On this week’s edition of the podcast, Toby Sells talks about his cover story “The Battle for Midtown.” Zoning and housing are hot topics, as the Memphis 3.0 plan is up for review.
Tag: Robert Gordon
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The Battle for Midtown
Editor’s note: Citywide planning, land use discussions, zoning, and the potential economics of it all are far too broad and dense to ever be covered in a single news story. (So are other considerations about income, race, and population loss.) Please consider this piece the beginning of our coverage on Memphis 3.0.
For this one, we’ll take you inside one of MidtownMemphis.org’s information meetings and share a Q&A rebuttal about it all from John Zeanah, director of the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development (DPD).
Memphis 3.0 will “sell out” Midtown neighborhoods to investors and businesses looking to cash in on (but maybe never really care about) the attractive communities residents in those places have built over decades.
That’s a very basic expression of the argument voiced for months now from MidtownMemphis.org. The volunteer group is fighting the plan with a series of information meetings, an online information hub, and yard signs — sure signs that a Midtown fight has gotten real.
Passed in 2019 and devised by former Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland’s administration, Memphis 3.0 is a document guiding the growth of Memphis. It’s up for its first-ever five-year renewal. A major strategy for sustainability in the plan has been to support some of the city’s anchors like Crosstown Concourse, Overton Square, and commercial areas around Cooper Street.
However, MidtownMemphis.org argues the locations for these anchors and the planned density that could surround them aren’t fair. For example, group members say a lot of density is planned for Midtown but very little for East Memphis.
Also, adding density to certain places around Midtown means multifamily homes, the group says, instead of single-family, owner-occupied homes. They fear profit-minded landlords will use 3.0 to work around zoning laws to create duplexes or quadplexes, won’t upkeep these properties, create transient tenants, and make neighborhoods less attractive for potential buyers. They say this could slowly destabilize neighborhoods into ghosts of their current selves.
“What we’re against — and we have history on our side — is destabilizing the neighborhood to support Crosstown,” said MidtownMemphis.org volunteer Robert Gordon, who has spearheaded the battle against 3.0. “[The plan] is going to wreck Crosstown, wreck the neighborhood, and, consequently, wreck the city. And if you don’t believe me, go back to Midtown in 1969. Go back to Midtown in 1974. Go back to Midtown when it was zoned like the [Memphis 3.0] future land use planning map envisions zoning.”
All of it, they say, could lead to a showdown at Memphis City Hall next year as council members review the changes for a vote.
However, John Zeanah, director of the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development, said the 3.0 plan won’t do what MidtownMemphis.org fears it will do.
“The goal is to make sure that our community has healthy, stable anchors that are supported by healthy, stable neighborhoods,” Zeanah said. “The suggestions that we would take extreme actions to destabilize neighborhoods is really puzzling. It doesn’t come from anything that we’re saying as a part of our meetings. It doesn’t come from anything the plan is saying.”
Inside a MidtownMemphis.org 3.0 meeting
A dreary, cold, wet February night was not enough to stop a crowd from sloshing through puddles to hear about how the Memphis 3.0 plan could “sell out our neighborhood,” as the signs say. Nearly 60 people gathered for a MidtownMemphis.org 3.0 meeting earlier this month at Friends For All.
MidtownMemphis.org has been holding meetings like these since September. Other info sessions — six in total — have been organized at Otherlands Coffee Bar, the Cooper-Young Community Association building, and the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library. Gordon said it was in January that planing officials stopped working with MidtownMemphis.org on the 3.0 issue.
At the latest February meeting, Gordon took the stage before a slideshow projected on a screen behind him. He described MidtownMemphis.org as a “sort of neighborhood association for neighborhood associations,” meaning his group meets monthly with Midtown neighborhood groups from Central Gardens, Cooper-Young, and more. MidtownMemphis.org also plants trees around Midtown and oversees the community garden next to Huey’s Midtown.
Gordon told the crowd he entered public planning discussions as a NIMBY (not in my backyard), concerned that the Poplar Art Lofts plan in 2019 would push noise and exhaust onto those enjoying Overton Park. This led him to the MidtownMemphis.org organization and he’s been a volunteer with the group ever since.
Gordon described the 3.0 plan as a “city guide” and a “North Star” for Memphis-area planning efforts. The plan’s motto, he said, reverses the sprawl strategies of years past and embraces the idea to “build up, not out.” While the motto is the essence of the plan, Gordon called it “quite misleading.”
One critical foundation of the Memphis 3.0 plan is where that growth inside the city’s footprint should happen. The plan says that growth should happen around anchors. These anchors, picked with the help of residents, are usually commercial areas like Overton Square, Crosstown Concourse, Cooper-Young, and others.
To Gordon, city planners dropped a compass point on these anchors and drew a circle around them. Inside those circles is where the 3.0 plan wants to grow, he said. This is a critical foundation of MidtownMemphis.org’s argument against the 3.0 plan, with Gordon saying, “I’m not alone in thinking that’s a bad way to make plans.”
“So, you may have bought your home in a single-family neighborhood, but the future land use planning map sees in the future … a change to a more dense kind of neighborhood,” Gordon told the crowd. “One of our big issues with [3.0] is right here at the core of it: the anchors. We don’t agree that an anchor necessarily warrants this kind of density. Nor do we agree with what are called ‘anchors.’ For example, let’s just point out, Overton Park is not an anchor.”
The anchor model and the density projections that come with it are brush strokes too broad to paint the intricacies of planning something as complex as Midtown neighborhoods, Gordon said. This is seen at a macro level in the plan as the city is divvied up into 14 planing zones. In this, Midtown, the Medical Center, and Downtown are merged into one zone called “Core City.”
“I think that is a mistake because Midtown is residential housing, and Downtown and the Medical Center are not,” Gordon says. “So, let’s start by saying those should be separated.”
But Gordon easily shifts into the micro: the dense, complex, nitty-gritty of 3.0 that could allow single-family neighborhoods to legally be chopped into quadplexes, new units built where they can’t be now and, he says, destabilize Midtown neighborhoods.
The density models from anchor planning in 3.0 are the easiest way for a developer to create multifamily in a single-family zone, he said. They’ll pay “professional convincers,” basically development lobbyists at Memphis City Hall, to speak to planning boards like the Land Use Control Board or the Board of Adjustment and ask for a special zoning change on property from single family to multifamily.
“This professional convincer is going to go in there armed with information from Memphis 3.0 and say, ‘This is what the city wants,’” he said. “So, in short order, your single-family neighborhood is going to begin to show multifamily buildings. And people who are looking for houses to buy are going to go, ‘Wait a minute. I remember this as a single-family neighborhood. What’s that four-plex doing there?’”
While the process may move slowly, he said, it could be a deciding factor for potential Midtown homeowners who might not want to gamble their biggest investment “on a neighborhood that’s in flux.”
