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Memphis’ Hip Hop Renaissance

Mark down 2018 as the year that Memphis music conquered the world — again.

We can dwell on the chart conquests of yore by Sun and Stax, all fueled by the fiercely independent spirit of those studios’ producers and artists. Or we can fast forward to the widespread use of Memphis soul samples by NWA, Snoop Dogg, and others in the late 1980s. Or skip ahead to DJ Paul, Juicy J, Crunchy Black, and Frayser Boy winning an Academy Award for Best Original Song. Even that was a dozen years ago, and was only the tip of the iceberg. As it turns out, that iceberg has been chugging along for decades now, gathering momentum. Now, once again, it has crushed the charts.

“It’s been a big year for Memphis hip-hop,” says Devin Steele, DJ for K97 FM. “Just with Yo Gotti, BlocBoy JB, Moneybagg Yo, and Young Dolph, alone. About a month ago, all four of those artists had records in the top 20. You hear Memphis records on the radio in every major city now.” And that’s not even including less visible Memphians like Teddy Walton, who produced a track on Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy- and Pulitzer Prize-winning DAMN.

Beyond new material, classic sounds from the 1990s and early aughts are being revived as well. Steel explains, “There’s a resurgence of Three 6 Mafia, with people reusing their beats for a lot of popular songs. Like that classic Juicy J song, ‘Slob on My Knob.’ G-Eazy took that record, put Cardi B on it and just redid the record. It’s the same record!”

Lawrence Matthews, aka Don Lifted

Indeed, a recent article in Rolling Stone calls Juicy J’s track “the most influential rap song of 2018,” naming no less than three artists who have used it. It’s a rare accomplishment for a song cut a quarter-century ago.

One thing made clear by this is the way a track can live on, independent of any one artist. Aside from Memphis performers who have topped the charts, the success and longevity of those tracks rely heavily on Memphis producers — the unsung heroes of this story.

Many of the new hits, such as “Look Alive,” the BlocBoy JB collaboration with Drake that reached number five on the Billboard Hot 100, grew out of tight connections between artists and producers dating back to childhood. Tay Keith, the 21-year-old who produced “Look Alive,” grew up with BlocBoy JB in Raleigh, and they helped refine each others’ skills in their early teens.

As Keith told Fader magazine, “We used to have everybody in the neighborhood record their music in the garage … [BlocBoy] used to be freestyling to the beat the whole time while I’m making it.” As Keith developed his reputation, he went on to work with Blac Youngsta and Moneybagg Yo. But when Drake connected with BlocBoy JB, it brought a sea change. “It definitely changed my life and opened a lot of doors for me,” he says. “It helped me elevate to the next level. But I’m actually still in college, so I’m basically just working this summer.”

DJSqueeky

Lawrence Matthews, aka Don Lifted, recalls a similar friendship. “Cody Jordan — ThankGod4Cody — he’s a friend. We grew up producing together in a friend’s attic. He ended up moving to Atlanta, then moving to L.A., and now he has two platinum records. He’ll also be featured on my upcoming album. I remember when we used to have parties in my living room in 2011. We were talking about that last week at his place, outside his new studio that they’re building. Sitting in the back yard with a pool and a basketball court, and it’s just like, ‘We’re out here! How did seven years lead us to this?'”

The tale of youthful collaborations leading to great things is common in Memphis hip-hop. As the now-legendary producer DJ Squeeky told the Memphis Flyer of his early days in the late 1980s, “I was probably about 15 [or] 16 years old. I did some work with 8 Ball & MJG, Criminal Manne, Project Playaz, and Tom Skeemask. We all kinda grew up together in the same neighborhood.” Some 30 years later, DJ Squeeky is still making hit records, now with Young Dolph, born about the time Squeeky got started. Their track, “100 Shots,” was just certified gold — Squeeky’s second gold record to date.

Pondering the fact that he, unlike many Memphis-bred artists and producers, still lives in his hometown, Squeeky reflects on the lack of recognition Memphis gets, given its high ratio of talent. “People are just milking Memphis. They’re getting millions of dollars. Everybody’s got the sound of Memphis,” he says. “But Memphis ain’t getting the acknowledgment as the source where they’re getting all this music from, where they’re making all this money. They keep pointing at Atlanta. And it’s really not Atlanta. In Atlanta, they have more belief in rap than we ever had in Memphis. Because they look at it like it’s a business venture. They look at it like, if we spend money, we make money. In Memphis, we get kinda skeptical about spending our money. We gotta think about it three or four minutes.”

It’s a familiar story, going back to a producer Squeeky cites as an early inspiration: DJ Spanish Fly. Now, with his early mixtapes being rediscovered on the internet, Spanish Fly is recognized as a pioneer of the crunk sound. But for years, aside from a few shout-outs by the Three 6 Mafia crew, he went unappreciated. As Squeeky notes, “We’ve been having this sound for the longest time, but nobody called out what we was doing, ’cause we was before our time. But over time, that’s how everybody sounds now. It’s like the sound of the world now is Memphis.”

IMAKEMADBEATS

DJ Squeeky, since before his earliest hits with 8 Ball and MJG, has also been an architect of that sound. As Steele says, “His name is coming up a lot with the whole trap vs. crunk debate, over who came up with what, where it came from. Atlanta’s taking credit. Memphis came up with it.”

But what is the Memphis sound? Ever evolving, it’s not easy to define nowadays.

