#things to do in memphis

[karenpulferfocht]

The Stax Documentary

A SPECIAL PLACE IN MY HEART FOR STAX

STAX ARTISTS THROUGH THE YEARS

SOULSVILLE: The neighborhood around Stax, and home to many musical greats!

It’s no secret that what made me fall in love with Memphis and made me want to stay in Memphis for so many years was the music. The people, yes, the warm climate, yes, the fantastic professional opportunities, yes, the central location, yes and the low cost of living, yes. But the music-- absolutely yes!

I‘ve always loved jazz and the blues. My father entertained me with silly songs any child would love, like Slim Gaillard- Potato Chips and “Flat Foot Floogie.” He went to an elite school in the northeast and had to listen to this “race” music secretly, as it was frowned upon.

Memphis is home to The Blues Foundation because of the rich blues musical history and heritage. Memphis and the Mississippi Delta are like Mecca for blues fans and blues pilgrims.

As long as I’ve lived here, I have noticed that Europeans were very knowledgeable about Memphis music, much more so that many Americans. Americans came to Memphis to see Graceland.  But it’s always been the Europeans who were savvy on the blues, R&B, and the soul music that has its roots in Memphis. The Stax Documentary explains this.

There is the Poretta Soul Festival, in Rufus Thomas Park the third week of July, every year, in Porretta Terme, province of Bologna. Graziano Uliani, frequently comes to Memphis seeking out new local talent for his festival.

I have a vivid memory of Rufus Thomas telling me how excited he was that they were naming a park after him.

It’s the music created here in this region that draws people from all over the world, to Memphis.  

In the last decade, Memphis has risen to the top of places to visit by influential travel magazines like National Geographic and Condé Nast . “Memphis is one of two destinations from the U.S. highlighted in Condé Nast Traveler's “23 Best Places to Go in 2023,” which covers 22 countries and six continents,” a Commercial Appeal story reported.

I got to know Stax artist Rufus Thomas when I first moved here from Chicago. Rufus captivated me right away and quickly became of of my favorite entertainers. He was SO MUCH FUN! He was an amazing entertainer with roots in vaudeville. He could still get a crowd going with Funky Chicken and Walking the Dog, into his 80’s. I have many fun memories of seeing him perform on Beale Street. He used to say, “If you could be black for one Saturday night on Beale Street, never would you want to be white again.”

His daughter Carla, who still lives in Memphis, was also a successful Stax artist. You can still find Carla out buying flowers, or as a guest at one of the many Memphis music events held over the years. Carla is Stax royalty. She had the good fortune to record with Otis Redding before he was killed in a plane crash in 1967.

Redding’s music is so soulful, it just pierces right into your heart.

As with many great artists, he died way too young at age 26.  Stax music was experiencing some real success when Redding and many band members died in a plane crash.

As a photojournalist in Memphis, over the years I covered the only survivor of that plane crash, Ben Cauley.  Other influential Stax artists like Booker T. and the MG’s, Isaac Hayes, Albert King, Marva Staples, David Porter, Steve Cropper and Sam Moore have all been in my camera’s viewfinder.

The documentary goes into the run of bad luck that followed Redding’s death, the assassination of MLK in Memphis and the signing of a bad contract by Stax owner Jim Stewart, who in a very Memphis way, trusted the people he was working with.

By the time I had come to Memphis, Stax had closed. But there was an appreciation for the Stax contribution to Memphis music legacy.

The documentary helped me appreciate more deeply the people, their experience and the music that is so deeply woven into the fabric and culture of Memphis.

I covered the opening of the Stax Museum and the music programs they had for the kids of Memphis. These programs are still teaching our city’s youth about the magical musical legacy here while cultivating the next musical generation. I went to New York City to cover the Stax Kids when they played at Lincoln Center and I also was on assignment when Memphis Music, including several Stax artists, Justin Timberlake and harmonica great Charlie Musselwhite were honored at the White House by Michelle and President Obama.

Wayne Jackson , and his wife Amy, were good friends of ours. He was one of the Memphis Horns.  Jackson and partner Andrew Love were on hundreds of Top Ten and Number One hits, gold and platinum records. They were considered the Rolls Royce of horn sections. Jackson fully appreciated the experience and he tells about it here in this short video I did before he passed away.

Memphis is just such a musical treasure box that never ceases to amaze and entertain me. Living here you run into these folks here and there. Most of them have always been very accessible.

“Indeed, many musical luminaries either hailed from or resided in the Soulsville neighborhood,” writes Alex Greene in Memphis Magazine.

Even though I felt like I knew the Stax story and many of the players and much of the music, the Stax documentary opened my eyes with more intimate details, historical glimpses, and great storytelling to help me appreciate what the artists and producers went through, good and bad to create and capture the “Memphis sound.”