A neighborhood could get multifamily zoning even if it’s not in one of those anchor density zones, Gordon said. The Memphis 3.0 plan designates some entire streets for higher density, regardless of where they lie, he said. So, even if your neighborhood passes all the other tests, a developer could use the street designation as an argument for, say, a four-plex on a street. Later, another developer could come in wanting the same thing nearby because there’s already one across the street.
A third way Gordon told crowd members a neighborhood could get density through 3.0 is from degree of change. He joked it was the “dreaded degree of change” because it was harder to explain. The term, he said, basically means how money gets into a neighborhood. The 3.0 plan outlines three categories, he said. In it, the city works alone or with developers to fuel projects in certain neighborhoods, based on the need, and that could mean high-density housing.
“If you’re in a ‘nurture’ neighborhood, the city’s going to throw a lot of money at you,” Gordon said. “If you’re in an ‘accelerate’ neighborhood, the city’s going to throw some money at you but they’re going to try and get private investment to come in.
“If you’re in a ‘sustain’ neighborhood, then the city’s is going to say that private investors are going to take care of that.”
A contentious question of motivation
The Q&A portion of the meeting found a raw spot in discussions around Memphis 3.0 and the density topic in general. The basic question: Are single-family housing proponents seeking to bar low-income people from their neighborhoods?
Abby Sheridan raised the point gently at the MidtownMemphis.org meeting. The reason she and her family moved close to Crosstown, she said, was to be within walking distance of the Concourse, for the density. She went to the meeting to see what the opposition to 3.0 was about, she said.
“Don’t be afraid of density,” she told the crowd. “Just because we allow for different types of housing doesn’t mean it’s an automatic guarantee.
“I’ve lived in multi-unit neighborhoods for most of my adult life. They are thriving, vibrant communities.
“If we, as Evergreen [residents], believe that diversity is our strength, y’all are really showing your colors tonight.”
The comment sucked the air from the room that was quickly filled with side chatter, sighs, and low gasps. Emily Bishop, a MidtownMemphis.org volunteer, responded, saying owner-occupied homes stabilized Cooper-Young in the late ’80s when she bought her home (once a duplex, she said) there.
“The businesses were nonexistent in Cooper-Young,” Bishop said. “There was one Indochina restaurant. [The neighborhood] was light industrial at best.
“There was no zoning change that brought density back. What makes a neighborhood thrive are owner-occupied homes with people who get involved, who do the code enforcement work, who get rid of slumlords, and who support the local businesses.”
In all, Bishop said Memphis doesn’t have a housing shortage; it has an affordable housing shortage.
“And there again,” Sheridan said, “what I’m hearing you say is … ‘not in our neighborhood.’”
Gordon jumped in to cool off the topic by saying that MidtownMemphis.org really is simply in favor of doing smaller plans for distinct neighborhoods.
Joe Ozment spoke plainly.
“I’ve been doing criminal defense in this city for 33 years and I’ve seen what’s happened in areas like Hickory Hill and Cordova when you add density,” he said. “We don’t want that in Midtown.”
Jerred Price, president of the Downtown Neighborhood Association, and his board attended the meeting to “support the neighbors.” He and the board agreed that Downtown should be a separate planning bloc from Midtown. He said the anchor-and-compass method “shouldn’t be a strategy for development.”
Dropping “one of those special, little circle-drawing thingamajiggers” at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital would mean high density for the single-family neighborhoods like Uptown, he said. But higher density could be welcomed on the other side of the interstate there because it’s in the Downtown core.
“So, even for us, those circles don’t make any sense of our communities,” Price said. “We stand with you on that.”
Asked about the timeline of the Memphis 3.0 proposal, Gordon said public meetings will continue through this year. Revised plans with that public input would then be published. Then, the Memphis City Council would vote on them, likely in 2026.
“If the future land use planning map hasn’t changed,” he said, “we will continue to marshal forces and the idea will be a showdown at city council.
“We would bring many citizens up there to protest a map that is not properly planned and does not look at what is stable in Midtown, is determined to destabilize Midtown for the benefit of commercial anchors, and is giving a free pass to other parts of town.”
Q&A with John Zeanah
John Zeanah is the director of the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development. He said overarching city plans like Memphis 3.0 are nothing new; they’re even mandated for cities in certain states.
Among those plans, Memphis 3.0 stands out, Zeanah said. It has won awards from the American Planning Association and the Congress for the New Urbanism. Memphis 3.0 is the city’s first comprehensive plan since 1981.
We asked him to respond to the movement against the 3.0 plan, which was authored by his office. — Toby Sells
Memphis Flyer: What do you make of the arguments about 3.0 from MidtownMemphis.org?
John Zeanah: Memphis 3.0 was adopted six years ago. So, when is it going to do those things [that MidtownMemphis.org argues] if it hasn’t already?
They’re saying the plan is up for a five-year review.
We’re undergoing our first five-year plan update now. One of the things that we’re doing as a part of the five-year plan update … is conducting a comprehensive look at the zoning map and understanding how well our zoning works with [Memphis 3.0].
I think part of the misunderstanding is the claim that we would necessarily rezone areas, according to the plan, to the most intense use or the most intense zoning district that could be conceived. And that’s not the case.
First of all, [Memphis 3.0] is general in nature. It — and the future land use map that they are so worried about — is meant to be general, with a generalized land use map.
I think there’s some misunderstanding about whether the future land use map is calling for all these new things to happen. It’s an expression of what’s existing today. In some cases, it’s a mix of both.
Suffice to say, as we are going through the five-year plan update and we’re thinking about how zoning is a tool to implement the plan, our orientation is not to just apply the most-intense zoning district. There are changes to zoning that may not always be in residential areas. In fact, I’d say most of the zoning changes that will end up being recommended are in some of our commercial areas and commercial corridors.
The goal is to make sure that our community has healthy, stable anchors that are supported by healthy, stable neighborhoods. The suggestions that we would take extreme actions to destabilize neighborhoods are really puzzling. It doesn’t come from anything that we’re saying as a part of our meetings. It doesn’t come from anything the plan is saying.
They’ve said developers could use the future land use planning map as another arrow in their quiver. They could argue that while multi-family homes may not be allowed in a zone now, they could point to the suggestion in Memphis 3.0 and make a case for their project at city hall.
One cannot simply point to a generalized land use map and say, “Well, because this area around an anchor is a mixed-use type, I should be entitled to do the most intense thing that is part of this mix.” That’s no. 1. And no. 2: The plan does not have the authority to entitle that. That’s the role of zoning.
So, if you live in a neighborhood that is predominantly single-family and your zoning is single-family detached, and it is a stable neighborhood, there is no reason for the city to propose changing the zoning for the neighborhood. You are the healthy, stable neighborhood that is helping to support the anchor nearby. That is a good thing. That’s what we want to help preserve.
