Tag: Memphis

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Film Features Film/TV

Film: Memphis

Director Tim Sutton has long been fascinated with the Bluff City. “It’s a feeling, an aura,” he says. “I feel like if you’re trying to tell a folk tale about American music, that’s Memphis. It’s as blessed and as cursed a place as you’re going to get.”

His new movie Memphis began life as a grant proposal for the Venice Biennale art festival’s College Cinema. His proposal for a film about a musician who comes to Memphis to record a new album only to lose himself in the process, was one of three awarded a budget of 150,000 euros (about $200,000) to produce a film that would premiere at the Venice International Film Festival in Italy. “That puts you on the map,” says the Brooklyn-based filmmaker.

Sutton set out to capture the aura of Memphis by casting as many locals as possible. Except for the lead, Willis Earl Beal, everyone in the film is a non-actor from Memphis. “I wanted the lead to be an outsider,” Sutton says. “He’s a stranger in his own skin. He’s down there trying to weave through the streets of Memphis in his own way. He has the pressures of the people around him: the producer, his girlfriend, the church. These are all the different aspects of Memphis all hovering around this guy’s experience.”

Beal’s character, who is also named Willis, is a baby-faced soul singer with a Sam Cooke-like voice. His self-possessed bearing and the deference with which those around him treat him indicate that he has been successful in the past. “I imagined it into existence,” he says of his music—or maybe his reality. “I consider myself to be a wizard”

But once he gets to Memphis, his wizardry seems to fail him. His mystical ramblings might work with his girlfriend (Constance Brantley), but when he’s in the studio confronting his producer (Larry Dodson of the Bar-Kays) his facade fails. He wanders the streets looking for inspiration. He goes to church, the crucible of soul music, but still his voice fails him. Called up in front of the congregation full of life and spirit, he finds himself empty, his voice failing him. “I haven’t been to church in a while, so I can’t sing,” he says. “I’m gonna sit myself down and praise God right now.”

Willis’ journey is organically dreamlike as he drifts from place to place, trying in vain to connect with the city’s people and understand the soul of Memphis. The director says he started off with a 45-page treatment, but the story evolved as the shoot progressed. “We still paid attention to that document, but day to day, I would write an outline and some storyboards of what we were going to do. Then, at the end of the day, we would revisit what we had done, and I would make new storyboards and new outlines based on what we had seen. It was all loose and liquid, but by design.”

The city has rarely looked more hauntingly beautiful than it does under the lens of Memphis cinematographer Chris Dapkins. “He has an almost documentary style,” Sutton says. “He likes to capture something as it is happening. He doesn’t use a lot of toys: Not a lot of camera bodies, not a lot of lights. He really understands people and how people fill a landscape.” Dapkins’ camera is fascinated with the contrast between the city’s verdant trees and its bleak, post-industrial landscapes. “He’s very natural. Every frame in the movie is beautiful. That’s Chris.”

Sutton’s film is dreamy and improvisational in the style of the Chinese director Kar Wai Wong, whose 2007 film My Blueberry Nights also envisioned Memphis as a place steeped in intimations of eternity. “I was never coming down to Memphis to say, ‘This is how we’re going to do the movie,'” says Sutton. “I was always coming down there saying, ‘I have this vision, and it’s up to us to bring that vision to life in a truthful way.’ Everybody who is in the movie is playing a heightened version of themselves — a mythic version of themselves. I set the frame, and I kind of tell them what’s going on, but it’s up to them to live in front of the camera. And that’s why I particularly love coming to Memphis: Ordinary people have a lot to share. They have a lot of wisdom. You can learn a lot just by looking a their faces.”

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Blurb Books

Stephen Schottenfeld: Counter Culture, Bluff City-Style

“You’re a pawnshop, Huddy. You’re supposed to be in a bad area.”

That’s Joe Marr, Huddy Marr’s successful builder/developer brother who lives in Germantown, doing the talking. Joe owns the building housing Huddy’s business, Bluff City Pawn.

“Pawnshop should be close to bad,” Huddy, who’s just trying to make a honest living, answers back. “Right on the edge of bad. Just a little ahead of bad.”

And that’s right where Bluff City Pawn is: out on Lamar, pretty close to bad. But the stores on either side of Bluff City are closing shop. A blood bank’s moving in. Bluff City’s about to get real close to bad. And that’s why Huddy Marr is looking to move the business, and he has his eye on Liberty — Liberty Pawn, on Summer.

“You must be the only person who drives down Summer and says, ‘Count me in,’” Joe later says to his brother. “Summer and Lamar, they’re both ghetto streets.”

“Summer is doing business with the whole city,” Huddy, who knows his stuff, says in response. “Don’t matter ghetto.”