By Karen Pulfer Focht ©2024

Memphis Photojournalist

https://www.karenpulferfocht.com/blog/waynejackson-memphishorns

[mrsthunderkin]

Memphis is the drama

[hooked-on-elvis]

Elvis Presley and Gene Smith (his cousin), and Elvis and Alan Fortas (his friend and Memphis Mafia member) during photo shoot for "King Creole" in 1958.

Alan Fortas (nicknamed "Hog Ears" by Elvis), said about his pictures with EP: "To prove to my friends I was actually making movies with Elvis Presley, I had wallet size pictures like these made up from shots taken at promotional photo sessions for 'King Creole' held at Paramount studios 1958."

Elvis and friend, Alan Fortas. Early March 1958, at the Paramount Studios in Hollywood, CA.

[ereborne]

Song of the Day: March 18

"Break Down Here" by Julie Roberts

[jazy3]

So this is a chance to do something good! The Innocence Project is fighting for further DNA testing to formally clear the West Memphis Three, including Damien Echols who was the inspiration for beloved rocker Eddie Munson! While Eddie may be fictional Damien, Jason, and Jessie are very real people who deserve justice. Signing a petition takes 5 seconds and could make a real difference!

Sign the petition: http://surl.li/jgvqr

[frosteee-variation]

are there any details in the drafty shipshape fic u wrote that we missed 👁

(this is the fic being referenced!!)

OKAY ACTUALLY I GOT REALLY EXCITED WHEN I SAW YOU ASKED THIS AND I LOOKED AND I CAN’T RECALL??

I DON’T THINK SO????

arguably you could say the lil tidbit at the start is like. the. the part like

This was not their ship.

The deck rocked beneath their boots at a pace they were all-too-familiar with, the planks creaking with the same give that they knew they always had, the waves hitting the hull in arcs that they practically knew by heart; but this was not their ship.

^^^^^ this one

is because they’ve witnessed the same type of scene so many times and also because of the curse thing they quite literally know exactly what will happen every time but I feel that one’s more upfront about it???

I typically do it for longer ones dhfbfbg,,

but!!! if I add any in any others I will definitely probably talk about them!!

like I know in the Knight/Abacus thing I’m writing there’s a brief mention by The Knight of how the halls feel “empty” and how a sort of “hollow feeling” sort of follows them everywhere they go

and I 100% intended for that to be a minor implication that a) the hall of champions is a literal part of them in a weird sort of god/domain way and b) they are a Trojan Horse so that emptiness is very literal in that case

[babaroqa]

missing will hours

[pinolitas]

oh! in other news I'm now a fan of the department of transportation's commissioner. she was the keynote speaker at my friends graduation today and she had a real good speech about being good at the little things to be able to make change with the hard things

[septembersghost]

Ohno... FOB faux pas- red vinyl of MM- twitter. com/3cheers4mikey/status/1644139341382336517?s=20 twitter. com/thxu4_the_venom/status/1644351043063496704?s=20

i remember this happening with...folklore, i think? where people ordered another record but it played that instead. i confess it makes me laugh. mistakes happen in pressing!

[novanhistorian]

Every day I must act normal despite knowing how the contrast between Memphis’s and Sana’s views of authority all traces back to how they see the same quasi-omniscient system exploited and by whom.

[srorgana1]

my mental state

[universewolfpup]

someone force me to make those darn fnaf au and Memphis & Friends blogs dosh garnit !!

[weekend-conspiracy-theorist]

nothing matches the fury of having the stupid fucking google assistant activate on my phone when I KNOW I have turned that fucking thing off MORE THAN ONCE

[waffled0g]

Everyone gets “The 90s” look wrong and I hate it

Couple years ago I saw these two board games at the store back to back. Well, not saw them per se, but ya know. Spied them out of the corner of my eye. And for a moment without reading the text, I couldn’t tell you which was which decade at first. Funny. Either they were in a rush to get these out the door or they wanted their throwback trivia game boxes to look uniform. I didn’t think too much of it.

Only, from then on I started seeing it MORE. Every time someone markets a 90s or 80s throwback...

Goddammit they’re identical! What??! How did we let this happen? As a 90s survivor and a designer, this drives me up a wall.

Look, I know I’m late to the party to complain about “the 90s look” when we’re just starting to get sick of the Y2K nostalgia train. But c’mon, the 90s were not The 80s: Part Two™ 

Trust me when I say that we weren’t all wearing neon trapezoids up until the year 2000. The 90s look being peddled is so specific to the tail end of the 80s and an early early part of the 90s - a part of the 90s when it wouldn’t stop being the 80s. This is Memphis design being conflated with the wrong decade.

Keep reading for a long ass graphic design history lesson and pictures of old soda and fast food.

