old-old Memphis

[bloke]

back when the place was known for cool, instead of for murders.

Most of the gods of Stax are in this video.

I used to work on Wayne Jackson's trumpet and flugelhorn...

[Three Valves]

Even influential in early Ska.

Check out the bone featured on this version, baby!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTVByX-s-EY

[bloke]

Even influential in early Ska.

Check out the bone featured on this version, baby!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTVByX-s-EY

VERY fine playing, but the OVERALL version lacks excitement...and is too "swingy".

[Jim Williams]

You can talk about music all you want, but here is the REAL essence of Memphis

[bort2.0]

Old old old is the ancient pyramid of Memphis

[Jim Williams]

Old old old is the ancient pyramid of Memphis

...and Memphis, Indiana has a population of 695.

[bloke]

You can talk about music all you want, but here is the REAL essence of Memphis

He lived "sorta" beside/behind my junior high shop teacher...
A really valuable and wide lot was nothing but turf, a paved entrance, and a really tall wall (with radio-controlled gate) to his house that (sorta) faced the street behind (but with those original driveway(s) jack-hammered away, when he scraped the original house(s) and built his there.

Just as with other "celebrities" (though my shop teacher and I remained close friends until he died twenty years ago or so), I never asked my shop teacher to introduce me to his neighbor.

bloke "I don't understand what people think they're accomplishing, when they shake hands with celebrities and have their pictures taken with them...I NEVER bother them, when backing them up at gigs...They don't know me - They don't want to know me; I don't know them - I don't want to know them."

oh yes...and this:
Hollywood - politics for the stupid
D.C. - celebrity for the ugly

[bloke]

When I walked away from studio teaching at KU (just too much freelance work to ignore, back in Memphis), this stuff was being built on an island just across from the shoreline of downtown Memphis...an outdoor 5000-seat amphitheater (many big stars, etc.) and a monorail to get over there. This is where I worked with Mancini, backed up the Moody Blues, etc., etc., etc... There was even a full model of the entire Mississippi River on that island (with accurate to-scale representations of depths) with water in it, where people took off their shoes and waded. ...along with shops/restaurants/etc...

All of that is still there, never used today, and it's all crumbling away...



Just after the end of the 1980's was the beginning of the end of Memphis, Tennessee...and it's not just "inside the Memphis city limits".
This week - just as with (third-world) Jackson, Mississippi - the fanciest-schmanciest next-to-Memphis/same-county suburb has had its water supply messed up (a long story: all of which involves, incompentency/carelessness/stupidity/idiocy/corruption). I've tried to tell friends/relatives that just moving out of the city - into a suburb - isn't good enough...They are all in denial.

[bloke]

You can talk about music all you want, but here is the REAL essence of Memphis

Jerry lived (lives?) in a (formerly, I suppose...) nicer neighborhood. (All the super-elite private schools - with nice-car-priced annual tuition rates - are along that street.) His house was on a double lot BEHIND my 8th-grade shop-teacher's house (technically, on the street behind my shop-teacher's street) - all privacy-fenced-in - with the solid-gate entrance (no entrance on Jerry's own street) being yet a THIRD lot on the same street as my shop-teacher's house.

interesting related old article:

https://rajah.com/2004/2061

[bloke]

Old old old is the ancient pyramid of Memphis

THIS boondoggle (intended to be a bassebaw ureenuh, and ended up being a bait shop)...??

[bloke]

Back when I was a kid (up until I was no longer) this place was southeast of Memphis just barely into Mississippi.
It took a good hour to get there from my house, but today (with all the freeways and freeway-like roads) I can get there in well under an hour - even from out here at blokeplace.

Basically, someone discovered some natural springs on their property, dug a large pond, brought in epic truckloads of white Florida sand, installed a square "hangout" float in the middle, a very tall slide in the shallow part, in the deepest part a regular diving board and a high dive, a fountain (where the "big boys" would play "king of the hill" type water fights), a gazebo + jukebox for dancing, a snack bar, a big parking area, they left shade mature trees in perfect places, and Memphians went "to the beach" all summer whenever they could.

My Mom took some friends and me once a year. She was a very attractive woman, even though - when she first begin taking me - she was probably 46 or so. She would wear her one-piece swimsuit, but - as she approached 50 - she decide to wear shorts and a short-sleeve shirt. I'm sure she took my older sister and brother in early years - they are both over a decade older than me.