“In Memphis, we have our own sound: the bounce,” Tay Keith explains. “That bounce sets us aside from everybody else.” The prominence of the Roland TR-808 drum machine is a part of that. It figured heavily in hip-hop’s earliest days, but as rap explored sampling more through the 1980s, loops of classic funk and soul drum breaks came to dominate. That is, until Memphis producers stepped up, bringing the 808 into the foreground once again. Over such beats, DJ Squeeky, Three 6 Mafia, and others layered more orchestral sounds, creating the doom-laden “horror movie” sound of the 1990s.

That’s still a defining sound, as the current recycling of old Three 6 Mafia tracks proves. But records from the new generation of Memphis producers, like Keith, can be spare, almost bleak, with the 808 percussion foregrounded even more. This is calculated.

Yo Gotti

As Keith explains, “You make the beats simple so you give the artist more room to ride the beat. If you put too much into a beat, artists really don’t have much room to do what they want. The simplicity is the creativity.”

DJ Squeeky puts it another way: “The new people making the new trap sounds, they’re making the beat with less of the music. When I was coming up, we had more music. It was in our blood with the Memphis sound, to have more music in a track — guitar, pianos, and all that other stuff. I grew up on a lot of that. So I added a lot of that to my tracks.” Having spent his early years as a drummer at the First Baptist Beale Church, where his family attended services, he’s still committed to layering more sounds over his beats.

But DJ Squeeky isn’t the only producer from Memphis with a musical background. Alan Hayes is possibly the least recognized Memphis hip-hop producer/engineer, emerging as he did out of the white rock and new wave scenes of the 1970s and 1980s. He, too, notes the change in the recent hip-hop soundscapes. “It seems to me that the tracks have gotten a lot less musical and a lot more beat-oriented. Now it just seems like the music is just some kind of ethereal bed underneath a big giant 808 kick and snare.”

A paradoxical figure in Memphis rap, Hayes is a missing link between the city’s electronic music scene of the 1980s and the hip-hop that was to come. Having played with successful electronic new wavers Calculated X, he already had a TR-808 and many other synthesizers when he built his House of Hayes studio around 1988. Thus, he was perfectly poised to catch the initial wave of Memphis rappers.

Tay Keith

“The first rapper I worked with was named AlleyCat. The producer was Carlos Broady (another Memphis native). This was right after he had done the stuff with Biggie Smalls.” Soon thereafter, Hayes cut the first demos of a 15-year-old named Yo Gotti, whose success led to more work in the genre, such as Gangsta Blac’s 74 Minutes of Bump. But he credits another studio as the scene’s true pioneer. “MegaJam was probably the earliest commercial hip-hop studio in Memphis. One of the guys there was Michael Patterson. He’s now done a lot of big time stuff.” Kojack, another renowned producer from Memphis, also started at MegaJam.

Though Hayes produces and engineers many styles of music, he hasn’t lost the enthusiasm for hip-hop that he felt in those early days. “There just aren’t any rules of what you can put together to make a beat,” he says. “I bought my first synthesizer, a Minimoog, probably about 1971. And I’ve always been just as enamored by sound and texture as actual music, you know? So hip-hop was a huge opportunity to just go wild with weird sounds and stuff.”

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The idea of “going wild” is significant. Though the current trend is minimalist, the more expansive possibilities of hip-hop are still alive and well in Memphis, and not just with musician-producers like Squeeky or Hayes. Under the surface of the Memphis-derived hits, the city is witnessing an explosion of creative approaches.

The Unapologetic label/collective, for example, is premised on the notion of diversity. Memphian James Dukes left town after high school for a job at Quad Recording Studios in New York, working with Talib Kweli, Common, Missy Elliott, Ludacris, and others. Unlike many, he returned here in 2011. “New York toughens you up in a very interesting way, in a very social kind of way,” he says. “I would say I went up there as Nemo, which was just a nickname, and I came back IMAKEMADBEATS, a kind of scarily dedicated guy.”

Kenny Wayne

Dukes found himself pursuing a richer vision of what Memphis hip-hop could be. Inspired by other like-minded Memphians who chafed at the new “Memphis sound,” he founded Unapologetic to nurture their work.

Now, a few years on, Unapologetic has developed a stable of artists and producers who evoke the freewheeling spirit of the Native Tongues collective in late-1980s New York: rappers like PreauXX and A Weirdo From Memphis; producers like C Major and Kid Maestro; less rap-oriented artists like angelic singer Cameron Bethany or bass phenom MonoNeon; and even a clothing line. The musical environments created by IMAKEMADBEATS and his fellow producers are imaginative and eclectic.

One precursor to the Unapologetic model was the Iron Mic Coalition, which held to a similar set of values, though not with the same production and marketing savvy as Dukes and his cohort. Dukes counts them as an inspiration, especially the work of Ennis Newman, aka Fathom 9, who passed away in 2014. Dukes recalls, “While the I.M.C. has various talents, Fathom 9 to me was the most left wing. He was past the point of comfortable and cute. He did it in a way to where it was daringly uncomfortable.”

Which brings us to the “message”: While overt politics mostly emerge in rappers’ lyrical choices, they inform the production as well, and it’s clear that groups like Unapologetic and I.M.C. create a milieu where politically conscious rap can flourish. Of course, you can’t dismiss the raw political impact of Three 6 Mafia or Yo Gotti raps, even if they mainly celebrate the classic outlaw hero. But conscious rap is less conducive to the call-and-response chants of crunk.

(Clockwise from top) IMAKEMADBEATS, A Weirdo from Memphis, PreauXX, Aaron James, Quinn McGowan, Jr., Kid Maestro, Eric Stafford, C Major

When I ask IMAKEMADBEATS about political rappers in Memphis today, he singles out two. “Marco Pavé is one. He’s built a whole identity around it. And Don Lifted. His stuff is maybe not as aggressive in that sense, but he’s very aware.”