Specifically, the look is Memphis Milano, self-named by the Italian design house Memphis Group. Starting in the early to mid 80s, they made all sorts of furniture, fabrics and sculptures that were like a Piet Mondrian grid painting under heavy radiation. Their whole deal was defying the standards of existing industrial design up to that point on purpose. Chairs had weird arches, bookcases would be in strange alien colors, unusual materials like plastic or elastic were used in place of metal or wood, that sorta thing.

Memphis quickly became the signature look for the decade. You can tell something’s influenced by Memphis design from it’s telltale trademarks:

Clashing, neon colors.

Use of diametric shapes.

Contrasting patterns like zebra print stripes, confetti squiggles and checkerboards.

It wasn’t long before Memphis Milano-inspired design was everywhere in 80s pop culture:

It was a special time, yes.

I was a kindergartener at the tail end of the 80s, so I knew Memphis mostly through the lens of kids media. Toys, clothes, games, tv shows used it like candy colored catnip. Cable channel Nickelodeon more or less adopted the Memphis aesthetic as their signature in-house style and practically built a monument to it at a Florida theme park:

I think this is why folks mistake what decade Memphis is representative of - 90s staples like Nick, Saved By The Bell, Fresh Prince - they all stayed around much longer than the design trend’s expiration date. 

Couple that notion with the fact that companies are slow followers to design trends. Something gets popular and they want to get on the bandwagon? Gotta wait for the ink to dry, gotta wait for the production molds to be made. It would take a few years for them to completely work Memphis outta their system.

Now, this is not to say Memphis is bad! Personally I’m a fan of the aesthetic, if my neon-drenched artwork wasn’t a tip-off already. But it is a trend, and trends never last forever.

So what took the Memphis Milano look down for good? This part’s up for debate, but I personally think it had something to do with this dude:

It’s that grunge music from Seattle that’s so popular with the kids these days dontchaknow.

Once Smells Like Teen Spirit hit in 1991, the Nirvana tone drove the rest of the decade. Clean geometry became weathered, grainy and organic. Bright neon pastels became more bold. Bubblegum pop music sounded fake and manufactured. Attitude and apathy was authentic. Whatever.

Things got grungy. Things got grimy. Olestra was invented.

I think the best way to visualize this transition is how Cherry Coke entered the decade and how it left it:

1992 Memphis on the left, 1998 grunge junkie on the right. Fitting that the 90s would end with a design that looked like Darth Maul’s lungs.

Okay, so what should 90s retro design look like?

Continue on to PART TWO! Spoilers: No VHS filters or vaporwave needed, but maybe bring an antacid.

[vecationist]

Discovering Memphis: A Weekend Guide to the Best Things to See and Do in Tennessee's Music City

Memphis, Tennessee is a city steeped in history and culture, with a vibrant music scene, delicious food, and an array of exciting activities for visitors to enjoy. If you’re planning a weekend getaway to Memphis, here are some must-see sights and experiences to add to your itinerary. Day 1: Start your day off with a visit to the iconic Graceland Mansion, the former home of Elvis Presley. Take a…

[paper-mario-wiki]

Who are you?

My name is Scout! I'm an Anthropologist and a trans woman living in Seattle. I like playing Team Fortress 2, and cuddling with my dog, an Australian Shepard named Scarlet. I smoke weed with enough frequency to be considered a "stoner," and I tend to spend a lot of time by myself on the computer learning about things that interest me.

I enjoy collecting things like weird old corporate knick-knacks (viagra shaped wristwatch, t-mobile spatula, camel cigarette emergency flashlight), and vintage jackets. I lived in Japan for 3 years, where I went to school at Doshisha University in Kyoto, but came back to the USA due to isolation during the beginning of the pandemic making my mental health deteriorate rapidly, since it started after only 3 semesters of being there.

I used to be a livestreamer and let's player with a few different channels and podcasts, but a year and a half ago I stopped because I didn't enjoy what being a content creator meant. Today, I'm going to eat fried chicken for breakfast, and later on I'll probably record some Sans and Papyrus voice acting for an animation someone hired me for. I also used to do Undertale voice acting, which is actually how I got my start.

I've also been known as Clown Depot, Smaverage Joe, TheMGMjr, Googoo, and a lot of online handles as the years have gone by. You may have seen me in Real-Time Fandub as Memphis Tennessee, Mr. X the Librarian, Mikeiplier, Storm the Albatross, and Da Devil from Da Bible. You may have also seen some of my viral tumblr posts, like Genghis Kanghis, Music For Unproductive Zoomers, "a chess move called The Frenchman's Cumsock", "never ask a genie for raspberry crowns, because that's a type of wasp", "that's pretty con-fuckin-venient, I'm sorry for doubting you 7-eleven, have a good night", or a few others.

Hope this helps.