I remember - one year - that silly Herman's Hermits song "Henry the Eighth" (based on an old drinking song) being a hit, and someone playing it over and over and over - up the hill at the gazebo. Based on when it was a hit, I guess I was 9, so that trip down there had to have been the summer after 3rd grade.

Decades ago, the land was sold, the spring was diverted into a nearby lakes, the pond was filled in, and several luxury homes were built where Maywood had been.





more pics:

https://historic-memphis.com/memphis/ma ... ywood.html


later (when it was first filled in and houses were built)...but before property owners planted trees around their new houses:



As can be seen, the area has become one of the nicer "not in Memphis, and not even in Tennessee" places to live - yet work in Memphis:

[MiBrassFS]

Outside the context of this thread and the fact that Joe knows Memphis, I would have easily believed that this was photoshopped.

THIS boondoggle (intended to be a bassebaw ureenuh, and ended up being a bait shop)...??

[bloke]

Some won't like this...so it's offsite...
https://tinyurl.com/TruthThusTriggerWarning

[bloke]

This was as late as the 80's - 90's, but still before the daily multiple murders...
(The beginning of the end of Memphis was when a mayoral election was stolen in the wee hours on election night of 1991.)

This was Mr. Martin.
He was at the same busy-ish intersection every evening during rush hour, and would wave at everyone on their way home from work.




For those who know Memphis, this was an intersection on the back side of East High School - the corner of Walnut Grove Road and Holmes Street (just outside a large neighborhood of somewhat-to-quite "grand" houses).

East High School was built by Boss Crump (of W.C. Handy fame) and looks like a palace...It was the "new school out east of town" that he could show off to his out-of-town guests and muckety-mucks.




Boss Crump: earlier and later

[Three Valves]

I relistened to “last night” above and thought the chords were again similar to a Ska song I remembered “Sock it to ‘em JB” by The Specials. I never knew that track was a cover.

[bloke]

This is AM band (WHBQ) deejay George Klein and 16-year-old Cybill Shephard in 1968 (age 16 - winner of the Miss Teenage Memphis pageant).




This is probably from the following Saturday on TV. My guess is that she was on Klein's LOCAL TV show (that was sort of a LOCAL version of Dick Clark's "American Bandstand") which was called "Talent Party". It highlighted local emerging bands such as the Box Tops, Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, The Gentry's (Larry Raspberry lived in the Treadwell district, but somehow went to Kingsbury), The Jesters, The Crackerjacks, etc.





...Klein had a set of dancers - on his Talent Party TV show (on WHBQ TV - same call letters as his AM station - WHBQ), who would dance when the bands would play - called the "WHB-Cuties"... (picture below from the same era: 1967)





In the 60's, WHBQ (TV) was the "cheesy/alsoran" (ABC) network station, but they had the best (cheesy) stuff, such as "Sivad" (a vampire character - Davis spelled backwards) who hosted the late-Saturday-night scary movie show, as well as Saturday morning "studio wrestling".

I remember a 1960's jingle that ran for years on that TV station, attempting to present themselves as the station to watch various sports:




That (AM radio) station played top-40, and Klein was a F.O.E. (Friend of Elvis).
At Memphis State, we weren't particularly fond of him, and - when he would show up are marching band practices occasionally to say "hi" to Tom Ferguson (c. 1974) the whole 200 pc. band would hiss. Klein passed away about five years ago (in his 80's) and - until just before his death - was still doing a not-prime-time local TV show where he would interview old-fogey local musicians of the past.

(Tom Ferguson was our band director, amazing jazz pianist, arranger, and was the pianist on the first Matteson/Phillips TubaJazz Consort L.P., which was produced roughly around that same time - c. 1976)

Cybill went to (very fancy architecture, shown previously - ordered by "Boss" Crump, so he could show it off to his out-of-town friends...etc.) East High School, which (by the 60's and through the 70's) was widely known as the "druggies and tarts" school...whereas my high school (Kingsbury) was known as "the redneck school", one called Treadwell as known as "the roughneck school" (knives/white gangs/etc.), and other high schools had reputations that I'd best not discuss.

Both the East High and Treadwell districts were adjacent to the Kingsbury district, and - actually - my elementary school district overlapped all three, so only about a third of my elementary school buds went on to Kingsbury with me.

Two years later in 1970 (barely old enough to legally do so) Cybill was filming the nude scene in "The Last Picture Show" (released - 1971).

[Three Valves]

Reminds me of the fictitious Corny Collins and his hair hoppers from the movie Hairspray.

Did you have Roller Derby in addition to wrasslin’?