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The King’s Hometown Cuts
Having incorporated elements of Sun Studio, Phillips Recording Service, and Ardent Studios into the design of his own Southern Grooves studio, Matt Ross-Spang has an ear for history, so it’s no wonder that he’s become the go-to guy for mixing Elvis Presley. It started with his 2016 mixes of outtakes from Presley’s 1976 recordings at Graceland, and others followed, but his mixes on 2020’s From Elvis in Nashville compilation, stripping overdubs away from the raw tracks Presley recorded during marathon sessions in June of 1970, were Ross-Spang’s greatest feat, yielding such jaw-dropping tracks as the hard-choogling “Patch It Up.”
Now, following a brief similar to that of the Nashville album, Ross-Spang has outdone himself on a new box set dropping just as Elvis Week commences this Friday, August 9th. With a nod to last month’s 70th anniversary of Presley’s first recordings for Sun Records, Sony Music/Legacy Recordings will release Memphis, a set of five CDs and/or two LPs produced by Ernst Jørgensen, collecting everything Presley recorded in his adopted hometown.
Naturally, that includes Presley’s initial work with Sun Records’ Sam Phillips, though those foundational recordings were not tampered with (nor could they have been, not being multitracks), only given a thorough restoration and remastering. After the Sun era, there were three other distinct moments when Presley cut records in Memphis: in 1969 at American Sound Studio, in 1973 at Stax Records, and in 1976 during remote recording sessions the King set up in his own Jungle Room at Graceland. Also included is a live recording of Presley and his touring band at the Mid-South Coliseum in 1974. All of those recordings get the Ross-Spang treatment.
Working from digital copies of the original multitrack tapes offered him a glimpse into the recording techniques of a bygone age. “I was really excited to work on the Stax and American stuff simply because I’m a Memphis history nut,” he says, “and to get to hear those multitracks was really exciting. Working with Chips Moman at American, Elvis had a new band, a new producer, a new studio — everything was new. And yet Chips didn’t have nice technologies like RCA [in Nashville]. He committed all that music to four tracks, typically. And oftentimes he recorded the [reverb] chamber right onto the track. Or put the bass and the acoustic guitar on the same track. So it was really cool for me to open that up and see how much commitment he had, the vision he had from the beginning.”
Those American recordings yielded hits like “In the Ghetto” and “Suspicious Minds,” but the familiar versions, exploding with those distinctive string arrangements, are only hinted at here. The Memphis tracks reveal what preceded those orchestral flourishes: The sure-footed, house band Moman had assembled, aka The Memphis Boys, both soulful and rocking, playing their hearts out while the voice of Elvis rang out in the room. As Robert Gordon writes in the extensive liner notes, the new mixes put us “standing next to Elvis inside the recording studio, us and the basic band, hearing what he’s hearing.”
Moreover, it’s a master class in minimalist songcraft, as one hears guitarist Reggie Young weave his lines in with those of keyboardists Bobby Woods and Bobby Emmons, the latter’s organ parts suggesting an orchestra, yet molded out of rawer sounds. Here and there are occasional overdubs, as in the remarkable “Don’t Cry, Daddy,” where Presley harmonizes with himself. As Ross-Spang explains, “We left in some of the overdubs that they did on the spot there [at American], but we didn’t use things that they went back to Nashville to do.”
Ross-Spang didn’t have to mix these tracks entirely on his own. “It was really fun to get to work with Robert Gordon on this. I was sending him mixes and he was sending me notes back. And then producer Rob Santos and Ernst. Sometimes I can treat a mix too technically and not emotionally, but Ernst would give me very nontypical, emotional mix notes.” As the singer’s raw emotion explodes from the speakers, Memphis reveals Elvis to be one of the premier soul artists of his time.
For director Augusta Palmer, The Blues Society is a personal project.
Her father, music writer Robert Palmer, was a member of the group of hippies and weirdos who first brought Black blues artists from Memphis and Mississippi to the Overton Park Shell. They were among the first to acknowledge the deep debt that popular music owed to these artists. Robert Palmer went on to write the bestselling music tome Deep Blues in 1981.
Augusta Palmer’s film debuted at Indie Memphis 2023, when Memphis Flyer Music Editor Alex Greene interviewed her about the film and what it meant to her, the city, and the world. It went on to win awards at the Oxford Film Festival, and is now playing in limited engagements all over the country.
On Friday, May 31, The Blues Society opens in Memphis at Studio on the Square.. The opening weekend will feature a series of Q&A’s with the director and some Memphians involved in the project. On Friday, Grammy-winning author and filmmaker Robert Gordon will moderate a discussion with the director and musicians Jimmy Crosthwait and Chris Wimmer. On Friday, June 1, Indie Memphis executive director Kimel Fryer will moderate a discussion with director Palmer and editor Laura Jean Hocking. On Wednesday, June 5, Robert Gordon will return with Memphis radio legend Henry Nelson.
Here’s the trailer for The Blues Society.
As the 66th Annual Grammy Awards unfolded over the weekend, many names associated with Memphis and the Mid-South were among the winners, including musicians, songwriters, producers, engineers, and writers.
If award-winning music creators are already a well-established Bluff City tradition, the music writing being done here is quickly becoming another of the city’s music industry exports. In 2021, the Commercial Appeal‘s Bob Mehr won the Best Album Notes award for the writings he penned for Dead Man’s Pop, a collection of music by The Replacements, and scored another win last year for his notes in the deluxe edition of Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, co-produced by Cheryl Pawelski of Omnivore Recordings.
This year, it was Robert Gordon’s and Deanie Parker’s turn to take home the Best Album Notes prize — for yet another Pawelski project, Written in their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos, Craft Recordings’ seven-CD collection offering a glimpse into the the rare songwriting demos of Stax Records in its heyday. Profiled in the Memphis Flyer last summer, the collection is an intimate portrait of the men and women who wrote the songs of the pioneering soul label. The same box set, produced by Gordon, Parker, Pawelski, Michele Smith, and Mason Williams, also won the award for Best Historical Album.
It’s a subject that’s been thoroughly researched by Gordon, who also won a Grammy in 2011 for notes accompanying Big Star’s Keep An Eye on the Sky box set before penning the book Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion in 2013. But if Gordon knows Stax, co-writer Parker outdid him with her eyewitness accounts, having worked at Stax through most of its existence and even serving as a songwriter there herself.
Over the past 20 years, Parker has also championed the creation of the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, the Stax Music Academy, and the Soulsville Foundation, as celebrated in this 2023 Memphis Flyer story. Thus her Grammy win was an important tribute to one of the label’s key behind-the-scenes players, and as the co-producers of the set gathered onstage to receive the award, they naturally deferred to Parker to speak on their behalf.