Don Lifted and Marco Pavé are indeed a study in contrast. Don Lifted, a member of the mostly visual arts-based group The Collective, curates his own and others’ artwork in local galleries, creates objets d’art as set pieces for his concerts, and is one of many local rappers who produce their own tracks. C’Beyohn, Cities Aviv, and Kenny Wayne (also a visual artist in The Collective) all work in this way, often combining autobiography with “message” rap.

Pavé presents himself as more of an activist and auteur, though he relies on producers like Broady to create striking juxtapositions of samples and lyrical protest. Wayne also creates tracks for Pavé, and the two have recently been scoring their hip-hop works for live orchestra. This may represent the newest frontier in the genre. Sam Shoup, an arranger and instructor at the University of Memphis, tutored Wayne in conducting classical musicians and assisted with an operatic version of Pavé’s Welcome to Grc Lnd. He finds Pavé’s approach “very interesting. His vision is huge. It could be a landmark piece to come from this town.”

But it was not Shoup’s first run at genre-busting. “This started about four or five years ago, when I arranged the Opus One show for Al Kapone [with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra],” Shoup recalls. “That was one of the first orchestral rap things ever done. And so we kind of pioneered that. Recently Nas did a concert with the National Symphony. Al Kapone was texting me and saying, ‘Man, we did this four years ago!'”

Wayne, whose brother is producer WeboftheMacHinE (a collaborator with Missy Elliot, Timbaland, and Young Dolph), is far from alone in breaking into the realm of live musicians. During Memphis’ MLK50 commemorations, students from the University of Memphis Department of Music staged an original hip hop symphony, “Echoes of a King.” With a jazz band on the left, a string section on the right, and several impressive rappers and singers weaving in vocal parts, the work was a stunning taste of what R&B-tinged hip-hop can become.

While it’s difficult to call such grand explorations “underground,” they certainly exude an indifference to the usual markers of commercial success. But that’s not to say any of these alternative artists would shun more public acclaim. There’s always the chance that, in following their unique visions, they’ll build a larger following. Indeed, they already are.

The bottom line: Memphis is teeming with producers, and even the chart-toppers are pushing their creativity to the limit. As Tay Keith says of his success with BlocBoy JB, “We just did it in more of a creative way than other people. My advice would be to be more creative with it. Stick with a new rhythm, your specific way.”

Clearly, dividing producers or rappers into commercial vs. underground realms is too simplistic. As IMAKEMADBEATS notes, “I don’t think there’s a binary way to look at it in 2018. I think the angle that we want to focus on most is the future progression. For example, what has been deemed an underground sound, like Memphis crunk in the ’90s, became commercial simply because it got the right visibility. So what is underground is very relative.”

This in turn has a direct bearing on a city’s musical identity. Pavé notes that “for Memphis to become the city that it needs to become, music-wise, we definitely have to create other types of sound, other types of rappers with different images.”

Editor’s note: Andria Lisle offers a comprehensive guide to the best spots in Memphis to hear hip hop.

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Music Music Blog

The Memphis Jazz Workshop: A Q&A with Founder Steve Lee

Faculty and students of the Memphis Jazz Workshop

Steve Lee is helping to revive jazz education for Memphis youth in a big way. Having taught with the Memphis Music Initiative and the Visible Music College, and having received the Steinway and Sons Top Teacher Certificate Award in 2017, he founded the Memphis Jazz Workshop to fill in gaps that have developed in public school music education. The pianist lived in New York City for twelve years and studied with jazz giant (and Memphis native) Donald Brown. Now he’s back in his hometown and has gathered a faculty of some of the city’s best and brightest players. 

Stephen Lee

Tomorrow evening at Hutchison School, audiences can hear for themselves what the workshop students have accomplished during the past month’s winter session. After the student concert, faculty will join drummer Ulysses Owens, Jr. in a performance featuring many compositions associated with Memphians who made their mark in the world of jazz. Owens, a graduate of the Julliard School, was named a ‘rising star’ by Downbeat magazine in 2012, and drummed on Grammy-winning albums by Kurt Elling and Christian McBride.

Memphis Flyer: When did you start the Memphis Jazz Workshop? And where is it based?

Steve Lee: We just started this past June of 2017. Now it’s based at the University of Memphis. We’ve done it at Hutchison, and at the Visible Music School. But the main place is U of M.

Do you do workshops for adults?

You’re the second person to ask me that this week! If we had our own space, that’d be real easy. That’s on the agenda — to give lessons not just to grade school kids but to adults too. That’s what the Nashville Jazz Workshop does. But we really need more space for that.

So the Saturday concert will be the graduating recital of all the kids in the workshop?

Yeah, it’ll be a couple of combos performing. Then at the end of the concert we’ll get everybody up there playing an F blues, something like that.

So I guess the star attraction is Ulysses Owens, Jr. Will he be teaching as well?

Ulysses Owens, yeah! He’s also doing workshops Saturday morning. He’s doing a drum workshop, then he’s doing an entrepreneur workshop at 11:30. Then he’s doing the concert later that night.

Who will be playing with him?

Me, Gary Topper (saxophone), Johnny Yancey (trumpet), and Sylvester Sample and Carl Casperson (both on bass).

