puts it, “Brian, within a year, had purchased Mama Cash’s house in Hendersonville, because that’s where Johnny spent his last days.” Not long after, he also purchased the Cash family’s rural retreat near Dickson, Tennessee, and the little country grocery store down the road for good measure. Both are being developed as pilgrimage destinations for true Johnny Cash devotees. And they are legion.
Hillis tells the tale by way of explaining the unique performances he and mastermind Mark Lovell have booked for the fair, running from August 31st – September 9th at Agricenter International. They’ll feature dozens of performers, but local Cash fans are rejoicing at a special tribute planned for September 2nd: the Johnny Cash Family Reunion.
Hillis further explains, “I got involved because Fluke Holland, Johnny Cash’s drummer for his entire 37 years of touring, is a buddy of mine. So I called him about getting everybody together that’s still playing music.
“Next thing you know, we got this thing cooking. Thomas Gabriel is just amazing, he’s Johnny’s first grandson, and Mark Alan Cash, that’s another nephew. The Oxley family has brought them out.
“And then you’ve got Roy Cash who’s here in town. A lot of people don’t know about him. He’s a war hero. That dude went out to San Diego about a year ago and met with all the fighter pilots from Vietnam. They were trying to kill each other way back when, but they went to some Navy base out there and made amends. Roy will be there. And Dan Oxley [Brian’s brother] is a world class trumpet player. Hopefully he’ll play on ‘Ring of Fire’.”
They’ll play plenty of Johnny’s tunes, of course, but there will be non-musical delights as well.
“They’re gonna do all kinds of songs, even some new ones they’ve written. Then they’ll have an all-family singalong, where everyone will participate. And Cindy Cash might come and tell some stories. Also, Brian bought the ‘One Piece at a Time’ Cadillac. Back in the 70s, a guy built that car for Johnny [based on the hit song]. And he absolutely loved it. That’s the car he drove, apparently. So that’ll be there at the show.”
But what of you, dear reader? Have you heard the Man in Black? On the off chance that you haven’t, you’d best get to listening. One place to start would be the recent album from England’s Charly Records.Late last year, they remastered the Sun Records tracks that put Cash on the map, which still stand as some of his finest work. Even longtime fans will appreciate the care that has gone into this fine slab of vinyl, now clearer than ever, sporting both hits and lesser-known gems like “Straight A’s in Love” and “Luther Played the Boogie”.
The latest, best collection of Johnny Cash on Sun.
And by all means, get out to the Delta Fair and Music Festival to hear the music of Johnny Cash by those who knew him best. The man himself may be gone, but his legacy will cast a shadow for a thousand years.
The big news from the third episode of Sun Records is that Johnny Cash finally got something cool to do.
The episode opened with him hanging with his buddies in a beer hall in Landsberg, Germany where he was stationed in the early 1950s. (Idlewild Presbyterian Church’s Fellowship Hall gets a featured cameo as the watering hole.) At the prodding of his buddies, Cash busts out into an impromptu oom-pah song, wowing the crowd. This is the first time Kevin Fonteyne has shown believable talent as a singer—although I have no idea if he actually sang himself—and I started to possibly buy into his Cash portrayal. Later, Cash shows his introspective side as he passes up the opportunity to see a movie in the base lounge to sit by himself with his guitar, working out some songs. He gets a big idea when his buddy casually mentions Folsom prison. We all know where that’s going.
Col. Tom continues to be the most compelling character in the series. When he first see him this week, he’s getting some heat from his bookie—turns out the Colonel likes to gamble, and his eye for the ponies is not as well developed as his eye for singing talent. Nevertheless, his grandiosity is in full effect. He’s already starting to refer to himself in the third person. “Are you proposing impropriety on the Colonel’s part?” he says to Eddy Arnold.
But while his gambling instincts may be faulty, his hucksterism is on point. He sells fans to the fans at the un-air conditioned Peabody Dog Patch Jamboree. The show is a Memphis musician cameo-fest: The Subteens’ Mark Aiken gets a line as the stage manager, and guitar slinger John Paul Keith gets a double cameo as two different guitar players! He’s like Clark Kent, just take off the glasses and you’re somebody else. Had I not been familiar with JPK, I might not have noticed his duplicity, which is a tribute to the skill of the makeup and costume folks. If there’s one thing Sun Records has been consistently good at, it’s deploying all of the budget- and time-saving tricks in the book.
Meanwhile, Eddy Arnold’s career is blowing up, but he’s getting wise to Col. Tom’s chicanery. The Colonel’s already got another mark—Hank Snow, played by St. Louis musician Pokey LaFarge—so he fires the client before Snow releases him.