[jump]

And maybe, business-wise, it doesn’t matter. What matters more in the new novel Bluff City Pawn (Bloomsbury) is family. And family starts to really matter when Huddy, Joe, and a younger brother named Harlan, back from Florida with nothing to his name (apart from a police record), enter into a deal.

Nothing fishy about that deal, nothing un-law-abiding about it. Huddy has been offered to buy a valuable gun collection off a rich widow in Germantown. Huddy, Joe, and Harlan stand to earn real money off the resale of those guns. But Huddy knows that it’s critical they do the deal right. He knows how ATF operates. More than ATF, he knows how his brothers operate. Which is why Huddy puts it this way going in: “As long as we don’t trust each other equally, we’re okay.”

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Until, after the deal’s done, they don’t trust each other equally. That’s when things in Bluff City Pawn go south. And no, this is not Memphis overlooking the Mighty Mississippi. It isn’t Memphis, home of the blues, birthplace of rock-and-roll. Beale Street might as well be a world away. This is Memphis as tourists don’t see it but as citizens day to day live it. It’s Memphians staying put despite the city’s leadership and hardships. It’s Memphians pulling up stakes to seek greener, safer pastures out east. It’s Memphis as only an insider could depict it. Except that this novel’s author, Stephen Schottenfeld, is no native son. He grew up in Westchester County, just north of New York City, and he got his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

But before moving to the University of Rochester, where Schottenfeld now teaches, he was on the faculty at Rhodes College, and during his years there, 2003-2008, he got to know this town real well. He wrote a short story called “Stonewall and Jackson,” which appeared in New England Review in 2006. He wrote a novella set in Leahy’s Trailer Park called “Summer Avenue,” which appeared in The Gettysburg Review in 2010. For Bluff City Pawn, though, Schottenfeld knew he needed a wider field — a story with more possibilities, more points of tension.

So Schottenfeld got to know local pawnbrokers, local builders, local realtors, and even local garden-club members. He visited local gun shops, gun dealers, and gun shows. He talked to local ATF agents on the right way to write up a gun inventory, on how those agents conduct themselves. And Schottenfeld wanted especially, as he said in a phone interview from his home in Rochester, to thank all those good people who helped him in his research: “They were incredibly generous with their time.”

Schottenfeld’s literary agent, once he read the manuscript of Bluff City Pawn, was something else: puzzled.

“He expected, first of all, a Southern accent,” Schottenfeld said. “Then his next question was: ‘Did you grow up around a pawnshop or a lot of guns?’ I said: ‘No, I didn’t … at all.’”

What Schottenfeld did grow up blessed with is a fine ear for dialogue (he once worked in film postproduction in New York; he’s taught screenwriting in his classrooms), and Bluff City Pawn confirms it: No over-obvious Southernisms here; just the plain-spoken (verging on elliptical) give and take you’d expect to hear between a business owner and his customers (or brother to brother) and the more polished strains (and no less elliptical speech patterns) you’d be likely to hear among Germantown’s old-guard, horsey set.

Schottenfeld also has a real eye, not only on the broad canvas but down to the smallest, most telling matters. You want a tutorial in the right way to handle a pawnshop customer angling to sell a non-flat-screen TV? It’s here in Bluff City Pawn. The right way to lay out the merchandise so you’re not, when your back’s briefly turned, robbed blind? That’s here too. So too the smoothest way to earn the trust of a gracious widow and to skirt the superciliousness of her superannuated preppy son.

Call details such as these “texture.” Schottenfeld does, and it’s the product of this author’s almost journalistic attention to real-world verismo:

“I’m curious about people’s lives. I don’t have a great storehouse of autobiographical tales. I don’t tend to reach back into my own childhood. There is a journalistic impulse in me to get out there, do the fieldwork. And yet I’m not interested so much in nonfiction. As a writer, I’m interested in ‘texture,’ specificity of language, information. I’m interested in what people do. I want to observe it, understand it. And Memphis, at the time I wrote this book, was kind of perfect for me.

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“Before I moved to Memphis, I didn’t think of myself as a writer of ‘place.’ But my eyes and ears were opened when I was there. I was so interested in what people were saying, what people were doing around me. But when I realized I was going to be writing about pawnshops, yes, it was intimidating. I knew there couldn’t be any shortcuts. I was going to have to ‘negotiate’ this new space … write as a real insider. William Faulkner, Alice Munro, Daniel Woodrell: They’re steeped in place. They gain their authority through their years in those cities and towns they write of. But there are other writers who gain their understanding of place precisely because they’re not from it.”

But forget Memphis for a moment. Consider its big suburb to the east.

