Tag: Memphis Legends

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Reigning Sound at Bar DKDC

The Reigning Sound original lineup from the Memphis Flyer Archives.

Gonerfest 13 starts tomorrow, but the myriad of after shows, pop up shows, and other distractions has already begun. Tonight the original lineup of the Reigning Sound will play a “secret show,” but since the information is all over People Magazine (Facebook), I suppose the show is fair game for this here music blog.

If you saw the OG lineup of the Reigning Sound play the Harbor Town Amphitheater this summer then you already know that this show is going to be spectacular. If you were lucky enough to see Greg Cartwright play solo at DKDC around that same weekend, then you know that the tiny bar on Cooper is a pretty choice location to see one of the greatest songwriters to ever come out of Memphis.

If those two events escaped you, there is still time to pull yourself out of worthless human being territory. Get to DKDC tonight by 10:30 p.m. and see what all the fuss is about. You’ll be glad you did. 

Reigning Sound at Bar DKDC

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Memphis Music Hall of Fame Announces 2016 Inductees

CREDIT: Chris Shaw

Chris Shaw

Ori Naftaly of the band Southern Avenue inducting John Lee Hooker into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame

The Memphis Music Hall of Fame announced their new inductees to the 2016 class earlier today at Lafayette’s Music Room. Six inductees were added to the Hall, bringing the total number of members to 60. 

The first inductee at the fifth year anniversary of the Memphis Music Hall of Fame was American opera legend Margueritte Piazza. Piazza’s career included performances on Broadway and the New York City Opera, and she was also known for her philanthropy involving St Jude.  

Memphis Music Hall of Fame Announces 2016 Inductees

Second in the induction ceremony was blues legend John Lee Hooker. The Hook was a blues superstar who’s career stretched over half a century, and his songs “Crawling King Snake” and “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” are some of the best blues songs ever written.

Memphis Music Hall of Fame Announces 2016 Inductees (2)

Third in the induction ceremony was William Bell, the Stax singer and composer who is still at it, having recently finished This is Where I Live, his new album produced by John Leventhal. 

Memphis Music Hall of Fame Announces 2016 Inductees (3)

Saxophonist Charles Lloyd was the fourth inductee. Lloyd’s 42nd album, 2015’s I Long to See You features guest appearances from Willie Nelson and Nora Jones. As a teenager, Lloyd gigged around town with the likes of George Coleman, Howlin’ Wolf and B.B. King.  

Memphis Music Hall of Fame Announces 2016 Inductees (4)

The Hi Rhythm Section got the fifth induction slot, and they also received the most applause following their induction announcement. Under the direction of Willie Mitchell, the Hi Rhythm section played with Al Green, Ann Peebles, Otis Clay and Syl Johnson.

Memphis Music Hall of Fame Announces 2016 Inductees (5)

 
The final induction at Thursday’s ceremony went to Sam “The Sham” Samudio, the Memphis legend behind the hit “Wooly Bully.” Besides being behind one of the most legendary party songs of all time, Samudio and his band The Nightriders were the house band at the Memphis club The Diplomat before burning up the charts with their signature brand of Tex-Mex fried rock.

Memphis Music Hall of Fame Announces 2016 Inductees (6)

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Music Music Features

Cash Comes Home

CREDIT: Leigh Wiener

In December, 1954, Johnny Cash, Marshall Grant, and Luther Perkins stepped into the Galloway Methodist Church on the corner of Cooper and Walker for their first performance together for the Pioneers Club, a ladies church function. Over the past year, Mike McCarthy has been raising money in hopes of erecting a statue to commemorate this historical event.

I sat down with McCarthy to learn more about the Johnny Cash Statue project, which has raised over $16,000 of the $75,000 needed to erect a statue in front of the newly-bought Galloway House. –Chris Shaw

Leigh Wiener

Johnny Cash

Memphis Flyer: How long have you been working on this project?

Mike McCarthy: I went to the initial owners of the church about a year ago and pitched them the idea after I finished doing a similar project in Tupelo and realized how under-statued Memphis was. I’ve lived in Cooper-Young for 17 years, and I started thinking about how cool it would be to have statues of neighborhood heroes. Johnny Cash being the hero of Midtown, Otis Redding the hero of Soulsville, and so forth. You could look at [the former] Forrest Park and see it as Sam Phillips park. I started the ioby site about a year ago, and we are asking for $75,000 in total.

Why do you think Cooper-Young needs this statue?

Every neighborhood has a hero, and in Memphis that’s especially true. I look back at what Memphis offered in the 20th century in terms of pop culture, and a lot of it has gone away. A lot of it isn’t being promoted anymore. We see Mississippi taking advantage of their cultural identity, the Mid-South identity, and that’s something we could have. I think if we claim ownership of our cultural identity, it could change the perceptions of these poor or bad neighborhoods.