“Stax founders Jim Stewart and his sister Estelle Axton gave the Stax songwriters a racially integrated paradise where they were encouraged to discover and develop their authentic talents by Al Bell,” Parker said while accepting the award. “This set highlights some of Stax’s and America’s most talented rhythm and blues songwriters: Eddie Floyd, William Bell, Steve Cropper, Homer Bates, Mack Rice, Bettye Crutcher, Bobby Manuel, and Henderson Thigpen.” After thanking the Recording Academy and her fellow co-producers, she also gave a nod to local artist Kerri Mahoney for designing the look and layout of the box set, before concluding with a warm acknowledgment of “the remarkable visionary and producer, Cheryl Pawelski.”
Another non-performing contributor to Grammy wins was Matt Ross-Spang, who engineered on Weathervanes, the Best Americana Album winner by Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, and who co-produced and mixed Echoes Of The South, the Best Roots Gospel Album winner by the Blind Boys Of Alabama, at his Southern Grooves studio in the Crosstown Concourse.
Beyond the scribes, historical producers, and knob-twiddlers, musical artists from Memphis also made a strong showing at this year’s ceremony. While Memphis has always loved native daughter Julien Baker, it seems all the world loves boygenius, her band with fellow singer-songwriters Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus. Their 2023 album The Record garnered six nominations, and ended up winning Best Alternative Music Album, with the group also scoring Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song wins for the single “Not Strong Enough” — featured in this week’s Music Video Monday.
When boygenius, decked out in matching white suits, accepted their second award, Baker wore her heart on her sleeve. “All I ever wanted to do in my life was be in a band,” she said, visibly shaken with emotion. “I feel like music is the language I used to find my family since I was a kid. I just wanted to say thank you to everybody who ever watched me play.”
Bobby Rush, based in Mississippi but with longstanding ties to Memphis (and awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities by Rhodes College), also saw his latest work celebrated, with his 2023 album All My Love For You winning Best Traditional Blues Album. He too was eloquent in his gratitude. “I treasure this, and honor Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Tyrone Davis, Johnnie Taylor, all the guys coming before me that I looked up to…thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Finally, while not winning as a performing artist, the legendary DJ Paul was a towering presence onstage as Killer Mike accepted awards for, Best Rap Album, Best Rap Performance, and Best Rap Song. He co-wrote his track, “SCIENTISTS & ENGINEERS,” with DJ Paul (aka Paul Beauregard), Andre Benjamin, James Blake, Tim Moore, and Dion Wilson. In winning the latter category, Killer Mike and his collaborators edged out another Memphis talent, producer Tay Keith, who was among the songwriters for the Grammy-nominated track “Rich Flex” by Drake and 21 Savage.
Right out of the gate, Killer Mike acknowledged his colleague from Memphis as they stood together at the podium. “I’m from the Southeast,” he said. “Like DJ Paul, I’m a Black man in America. And as a kid, I had a dream to become a part of music, and that nine-year-old is excitedly dancing inside of me right now… I want that thank everyone who dares to believe that art can change the world.”
DJ Paul, of course, has long been an integral player in the Oscar-winning Three 6 Mafia, and is an active solo artist and producer to this day, as profiled by the Memphis Flyer here. His old crew included the late Gangsta Boo, who was honored during the In Memoriam segment of the ceremony. Wayne Kramer of Detroit’s MC5, whose appearance on Joecephus & the George Jonestown Massacre’s Call Me Animal album was likely his last released recording before his death on February 2nd, was also remembered in the segment.
Memphis was well-represented at last night’s Grammy Awards. The album of long lost Stax demos, Written In Their Soul, won for Best Liner Notes, an award which was accepted by Stax’s PR person turned champion Deanie Parker and Memphis writer/director Robert Gordon.
Bobby Rush, now entering his ninth decade, won Best Traditional Blues Album for All Of My Love For You.
Supergroup boygenius—Pheobe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and former Memphis punk rocker Julien Baker—won three Grammys, including Best Alternative Album for The Record. “Not Strong Enough” won both Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance. Watch Baker get emotional while accepting the group’s third award of the evening.
The music video for “Not Strong Enough” was shot by the band themselves while hanging out in Southern California, and edited by Jackson Bridgers. The video shows off the group’s low-key appeal, which charmed the nation on the summer’s blockbuster tour which climaxed with a sold-out Halloween show at the Hollywood Bowl. The visuals may be unassuming, but the music is powerful.
You don’t have to win a Grammy to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday. All you have to do is email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Take heart, juvenile delinquents everywhere: there walks among us one of your kind who parlayed his street savvy into nothing less than crafting a new Memphis Sound. You can learn all about that and more this Monday, October 16th at 7 p.m., when author Robert Gordon sits down to chat with Nix about his life in music. It’s part of Gordon’s ongoing series of listening parties at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, in which he curates playlists of songs by the likes of Steve Cropper, Al Kapone, IMAKEMADBEATS, Boo Mitchell, and others with the artists themselves, using the music as a jumping-off point for discussions of their craft.
Nix’s name may not be as familiar as those others to some, but he’s played a pivotal role in Memphis music ever since he was a student at Tech High School, “where the delinquents were transferred and taught a trade before they flunked out completely,” as Gordon writes in It Came from Memphis. That was when he played sax with a group that included Cropper, Duck Dunn, Charlie Freeman, and Packy Axton: The Royal Spades. Axton’s mother Estelle was busy starting up a new business called Satellite Records, and when she facilitated a recording session for the group, she prevailed upon them to change their name to the Mar-Keys.
That session would yield the instrumental track “Last Night,” which was a shot across the bow of pop music, an R&B smash hit by a bunch of white kids that would presage the integration championed by Satellite, as it soon morphed into Stax Records.
But Nix was destined to be more of a behind-the-scenes player. As he told Gordon in It Came from Memphis, “I didn’t play on any sessions after a certain point. Not after they got good musicians to play … Eventually, I was producing, and that’s all I ever wanted to do. I wanted to write and to put records together in the studio.”
He embraced that role with aplomb, eventually working as a producer, arranger, and musician for artists as diverse as Furry Lewis, Albert King, Isaac Hayes, the Staple Singers, Jeff Beck, Brian May, Eric Clapton, and many others. His song, “Going Down,” originally recorded by the band Moloch in 1969, has become a rock standard covered by Freddie King, Jeff Beck, Deep Purple, JJ Cale, Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Who, Led Zeppelin, and others. The Rolling Stones performed “Goin’ Down” as recently as 2012 on a televised live concert with John Mayer and Gary Clark, Jr.
Now 82, Nix has decades of stories to share. He was the one member of the Mar-Keys “who could draw the crowds because he was so completely entertaining to watch,” writes Gordon. That instinct for entertaining, and a story well-told, hasn’t left him.
Well, the weather outside is, if not exactly frightful, certainly shading toward cold, blustery, and gray. Time-tested local pastimes like porch drinkin’ and riverside running are getting a little less comfortable. The good news? Books exist, and Memphians, from Shelby Foote to Katori Hall, have a certifiable knack for storytelling.
