Tag: Raiford’s

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News The Fly-By

MEMernet: Stumbling, E. Parkway McDonald’s, and Ice Attack

Beale Stumblin’

On Twitter, Devin Walker hilariously Memphis-ized a wildly popular meme last week.

Good question

The McDonald’s on East Parkway closed years ago. But the joke E. Parkway McDonald’s Twitter account never did. And we’re glad.

After the “big game” last week, they said, “No word yet on whether or not we’re catering this year’s Super Bowl champs at the White House.”

It’s ice

The MEMernet froze last week with ice and icicles everywhere. Look no further than trees outside the Memphis office of the National Weather Service.

VaxQueue Qué?

Nextdoor user Melania White asked last week if anyone who had signed up for VaxQueue — the county’s standby service for unused doses of COVID-19 vaccine — had actually been alerted. Of the nearly 50 respondents to the message, only three said they had been asked to come in.

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News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall

Spit Shine

Fatherhood has been good for Saliva-frontman Josie Scott. In an interview with The Edmonton Star, the Memphis musician discussed his desire to balance family life with rock-and-roll and offered some advice for aspiring songwriters.

“If I say to you, ‘That bitch broke my heart,’ you can probably identify with me,” Scott told the Star. “But if I say, ‘We were horseback riding and … she shoved me off the horse, and I broke my arm,’ you’d probably cease to identify with that. … The key ingredient is bridging the gap between your heart and mine.”


Raiford Museum

A few months ago, Robert Raiford, the mighty godfather of Memphis disco, hung up his sequined cape and locked the door to his world-famous dance emporium. Now the Memphis Business Journal is reporting that Raiford’s Hollywood Disco will likely reopen.

Local businessman John Maher told MBJ that Raiford will soon return to the DJ booth. “We want to try to duplicate what Raiford did,” Maher said, as if such a thing were actually possible.

Do a Study

The Albany Times Union recently sat down with Carla Sofka, an academic who has spent much of her career studying death and loss but who recently has turned her attention to “celebrity mourning.” Sofka offered four possible reasons why some celebrities — Elvis in particular — live on decades after their deaths.

First, perhaps the celebrity made a contribution that continues to resonate long after his death. Second, “a lot of people lived vicariously through [their favorite celebrity].” Third, “people like John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe died young and in mysterious ways and people are still interested in the conspiracy theories.” And the fourth reason, according to Sofka, is “the sheer amount of money there is to be made off of famous dead people.”

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Raiford’s Hollywood Disco To Reopen

The Memphis Business Journal is reporting that a group called Raiford’s LLC has applied for a liquor license for the building that housed Raiford’s Hollywood Disco.

From the MBJ: Local businessmen Tom McCraw Jr. and John Maher formed Raiford’s LLC and signed a five-year lease for the building.

The dance club, which was operated by Robert “Hollywood” Raiford for 32 years, closed in May 2007 when he retired.

Raiford, 66, will dee jay at the club on Friday and Saturday nights, the only two nights it will be open.

Read the MBJ story here.

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News The Fly-By

Paradise Lost

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

It’s the end of an era. A funky, funky era. Raiford’s Hollywood Disco, the pride of Vance Avenue and the soul of South Main, is no more.

“I wasn’t intending to close when I did,” said Robert Raiford, the man who has spent the last 30 years transforming his small dance club into a living, breathing, bumping, and grinding work of art. “I was thinking it would be another 10 days before I closed. But one night I just looked at the barstools and I knew it was time.”

Raiford moved to Memphis in 1962 and took a job pumping gas. He worked alongside his brother up front at a time when it was more common to find African Americans working in the grease pits.

In the ’70s, Raiford co-owned a body shop with his brothers, and his skills took him from Memphis to Chicago and from Chicago to Wisconsin. But the cold weather didn’t agree with him. In 1978, he returned to Memphis and rented the dilapidated building at 115 Vance and began transforming it into the most personalized disco in the world. Even with the colored lights, the thick cherry-scented smoke, and sex-o-matic dance competitions, Raiford’s felt less like a club than the cozy private living room of the Avenging Disco Godfather. And in the DJ’s booth, Raiford reigned supreme in colorful suits, hats, and James Brown-style capes, spinning classic wax for the generations.

“Since I’ve closed, I’ve had a lot of people come up to me. People with young children,” Raiford said. “They say, ‘I wish you could keep it going until my child is old enough to come to your club.'”

Will Raiford miss all the smoke? The mirrors? All those girls doing the Electric Slide? He plans to spend more time hunting, fishing, and doing the things regular folk do when they retire.

“I don’t know what your religion is like, and your religion may not be like mine,” Raiford said, looking back over the 10,000 nights he’s spent in his own little garden of earthly delights, where the words “No Discrimination” are painted on the wall for all to see. “But when I was in the club and it was full and everybody was having a good time, I couldn’t help but feel that that was the way the world was supposed to be all the way back at the beginning of time.”