“Germantown was for me the ‘discovery’ of the book. I’d lived inside the city, in Memphis. I’d had my own feelings about Germantown. And, frankly, it didn’t interest me much. But I came back to Memphis a couple more times and came to, in some ways, appreciate the impulse to flee, like my character Joe. Some reviewers have talked about him as the villain of the book, and he may act in a villainous way. But I’m moved by his work ethic, how honest he’s been in so many ways. He just got caught up in a bad time.”

The bad time Schottenfeld is referring to is the recession of 2008, which threatens to ruin everything Joe’s worked so hard to achieve, and that includes a big house and garden and an upscale enclave of unsold houses he’s built in a development called Heritage Cove.

But what of Harlan, one part lost little boy, two parts real rascal?

“I’m sad for him,” Schottenfeld admitted. “He’s an unintimidated kind of guy. But what scares him are these memories he can’t reconcile — memories of his family when he was growing up: what wasn’t there for him; what wasn’t given to him.”

And as for Huddy Marr — Bluff City Pawn’s wonderfully drawn major character: Can’t question his street smarts and realistic view of the way the world runs. But can you also think of Huddy in terms about as un-Southern as can be: Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka? Schottenfeld can:

“I may write in a social-realist vein. My work may be located in an actual place and not some blasted non-zone. But, like in Beckett, there are ways that Bluff City Pawn ‘gestures’ at feelings of being lost, of being estranged, of being caught in some zone where you’re not regarded, you’re not understood. And as in Kafka, there are moments in the book where Huddy is caught by forces — institutional forces, bureaucratic forces — inside a system that even he, at times, can’t decipher.”

Which brings us back to Beckett and his minimalist mode. Surprising to think, but there’s that too in Bluff City Pawn, which is as naturalistically told as any novel by Richard Ford or Russell Banks. Still …

“There’s something about a pawnshop that has a kind of elemental connection to what a story should be and can do,” Schottenfeld said.

“You’ve got two characters. You’ve got a counter separating them. Things are being pulled out, placed on the counter, individual pieces. I’m looking at that counter, those little bits.” •

Stephen Schottenfeld will be guest of the River City Writers Series at the University of Memphis on Tuesday, September 16th, when he will read from and sign Bluff City Pawn. The reading is inside the University Center’s Bluff Room (Room 304) and begins at 8 p.m. A student interview with Schottenfeld will take place the next morning in Patterson Hall, Room 448, at 10:30 a.m. For more on the River City Writers Series, go here.

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Film Features Film/TV

Film: Take Me To The River

It is said that all art aspires toward musicality, and no form comes closer than film. The linear flow of moving images naturally mirrors the aural motion of music. When the sound era dawned, the very first thing filmmakers did was turn their cameras on Al Jolsen and let the music do the talking.

Perhaps because of the two media’s similarities, many directors are also musicians. Such is the case with Martin Shore, a drummer from San Diego who toured with Cody Dickinson’s Hill Country Revue. Shore’s day job is as a film producer, and Take Me To The River, his directorial debut, is the latest music documentary to take on the question, “What makes Memphis music so special?” Guided by North Mississippi Allstars’ guitarist and son of legendary Memphis music producer Jim Dickinson, Shore gathers a who’s who of Memphis music legends together to make a record while the cameras roll.

The problem facing the directors of all music documentaries is how to balance the story and the music. It’s a simple problem of arithmetic: Unless you’re Martin Scorsese and HBO gives you three hours to tell George Harrison’s story, you have a limited amount of time to work with. Without the music, it’s hard to care about the story; but give the story short shrift and you lose the reason the audience is there in the first place. In Take Me To The River, Shore errs on the side of the music, and this is probably wise. The epic sweep of the Stax story has already been told in Robert Gordon’s Respect Yourself, so Shore constructs a series of vignettes from footage of the recording sessions interspersed with interviews with the musicians.

This approach makes for some magical moments. Al Kapone chats with Booker T. Jones as the legendary keyboardist drives his van around town. The Hi Records backup singers the Rhodes Sisters recall how Willie Mitchell used to exclaim “God the glory!” when they hit a note he liked. Frayser Boy, who wrote the Academy Award-winning flow for “It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp” admits to Skip Pitts, who played guitar on Isaac Hayes Academy Award-winning “Theme From Shaft,” that he has never recorded with a live band before. Pitts refuses to even look at a chart before launching into the Rufus Thomas song “Push And Pull.” The magnetic and eternally young Mavis Staples changes the song at the last minute, and then soothes her collaborators’ nerves with a few well-placed smiles and a stunning vocal performance. William Bell tells the story of David Porter writing “Hold On I’m Comin” while an amused Porter looks on. Narrator and Hustle and Flow star Terrence Howard becomes completely overwhelmed by emotion after recording with the Hodges brothers, including a frail looking Teenie. Bobby Blue Bland teaches Lil P-Nut to sing “I Got A Woman.” And finally, Jerry Harrison of the Talking Heads produces a session with Snoop Dogg and the Stax Academy Band pulling together more than a dozen musicians to cut “I Forgot To Be Your Lover” in less than 30 minutes.

