Peeling Back the Layers of Time in Memphis

We did a lot in a short amount of time in Memphis. I’d been there many times before, but my wife had not. We made pit stops by 1372 Overton Park, Graceland and the Lorraine Hotel before doing tours at Stax, Sun and the Museum of Rock & Soul (a Smithsonian museum at the FedEx Forum) and then walking down to the river at Beale Street where they pulled Jeff Buckley’s body from the water.

All of those things are important, but the two places that impacted me the most were Sun Studio and the Museum of Rock & Soul. They touched me for the same reason, but in different ways.

At Sun, I felt similar to how I felt at Norman Petty Studios in Clovis, NM or at FAME in Muscle Shoals, you hear those songs as you’re standing in the same room they were recorded and there’s a part of me, whether in reality or in my imagination, that is transported back in time to that moment. I can see everyone walking around, Sam Phillips yelling at people, Elvis shaking his head, Jerry Lee mouthing off… but maybe that’s all influenced by the scene in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story where Dewey about blows it and John Michael Higgins’ character gives him one more chance because he has so much respect for those “nice Jewish fellows”… “what can it hurt?”

It’s a little overwhelming at times. I admit, I’m moved to tears standing behind the piano that Jerry Lee left a cigar stain in and hearing “Great Balls of Fire”.

The Museum of Rock & Soul was a little closer to home. They talked about black and white sharecroppers living side by side and how they shared their music with one another. They didn’t say it directly, but they shared their lives with one another. My grandfather was born into a family of sharecroppers in Tennessee, so I know, at least from first hand accounts, what life was like for these folks. There’s this great misconception from modern urbanites about the South that whites and blacks were always at odds - it’s just not true. While there’s no denying certain obvious elements of American history, the reality is it was the elite whites vs. the poor blacks and poor whites. I’m not denying the difference in life of whites and blacks during the Jim Crow era, simply stating that for poor whites, you had much more in common with the blacks than you did the wealthy whites. At the end of the day, green is always more important than white. They worked the same jobs on the same farms side-by-side with one another. It is kind of hard to have any kind of superiority complex in that situation.

What that illustrates is obvious to me: Politicians don’t do anything but inflame race relations, Jesus and rock and roll are what broke down the imaginary barriers between the races. We worship the same God and we experience the same pains and joys in life, which we express through music. There’s no such thing as “white music” or “black music” - it belongs to all of us. Eric Clapton belonged to the blues in the same way a young Chuck Berry felt like he belonged to the Grand Ol’ Opry and The Louisiana Hayride as a kid.

I think about the huge cultural barriers that existed at the time and how these men and women stepped through it and it saddens me to think of people today, like Pink, saying she doesn’t want Trump supporters listening to her music. She must not think enough of her art for it to be worth their while. I don’t recall reading where Aretha or Marvin ever said they didn’t want white people listening to their music. They didn’t want their music to divide, they wanted it to unite. I think we’d all do ourselves a favor to revisit our ancestors of just a few generations ago, maybe they knew a thing or two.

We ended our time in West Tennessee by paying respects to Chris Bell. He had his struggles for sure, but his membership in the 27 Club was bad timing and providence, not drugs or suicide. He never got to see how he influenced generations of songwriters. His lack of success certainly weighed on him, but he was making music and working at his family’s restaurant and if not for the car crash, he would most certainly have lived his dream. It’s not there for all of us, but it’s important to remember, we can't control how the would responds to our art, all we can control is how much we put into our art. We have the responsibility of doing the absolute best we can, working as hard as we can with the talent the Lord gave us, but we have zero control over how people receive that art.

We need to slow down every once awhile and appreciate where we are and how far we’ve come. We have our own battles to face, but it’ll be hard to move forward if we keep re-fighting battles that have already been won. It is why history is so important. It’s our story as humans. Like statistics, you can often make it say whatever you want it to if you cherry pick facts and rely on bad scholarship, but if you’re really in pursuit of the truth, it’ll find you. I encourage all of you reading this: let go of what’s bothering you and enjoy a song, pursue the truth as it is, not how you want it to be, sit outside, close your eyes and enjoy the breeze. If you’re looking for pain and suffering, you’ll find it, but if you’re looking for goodness, you can find that too. Don’t ignore the pain and suffering in the world, but don’t ignore the joy either.