Ulysses graduated from Julliard. He’s also a producer. You know, he’s produced probably 20 or 30 different singers out of New York. Plus, he has his own nonprofit in Jacksonville, Florida. It’s like a dance and fine arts program. And that’s what he’s gonna talk about. You know, carving out your own space, in life and music. Whatever you wanna do. In entrepreneurship, you don’t just have to be a musician. There are other things that you can do also. That’s what the entrepreneurship class will be talking about. Ways to do more than just play music. I wish someone had told me about that 20 or 25 years ago.

Do you have a particular method of teaching jazz to younger people?

We really teach them to just listen to the music. There are so many styles of music out nowadays. And most of their friends don’t listen to jazz. So we’re trying to encourage them to listen more to the music. For instance, some of those kids were playing “Impressions” at rehearsal. And I asked if any of them had heard John Coltrane play it. They were like, “No.” How’re you gonna play “Impressions” if you’ve never heard John Coltrane play it? So, we encourage them to listen more. And practice.

We do have kids that like to practice. But that’s still a struggle. Especially for a few that wanna go to Julliard, and do that for a living. They really need to understand that you have to be practicing at least three, four, or five hours a day at the middle school grade level, or even elementary, to compete against kids who’re applying for those scholarships. And we focus on mental stuff, motivation. Also, listening to live music. That’s another thing kids don’t get a chance to hear a lot. ‘Cos there’s not a lot of live music nowadays. Everything’s programmed. So, just give ’em all those methods. See what happens.

The first thing I do, especially with piano players, I teach them [chord progressions] ii-V-I’s, in all twelve keys. So that’s the beginning. Once you do that, then we can start talking. If you don’t know your ii-V-I’s [such as C minor-F-B♭] in all twelve, major and minor keys, there’s nothing they can do. But once you learn ii-V-I’s, then they can get into scales and chord changes. And then you can stretch it into bebop. For example, with ii-V-I, you’ve got a minor chord to a dominant chord to a major chord. So once you know those chords, once you play that C minor, then you can play that for four bars and you can get to the next chord, which is an F7. Once you understand how to get around those changes, everything else is downhill. This applies to all instruments. Horn players should have an understanding of piano, so they can see what they’re doing. It makes it easier for them to really learn improv, if they have an understanding of piano and a little basic jazz harmony. That helps too.

How about blues?

Oh that’s the first thing we really do. Teach them an F blues. You know, “Straight No Chaser,” just teach ’em the blues scale. Once you teach them that blues scale, and I’m really speaking for piano players, you show them the left hand voicings, you learn the blues scale with your right hand, and you start coming up with melodies. That’s the first thing we start with, the blues. Get them making little melodies and sounding pretty good, then they’re confident. And then we can go to another song, like “Autumn Leaves” or “Song for My Father.”

So on Saturday, what kinds of jazz tunes should the audience expect to hear?

Well, the kids will be doing this tune, “Red Clay” by Freddie Hubbard. That’s the older kids. The younger kids will be doing “Cantaloupe Island,” by Herbie Hancock. Now, Ulysses will be doing a couple Mulgrew Miller tunes. He’ll be doing a James Williams tune. He’ll also be doing a Roy Ayers tune called “Cocoa Butter.” So it’ll be a mix of songs from other artists. He may be doing one original called “Soul Conversation.” A few by Memphis musicians like [pianists] James Williams and Mulgrew Miller. Mulgrew, you know he’s from Greenwood, Mississippi, but he spent so much time in Memphis. He went to the University of Memphis before he moved to New York.

Although I mainly studied with Donald Brown, I actually had a lesson with Mulgrew when I was living in NY. He was in New Jersey and I took a bus over to his house. The bus broke down on the way back!

It strikes me that teaching jazz to youth is a long tradition in Memphis, going back to Jimmie Lunceford at Manassas High School in the 1920s. Do you feel this is kind of a continuum of that?

Oh man, yeah! Jimmie Lunceford, that’s another secret that a lot of people don’t know about. I do think it is a continuation of what he was doing. But Memphis never had a jazz workshop like the workshops we have now. They always had jazz in the schools. And there used to be more, man. When I was in school like back in the 1980s, most high schools had a jazz band. Now, it’s really only a handful that have a jazz band around the city. Overton, Central, Germantown. The other city schools might have a little combo, but nothing like a jazz band. I don’t think there are even ten.

Did you study jazz in high school here?

I studied at Carver, with Ozzie Smith. Ozzie Smith was a well known local musician around town, back in the ’80s. I had one year with him. He was a great saxophonist. He’s the pastor for a big church in Chicago now. And I also studied with Tim Turner. Tim now is a jazz director down at Xavier University.

So many great jazz players came out of Memphis.

Memphis really doesn’t understand the history, and the role the city plays in jazz music. The people that played the music, and contributed to this music worldwide. If you look at cities that the great jazz players came from, and you look at the number that came from particular cities, Memphis is up there. You know, Philly, maybe Detroit. But Memphis is definitely in the top five.

I mean, you got Charles Lloyd, you got George Coleman, Hank Crawford, Phineas Newborn, Jr., Donald Brown, James Williams, Mulgrew Miller, Bill Easley, Kirk Whalum, and Harold Mabern, Jr. And Herman Green! I played with Herman at the first jazz festival I played. I was back here in Memphis one summer and he asked me. It was me, Herman Green, and Terry Saffold. We were in Nashville, opening up for Lionel Hampton at a jazz festival. I’ll never forget that! It’s just a long list of musicians from Memphis that have done a lot for jazz. But Memphis is not aware of it. Memphians don’t know their history.