It’s fun to be a fly on the wall in these recording sessions held in historic spaces, and the camaraderie and respect between the players is evident. The talent, discipline, and instincts on display are amazing, because, as the indomitable Deanne Parker says, these musicians came of age in a time when “we didn’t have any technology to make you sound better.”

Take Me To The River never answers the question of why this city produces so much great music. But then again, no one else has ever been able to put a finger on what Charlie Musselwhite calls “that secret Memphis ingredient you can’t write in a book.”

Take Me To The River
Playing Friday, September 12th
The Paradiso

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Kidnapped for Christ

When director Kate Logan was a film school freshman, she set out to make a documentary about the Christian youth camp Escuela Caribe. The young Evangelical thought she was making a feel-good movie about the camp, which brought troubled teens to the mountains of the Dominican Republic. But what the 20-year-old film student found during her seven weeks at the camp would shock her to her core and begin a seven-year saga that would culminate with Kidnapped For Christ, the 2014 Outflix Film Festival’s opening film.

Escuela Caribe is part of a chain of similar camps that promise parents that they can change their teenagers’ behavior for the better — for a hefty fee. But the reality is much uglier than advertised. The film opens with kids’ stories of being kidnapped from their beds in the middle of the night by unknown thugs and taken, sometimes in chains, to the airport against their will, often while their parents looked on. Once out of the country, they are subjected to a program of brainwashing that will be familiar to anyone who has ever read about the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Escuela Caribe had been in existence for 35 years by the time Logan spent her fateful six weeks there, and at some point in the past, the place had gone from Bible study camp to Stanford Prison Experiment. Committing your child to a work camp is a pretty extreme measure for a parent to take, but none of the kids Logan interviews seem messed up enough to warrant it. There’s Beth, who claims she is there to cure panic attacks; Tai, whose offenses seem like nothing more than run-of-the-mill teenage hellraising; and David, a 17-year-old honor student who was shipped off after coming out to his parents as gay.

Kidnapped for Christ

Kidnapped for Christ is like a more paranoid version of Morgan Jon Fox’s landmark documentary This Is What Love In Action Looks Like. As stories of brutal abuse at the camp proliferated, Logan’s vision of her project changes until she makes a fateful decision to become involved in the story by attempting to rescue David from the camp. The story’s unexpected twists and turns make it one of the more satisfying, and harrowing, documentaries of the year.

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Film Features Film/TV

Outflix Film Festival

The Outflix Film Festival enters its 17th year on a strong note, coming off its most successful edition ever with more and better films portraying the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender perspective. This year’s entries topped 300 films, up more than 50 percent from last year, reflecting the festival’s growing profile. “It’s great for me, because I love to watch films,” says festival director Will Batts.

The annual festival is a fund-raiser for the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center where Batts is executive director. “We have to have a really diverse lineup, because we serve a really diverse community,” he says. “We want to make sure we have women’s films, transgender films, and films with people of color who are leads. We want to make sure that the whole community can see themselves on the screen.”

Outflix was started in 1997 by Brian Pera, an acclaimed Memphis filmmaker. “He started it as a kind of experimental theater project,” Batts says.

Early in its existence, the festival was held on the campus at the University of Memphis before moving briefly to commercial theaters and then lying fallow for a few years. “We started it back up in 2005, which is actually how I got involved in the center,” says Batts.

After one year at the former Memphis Media Co-Op and another at the now-defunct Downtown Muvico theater, the festival found its permanent home at the recently remodeled Malco Ridgeway cinema. “We’ve been there through the transition and the remodel. It’s great. The only bad thing is that there are fewer seats now in the theaters, so we’re seeing more movies sell out.”

Out in the Night

Batts says that during his decade at the festival he has had a front-row seat for the technological transition that has affected every level of the movie industry. “The first couple of years, everything came in on VHS, so we had cases of VHS tapes. But this year, probably 95 percent of the films were digitally submitted. That means that a lot more filmmakers are getting their films in front of us. So we get a lot more variety.”

The weeklong festival begins on Friday,September 5th and runs for one week, screening 19 narrative features and documentaries. This year’s opening night film is Kidnapped For Christ, directed by Kate S. Logan.

“It tells the story of something we deal with at the community center all the time,” Batts Says, “which is this belief that gay and lesbian people are somehow damaged in some way and need to be fixed; parents immersed in this culture that tells them that their kids are bad or wrong or sinful or whatever, and they need to be sent off to some camp in the middle of nowhere to beat the gay out of them. We want to get the message out that this is really harmful, and it continues to this day.”