Back at our titular studio, Sam, Dewey, and B.B. King are pretty pleased with their recordings, but label head Joe Bihari (Mike Horton) is not so turned on to “all the hep stuff blasting out of Beale Street.” The future arrives out front of Sun in the form of Ike Turner (Kerry D. Holliday in his screen debut) and his band, causing a commotion with the racist proprietors of the car dealership across the street. On the one hand, I applaud the show for taking the controversial “racism is bad, OK?” stance, but the whole sequence where Sam and Dewey stand up to the bigots—as well as the characterization of Ike is pretty cringeworthy.
Not that Ike Turner was a good guy in real life. Far from it. When they can’t come up with the $3.98 it takes to record at Sun, they naturally head down to Beale Street, where Ike tries to pimp a waitress named Wanda into singing for his band at Sun and paying the bill all herself. When that’s unsuccessful, he just grabs the tip jar and runs out the door, leading the establishment’s proprietor to fire off a blast from a shotgun that damages a guitar amp.
The story of how the damaged guitar amp accidentally created fuzz guitar is the stuff of rock legend, and its treatment here is an example of how Sun Record’s flawed approach to history is counterproductive. As Ike Turner told it, the amp fell off the back of the car. There was no dramatic shotgun chase. Wouldn’t the simple fact that Ike and boys were flat broke, scrounged up just enough to cut the record, and then had to play with a damaged guitar amp that turned out to actually sound good be more relatable? Injecting unnecessary crime hijinx adds nothing. Furthermore, when they actually cut “Rocket 88”, Sam makes noise about being impressed with the novel guitar tone, but we never actually hear the guitar tone isolated so the lay audience can understand what he’s talking about. The good news is, the take of “Rocket 88” recorded for the show is pretty rocking, and Ike’s resentment at being told what to do by Sam, and his subsequent outmaneuvering of Sam is believable and in character.
Sam and Marion takes “Rocket 88” to a pool party where Leonard Chess of Chess Records fame is cavorting with teenage hotties. Marion record scratches the anemic swing on the turntable and busts out “Rocket 88”, sending the greasers and bobby soxers into a spasm of uncontrollable dancing. Mr. Chess is impressed, and soon Sam is hanging his first hit record on the wall—only to find out that Ike Turner has jumped ship, so he’s back to square one. Sam responds to the setback with a one-man, Marshall Avenue DUI party. Marion, meanwhile, gets a radio gig with Dewey to help support the company, setting her up for either an illicit love triangle with her boss or some Mad Men-style sexual harassment. Time will tell.
Down in Louisiana, Jerry Lee and Jimmy Swaggart are getting into more teenage hijinx, stealing porno mags and breaking into the church so Jerry Lee can chase skirts and play the upright piano. Jimmy makes some noise about how Jerry Lee’s sinful ways are going to send him to the pit of fire (“Spill not your seed on the ground! Stay away from loose women!”), but we all know how effective that’s going to turn out to be. Besides, Jimmy’s heart doesn’t seem to be in it. He’s clearly having too much fun tagging along with his cousin. In this comedic sub plot, playing fast and loose with history is yielding some fun comic dividends.
Unfortunately, it’s Elvis’ turn to spin his wheels. He sneaks into Trixie’s room at night and, trying to explain his ahistorical black church attendance, tunes her radio to Dewey’s R&B show. This attracts negative attention from her father, and as Elvis flees through the window, he yells at Trixie “This is the kind of music that makes good girls go bad!”
Dad’s got a point, Trixie. Dad’s got a point.
[Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the site of the beer hall shoot as Rhodes College’s cafeteria.]
It’s finally here! Sun Records the CMT series formerly known as Million Dollar Quartet, was filmed here in Memphis last summer. Like everyone in the city, the crowd at the official red carpet premiere at the Paradiso was eager to see the results. Local cast and crew, as well as a smattering of political dignitaries, munched hot dogs and heavy hors d’oeuvres, swarming the table for slices of cake during the commercial breaks. The mood was jubilant and, by the time the closing credits rolled, satisfied with the first of eight episodes retelling the story of the birth of rock and roll.