Memphis Jazz Workshop events at Hutchison School, Saturday, February 24.
10:30-11:30 am:   Master drum class with Ulysses Owens, Jr.
11:30-12:30 pm:   “Carving out your own space in the music industry”
                                      — entrepreneurial workshop with Owens.
6:15-6:45 pm:      Memphis Jazz Workshop student ensembles performances.
7:30-8:30 pm:      Concert with Owens and members of the faculty.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Jackson Soldiers On

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, whose very presence has an inspirational quality, may have been spread somewhat thin on Sunday, when the great icon of civil and human rights made appearances in Memphis relating to both the city’s forthcoming homage to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to Operation PUSH, Jackson’s own self-empowerment initiative, and to the celebration of Black History Month.

Jackson also needed to be mindful to the demands of various important local projects and causes, such as the ongoing campaign of CME Church functionaries to renovate the Collins Chapel Health and Recreational Center (aka Correctional Hospital) for African Americans with special needs, one of several community improvement projects whose aims are aligned with the purposes of Jackson’s PUSH organization.

The Reverend has made repeated visits to Memphis on behalf of its renovation, the estimated price tag of which has risen from $3 million a year ago to its current projected level of $5 million. 

Earlier on Sunday, Jackson participated in a press conference upon his arrival at Memphis International Airport, preached the morning service at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church, and toured the Collins Chapel facility, after which he took part in yet another press availability.

Then came an evening visit to Mt. Pisgah CME Church for what was billed as a “community town hall forum.” At Mt. Pisgah, a palpably tired Jackson (recently he announced that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease) turned out to be essentially a guest observer, sitting at a conference table in the church’s front aisle, along with various church and school and public officials, while other officials and political candidates of various kinds sat in the congregation itself. 

His role during this phase of the program was to be a witness to the proceedings, which would go on to include lengthy speeches from those sharing the conference table with him — on issues ranging from Collins Chapel to school issues, and to matters involving Kroger vacating Orange Mound and rising MLGW rates.

All the while, Jackson sat silent, taking things in. There arose one potentially controversial moment, when City Councilman Ed Ford Jr. rose to expound, first on the grocery-desert problem developing in Orange Mound and then on the issue of a forthcoming November referendum on the November ballot by the council.

The referendum, backed enthusiastically by Ford, calls for the cancellation of a Ranked Choice Voting initiative approved by the city’s voters in a previous 2008 referendum and scheduled for implementation by the Election Commission during the forthcoming 2019 city election. In a nutshell, RCV would allow voters to cast as many as three votes for an office, ranking their preferences. The procedure distributes the voting results in such a way that runoffs in cases where there is no majority winners would prove unnecessary.

“Ranked Choice Voting, in my eyes doesn’t help us,” Ford said, comparing RCV to poll tax procedures of the Jim Crow past. He spoke of having debated the matter against “somebody in from Minneapolis” and against University of Memphis law professor and former County Commissioner Steve Mulroy, an RCV supporter.

“They must have gotten desperate,” he said, noting that his debate opponents had cited both former President Barack Obama and Jesse Jackson himself as RCV proponents. At this, Jackson, clearly determined to stay out of a local controversy, evinced no response whatsoever — though it is a fact not only that he has endorsed RCV as a progressive measure but that his son, U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., has sponsored legislation supportive of Ranked Choice Voting in Congress.

When Jackson finally got his pulpit moment, he was content to lead the congregation in one of his patented self-empowerment chants. His only intervention into a local issue occurred when he joined County Commissioner Van Turner — head of the Greenspace nonprofit that had removed two Confederate memorials from parks purchased from the city — at the pulpit. The Reverend joined hands with Turner and raised both their arms overhead. Then, having soldiered on for justice one more time in Memphis, Jesse Jackson paid his respects to the congregation and left the building.

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

This Week At The Cinema: International Features And Shorts, Plus Sammy Davis, Jr.

It’s a busy week in theaters!

Tuesday night presents a wealth of options. The Morris and Mollye Fogelman International Jewish Film Festival presents a comedy from Morocco at the Memphis Jewish Community Center auditorium. Midnight Orchestra tells the story of a man trying to put together a tribute to his late father by finding all the musicians he played with.

This Week At The Cinema: International Features And Shorts, Plus Sammy Davis, Jr.

At Studio on the Square, Indie Memphis presents In The Fade, a German drama about a woman who loses her family to neo-Nazi terrorists, and the price her quest for revenge exacts.

This Week At The Cinema: International Features And Shorts, Plus Sammy Davis, Jr. (2)

Meanwhile, over at Crosstown Arts, the monthly Shoot & Splice series presents a lecture by Rhodes College Film and Media Studies Professor Rashna Richards based on her book For The Love of Cinema: Teaching Our Passions In And Out Of The Classroom.

Rashna Richards

On Wednesday night, Feb. 7, at Crosstown Arts, the International Shorts program from Indie Memphis 2017 presents snack sized movies from Norway, Canada, India, China, Mexico, and South Korea.

Thursday’s offering from the International Jewish Film Festival explores a dark time in twentieth century history when Nelson Mandela faced a death sentence for conspiring to overthrow the apartheid government of South Africa. An Act of Defiance is screening at Malco Ridgeway Four.

This Week At The Cinema: International Features And Shorts, Plus Sammy Davis, Jr. (3)

Then on Sunday, at the MJCC, a biopic about the beloved, mercurial entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr.

This Week At The Cinema: International Features And Shorts, Plus Sammy Davis, Jr. (4)

See you at the movies!

Categories
News News Blog

Team Chosen to Create ‘I Am A Man’ Plaza

A California sculptor and a Memphis landscape architect will create the “I Am A Man Plaza” here to help commemorate 50th anniversary of the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike and the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Officials with the city and the UrbanArt Commission (UAC) announced Monday that John Jackson of JPA, Inc., of Memphis, and Cliff Garten of Cliff Garten Studio, of California, will collaborate with Memphis spoken word artist Steve Fox to create the plaza.