Among the feature-length movies will be shorts, screening both before the features and as part of a shorts program on Sunday evening. “I especially love short films,” Batts says. “There’s something really powerful about telling an entire story in five minutes. “You can watch some of them on YouTube, but that’s just not the same experience as sitting in a theater full of people watching a really powerful short film.”

Much has changed about film and television’s vision of homosexuality in the 17 years since Outflix started, but there’s still a long way to go. “I think there are more accurate portrayals of LGBT people, but it still hasn’t permeated the mainstream,” Batts says. “We’re moving closer to reality, but we’re not quite there yet. The films we show at Outflix are more real, because they’re made by LGBT filmmakers and they’re about and starring LBGT actors who know the experience. They’re not going to tone it down for an audience who won’t understand them. Some of the films are more open about sexuality, some of them are open about what it means to be transgender or intersexed, so they’re educational in a way. Some of the films are about injustice and intolerance. It’s a much more real portrayal of LGBT people. We don’t get to see ourselves portrayed on the big screen as real people, warts and all. And that’s why Outflix exists.”

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Cover Feature News

TCB on Beale Street

CREDIT: Courtesy of Lansky’s Archives

As proprietor Hal Lansky welcomes you into his family’s new store on Beale, he stands in the building that his father and uncles turned into one of the most influential clothiers of the 20th century. Perhaps most famous for dressing the legendarily natty Elvis Presley, Lansky’s has deep roots in Memphis, and the new store features a museum-quality photo exhibit that is a testament to that history.

“This whole story doesn’t exist without Elvis,” said archivist David Simmons, who worked with Lansky’s on the new store and museum on Beale. “But the story is a lot bigger than that, a lot bigger. These are men who changed the way America dressed.”

Courtesy of Lansky’s Archives

During Elvis’ first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, he was wearing an outfit purchased from Lansky’s on his new credit account. That was September 1956. By then, founder Bernard Lansky (Hal’s father) and his brothers had been in the store for a decade, meeting the peculiar needs of Beale Street.

“Musicians, celebrities, dandies, pimps, and gamblers,” is how Simmons describes the clientele in photos. “Look at that outrageous merchandise. [The Lanskys] were never shy about pushing that envelope.”

Beale Street had quite an envelope. Once a street of white-owned businesses, many of the properties were bought by black businessmen like Robert Church Sr. in the late 1880s. It was named “the Main Street of Negro America” by black businessman George W. Lee. A 1947 obituary for gambler Mac Harris described his dress: “He was known to have strutted down Beale Street in a cutaway coat, striped trousers, and a wide felt hat, twisting his mustachios, his Van Dyke beard trimly cut, his cane flashing in the lights.”

Courtesy of Lansky’s Archives

Lansky’s customers

Hal grew up on Beale Street and has watched his family outfit American culture, black and white, for more than half a century. After a brief interlude operating in other locations, Lansky has doubled down on his roots and returned to the clothier’s original building on Beale. It looks like a good bet.

“The only way [my father] got part of the building was that his father loaned him $125,” Lansky says. “The only space they could find was at 126 Beale. The only reason they got the space was that a man was murdered in the store. When they got it, they had all kinds of ladies’ stuff. My dad was a pretty colorful guy. He said, ‘This ain’t me.’ He took all the ladies’ stuff and threw it out on the street. Then within hours, the stuff disappeared. So they needed something to sell. It was 1946, and the war was over. They started selling Army surplus. Pants, shirts, cots, fatigues for $1.99. After a few years, the stuff started running out. Of course, they were merchants. They needed something different.”

Courtesy of Lansky’s Archives

Hal has a visceral enthusiasm for the space, which is shared by new tenants the Hard Rock Café and the Memphis Music Hall of Fame.

“This building has a colorful past,” Lansky says. “In the late 1890s, it was the courthouse. [Later] the second floor was a house of prostitution. They were renting the rooms out by the hour. My dad said, ‘This is some valuable space.’ So my dad started renting the rooms out for the day, the week, the month, until he controlled the whole top of the building. Then he started moving his formal wear and tuxedos up there. Now, we’re excited that the story is back on the map.”

Courtesy of Lansky’s Archives

Dewey Phillips and Elvis

Growing up on Beale was a front row seat to American history, Lansky says. He’s still amazed by how hard his family worked and by the people they grew to know and love.

“When I was a young man, there were really no store hours,” Lansky says. “When there was business, my parents were open.”

Simmons adds that Lansky’s was probably the first white-owned store with black salesmen in Memphis.

“Beale Street was an African-American street,” Lansky says. “It was a black man’s street. Whites really did not come on this street. Surprisingly, Elvis did.”

