ARTICLES

A View Over Memphis

12 August 2010

Author: Jack Barlow

I never truly knew what a ghetto was until I went to Memphis. It was a beautifully sunny and perfectly spotless day when I first stumbled upon it as I was out walking, strolling the leafy streets of downtown Memphis, antebellum house after antebellum house, until I made a wrong turn and, suddenly, things didn’t seem so spotless anymore. I was told later that it had been abandoned years ago, in haste, the aftermath of a vicious gang war that had spread wildly out of control, but whatever had happened it was still there; a whole inner-city block of apartments, houses where hundreds of people, families, loners, whoever, once lived in community, but now was abandoned to all but the elements and doped up crack-heads. There is often something strange about abandoned places at the best of times, but this was sinister, melancholy, violent and, above all, deeply wrong. Looking at the looming houses with peeling paint, broken windows, yet still with ‘for rent’ sings on some, all in the heart of mid-town Memphis, one thing became pretty clear: South Auckland is not a ghetto. This was.

And so it goes in Memphis. Of course, the city was not always in such a state. In the mid 1960s, Memphis was one of the leading centres in the thriving civil rights movement, with protests, riots, and, most famously, the assassination of Martin Luther King at the downtown Lorraine Motel in April 1968. Even before then it had a healthy reputation: up until the 60s it was known as a fairly quiet, medium sized town, even being recognized as the United States’ “quietest, cleanest and safest city” on several occasions throughout the 1950s. And with people like legendary bluesman Furry Lewis cleaning the streets at the time, it begs the question: just what sort of paradise was this place?

That was a long time ago, and about the only time you would now hear the word ‘paradise’ used in conjunction with the word ‘Memphis’ would most likely be whilst referring to a midtown strip club. Memphis is a town of faded glory, living off the remains and memories of its glorious musical past rather than anything even remotely in the present. It is even easy to spot the change through Memphis song titles: “Memphis Beat” from the 1960s versus “Can’t go Back to Memphis” from 2009. Beale Street, once the epicenter of American music and the home of the blues is now (excepting BB King’s wonderful blues club) no more than a tourist trap, while Stax Records closed in 1981. Even Furry Lewis died a long time before that.

This is all a trifle unfair though, because to focus solely on the present and ignore Memphis’ past, and especially its musical past, is to overlook what has made the city so special. And what a past, too: the sweet, Southern soul of Stax Records, Beale Street (the home of the blues), Sun Studio, and the knowledge that, although they may now be broken and tatty, once upon a time bluesmen, men like BB King, Leadbelly, Robert Johnson, flocked to those very streets to, as it happened, change the course of the 20th century popular music.
But, as great as all that is, none of it ever had such a big (and lasting) impact on the city as did the King. Although Elvis was not originally from Memphis (he hailed from Tupelo, Mississippi), these days Elvis and Memphis are more or less synonymous. Indeed, Graceland is still, to this day, Memphis’ biggest tourist attraction.

But I never went to Graceland. It was expensive, I was broke, and the thought of peering at, say, Elvis’s couch with a bunch of middle aged, horned glasses-wearing couples from Nebraska was about as enticing as it sounds. Instead, I spent my last few moments in town in a more low key (yet arguably more authentic) salute to The King, lolling about in the shadows underneath the famous Elvis statue at the upper end of Beale Street on a late Friday afternoon. As the sun set, the statue stood out against the Mississippi River, throwing a shadow over Beale Street and downtown Memphis just the way Elvis did in real life. Memphis may never be quite what it used to, but it will always be special. And it will always be the home of The King.