The plaza is set to be built adjacent to Downtown’s Clayborn Temple. It will cost more than $1.5 million and is expected to be completed by April 2018.

The creative team was chosen by a selection committee comprised of community stakeholders, representatives from architecture and design firms, and artists. Dr. Earnestine Jenkins, an art history professor at the University of Memphis, was one member of the selection committee.

“The Cliff Garten Studio project is an inspired artwork of imagination and wisdom,” Jenkins said in a statement. “It best exemplified the import of the Sanitation Workers Strike in civil rights history, and the significance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ultimate sacrifice that occurred in our city almost half a century ago.”

Committee members reviewed 78 applications and invited six teams to submit site-specific proposals.

Applicants were asked to design “a space to inspire the next generation of leaders, innovators and advocates of positive social change. The installation also needed to provide a peaceful interactive and educational Memphis experience that promotes equity and justice, making residents and tourists want to revisit the plaza,” according a statement from the city.

Garten’s winning proposal now includes a central sculpture of 15-foot-tall stainless steel letters forming the phrase “I Am A Man.” Quotes and speeches from civil rights leaders will be included in components around the sculpture.  

The team will also lead from community workshops for citizens cross the city to share the design and to review the text to be feature in the plaza.

Those workshops will be:

Saturday, August 19 from 1:00 – 3:00 pm
New Chicago Community Development Corp.
1036 Firestone Avenue, Memphis, TN 38107

Thursday, August 24 from 10:30 am – 12:30 pm
Orange Mound Community Center
2572 Park Avenue, Memphis, TN 38114

Tuesday, August 29 from 5:30 – 7:30 pm
Clayborn Temple
294 Hernando Street, Memphis, TN 38126

Thursday, September 7 from 5:00 – 7:00 pm
Whitehaven Community Center
4318 Graceland Drive, Memphis, TN 38116

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Booker T. and the MGs

Today’s Music Video Monday salutes a group of Memphis legends.

Booker T. Jones closed out the Beale Street Music Festival Blues Tent last night with nearly 90 minutes of perfection. Battling that bane of all outdoor music festivals, bass bleeding from the next stage, the Lifetime Achievement Grammy winner led his band through a tour of songs from his five decade career—”Hip Hug-Her”, “Born Under A Bad Sign”, “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long”—with some of the artist’s personal favorites like “Summertime”, “Purple Rain” and “Hey Ya” thrown in for good measure. Here’s a short clip I filmed from the back of the packed Blues Tent of Jones and company playing the song he wrote in 1962 that he claims his still his favorite to this day, “Green Onions”.

Music Video Monday: Booker T. and the MGs (2)

You can read my interview with the genius of Memphis soul in this week’s Memphis Flyer Music Issue cover story. Booker T. closed his set with the stirring live arrangement of the classic “Time Is Tight” that he used to wow audiences with in the 1960s. Here he is in 1970 with Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, and Alan Jackson Jr. bringing the house down as the guys from Creedence Clearwater Revival look on in awe.

Music Video Monday: Booker T. and the MGs

If you would like to see your music video on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Captain America: Civil War

Another May, another superhero movie. How far along are we on this wave of superhero movies? I date it from Bryan Singer’s X-Men in 2000, although you could argue that it goes back to Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman. The studios have refined the hit-making formula, crowding all other genres out of the blockbuster space. Only Star Wars brings in that kind of business, and, as great as The Force Awakens was, it clearly showed the marks of the Disney/Marvel method. As long as the returns remain good, the culture will be papered with comic book movies — and with Captain America: Civil War opening to $673 million on a $250 million budget, there’s no sign the returns are going to fall off any time soon.

Constraints breed creativity, and as formulaic as big-time superhero movies have become, Kevin Feige has a good process in place that both delivers the corporate goods and encourages filmmakers to do good work. Two of the Jon Favreau/Robert Downey Jr. Iron Man movies have been exceptional, but the real heart of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s overarching narrative is the Captain America franchise since Chris Evans was introduced as Steve Rogers in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger. Directed with a classical flair by Joe Johnston, The First Avenger established Captain America as a link to the country’s most heroic period: fighting the Nazis to save freedom. Steve Rogers has become a stand-in for America’s best version of ourselves. Whether it’s a super weapon in the hands of the Red Skull in his first film or an unaccountable surveillance state in Winter Soldier, how he reacts to the problems thrown at him is in accordance with the best angels of our civic religion.

Much of the credit for the success of the Captain America movies must be laid at the feet of Evans, who plays Steve Rogers as empathetic and fundamentally decent but with a strong sense of melancholy befitting a man out of time. The series has also been bolstered by strong direction, first from Johnston and then from Joe and Anthony Russo, who plunged the stalwart super patriot into a world of spy vs. spy intrigue in The Winter Soldier. The best superhero stories come when the heroes are confronted with challenges they are not well-equipped to face and a villain with enough vision to turn the heroes’ strengths into weaknesses. Captain America, the super soldier created to fight the Nazis, the ultimate external threat, found new depth when he had to tease out friend from foe inside the government he has sacrificed everything to serve.

There are two sides to every story — Chris Evans (above) as Captain America; Robert Downey Jr. and Don Cheadle as Iron Man and War Machine.

The Russos are back at the helm for Civil War and have once again tried to tie into the zeitgeist of a divided America. 2016 gives us two blockbusters about superheroes fighting each other. The first was Zac Snyder’s dismal Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Civil War is much better in every respect, largely living up to Winter Soldier.