Presley was hip to Lansky through his fascination with Dewey Phillips, who often did remote radio broadcasts from the store. Bernard’s brother, Guy, was frequently quoted in Peter Guralnick’s Presley biography Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley. Elvis was a fan of Bernard Lansky before he became the King of rock-and-roll.

Courtesy of Lansky’s Archives

One of Elvis’ coats from Lansky’s

“We hang our hat on Elvis,” Lansky says. “He put us on the map. But we’ve had so many people through our doors before Elvis. Being the ‘Clothier to the King’ is a great thing. People in Memphis say, ‘I don’t want to shop at Lansky’s. I don’t want to look like Elvis.’ But we’ve changed every decade. If we hadn’t changed our looks and our style, we’d have been out of business 30 years ago. I tell people, if we sold white button-down shirts, we’d have gone out of business. If Elvis wore a white button down shirt, he might still be driving a truck. With his talents and our styling, it was a great combination.”

That philosophy outfitted Presley when he appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show on September 9, 1956. A telegram from Lansky to Presley hangs among the new shop’s museum-like space. Lansky wishes Elvis well and asks for a plug on the broadcast. Lansky didn’t get his plug, but it illustrates an eye for business that helped him succeed beyond the realm of the King. But Lansky and Elvis are inseparable. Also on display is a photo of Bernard and Hal in a three-wheeler Messerschmitt micro car that Lansky bought from Elvis. The title has two Presley signatures, which Lansky knew were valuable.

Courtesy of Lansky’s Archives

Sam “The Sham” Samudio

“A lot of people begrudge [Elvis’ manager] Tom Parker,” Lansky says. “[He] would always write two checks. Let’s say the bill was $400. One of the checks would be $300 and one would be $100. He’d get Elvis to sign one of those checks because the merchant would keep them. They didn’t cash that check. It was like getting a 25-percent discount.”

The stories are endless.

“Sam Samudio. Sam the Sham. He and my dad were tight,” Lansky says. “During those days [Samudio] was a drinker. He’s found religion now. But he drove his motorcycle into this building and left the motorcycle in this building for probably two years before he finally realized where it was. My dad stored it for him for two years.”

Courtesy of Lansky’s Archives

Steve Cropper modeled for Lansky’s

Lansky was an integral part of Beale Street, a fact that kept the store in business during the 1960s, when African-American Memphians captured the torch of popular music.

In 1967, Stax Records conquered Europe with a tour that is still legendary almost 50 years later. Otis Redding’s performances in Paris are some of the greatest filmed documents in popular music history. It was the label’s global moment. Redding conquered the world. The Stax group’s suits came from Lansky’s.

Wayne Jackson recalls the tour in his biography, In My Wildest Dreams. Jackson was a member of Stax’s first-born band, the Mar-Keys. Going to be outfitted at Lansky’s was a big deal. Jackson writes:

Courtesy of Lansky’s Archives

“It’s where Elvis bought his wild, honky-tonk stuff, and we all knew it. So we looked into the triple mirrors. Holy God! Zoot suit blue! Bernard was ecstatic! ‘I got this number in cat-eyed green, too! All wool to the bone! Hey! You guys gonna take over Europe, man, in MY clothes! Mohair from Lansky’s! I don’t think even Elvis got this suit! I mean it! Would I lie to ya?’

Then it was Andrew and Joe’s turn, and we laughed as Bernard did what made his life a wondrous thing.

‘I’m not kiddin’! You guys think I’m KIDDIN’ but I am not KIDDIN’! You guys are gonna make ’em crazy for you in these suits, you watch what I tell ya!

By the way, y’all need shoes?'”

Courtesy of Lansky’s Archives

Another client, Rufus Thomas, based his “Ain’t I Clean?” bit — showing off his suit lining with his trademark grin — on his Lansky duds and was a major proponent of the Miami Stomper, thigh-high, red, python boots. Lansky’s was the leading store in the country for selling the Stomper.

Lansky’s will share the building with two musically themed tenants, the Memphis Music Hall of Fame and the Hard Rock Café, an international company with Memphis roots.

“I was working in the store in the late 1960s or early 1970s, and I kept seeing this guy with Rolls Royces,” Lansky says. “I could see him turning right [in front of the store]. This was going on for a matter of months. Finally I asked, who is this guy driving the Rolls Royces? His name was Isaac Tigrett.”

Courtesy of Lansky’s Archives

Tigrett, of course, is the son of financier John Tigrett and the founder of the Hard Rock Café and House of Blues.

“He would go over [to London] with his dad,” Lansky says. “Isaac would be flipping these Rolls Royces, bringing them back and selling them. He was a business-minded guy. I think that’s cool. And in 1972, they opened the first Hard Rock Cafe in London.”

The first Hard Rock was housed in the former Rolls Royce dealership.