Drake Milligan as Elvis Presley
The opening image of S1:E1 is instantly familiar for Midtowners—an exterior shot of one of the 50s era apartment complexes that dot the Parkways, standing in for Lauderdale Courts. We meet The Man Who Will Be King (Drake Milligan) as a shy teenager strumming his guitar in the breezeway, talking to his mother Gladys (Walking Dead vet Ann Mahoney) through the open door. Vernon (Joe Crest, most recently of Stranger Things), just wants his progeny to get a haircut and be a man. After Gladys calls him out on his drinking, Vernon storms out, leaving Elvis to sing “Are You Lonesome Tonight” in an angelic voice to his mom.
Elvis’ prodigious vocal gifts being ignored is a recurring theme in this episode, as is Presley’s penchant for crossing racial lines, which both enriches his musical and spiritual side and makes him even more of an outcast than the poor Mississippi boy already is. His music at first endures him to Trixie (AlexAnn Hopkins), and then, when her parents see him out front of a black church on Sunday morning, it alienates her.
Milligan, who has only ever played Elvis on screen—having being cast for the part on the strength of his performance in the 2014 short film “Nobody”—is the most promising characterization in the series. This is excellent news for the future of the series.
Chad Michael Murray as Sam Phillips
Arguably, the main character of Sun Records is Sam Phillips, played by Chad Michael Murray, a North Carolina actor who got his start on Gilmore Girls. This first episode introduces Sam and his wife Becky (Jennifer Holland) as Sam drags her to see Dewey Phillips (Keir O’Donnell) doing a live broadcast from a
Margaret Anne Florence as Marion Keisker
juke joint. Sam is trying to stand up his Memphis Recording Service with the help of Marion Keisker (Margaret Anne Florence) in time for a first recording session with the Skunk Mountain Boys, an Arkansas hillbilly combo clearly ripped off from O Brother! Where Art Thou?. Unlike the doubting Becky, Marion shares Sam’s vision, and by the end of the episode, an affair breaks out in the claustrophobic confines of 706 Union Ave.
Murray looks the part of Sam Phillips more than Milligan looks like Elvis, but his performance in the initial episode is shakier. It’s hard to portray people like Sam Phillips, who was larger than life in real life, without tipping over into cartoon character territory, and Murray occasionally seems like he’s doing a Hunter S. Thompson imitation. But I did leave episode one encouraged by Murray’s serious commitment to the role.
Less encouraging is Sun Records’ handling of Johnny Cash. Arguably the most fascinating real life character in the Million Dollar Quartet, Cash is played by Kevin Fonteyene, who neither looks the part nor shows the ability conjure The Man In Black’s sad-eyed gravitas in the initial episode. Admittedly, Fonteyene starts with a disadvantage of following up Joaquin Phoenix’s star-making turn in Walk The Line (a film which just gets better with each passing year), but the writers are doing him no favors, introducing him long after the life-derailing death of his older brother, opting instead to give him a cornpone monologue at his brother’s grave site that is clearly just a prop in an Arkansas field. Maybe it will improve when Cash joins the Air Force, but right now what should be the most fascinating subplot seems like an afterthought.
Kevin Fonteyene as Johnny Cash
The forth major player introduced is Col. Tom Parker, played by comedian Billy Gardell. In no uncertain terms, Col. Tom is drawn as a shyster, as his “dancing ducks” act at a county fair is revealed to be a big scam, angering the local hayseeds so much that is is only saved from a riot by the swift intervention of Eddy Arnold (Trevor Donovan).
Billy Gardell as Col. Tom Parker
Parker’s promotional antics for Arnold echo John Landis’ comedy scenes from The Blues Brothers, illustrating a go-to strategy by director Roland Joffé. There’s a lot of history to be covered in a short time, and the production needs to find shortcuts to get the information in the mind of the audience without sacrificing time better spent on character beats. Gardell’s performance is the most assured and confident in the show, which also bodes well for the future of the series as Parker’s dark side emerges more fully.
The brightest spot in the first episode is Memphis itself. The city looks great, and the mix of studio and location shooting is flawless. The lighting, set design, and art direction are as good as anything currently on television that’s not called Game Of Thrones. Memphis audiences will enjoy looking for easter eggs and critiquing the jumps of logic and landscape. In one particularly hilarious (to me, anyway) moment, a geography challenged Elvis forgets the Mississippi river runs North/South instead of East/West. But those quibbles will mean nothing outside our borders, while the potential for introducing new audiences to the richness of Memphis music history is vast. With the first episode, Sun Records is off to a promising, if imperfect, start.
It’s beginning to look like I’m not going to get the call to appear in the new television series, Million Dollar Quartet, currently filming in Memphis. Actually, we did get a call from a set designer who had heard that we had some period furniture that might fit the production. Since half of my home is still furnished in Mid-Century Parents’ House Modern, I thought we might make the cut. But after my wife told him we’d be glad to rent him some stuff, but we weren’t going to give it away, he never called back.
