Backroads of American Music

Homes of the Stars! Memphis Style

Preston — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 21:19:00 GMT

Article by Preston Lauterbach

As you know, we here at Backroads deeply value the unmarked landmarks of our grand music history. Owing to the Bluff City's unparalleled legacy as a foster of talent, Memphis, Tennessee contains more than its share of homes where the giants of blues, soul, and rock-n-roll were born, first masturbated, developed a taste for fried banana sandwiches, learned music, wrote unforgettable songs, and died. Too often, we arrived late to our appointments with historic structures and elderly folks, finding they'd gone before we fully realized they were among us. We vowed that it wouldn't happen again if we could help it, and went to find as many hidden landmarks as we could before the wrecking ball, kudzu, or crackheads with matches could beat us to them. Click on the pics for a closer look.

First, we give you the birthplace of the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin. When I say birthplace, I mean, Aretha's mother pushed Aretha out of her own body and into the world on a kitchen table inside this very house, at 406 Lucy Avenue on March 25, 1942. Take note of a few of the home's prominent features. First, it's abandoned. Second, it's dilapidated, and I would say uninhabitable if there weren't the obvious signs of squatters present inside. Third, it lacks any mention of its significance to history. Now can you imagine this happening to one of the founding fathers of our nation? Or a grand figure in American letters? Even the little shack in Tupelo, Mississippi where Elvis Presley was born has a historic marker and a tour guide to take $10 from you and point at the two rooms inside.

The neighborhood is rundown, but the neighbors are friendly, and they don't need a historic marker to know who's house it was.

Next, behold the boyhood home of Booker T. Jones at 666 Edith Street. It's about a block from a great story of resurrected history, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, built on the vacant lot where Stax Records once stood. Anyhow, you get a feel for the proximity of young Booker T. to the studio. He hung around the Satellite Record Shop adjacent to the recording studio until he caught on as a session musician at Stax. There he helped lay the foundation for Southern Soul. Visitors to the museum should visit this site to develop a greater feel for the roots of soul music that a museum just can't convey. By the way, Aretha's birthplace is under a mile from here, other side of McLemore Avenue and Stax.

The home was for sale a year ago. I'm told that the board is actually a good sign, indicating that the owner hopes to keep harmful influences out. It did look like some work was underway. Though a visit is recommended, the timing is very important. The earlier in the day, the better.

The property below hosted a gifted and important artist in her twilight. The great Memphis Minnie spent day and evening in her wheelchair here on the front porch at 1355 Adelaide in South Memphis.

It's been available for sale for quite some time with no takers. Squatters have invaded it, too. The neighborhood scuttlebutt has it slated for demolition, though I'd guess the earth will claim it before the bulldozer does.

Minnie retired to this address after her girlish days ended and a stroke pretty well laid her up. A relative took care of her until the wild one moved on to a rest home and then died in 1973. She knew few peers as one of the champions of Chicago blues in the 1930s. She died penniless, in fact she lived penniless for the last decade of and a half of her life. Her grave sat unmarked until admirers fixed that situation years after her death.

Finally, one of the more tragic tales of rhythm and blues began here at 899 Ferry Court, a short distance from the Booker T. Jones and Aretha Franklin homes. It began with dreams and ended quite prematurely with a gun. Here John Alexander Jr. grew into a young man whose stage name Johnny Ace lived in the breath of teenage African American girls in the early 1950s.

His hit songs included "My Song" and "Pledging My Love." Like other ambitious black artists of his day, Ace toured constantly. The rigors took their toll on his psyche, causing exhaustion, depression, drug abuse, and violent behavior. The vicious cocktail frothed over on Christmas night, 1954 in Houston, Texas. Backstage, he toyed with a pistol in the presence of three friends who say that he pointed it and pulled the trigger at two of them and then himself. It only went off once. He now rests among other fallen greats of Memphis music.

The home is still in the family and because of that has remained in good shape. His niece Michelle lives there now, and didn't seem accustomed to visitors, though she welcomed us. The house is as it was in Ace's heyday, right down to the details:

Stay tuned to Backroads for more hidden history and unmarked landmarks. And if there's something you'd like us to find and shoot, drop a line and let us know.

Special thanks to Justin Fox Burks for his superb work.

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Sam "Black Smoke" Wiggins

Preston — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 20:21:00 GMT

We ran up on Black Smoke one night at the Boom Boom Room on Thomas Street in North Memphis, back when it was called the J&J. Nice enough dude. We chatted awhile, emptied intoxicating golden liquid into our bellies from chilled aluminum cylinders. He mentioned that he enjoyed picking a little guitar. Well, I'm pretty sure that his guitar is of normal size, but you get the idea. He made it pretty clear that he preferred his blues downhome, citing Lightnin' Hopkins as a sonic mentor. Now hearing a young African American man espouse such musical ideas is pretty damn unusual, so we decided that we must really take in a performance. But, proving as elusive as his nickname, Black Smoke disappeared-- poof!