As we walk through the new Hard Rock, Lansky is proud of what his family has accomplished. He beams with pride about a life and a story that he didn’t always appreciate.

“All my friends’ dads were professionals: They were doctors or lawyers. [My dad] sold clothes to black people. Back then it wasn’t too cool. My dad made a good living. But it’s cool that 50 years later, after my dad is gone, people around the world know him. His obit was in the New York Times. People from around the world know the Lanskys. Now it’s cool. We’ve met all these people and lived this story. The tables turned. I know Robert Plant. Back then, young people were into the British Invasion. But they never witnessed what I saw on the street.”

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Sing All Kinds We Recommend

Time Warp Drive-In: Motorcycle Madness

Tonight’s August edition of the Time Warp Drive In, Summer avenue’s biggest summer event, kicks off with a wedding. Kim Stanford and Coley Smith from Tupelo, Mississippi will say their vows at 7 PM, with Mike McCarthy, the Time Warp Drive-In empresario, presiding.

After the nuptials, the evening of motorcycle movies begins with the genre’s biggest classic, Easy Rider. Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda’s transcontinental epic captured the zeitgeist of its era like few films have before or since. But often lost amidst the Baby Boomer nostalgia is the fact that Easy Rider is a fantastic, and hugely influential, movie. Not only did it make a movie star out of Jack Nicholson, but it also has the first, and still greatest, use of “The Weight” in a film.

Time Warp Drive-In: Motorcycle Madness

The second film of the evening is 1953’s The Wild One starring Marlon Brando. Another hugely influential film, The Wild One was made at a time when Brando was one of the hottest properties in Hollywood. The same year he was playing the sensitive juvenile delinquent Johnny Strabler opposite Lee Marvin, he also played Marc Antony in Julius Caesar opposite James Mason and Sir John Gielgud. The film is the iconic template for the motorcycle movie, and nobody ever wore a Perfecto leather jacket better than Brando.

Time Warp Drive-In: Motorcycle Madness (2)

Made three years before Easy Rider, The Wild Angels was Peter Fonda’s first foray into motorcycle movies. Directed by Roger Corman, the film’s high point is a confrontation between biker gang leader Fonda and a judge, which has become one of the most sampled moments in movie history.

Time Warp Drive-In: Motorcycle Madness (3)

The evening closes out with the psychotronic exploitation drive in classic She Devils On Wheels:

Time Warp Drive-In: Motorcycle Madness (4)

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Sing All Kinds We Recommend

Time Warp Drive-In Pays Tribute To Elvis

In a special edition of the Time Warp Drive-In, Memphis auteur Mike McCarthy and Black Lodge Video’s Matthew Martin celebrate Elvis Presely’s film career on the 37th anniversary of his death.

The program kicks off with Jailhouse Rock, Elvis’ third and greatest film appearance. By the time it premiered in 1957, Elvis had already changed popular music forever and cemented his place as the biggest music star in the world. But to Elvis, true immortality meant film. He idolized Marlon Brando, and his performance in Jailhouse Rock owes much to Brando’s sensitive biker warlord in The Wild One. The plot is a paper thin extrapolation of Elvis’ bad boy public image, but it hardly matters. Elvis is at the height of his musical power and raw sexual charisma. The film’s centerpiece is a Busby Berkley style musical number of the title song, but even its antiquated and stylized setting doesn’t take the edge off the song or Elvis’ performance. The sequence has been copied dozens of times and remains an ideal towards which all subsequent music videos aspire to.

Time Warp Drive-In Pays Tribute To Elvis

After a “headlight vigil” is Viva Las Vegas. As Elvis’ film career went on, the quality of his films slowly declined, as he pumped out quick, but profitable, product throughout the 60s. But 1964’s Viva Las Vegas is the exception, primarily for one reason: Ann Margaret. Many of Elvis’ endless parade of love interests were one-note bimbos (Mary Tyler Moore excepted), but Ann Margaret was an exceptionally talented dancer and, if not exactly a great actress, a natural movie star with a personality as big as her halo of fiery red hair. She and Elvis had a torrid affair during and after the shooting of the film, and it shows on the screen big time. Acting or no, it’s clear that these two beautiful people can barely keep their hands off of each other. Add in a classic title song better than most of Elvis’ 60s output and it equaled the biggest grossing film of Elvis’ career.

Next is King Creole. Directed by the legendary Michael Curtiz, whose filmography includes Casablanca. Said to be Elvis’ favorite role, his turn as Danny Fisher, New Orleans street urchin turned caberet singer is certainly his best film performance, rivaling James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause.