Those Hollywood types.
In reality, these folks are Nashville showbiz types who are filming an eight-part mini-series based on the Tony-award-winning musical of the same name to air in November on the CMT Network. An open casting call was held in February for local talent to show their stuff. I was in the process of brushing my blue-suedes when I noticed that the only character over 35 was Colonel Tom Parker — an obese, avaricious poltroon — so it would demand method acting. My hopes for trying out for Uncle Vester were dashed when I heard most of the action takes place in the studio. Not the Sun Studio, mind you, but a look-alike soundstage similar to the one used in the Jerry Lee Lewis “mockumentary,” Great Balls of Fire.
The CA‘s Bob Mehr reported that the film score and other recordings are to be done in Nashville with Nashville musicians. Not to denigrate the excellent musicians of Music City, but that plan seems a little counter-intuitive, considering that you’re documenting an event that never could have happened in regimented Nashville. Only in “real gone” Memphis could such a confluence of talent assemble in one place, a recording studio no less, to basically goof off.
We have world-class musicians and recording studios here, so why spend the extra gas? Back in 1966, the Lovin’ Spoonful sang “There’s thirteen-hundred and fifty-two guitar-pickers in Nashville.” I’ll bet there’s 100,000 by now. The executive producer of the series is Leslie Greif, who actually is a Hollywood type, whose credits include the vastly entertaining mini-series, Hatfields & McCoys, which won several Emmy awards, and Gene Simmons Family Jewels, because a brother’s got to make a buck. However, he also produced Meet Wally Sparks, with Rodney Dangerfield, which makes him a hero in my eyes.
I’m reasonably familiar with the tale of the Million Dollar Quartet. First, because I was a Sun artist only a decade removed and a mile east of the actual event, and secondly, I was employed as a tour guide at Sun Studio for a time until they fired me because my tours went too long. It was my fault. I was always thinking of one more tidbit to tell the tourists, and I was gumming up the works. The boss said I just wasn’t fitting in with their “formula.” But before I was relieved of my duties, the management treated the staff to a viewing of Million Dollar Quartet musical at the Orpheum, for which I am grateful.
The story is loosely based on a historic gathering at Sun Studio, December 4, 1956. Carl Perkins was recording his hit song “Matchbox” with new artist Jerry Lee Lewis on piano, when Elvis strolled in, flush with the first success of his meteoric rise to superstardom, and escorting a Las Vegas showgirl named Marilyn Evans. The accepted story has Johnny Cash arriving from an afternoon of Christmas shopping, although Cash denied it. “I was the first to arrive and the last to leave,” Cash wrote in his autobiography. “I was there to watch Carl record.” Whatever the sequence, when the group gathered around the piano, Sam Phillips immediately called a newspaper columnist and a photographer while his engineer, Jack “Cowboy” Clement, pushed “record.” The result was an indelible photograph and a spontaneous jam session that included snippets of nearly 50 songs and studio conversations that weren’t released in their entirety until 1990.
The TV series expands upon the musical, featuring the greatest hit songs you’d expect, plus Memphis characters like Dewey Phillips, B.B. King, and Ike Turner. But there is one more prominent character who should be in the film.
Before the historians and the discographers descended on Sam Phillips, he was an approachable man who loved sitting behind his big desk reflecting on his glorious career. I once asked him who was the most exciting artist he ever recorded, and without hesitation, he replied, “The Howlin’ Wolf.” He said that Jerry Lee and Charlie Rich may have had the most talent, but the Wolf had a presence in the studio that you could feel. Mr. Phillips said, “His band knew not to mess up, or the Wolf would give them a look that put the fear of God into them.”
I never knew any of those guys in that famous photo. I’m content in knowing I was a tiny part of it. That’s why I hope this series can capture the essence of these now legendary characters. In 2000, the A&E Network premiered their documentary, Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll, at the Cannon Center. There was a meet-and-greet beforehand, and I waited my turn while former Sun luminaries surrounded the great man. Finally, I was able to say, “Congratulations, Mr. Phillips. This is really exciting.” He looked at me askance and asked, “Randy, how long have we been knowing each other?” I did some quick math and said, “I guess about 35 years.” He smiled and said, “Don’t you think you could call me Sam?” I instinctively replied, “Sure, Mr. Phillips.” I trust this mini-series will treat him with the same due respect.
Dan Ball 
Dan Ball 
Leigh Wiener 
Leigh Wiener 