Not to go all LeVar Burton’s Reading Rainbow on you, but a book really is the least expensive ticket to another world, a new perspective. In this issue, we’ve turned the page on eight new books by Bluff City authors. They each represent a chance to visit a new place, be it the Memphis music scene of yesteryear, the British Isles in World War II, a fictional dystopian future, or the life and times of a real rock-and-roll legend (a moral giant, if you will). So, whether you’re in search of a gift for the bookworm in your family or a cold-weather social-distancing activity for yourself, we’ve got you covered. Trust me; I’ve been social distancing since Scholastic Book Fair, 1992. Read on. — Jesse Davis
I Die Each Time I Hear the Sound
by Mike Doughty
Hachette Books, $17.99
I now know exactly what not to say to Mike Doughty, thanks to his new book.
I’ve seen him around. You probably have, too. He’s lived in Memphis now for a few years. I’ll see him occasionally at Fresh Market, and we stood in the same line to vote this year. I love his music, but it’s distasteful to brace a guy when he’s picking produce or a president.
In I Die Each Time I Hear the Sound, Doughty describes the unique unpleasantness of fans telling him how they discovered his old band, Soul Coughing. Many of those stories basically boil down to “my roommate had the CD.” Duly noted.
It’s an honest insight into a particular moment, unique to an internationally known musician who makes unique music that appeals to a unique audience. The book is filled with these distinctive insights, delivered with a lot of warmth and humor. But Doughty’s also nakedly honest about anxiety, depression, and shame. The mix of these gives I Die Each Time I Hear the Sound a fresh, broad appeal. It’s a rock-and-roll book about a real person.
For example: How would you feel if David Letterman complimented your guitar — not your music — on national television? What if you responded with snark and he walked away? What if you found out later that Letterman compliments a lot of people’s guitars on the show and was trying to be personable?
The book is filled with honest stories from the road, talking to Little Richard in a Los Angeles elevator, eating McDonald’s in Tokyo, meeting a drunken Evan Dando at Glastonbury, and arguing/not arguing with his estranged band over the liner notes of a compilation album.
But the book is most brilliant when Doughty describes music, drawing an incredibly accurate atlas of the sounds as he hears them.
Here’s how he describes Steven Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians on a drive through Washington State: “It was like those undulant marimbas rose from the yellow hills. The melodies change as if you’re passing them: a note materializes at the end, a note on the top disappears.”
Here’s Doughty on “These Arms of Mine”: “When Otis Redding sang the word mine — the second repetition, when the note gets higher — the word mine becomes a glowing flower, which expanded into the sky, then the sky opened into the cosmos beyond the cosmos.” — Toby Sells
Paper Bullets
by Jeffrey H. Jackson
Algonquin Books, $27.95
Rhodes professor Jeffrey H. Jackson couldn’t have known how timely a subject he picked when he began his research into French artists and romantic partners Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe for the book that would become Paper Bullets. Resistance, the key motif of Jackson’s just-released (and already lauded — Paper Bullets has been longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non-Fiction) tome, has become something of the watchword of the contemporary era, certainly of the last four years, making Jackson’s telling of two lesbian artists who put all their considerable talents to use to resist the Nazi occupation of the English Channel island of Jersey a story well-suited to the cultural moment.
Known in the art world as Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, Lucy and Suzanne operated a covert campaign to demoralize the German occupying army, striking at their psyche with their “paper bullets” — notes hidden in magazines and surreptitiously slipped into pockets, photo collages, poems, anything that might make the invaders doubt the morality of their position.
Before their resistance in Jersey, their relationship made Lucy and Suzanne outlaws, of a sort. “Their relationship was not their only secret,” Jackson writes in Paper Bullets. “According to Jewish tradition, Lucy would not have been considered Jewish because her mother was not a Jew. However, Nazi racial law made no such distinction.”
In Paris, before the war, surrounded by artists and entrepreneurs who were anything but stereotypical and enmeshed in radical politics, Lucy and Suzanne were at the cutting edge of a convention-defying moment in art history, in a Paris still reeling from the heavy losses sustained in the first World War. It was the perfect training ground.
As women working in a male-driven field, as women who loved each other, Lucy and Suzanne had practice viewing the world from a different perspective — and often having to fight for their right to participate. Lucy, too, suffered from chronic illnesses that set her apart from many of her fellows. Their status as unconventional artists working with Dadaists and Surrealists taught them the power of art as a way to subvert expectations.
The bulk of the action in Paper Bullets takes place on the island of Jersey, as Suzanne and Lucy begin to fight back against the occupation, steadily employing more sophisticated methods in their two-woman PSYOPS campaign. This is no dry history; rather, Paper Bullets almost hums with the tension of a tightly plotted thriller. Jackson deftly balances the narrative, though, giving the reader a taste of the romance that fueled the resistors’ relationship, the art scene that honed their skills, and the war that compelled them to find a way to fight. Paper Bullets has it all — it’s a tale of romance in spite of the odds, a slice of art history, and an inspirational World War II story. It is, simply put, nearly impossible to put down. — JD
The Ballad of Ami Miles
by Kristy Dallas Alley
Macmillan Books, $17.99
The more things change, the more they stay the same. While the world as we know it is broken in Kristy Dallas Alley’s debut novel, The Ballad of Ami Miles, many issues that plague our current society are all too rampant. Sixteen-year-old heroine Ami Miles has grown up in relative safety at her family’s survival compound, but when she receives a clue about her long-vanished mother’s whereabouts, she sets out to learn more about herself, and the world outside the compound.
Ami grows up at Heavenly Shepherd, a survival compound run by her grandfather, Solomon Miles. The America she knows has drifted into a post-apocalyptic collection of small communities after a virus rendered most of the population infertile. Any woman who does have the ability to bear children is quickly gobbled up by government “C-PAF” agents.
That fear prompted Ami’s mother to flee when she was a child, leaving her daughter to fend for herself in Solomon’s controlling environment. And her grandfather, the worst kind of bigoted evangelical, sees Ami as nothing more than a vessel to continue on the Miles lineage. When he invites a man to the compound to impregnate Ami, all bets are off. Her aunt provides her with directions to her mom’s last known location and sends Ami on her way with supplies.
While Ami Miles might have the YA label, Alley doesn’t treat her readers with kid gloves. A post-apocalyptic America doesn’t mean societal issues have gone away, and Ami tackles racism, homophobia, and plenty of other prevalent social issues for the first time after escaping Heavenly Shepherd. And it’s not all smooth sailing for the good-natured protagonist; Alley expertly weaves in a constant thread of deprogramming along Ami’s journey. Having basically grown up in a cult, it’s hard for Ami to jettison the thoughts and “values” that have been pounded into her since day one. Even as she learns more about the world, even as she makes new friends, and even as another young woman catches her eye, her grandfather’s directive to find a man and make a baby sits uncomfortably in the back of her mind.