What’s the neighborhood response been like so far?

I’ve had a lot of encouragement from Zac Ives (co-owner of Goner Records) and the Cooper Young Business Association. They agreed to give 10 percent of all revenue from their sales on Thursday, and they’ve already given $3,000 or so.

Who owns the church where you’d like to put the statue?

As of the last couple weeks, Mark Lovell, who runs the Delta Fair.

How many people do you think know that this location in Cooper-Young was where Johnny Cash played his first show with Marshall Grant and Luther Perkins?

For the last 10 years I’ve worked on various tourist jobs, and it was always common knowledge within those circles. This is something that’s going to be more known once the statue is up, especially if the Galloway House is banking on this being a place to see live music. When I worked for Backbeat Tours, we’d always slow down by the church. It has been esoteric, but that has to do with people trying to figure out how to promote the idea. Every neighborhood in Memphis is pivotal to the history of music here. Some neighborhoods have more than one hero.

You go into these places, in this case into this basement room, and the young punk rock scene or the young high school music scene has been playing in there, but the history goes back much further. I had the pleasure of interviewing Marshall Grant there, and we all assumed that the stage in there was the stage they played on because it looks 100 years old, but Marshall Grant turned me around 180 degrees and pointed to a corner and said, “That’s where we played.” I thought that was very Memphis — Cash playing in a corner. I want to show people that corner and show that it doesn’t have to be perfect for it to be historically significant.

Tell me more about the play based on the performance that’s happening on Friday.

The play was written by Daniel Lee Perea. He’s from Mississippi, and he’s a filmmaker. He was originally going to play Luther (Perkins), and then it turned out he couldn’t do it. Russell Rainey had played Cash in a play called Ring of Fire that Germantown Performing Arts Center had put on, and he’ll be playing Cash in this play too. Robbie House, who was in Sin City Scoundrels, is playing Luther.

Cash played the Galloway Church in December 1954, and he called his mother and told her he was very proud to play the church at Christmastime. That information will be on the historic marker that we unveil on May 1st. They had a ladies club there that raised money to send missionaries different places, and that night was the first time they ever played as Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two. We are trying to be historically accurate with the songs for the play, and Rainey will perform the same songs those church ladies heard years ago in the same place.

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Music Music Blog

More Jay Reatard Reissues

The Reatards.

Jay Reatard’s extensive catalog continues to get the reissue treatment from Goner Records. The label released a gatefold reissue of The Reatards’ Teenage Hate (complete with demo recordings) in 2011 and it’s just been announced that Grown Up Fucked Up will be reissued as well (and pressed at Memphis Record Pressing). Originally Released in 1999 on Empty Records, Grown Up was the follow up to the classic album Teenage Hate, and saw the band taking on a much more aggressive song-writing approach, resulting in the closest thing to a hardcore-punk record that Reatard ever recorded. Hey, Goner Records, how about an Angry Angles re-issue next? 

More Jay Reatard Reissues

More Jay Reatard Reissues (2)

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Music Music Features

Chris Bell’s Cosmos

This Friday, the Hi-Tone will host an all-star concert in tribute to one of Memphis’ most revered underground heroes, the late Chris Bell.

Bell is best known as a founder of the legendary power-pop group Big Star, and one-half of the songwriting partnership (along with Alex Chilton) that spawned the outfit’s magnificent debut album #1 Record.

After its release in June of 1972, #1 Record garnered positive critical reviews but ultimately flopped from a sales perspective due in part to both shoddy distribution and promotion. This disappointment led to dissent in Big Star’s ranks, and Bell left the group – which would go on to record two more influential studio albums, Radio City and Third, in the ’70s.

After his departure from the band, Bell spent the next several years working on solo recordings during off hours at Ardent, the local studio/label that was also home to Chilton and Big Star. However, only two of those recordings would see the light of day in his lifetime. In December of ’78, Bell was tragically killed in a car accident, thus silencing one of Memphis’ most transcendent rock-and-roll voices.

After Chilton’s untimely death in 2010, Big Star’s status rose again, and there have since been numerous tribute concerts staged around the world to honor the band. Until now, none have been focused primarily on Bell, who is often overshadowed by his more famous counterpart. That changes on Friday when a powerhouse group of local musicians (Jody Stephens, Van Duren, Vicki Loveland, Keith Sykes, Rick Steff, Stephen Burns, Richard Rosebrough, Paul Taylor, and many more) organized by Michigan-based journalist Rich Tupica and Ardent producer/engineer Adam Hill will take to the Hi-Tone stage to celebrate the entire Bell catalog. We sat down with Tupica and Hill to find out more about the show this Friday.

Flyer: How did the idea for a Chris Bell tribute show come together?

