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Published: October 13th 2008
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Suggested Listening for this Entry: "Mystery Train" by Little Junior's Blue Flames (aka Junior Parker), "Get Rhythm" by Johnny Cash, "Haunted House" by Gene Simmons (no, not Kiss' Gene Simmons), "Respect" by Otis Redding and "Love and Happiness" by Al Green.
Suggested Food and Drink for this Entry: Find a real, old school diner. Order a cheeseburger, fries and a large coke. If you're feeling fiesty, pull out that half pint of rum or Jack from your back pocket and spice up your coke.
Trying to sum up the entire music history of Memphis is difficult to do in one museum, let alone one blog entry. But, let's hope I can give you a taste of the sounds of Memphis and the surrounding areas of western Tennessee, eastern Arkansas and the Mississippi Delta and what the Memphis Rock N Soul Museum represents. One side note to this entry, the museum did not allow photography, thus there are no accompanying photos with this blog entry.
The Memphis Rock 'n' Soul Museum was organized on April 29, 2000 as a joint project between the Smithsonian Institution and the National Museum of American History. It was the first ever joint project entered by into the Smtihsonian. The museum opened in its Beale Street/Fed Ex Forum location in 2004.
Upon entering the Memphis Rock 'N Soul Museum, you view a short movie that is an introduction to Memphis music and the people, places and events that lead up to Memphis becoming one of the most influential, if not the most influential, city in the history of American music. The movie features clips of interviews with such infleuntial figures as Sam Phillips, Carl Perkins and Rufus Thomas. After viewing the movie, you enter the museum where each visitor is given his / her own peronal headseat which contains information on each exhibit. As the visitor comes to each exhibit, the visitor can hear a full explanation of the items in the exhibit and what they represent. At various stops throughout the museum, there are vintage jukeboxes. Each jukebox has a list of ten songs influential to the musical history of Memphis which the visitor can dial up on his / her headset and listen to in their entirety.
The first exhibit in the museum focuses on the culture of the rural areas surrounding Memphis and how that lifesytyle came to influence the musicians who were raised and / or lived in those areas. The exhibit details the hardships endured by both blacks and whites while they were scractching out livings as sharecroppers or in other manual labor jobs. This difficult way of living, combined with the influences of the church and religion, racism and the escapes provided by entertainment by juke joints and the radio set the scene for the musical revolutions of the 50's and 60's that were centered in Memphis.
The second exhibit presents the rural music from the 30's and 40's that influenced those who were living in the areas around Memphis and who were about to converge on Memphis beginning in the early 50's. The exhibit dutifully explains the cross pollination that was happening as blacks listened to radio programs such as the Grand Ole Opry and whites heard the sounds of local blues musicians. And underlying all this was gospel music.
After viewing the first two exhibits, visitors then move onto an exhibit detailing the social climate in Memphis in the late 40's and early 50's. The exhibit tells of how displaced black sharecroppers began to descend on Memphis and how Beale St. became the social center for the black community. At the same time, WDIA became the first radio station in the country to have an all black on air staff presenting programming aimed at the African American population. Among the earliest on air personalities at WDIA were B.B. King and Rufus Thomas. The combination of Beale St. and WDIA gave blacks musicians outlets for their performances. Also at this time, many young whites in the area began tuning into WDIA and being influenced by the R&B records being programmed by the station.
These first three exhibits set the scene for the exhibits that follow, the first of which being one on the Sun Records label which was founded by Sam Phillips. Sun and its predecssor, the Memphis Recording Service, were the springboard for numerous American musical legends. Just a short list is Howlin' Wolf, Ike Turner, Rufus Thomas, B.B. King, Johny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Conway Twitty, and of course, Elvis Presley. I'll detail the history of Sun in a later entry on my visit to the Sun Studio.
Following the exhibit on Sun, the museum explores the second musical revolution to come out of Memphis, soul. While soul is in no way exclusive to Memphis and its two stellar soul labels, Stax and Hi, soul did have some of its best and most innonvative artists come from the Memphis scene. I'll discuss the Stax and Hi labels in later blog entries about my visit to the Stax museum, but it important to note Stax brought Isaac Hayes, Otis Redding, the Staple Singers, Wilson Pickett, Booker T. and the MG's and Johnnie Taylor, among others, onto the American music scene. The Hi label introduced Al Green, Ann Peebles, Otis Clay and Syl Johnson to the American public.
The final exhibits in the Rock 'n' Soul museum focus on the social changes of the 1960's and Memphis' role in them. The exhibits give a glimpse into the roll played by the music and the musicians during this time of change.
I highly recommend the Memphis Rock 'n' Soul Museum be the first stop in Memphis for any visitor to the city who wants to see and understand one of the most influential areas in this history of American music. While no museum can fully cover each detail in such a broad swath of American culture, the museum gives an excellent overview of the people, time and places that helped revolutionize American music in the 1950's and 1960s. You won't regret visiting this museum.
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