The Ballad of Ami Miles is an ode to many things: self-growth, finding new experiences, welcoming in ideas that aren’t your own. Every step of her journey, Ami is up for the tough challenges that lay in her path. Reading from 2020’s perspective, where so many are insulated in their thought bubbles by algorithms, social media, and the like, Ami Miles is the perfect tonic. With a brave face, there’s always room for growth and new experiences.
I’m not sure I’m the target demographic for The Ballad of Ami Miles, but Alley’s electric pacing kept me hooked until the last page; ultimately, I blazed through in just two sittings. Through Ami, Alley never puts a foot wrong while crafting her narrative. Hard to believe this is a debut. — Samuel X. Cicci
It Came From Memphis
by Robert Gordon
Third Man Books, $19.95
Robert Gordon’s 1995 opus, It Came From Memphis, quietly but quickly grew into a cult classic, a must-read for any music aficionado wanting learn about the gritty, Black and white roots of rock-and-roll in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s — and the city where they were planted. Gordon’s cast of characters was as wild and eccentric as the river town that made them: Dewey Phillips, Sputnik Monroe, Sam Phillips, Furry Lewis, Mud Boy and the Neutrons, Bill Eggleston, Booker T., Tav Falco. Not to mention a supporting cast of midget wrestlers, motorcycle gangs, and all-around weirdos.
Iconic Memphis musician and Zelig-like guru Jim Dickinson knew many of the characters and their backstories, and he is a primal force in ICFM. His insights, along with Gordon’s extensive research, many invaluable interviews, and avid storytelling, give the book its authentic juice, chapter after chapter. There are plentiful you-are-there tales from the city’s iconic music studios — Stax, Ardent, Sun. There are long nights, inspired bouts of musical brilliance, booze and blunts and pills, bizarre escapades, and more than a little madness.
Now there’s a new 25th anniversary edition of It Came From Memphis, published by Jack White’s Third Man Books (the imprint that earlier this year published Memphian Sheree Renée Thomas’ Nine Bar Blues). And better yet, it’s not just a reprint. Much has been added: all-new photos, updated stories and interviews, and fresh opinions and perspectives from Gordon and others, including Peter Guralnick.
The original classic book is still there. It’s just been enhanced — and beautifully so. As Gordon admits in his preface, the original was something of “a guy book,” so he has brought more women’s voices and influences into this version. It’s a seamless and welcome addition.
As the cover blurb notes: “Vienna in the 1880s. Paris in the 1920s. Memphis in the 1950s. These are the paradigm shifts of modern culture. … Memphis embraced black culture when dominant society ignored or abhorred it. The effect rocked the world.”
That it did. It Came From Memphis is essential reading for anyone who wants to deepen their understanding of this city and its musical history. — Bruce VanWyngarden
Baron of Love: Moral Giant
by Ross Johnson
Spacecase Records, $15
Like the author himself (a friend and erstwhile bandmate of mine), this slim memoir (published by Spacecase Records) is a pulsating mass of contradictions that somehow self-assemble into a sentient whole. As such, it captures the way most of us live in fits and starts, and with good humor; but in Ross’ case, the fits and starts happened between the buccaneering world of rock-and-roll and the library shelves, first landing you backstage with Iggy Pop and the New York Dolls, then sending you “collapsing into a spiral of self-contempt and regret.”
The common thread is Ross’ keen eye, sharpened from an early age. With echoes of his father, a journalist in Little Rock, this book is bursting with vivid, keenly observed moments. The memories unfold in a chaotic jumble of brief vignettes, so the evocative tales of rock writing and rock drumming, with which the author made his name and honed his taste, rub shoulders uneasily with snapshots (both literal and figurative) of Ross’ youth and the dramas of adulthood. All are rendered in the clean prose of a reporter turning his investigative eye inward as well as outward. And some turns of phrase, be it “toilet club” or “mental patient rock,” are sheer poetry.
Without prejudice, Ross objectively notes the brazen racism of his Arkansas childhood, his ex-girlfriend’s career as a groupie, the fascistic roots of Alcoholics Anonymous, and the size of Iggy Pop’s schlong. Every chapter title might be a line from “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall,” as our hero rattles off the wonders and horrors he’s seen: “Who’s Alex Chilton?,” “Roland Janes,” “Creem Magazine Saved My Life,” “Swerve Into Perv,” “Charlie Feathers,” “The Klitz,” “Guiltabilly.” Through it all, his time with the Panther Burns, the band he co-founded with Chilton and Tav Falco, weaves in and out of the narrative like a tipsy driver you just can’t shake.
And “Baron of Love,” the inspired song/seance he cut with Chilton in 1978, hangs over the highway like a harvest moon.
What saves the book from being mere barstool boasting is Ross’ reflective instinct. Dollops of cultural studies and politics inform his musings on the ethics of the sexism, racism, and rockism at play in every scene. It may be more of a moral microscope, but if this be gossip, it’s gossip with a heart, and gossip with a brain. — Alex Greene
LGBTQ+ Revolution 2.0
by Jill Fredenburg
New Degree Press, $16.99
With the craziness and hopelessness some have felt in the last four years, it can be easy to forget how far we have come as a country in terms of social issues. In just 50 years, we have gone from segregating people based on the color of their skin to allowing true freedom of marriage. Reflecting on this can be astounding.
Jill Fredenburg’s LGBTQ+ Revolution 2.0, to me, is a product of the successes that we have made as a country in recent years. The book, which is structured as a collection of narratives sharing experiences and stories from people on different spots of the LGBTQ+ spectrum, tells the struggles, triumphs, and day-to-day lives of those who are in the LGBTQ+ community. Over 21 chapters, Fredenburg discusses all permutations of the LGBTQ community.
It’s not an easy read. At times I found myself angry and frustrated by the injustices faced by those that Fredenburg wrote about. Other times I felt hopeless to help. Fredenburg creates a connection between the reader and those featured in the book so that you can truly understand their lives, and the effect is immediate and intense. For all the sad stories and times of struggle there are also stories of triumph. But in that work Fredenburg also finds hope and strength in the knowledge that the LGBTQ movement is stronger than ever.
“I started writing this book with the hope that the process would help me understand how experiences like Cassandra’s and my own fit into the larger movement surrounding LGBTQ+ identity,” Fredenburg writes in her introduction. “What I discovered has made me excited for the next wave of LGBTQ+ rights.”