Rich Tupica: The idea was hatched, I think in January or February 2015. I had been planning a May 2015 trip to Memphis for quite some time, and the original plan was to have John Fry (Big Star producer/Ardent founder) give me a tour of Memphis. Fry was going to show me locations vital to Big Star or places we’d discussed over the phone for the past couple of years. Then, as we all know, sadly John passed away. That’s when the idea for a Chris tribute came to mind. I figured if the John Fry tour wasn’t going to happen, I would somehow still make this a Bell-centered trip and honor a songwriter I’ve been heavily researching since May 2012, when I started the book. The concert is a way to bring together Chris’ fans, family, and friends. I’m really looking forward to it.

How did you put the band together?

Tupica: The musicians were chosen mostly by Adam. But we did decide early on to try and include friends of Chris Bell – musicians he actually played with at some point. There are other musicians I would have loved to have, but with a limited budget, we stuck close to Memphis for this one.

Adam Hill: Dan Shumake [drums/guitar], Chris Gafford [bass], and I had been playing with Stephen in the Scruffs, so I knew those were the guys to help me with this. Rick was a must as well. Is Chris Bell underappreciated within the legacy of Big Star?

Tupica: I think Chris Bell is usually a footnote in many of the magazine articles, and that’s due to the short amount of time he spent in Big Star. Bell may have founded the band and its sound, but he left after the first LP, which makes it easy to write him off early on. But, for me, Big Star’s fourth record is that I Am the Cosmos LP. That’s his post-Big Star body of work, and, no matter what, I think Chris was always intertwined in the Big Star saga. Chilton, Stephens, and [bassist Andy] Hummel were even featured on some of the Cosmos tracks – they were still palling around. Sadly, though, Bell died very early. I think him not being around to take advantage of the Big Star resurgence didn’t help matters. He died young.

Hill: Maybe so, Alex repeatedly stated that he joined Chris’ band.

What are you hoping to accomplish with Friday’s show?

Tupica: This show is an out-of-pocket, labor-of-love project. Both Adam and I are huge fans of Chris’ sonic abilities and also his life in general, so it’s been great to put together an event that will bring together like-minded fans.

Hill: We hope to do the material and Chris’ legacy justice. I’m honored to have gone from a fan of the music to actually sitting next to John Fry and remixing some of Chris’ work with him.

What songs are you most excited about hearing in a live setting?

Tupica: I am excited to see all of them live. There are no live recordings of Chris Bell’s solo material, only studio versions and the outtakes. I’ve always been curious about how much energy his songs would have on a stage. He played very few shows and most of them were acoustic. He did perform some of his solo material with the Baker Street Regulars (a mid-’70s Memphis band that featured Bell, Stephens, and Duren), but they never recorded any gigs. In fact, this tribute show will probably cover more of Bell’s catalog than he was able to do while he was on the planet. I hear the Bell family might attend, and I hope this set brings about happy memories for them.

Hill: All of them, this has never really been done before to my knowledge.

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Press Play: A Tribute to John Fry and John Hampton

John Fry and John Hampton.

The Levitt Shell’s summer concert season starts tomorrow night with a tribute show honoring John Fry and John Hampton. Ken Stringfellow, Jon Auer, Jody Stephens and guests will be playing classic Big Star songs, and Tora Tora and Gin Blossoms will also be performing. Fry and Hampton worked on some of the biggest albums recorded in Memphis over the last few decades, and both passed away last December.

Press Play: A Tribute to John Fry and John Hampton (3)

As the founder of Ardent Studios, Fry created a hub for artists ranging from Bob Dylan to B.B. King to create some of their most memorable work. Fry joined the music business at the young age of 14 when he decided to operate a radio station in his bedroom, and later would go on to produce three albums for Big Star. John Hampton was also a hit-maker at Ardent Studios, and worked with the Gin Blossoms and Tora Tora, in addition to winning two grammy awards for his work with Jimmy Vaughn and The White Stripes. The show is free and all ages, so get to the Shell early tomorrow evening to honor two legends of Memphis music.

Press Play: A Tribute to John Fry and John Hampton (2)

Press Play: A Tribute to John Fry and John Hampton

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Jack Oblivian at the Buccaneer Saturday Night

CREDIT: Don Perry

Don Perry

Jack Oblivian returns to a familiar place this Saturday when he performs with Data Drums and the Tennessee Screamers at the Buccaneer. In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past 20 years, Jack Oblivian got his start in The End (Punk from Corinth, MS) before doing time in the Compulsive Gamblers, The Knaughty Knights, The Oblivians and about 50 other bands. Jack practically has the keys to the city at this point and shouldn’t be missed, but make sure to get to the Buccaneer early to check out Data Drums (featuring Chuck Vicious of the Oscars) and The Tennessee Screamers. $5 gets you in.  The video below from Rocket Science Audio should hold you over until its time to rock.

Jack Oblivian at the Buccaneer Saturday Night