To defeat Superman, you must put Lois Lane in danger. He’s too powerful to beat on his own, so you have to trick him into making mistakes. Similarly, the way you defeat Captain America is to put Bucky Barns (Sebastian Stan), aka the Winter Soldier, in danger. Bucky is Steve Rogers’ only link to the life he left behind in the 1940s, and Rogers feels partially responsible for Bucky getting the Soviet super soldier treatment that transformed him into a brainwashed assassin. When Civil War opens, Bucky’s been lying low since his escape at the end of The Winter Soldier. Captain America and his revamped crew of Avengers — Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Vision (Paul Bettany), and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) — are engaged in their usual business of keeping the world safe by chasing the fabulously named superterrorist Brock Rumlow (Frank Grillo). But, as usual when an “enhanced persons” donnybrook breaks out in an urban area, there are collateral casualties. In this case, a delegation of development workers from the reclusive African kingdom of Wakanda, the source of the world’s vibrainium, the material that Captain America’s shield is made from. The king of Wakanda, T’Chaka (John Kani) leads a movement to bring the Avengers under the formal control of the United Nations, and other countries, seeing the devastation wrought in the Avengers’ former battlegrounds, quickly come on board.

After Tony Stark is confronted by the mother of a young man killed during the final battle of Avengers: Age of Ultron, he decides to back the UN resolution, known as the Sokovia Accords after the city that Ultron levitated into oblivion. But Steve Rogers disagrees. The Avengers were created to keep the world safe from superpowered bad guys, and Rogers is absolutely sure that he is the only person qualified to determine when and how those threats can be identified and neutralized. He and Stark are already on the outs when a truck bomb blows up the United Nations meeting on the Accords, and his old friend Bucky is tagged as the guy to blame. Rogers is torn between loyalties to his friend, to his government, and his own moral sense, and his path splits the Avengers into factions: the Iron Man-led, pro-accord forces, which include Black Widow, Vision, War Machine (Don Cheadle), and T’Challa, (Chadwick Boseman), aka Black Panther, the son of the slain Wakandan monarch who has vowed to kill Bucky. Standing with Captain America are Falcon (Anthony Mackie), Scarlet Witch, Ant Man (Paul Rudd), and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner). To tip the odds in his favor, Stark tracks down Peter Parker (Tom Holland), who has only been Spider-Man for six months, and recruits him with an offer of a new spider suit.

The introduction of Spider-Man, the Marvel comic book empire’s greatest character creation, is just one demonstration of how superior the Marvel touch is to the DC regime. The Russos know we’ve seen Spider-Man’s origin story onscreen twice in this century, so when Stark asks Parker how he got his powers, he just mumbles “It’s complicated,” and leaves it at that. Holland’s version of Parker is closer to Toby Maguire’s goofy persona than the Andrew Garfield iteration, which is a big improvement.

Boseman’s Black Panther is a welcome addition to the MCU. He gives T’Challa a regal bearing that suggests he would fit in on Game of Thrones. The end of Civil War charts an interesting future for him, which we’ll get to see more of in his solo movie scheduled for 2018.

The centerpiece of Civil War is a great set piece inside the evacuated Leipzig airport where the two factions go at it for what feels like a good 15 minutes. Here the Russo’s major inspiration for the film comes into focus. The Empire Strikes Back brought moral complication into the Manichaean Star Wars universe, and Civil War attempts to do the same by making Rogers choose between competing goods at every turn. While defending Winter Soldier from Iron Man, Captain America says he’s doing it because Bucky is his friend. “I was your friend, too,” the wounded Stark says.

The shifting allegiances give the Russos a chance to bounce different pairs of characters off of each other, and it’s obvious this is where their interests really lie. Especially good together are Downey and Renner, who capture the raw anger of a longtime friendship betrayed.

Civil War is massively overstuffed with characters and fragmentary storylines intended to connect to the bigger universe but which bogs down the present story. Captain America: Civil War is a fun time at the movies, and among the best of its breed, but you can be excused if you feel superhero fatigue setting in.

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

The People Vs. O.J. Simpson

Cuba Gooding, Jr. as O.J. Simpson

On June 17, 1994, I was waiting tables at Alfred’s on Beale Street. People at the bar had been watching the NBA finals, but while I was ringing in an order, I noticed that all eyes were now glued to a white Bronco followed by a gaggle of police cars. What’s happening, I asked a fellow server?

“It’s O.J. Simpson,” he said.

“The football player?”

Yes, my fellow wage slave said. He’s threatening to kill himself on national television.

“Why?”

“He killed his wife, and now the police are after him.”

“Wow.”

“Wow,” he agreed.

“He should just kill himself and get it over with,” I said.

My fellow server, whose name is lost to history, looked at me in horror. “How can you say that?”

Apparently he was a big football fan.

“Your wife is dead and now you’re running from the cops with a gun to your head? It’s over, man. You’ve fucked up. Better just to punch your own ticket. Go out with some dignity.”

“What if he didn’t do it?”

Innocent people don’t lead half the L.A.P.D. on a low-speed while chase threatening suicide.

“You don’t know that! The cops frame people all the time.”

My fellow server was black, by the way.

“No they don’t. But it doesn’t matter. He’s making them look bad. They’re never going to let him get away,” I said, stringing multiple incorrect statements together. “Besides, you know what Frank Zappa said. ‘Be sure and get it right the first time, because there’s nothing worse than a suicide chump.’“

Somehow, quoting an obscure Frank Zappa song failed to assuage my co-worker’s growing anger. Onscreen, the infamous white Bronco rolled on down the freeway. The whole restaurant—patrons, cooks, bartenders, and busboys—had stopped what they were doing and were staring at the screen.