Fredenburg’s book LGBTQ+ Revolution 2.0 is not an easy read, but it’s a needed one. She speaks for the silent other who is often ignored and left out of the conversation, showing the good and the bad, then inviting others into the conversation. Her work is important reading for everyone, and she ends her book with a reminder that I think all people can live and learn by: “Who will you be, who and how will you love, without shame?” — Matthew J. Harris
Emergence
by Shira Shiloah
Salty Air Publishing, $15.99
Dr. Shira Shiloah is a local anesthesiologist who decided she’d get into the world of writing medical thrillers. Her debut novel is Emergence, set in Memphis and with ample description of familiar sights in and around Downtown. Shiloah also gives us a strong female anesthesiologist (beautiful, highly competent, owns a dog, touched by personal tragedy), a suitably wicked surgeon (an arrogant platinum blonde, owns no dogs, coked-up misogynist), and a sensitive resident doctor (thoughtful, supportive, easy on the eyes, owns a dog).
And there is plenty of lab-coat-ripping romance slathered throughout like a medical grade lubricant. In fact, Emergence rocks back and forth between incisions and intercourse, blending romance and thriller genres.
Allow these excerpts to speak for themselves:
“She could make out the silhouette of his muscular torso. His jeans were as loose as his smile. There were no blood or drapes between them tonight, just clear skin and healthy hormones. His gaze took her in.”
And: “He took the knife and expertly sliced him at the level of the jugular vein. The man screamed and struggled to get away, but with one sweep of his hand D.K. stabbed his cricoid, his voice box, so he’d be silent.”
If those passages appeal to you, then it must be just what the doctor ordered. — Jon W. Sparks
Memphis Mayhem
by David A. Less
ECW Press, $16.95
If the title Memphis Mayhem sounds like it could be describing either a crime wave or a chip-on-the-shoulder attitude or an era of public turbulence, the new book by Memphis music historian David Less concerns all of those things, but mainly it is history and memoir of the various strains of music that have percolated out of Memphis and defined the river city in its seminal relationship with the outer world.
As the author himself, a writer and archivist and third-generation Memphian, describes his work, “It is a story of a city and a culture and fosters independent thinking in the midst of a strict, conservative society. There is a spirit of self reliance in Memphis. It is born of the poverty and oppression shared by Blacks and whites here, who have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
Parts of Less’ narrative are familiar from other sources, but Less does not content himself with a roster of luminaries and a catalogue of styles. His treatment of Memphis’ early blues masters, for example, is against a backdrop of the gambling, desperate chance-taking, and crazy optimism that characterized Beale Street and its antecedent neighborhoods. He tells his tale in an episodic style that at first seems somewhat disjointed but is more accurately revealed to be the mosaic that it is.
Almost in the manner of a jig-saw puzzle, the pieces ultimately fit together — Yellow Fever; the band rivalry between two Black high schools, Manassas and Booker T. Washington, and the dispersing into the world of the innovative results; the laboratory of Black and white music sources that was Sam Phillips’ Sun Studio; and the serendipity of a second commercial-music wave stemming as much from the self-seeking curiosity of white Messick High students like Steve Cropper and Donald “Duck” Dunn as anything else.
Less explains why it is that Memphis music tends to be “behind the beat,” and he notes the importance of landmarks — like West Memphis’ Plantation Inn, where white Memphis high-schoolers learned their musical ABCs from innovative Black performers, and the Lorraine Motel, important as a honing place for white and Black musicians before it became a site of infamy and a shrine to the great MLK.
It’s all here — the jazz masters of the Crump-ordered “clean-up” period, Daddy-O Dewey, Ardent Studios, Chips Moman, Willie Mitchell, Al Green. And all of it pegged to the hard-boiled but generous local populations that lived in ever-treacherous and sometimes ominous times. (It is surely no accident, by the way, that much of the narrative of Less’ book derives from interviews with veterans of the Memphis music wars now living in the plusher confines of Nashville, which has a kind of finishing-school or retirement-home relationship to the dangerous but lively city on the Mississippi.) — Jackson Baker
Pat Rainer
Jim Blake
Barbarian Records was a beacon of hope in the chaotic music scene of the ’70s in Memphis, when the idealism of the ’60s opened minds and ears to sounds decidedly more freakish, a precursor to what would later be called punk. The label was launched in 1974 by the owner of Yellow Submarine Records, Jim Blake, who passed away yesterday at the Regional One Medical Center while recovering from complications related to a pelvic injury sustained last Friday. He was 75.
Blake was at the center of a scene that included Jim Dickinson, Sid Selvidge, Lee Baker, Jimmy Crossthwait, Alex Chilton, Ardent’s John Fry, Knox Phillips, William Eggleston, and Tav Falco, among others. By his side through much of the decade was Pat Rainer, who exhibited her photographs from the era two years ago at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music.
Yesterday I spoke with Rainer, who now lives in California, about Blake’s importance to the scene and his legendary archive of recorded works by the likes of Dickinson, Lesa Aldridge, the Klitz, and wrestler Jerry Lawler, complemented by his formidable library of LPs, comics and books by others.
Memphis Flyer: What happened? Was Jim Blake in ill health?
Pat Rainer: He fell while he was going into his house Friday evening, and a neighbor got an ambulance to take him to a hospital in Wynne, Arkansas. And people there figured out he had a fractured pelvis. The next morning they helicoptered him over to [Regional One], and he’d been there since Saturday. But then this afternoon he became unresponsive. They couldn’t revive him.
All because of a fractured pelvis?
You know, he had had heart bypass surgery in the fall of last year. And he had done pretty well since then. But in the past month or so, he’d been complaining about having problems with his balance, and having vertigo. On Friday, he was trying to carry a bunch of stuff in his house and he fell. I assume he was carrying comic books or records. Or both. I mean, it’s pretty poetic if that’s what he was carrying, but for all I know he was carrying groceries.
courtesy Mesmery Blake
Jim Blake and daughter Mesmery
This was at his home near Wynne, Arkansas?
Yes. Jim’s mother moved to Arkansas because her family was there. She was from Cherry Valley. Jim moved there when he left L.A. in the late 80s to take care of his mom when she was in failing health. Then his older brother bought a place there later.
You may have worked with Jim Blake longer than anyone in Memphis from that time.
I’ve known Blake since ’68 maybe? ’67 or ’68. I worked for him at Atlantis, which opened in ’68. I don’t know what you know about Atlantis, but it was a trip. That was the predecessor to the Yellow Submarine record shop. It was a house on Poplar, an old brick bungalow. And every room was devoted to a different kind of retail store. There was a record store, a comics store, Mike Ladd had a guitar shop, and there was, of course, a head shop. And somebody built a big light organ and hooked it up to a stereo, and we had all these headphone posts in there. You could sit in there and put the headphones on and watch the light show.
courtesy Pat Rainer
Pat Rainer at Graceland the day after Elvis died
He published an Atlantis newspaper, and he promoted a concert with Spirit at the auditorium, and then he did another one with Donovan. Atlantis preceded Yellow Submarine. In the interim, we had a falling out for a minute because I left him and went to work at Poplar Tunes. How dare I leave him! That’s the story of my life with him. Periods of being estranged because you didn’t do what Jim thought you ought to do, because that’s just the way it was. Then I went back to work for him and Nancy (his ex-wife) at Yellow Submarine. That was when he had what was first called Tennessee Roc newspaper, and then after that it was the Strawberry Fields newspaper.