Time Warp Drive-In Pays Tribute To Elvis (2)

The evening ends with The King’s 1972 swan song, Elvis On Tour. The concert documentary features performances filmed over four nights in 1972 interspersed with backstage footage and an interview. This is Elvis in full Las Vegas jumpsuit trim. His voice is strong, and his stage presence unmatched among mere humans, but it’s clear that he doesn’t have the same intensity as the man who was swinging from a pole in Jailhouse Rock. But after the extraordinary life he led, you’d be a little blasé about playing coliseums as well. 

The Time Warp Drive In begins at dusk on Saturday, August 16 at the Malco Summer 4 Drive-In. 

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Sing All Kinds We Recommend

Crosby, Stills, and Nash at the Orpheum

Crosby, Stills, and Nash, the most successul three-quarters of a band in history, are coming to the Orpheum on Wednesday, August 20th. 

Former Hollie Graham Nash will sign his book Wild Tales  at the Booksellers at Laurelwood on Wednesday at 1 p.m. Line tickets are required for the signing and come with the purchase of the book at Booksellers.

Get concert tickets here.   

Hear CSN at their best and get some very sound life advice from David Crosby here.

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Crosby, Stills, and Nash at the Orpheum

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Music Music Features

On Beale

CREDIT: H. Michael Miley

H. Michael Miley

Beale Street

You can put my name on the list of locals who have casually maligned Beale Street. But I’m here to eat words. Here goes: I love Beale Street.

The stereotype is familiar: Either rock blues played by heavy-set white guys in bowling shirts or throngs of black kids who don’t care to hear any blues. It’s true that there are sub-ideal bands and some nights when not everybody belongs. But this dismissive view of Beale is cheap shorthand and a sad way to miss out on an important part of Memphis’ economy, culture, and good times.

I recently went to Beale four times in 10 days and had a blast every time. Milling through the crowds at B.B. King’s Blues Club on a Friday at lunchtime, you hear accents from all over the world. It’s true that the British, Japanese, and continentals were not hearing Sleepy John Estes or Mr. King in his prime. People get hung up on “authenticity” and miss things like the Stax Academy Alumni Band’s residency at B.B. King’s. I went back to B.B.’s and heard Preston Shannon play his regular Wednesday night gig.

Shannon reminded me of the whole spectrum of a blues performance. I had been guilty of using the cheap shorthand, of using a bad example (Stevie Ray Vaugnabees) to define contemporary blues. Shannon is a moving guitarist and vocalist who’s been active since the 1970s and on Beale for almost a quarter century. He works within a tradition of showmanship that makes each note meaningful: a mix of human spiritualism and worldly desire. At his best, he works himself and the audience into something like a funky, social, religious experience. People come from Japan. Why don’t we come from Collierville or Central Gardens?

I walked down Beale several times over those days and saw throngs of people having good times. I heard music I liked: C-3 Blues Band at Rum Boogie and the McDaniel Band at the Blues Hall.

But there is one thing we should fix: The bars are in an outdoor volume war. Loudspeakers are set up, one after the other, down the street, each playing its own music. There was a moment when I saw a man who had clearly traveled here to listen to music. He was aghast at the cacophony of competing sound systems. You couldn’t hear anything. He was furious. So was I. The music that draws people to Beale did not have giant, solid-state amplifiers. Huge amplifiers are used as weapons by the military and are the worst thing about live music.

Beale, like Overton Square, is on the good foot. Beale Street Landing, the new Orpheum development, the new Hard Rock Café, and the Memphis Music Hall of Fame herald an even better experience for Memphis’ beloved musical pilgrims. We should not treat them like Central American dictators and blast them with unhealthy levels of noise. Put musicians out front, singing and playing unamplified instruments.

The city or merchants association should enforce the noise ordinance’s prohibition against loudspeakers for promotion. We should also amend the current ordinance to allow for drums, singing, and acoustic instruments in the entertainment districts like Beale, Broad Avenue, and Overton Square.

One solution was heard at A. Schwab for the Beale Street Caravan fund raiser, where the Bluff City Backsliders played a mostly unplugged set behind Jason Freeman’s powerful voice. The sound perfectly filled the room. You could hear it if you wanted to listen to every note, but you could also think or say hello to someone. Sleepy John never had a 300-watt amp.

Last weekend, I was in Nashville on Broadway. When you pass a bar like Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge or Robert’s Western World, the band is in the window, and you can hear what they are doing inside. It makes you want to go in, or it allows you to go hear something else. But you are not subjected to noise pollution the whole time you’re on the street.

Beale’s energy is so much more fun than Broadway. Beale is rowdy and wrong in just the right way. You can go to Nashville and walk your granny down the street for a cotton candy. That’s sorta fun, but Beale is the place for cutting loose and showing off your soul. Even standing in the deafening and absurd contrast of what is and what it was, I love Beale Street. We should all go more often.