“If he lives through this,” I said. “It’s going to be the biggest mess you’ve ever seen. And it’s going to go on and on and on.”

At least I was right about something.

David Schwimmer as Robert Kardashian and John Travolta as Robert Shaprio

I have to admit, I was reluctant going into The People vs. O.J. Simpson, the new FX series about the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman and the circus of a trial that dominated all media in the middle of the Clinton era. I was still, twenty years later, sick of hearing about it or thinking about it. What good could come from revisiting this greatest of American trainwrecks?

Show runners Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who in the 1990s were writing stuff like Ed Wood and The People Vs. Larry Flynt, are using the biggest murder trial of the last century as a way to peer inside the current American psyche. Their view of the proceedings is summed up by a clip from Tom Brokow heard in the second episode: “A tragedy of Shakespearian proportions playing out on the L.A. Freeway.”

Cuba Gooding, Jr. portrays Simpson as a befuddled Othello, looking around with disbelief as his life crumbles around him. David Schwimmer disappears into the character of Robert Kardashian, O.J.’s friend and attorney whose family’s first taste of reality stardom came when he read O.J.’s (premature) suicide note on live TV. John Travolta is another instantly recognizable face whose performance as high profile defense lawyer Robert Shapiro transcends his personal celebrity. Sarah Paulson plays prosecutor Marsha Clark as a no-nonsense, successful career woman raising two kids in the midst of a messy divorce. Courtney Vance does a perfect Jonnie Cochrane, one character whose portrayal in the show is much more nuanced than his public image at the time suggested.

That the national law firm Cochrane started in his post-OJ stardom was the biggest advertiser for the show’s second episode illustrates just one of the threads that connect the past with the present. All of our current identity politics are at play here, from Ferguson to intersectional feminism, not to mention class. The black men who rallied to O.J.s cause did so because they thought the police couldn’t be trusted to treat black people fairly, and they weren’t wrong. Clarke is portrayed as a woman outraged that a serial domestic abuser was allowed to kill his wife because he was a celebrity, and she wasn’t wrong, either. There are no good guys or bad guys in The People vs. O.J. Simpson, and the protagonist’s guilt or innocence is kind of beside the point. The show is about what happens when human nature meets mass media, a subject that is even more relevant today than it was back then. The 1990s never ended. O.J. is still in the Bronco, and we’re still watching him, forming our own opinions for our own reasons, and looking for excuses to hate each other. 

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Calling the Bluff Music

Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Legacy, Assassination

Martin-Luther-King-Jr.jpg

Forty-six years ago today, civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis.

A pastor, humanitarian, and activist, King traveled to the city to support the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike. Thirteen hundred African-American sanitation workers refused to labor until they received the same wages and treatment as their white colleagues.

On April 3rd, 1968, a day before his death, King visited Mason Temple Church of God in Christ to deliver his last speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.” The verbal presentation touched on the sanitation workers’ decision to go on strike due to being treated unfairly, the overall importance of equality and unity, among other things.

One of the most popular people involved with the civil rights movement, King was both a public figure and target. And on the night he delivered his speech at Mason Temple, he alluded to the possibility of being murdered in the future because of his popularity and influence. He conveyed that he wasn’t concerned about being harmed by hateful white men and that he was simply determined to carry out God’s will.

Ironically, King would be shot and killed the next evening. On April 4th, 1968, he was shot while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, a location that has since become part of the National Civil Rights Museum, around 6 p.m. A bullet from a Remington Model 760 rifle entered his right cheek and traveled through his neck severing his spinal cord before lodging into his shoulder. The 39-year-old was pronounced dead at the now-defunct St. Joseph’s Hospital at 7:05 p.m. that same night.

After his death was publicized, cities across the country, including Memphis, spiraled into a frenzy and rioted. This resulted in dozens of deaths and many more injuries.

Two months after the assassination, James Earl Ray, an escaped convict, was captured and charged with King’s murder. He admitted to fatally shooting King but renounced the confession days later. He alleged that he confessed as a result of extreme pressure from law enforcement and being threatened with the death penalty. Ray, ultimately, pled guilty to the assassination and received a 99-year prison sentence rather than the death penalty.

Years before he died, Ray attempted to withdraw his guilty plea and secure his innocence. He claimed that the assassination was a conspiracy spearheaded by a man named “Raoul.” Many others, including King’s family, also believed that more took place than what was being publicized. The King family supported Ray’s allegations that he was innocent. However, they claimed that Loyd Jowers, the owner of Jim’s Grill, a restaurant located near the Lorraine Motel, was involved with the assassination along with government agencies and the mafia.

Jowers himself also claimed that there was a conspiracy involving the mafia and the U.S. government to kill King. He claimed that Memphis police officer Lieutenant Earl Clark was actually responsible for King’s murder, and Ray was simply a scapegoat.

Only God knows who is truly responsible for the assassination of King. But countless people are aware of King’s contributions to the civil rights movement, primarily with the end of segregation in the South. To many, he’s one of the most influential and groundbreaking individuals in American history.

Nearly half a century since his assassination, things are significantly different than they were when King fought for economic equality and social justice. No longer can establishments avoid employing people or providing fair wages because of their race; equality has a more substantial presence. Of course, there are still a lot of issues plaguing society, but thanks to the contributions of people such as King, the opportunity for prosperity is no longer solely dictated by the color of a person’s skin.

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