He had pretty strong opinions. Kind of a firebrand, it seems?
Yeah. We were very passionate about music. That was our main thing. And he did what he could do to spread the word about stuff we heard and thought was important. Everything from David Bowie to Lou Reed to Rod Stewart. With the help of our friend Grover, he got Bowie to do a live interview on FM 100 with Jon Scott, and that really did break Bowie in America. We were into Bowie, let me tell ya. I loved Bowie, but Blake and Grover were cuckoo for coco puffs over him!
So Barbarian Records began while you were working at Yellow Submarine, when Blake decided to put out a record by Jerry Lawler, the wrestler?
Jim Dickinson really gave Blake the confidence and the idea that he could take Lawler into a studio and he could make a record. Dickinson said, “You know, you could make a record on Lawler and sell them at the matches,” and you could see the light go off over Jim’s head. He and I used to take Lawler’s records to the Coliseum and sell ’em in the stands, just walk up and down the aisle and sell them. When Lawler was a bad guy, they would buy ’em and break ’em! And when he became a good guy, they would take ’em and try and get ’em autographed.
I think working with Lawler meant the most to him. But he was really thrilled to work with my friend Randy Romano, who we called Sabu La Teuse. He was a gay white man who sounded like a young Black woman. And I think just being in the studio was what he loved, you know? All the musicians that would come work for him, it was just a blast.
Pat Rainer
Jim Blake smokes a joint while musicians prepare for a recording session, 1970s.
In addition to the handful of records he put out in the ’70s, he had a lot of unreleased recordings, didn’t he?
Yes, and I’d been working with him really hard for the past four or five years to get him to get those tapes out, so we could reissue all the Barbarian stuff on Omnivore Recordings. And he would always start the conversation with, “But I’ve got all these unfinished tracks on Alex Chilton and Sabu and Dickinson!” I’m going, “Jim, can we reissue the stuff that’s already been released? That”s been mixed and mastered? Then we can look at other stuff.” But there was always some reason why he couldn’t get to it.
Just the mindset of thinking he would go in and tweak something from 40 years ago, it’s mind-boggling.
Uh, yeah, like, “I’ve just gotta finish that track, get that one guitar overdub.” [laughs]
courtesy Mesmery Blake
Jim and Mesmery Blake
Robert Gordon went over there and helped him get the door open to the storage trailer where he had all the Barbarian masters. His and Nancy’s daughter Mesmery and I have been trying to get out there and get into it. Then he had to have that heart surgery. And then the pandemic. Robert sent me some shots he took, of piles and piles of stuff in his trailer. It looks very familiar to me. I lived through that for so many years with him. It started off small, and then when he relocated from his small house over there by Memphis State, he moved to a bigger home out there in Raleigh. And he built wall to wall record shelves, where he had to walk through there like a maze. You had to walk sideways. After that, he and I kind of fell out again, so I haven’t seen any of it over there in Arkansas.
It sounds like an amazing library, not just of Barbarian material, but in general.
He collected records and comics and never got rid of any of ’em. He collected books and posters and artwork.
Did he live alone out by Cherry Valley?
Yeah. He’s been living alone out there for a while. He has a cousin that lives down the road. His brother passed away a while ago. For years and years, we’ve called Mesmery the Barbarian Heiress. She’s his only daughter. Jim said when he first looked at her he was mesmerized, so she’s named Mesmery. She moved to Oregon to work in the wine industry and she’s done very well for herself there.
Of all the stuff he worked on, what meant the most to him?
I think anything he worked on with Dickinson. Dickinson was his mentor, like he was mine.
Did Jim Blake do much into the ’80s?
He moved out to LA in the early 80’s to work with Jon Scott, who was doing independent record promotion. Jim and Jon put out a tip sheet for radio called “Scott’s Tissue” with news about new music that went to radio programmers around the country. They also worked with a band called DFX2. They got them signed to MCA and had a record come out that was quite good.
Then he kinda transitioned, and he was working for Jerry Lawler for quite some time. He was driving to Memphis from Cherry Valley three or four days a week, to work for Lawler. Even recently. In fact, Lawler fixed up a place for him to stay at his house, after he got out of the hospital from having that heart surgery. You know, when Jerry was just a kid, Blake would pay him for his artwork. Jerry would draw stuff for our newspapers; he painted the front of the Yellow Submarine with a scene from a comic book. Jim always tried to encourage Jerry. We used to call him the human Xerox machine. Lawler could look at anything and reproduce it. And making those records, Jim was really ahead of his time doing that.
A memorial service in celebration of Jim Blake’s life will be held in Memphis in the near future, according to Mesmery Blake.
Furry Lewis in Stranded In Canton
Telling folks about their past, their cultural heritage, the artists who shaped how we think today, is usually the job of people like me. But writers and documentarians, no matter how hard we try to tell the whole story, are always doomed to tell only part of the tale. We decide what’s most important (which describes what our job entails in a nutshell) and edit out the rest. Rarely do general audiences get to see the unfiltered stuff, the raw material out of which cultural history is made.
In 1976, Memphian William Eggleston was the subject of a blockbuster exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Until that time, color photography was not held in high esteem in academic and “serious” art circles. Eggleston’s haunting, egalitarian photos of the Mid South changed that forever.
At the time, Eggleston had been seriously pursuing photography since the mid-1960s. While he was being feted in the highest circles for his ravishing prints, his interest had turned to video. Sony had just released a brand new video camera that taped to an open-reel deck. It was portable, but just barely. Eggleston got his hands on one and started obsessively shooting anything that was in front of him.
For years, the tapes lay dormant until they were assembled into a film called Stranded in Canton by director Robert Gordon. Today, even the press releases supporting the film refer to it as “infamous”. This is not a work with a narrative arc. It is more like being a fly on the wall at a particularly strange time and place. Memphis attracts eccentrics, and Eggleston hung out with the best of them. And by “best” I mean “weirdest”. Eggleston’s friends included Furry Lewis, Alex Chilton, Tav Falco, and a host of other hard partying artists. The photographer catches them with their guard down—if, indeed they had guards to drop in the first place. Much has been written about that time in Memphis cultural history, but this film puts you in the room with the people who were making that history, warts and all. Imagine Salvador Dali’s home movies, and you have the beginning of a sense of what Stranded in Canton is like
The film will screen tonight (Thursday, May 23rd) as part of the Crosstown Arts weekly film series. After the film, The Alex Chilton Revue Band featuring Ross Johnson and The Klitz will perform period-appropriate music at The Green Room. You can get tickets here at the Crosstown Arts website.
The Real Stuff: William Eggleston’s Stranded In Canton Screens at Crosstown Arts