Thunderstruck

Outfitted by Lansky

By Steve Beard and Troy Meier

Entry 2. Friday, October 15, 2004

Click on photo to enlarge

We woke up late and watched Matt Damon in Rainmaker in our room while we tried to convince ourselves to get our lazy rears out of bed and see the city. Eventually, we stirred from our slumber like Lazarus from his tomb. The lobby of the Peabody is also home to Lansky's, clothier to some of the greatest names in American music, namely Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, B.B. King, Isaac Hayes, and many more.

Troy and I went down and checked out the shop and chatted with Bernard J. Lansky himself (pictured here with Troy), which gives us a one-degree of separation from the King (R.I.P.). Lansky is a character and carries some awesome threads. Too rich for my blood, but Troy bought a shirt. We had a nice chat with a rockabilly chick named Adrienne (pictured below) who works for Lansky. She dug the idea of our trip. I suppose she gets weirdoes like us in all the time going through their rock and roll mid-life crisis. Oh well, at least she was nice about listening to us.

We saw the Indiana Pacers waiting for their team bus in front of our hotel while we were waiting for our Chevy Blazer to be brought up from the parking garage. They were in town for an NBA exhibition game. We went in search of Sun Records, the recording launchpad for Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins -- to mention just a few of the notables (yes, U2 also recorded parts of Rattle and Hum there). I love this place. We have both been here before, but there is no way we can be in Memphis and not check in. It holds a special place for us because we played in a rockabilly roots band twenty years ago called the Belvederes (that was us pictured on the left).

We grew up in Orange County during the emergence of the punk rock movement. We listened to the Adolescents, Agent Orange, and the Germs. Like a handful of other punks, we got into the roots stuff of Los Lobos, X, the Blasters, Social Distortion, and the Stray Cats. We had rockabilly crushes on Maria McKee from Lone Justice and Emmy Lee from the Red Devils, who the OC Weekly once referred to as "an underfed Ava Gardner in cowboy boots."

We also began hearing old recordings from Carl Perkins, Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, and Elvis. The Belvederes was a tribute to all those early players, and a great way to meet cute girls.

Sun is a great kind of mom-and-pop type of museum, especially if you have ever visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland or the Rock and Soul Museum in Memphis run by the Smithsonian. Sun lacks the corporate rock feel. It is kind of the greasy spoon of rock memorabilia. The recording studio (which you get to go in) is virtually untouched from the time that all the greats performed in the room. The Sun tour used to be donation-based, but now they are charging $9.00. Do it anyway. It is a great place, and the birth of so much that is great about American music.

After clamoring through the cds and other Sun trinkets, we headed to Ellen's Soul Kitchen for lunch. Be forewarned: Don't be in a hurry to get your food at Ellen's; they sure aren't in any hurry. Nevertheless, it was awesome. Troy got two huge Flintstone-looking pork chops with a side of greens. I got fried chicken and okra and spaghetti. I don't particularly care for okra, but I didn't want to appear to be too white, as if it was not readily apparent.

Our orders came out separately, with about a 5 minute gap. It was piping hot. Nothing is processed. It is made like you would make food at home, except way better. We were stuffed and happy.

We toured the Stax Museum of American Soul Music which is a definite must-see in Memphis in addition to experiencing Graceland, Sun Records, and hearing the Rev. Al Green preach at his Full Gospel Tabernacle. The Stax Museum was much more than we had anticipated. We happened to have hit it during their fund-raising Soul-A-Thon so there were marching bands and the team mascot from the Memphis Riverkings hockey team (pictured below).

Stax records launched the soul careers of the Mar-keys, Sam and Dave, Booker T and the MG’s, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, and Otis Redding. It was a tiny label that began in 1960 using an abandoned movie theater in a run-down neighborhood. Ironically, the label was begun by a white brother and sister, Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton. “I had scarcely seen a black till I was grown,” Stewart has said. “I didn’t know when I started, I didn’t know there was such a thing as Atlantic Records. I didn’t know there was a Chess Records or Imperial. I had no desire to start Stax Records, I had no dream of anything like that. I just wanted music. Just anything to be involved with music – one way or another.”

There is an old unattributed poem that was used on early Stax publicity release that may have explained its magic: “There’s on old saying / That goes like so / Keep trying / And you’ll get where you want to go / When things get rough / Buckle down / Don’t give up / You can conquer the world with your original sound. They knocked at the front door / And couldn’t get in / They heard a sound and went to the back door / Thus the sound let them in.”

The museum is a brand new 27,000 square feet building that pays homage to the great soul musicians that have come from Memphis. Come on, where else are you going to see a fully-reconstructed 100-year old Mississippi Delta church and Isaac Hayes’ 1972 gold-trimmed, peacock blue “Superfly” Cadillac? These two juxtaposed items speak so much about the roots and fruits of soul music.

In his magisterial book Sweet Soul Music, Peter Guralnick says that a gospel singer is “often described as ‘worrying’ the audience, teasing it, working the crowd until it is on the verge of exploding, until strong men faint and women start speaking in tongues. This is commonly referred to as ‘house wrecking.’ In soul music, perhaps the last of the great vocal arts, there is this same sense of dramatic structure, even if the message does not always provide the same unambiguous release.”

Next door to the museum is the Stax Music Academy, a superb learning center that offers year-round after school music programs for urban youth who live in the at-risk neighborhood known as Soulsville. As the promo literature states: “Whether the Academy produces the next Isaac Hayes or Mavis Staples, the student’s experience enriches their lives in ways that cannot be measured by mere stardom.”

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