Until a hot day a couple months later, when I followed the sound of old time blues drifting down Beale Street to the W.C. Handy House. On which porch sat none other than our friend Black Smoke. I encouraged him not to go poof again too soon for me to retrieve my voice recorder. The conversation and the music proved worth the wait. He waxes eloquent on the art of unaccompanied acoustic blues, and talked shit to me for having only seen a mule in photographic form. Though he acknowledges that he's among the younger practitioners of this black art, his story features details that could've come right out of the Lightnin' Hopkins diary: he learned to play from a bootlegger, and, yes, has spent time on the wrong side of a mule.

His story in his words follows. Thanks to Brent Powell for the photograph.

I’m from Arlington, Tennessee out Highway 70 [from Memphis]. Back when I was a boy, I had heard blues around the house. My family listened to stuff like Billie Holiday which was good.

I started playing when I was about 15, just messing around. I used to wash this guy’s car, he was a bootlegger named Buddy Harris in Arlington. He’d give me a dollar, which was pretty good money then. He had a guitar laying on the back seat, an old acoustic, and I asked him about it. He said he played, which I didn’t know. He got it out and played some Jimmy Reed, honky-tonk stuff. I just fell in love with it, said, 'Man you’ve got to show me how to do that.' He said, 'Naw, naw.' But I just kept on worryin’ him. Then one day he told me, 'If you wash my car four Saturdays you can have it.'

So that would have been about $4 he sold it to me for, and that was a good deal. It was an old, beat up Stella. Then my problem was I didn’t know how to tune it, so then I had to work another three weeks to learn how to tune the guitar. He showed me cross-natural tuning and honky-tonk.

My family farmed cotton and sharecropped. I knew I wasn’t going to be a farmer. I couldn’t wait to get that letter that said 'Welcome to the Army.' When I went into the military, and got married, and my wife didn’t want me messing around with music. There’s a stigma that goes along with people who play music. I never really put it down, though, and played every chance I got. In the army you can check out a guitar from the rec center and play it all day. So I did that, and met some guys and put a little band together and played around posts and little clubs. That went on all the way through my career. We played rhythm and blues stuff, and Temptations and Brooke Benton, Percy Mayfield. Smooth and mellow like, but
tough.

When I started playing, everybody had nicknames, and I didn’t, so I told people I was Black Smoke and it stuck.

When I got back to Memphis I got in a group called Tar-G with Larry Winfield. Then I started trying to put bands together. I played with Carl Drew, he’s about 80-something years old.

I just like the sound of one man playing blues. It takes a lot of nerve. I know guys that won’t do it. They could, but they don’t have the nerve. They might have the skill, but it’s a psychological thing.

I started playing the one man thing about seven years ago. I always did like Lightnin’ Hopkins and Muddy Waters, and more of the country stuff. I could never get the fellas around here to want to play that. It’s too slow — it’s a feel man, like a spirit. You can know them scales, but it ain’t how well you play, you just have to know how to put that one note there. Those guys want to add to it, they get bored. After they play around the pocket a while you ain’t got them blues.

Blues is what you’re feeling. You feel different from what I feel, but you have experienced it. Always about them women. Older you get, it’s still going to be the same. You never master them women. You can constantly write about that.

We need to get some younger peoples into blues. I’m 56 and I’m probably around the last generation not in a nursing home that still plays it. Blues is something you have to die at to be successful anyway. The young generation just don’t get it. My kids say, 'It sounds so sad, I don’t want to feel like that.' They’ve never even seen a mule. Have you seen a mule? A picture, right? Well, I’ve walked behind one.

The reason I like to play by myself is that it’s so creative, you can do so much. I write a lot of stuff while I’m playing. I may borrow a little, but it’s
always been Fannie Mae, even though her name was something else to me. Just change that name around, or don’t even mention no names. Make her an oak tree or something, sing about how you love all trees.

[image copyright Padre Photos 2007]

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New Featured Artist! The Man Called "Brick"

Preston — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:41:00 GMT

Here at Backroads we pride ourselves on finding the unjustly forgotten, unknown, or overlooked artists. Particularly those who make our homebase of Memphis, Tennessee one of the most distinctive and soulful cities in the world. Until now, those artists have been of the musical variety. But there is more to Memphis than music. It's a city of texture-- cracked sidewalks, broken glass, and crumbling facades; and a city of color. Driving through North Memphis, Whitehaven or Orange Mound you'll see a fine collection of street murals. Most of these painters have left only an obscure tag behind, like the great, out-of-pocket juke joint painter Zorro. Hard to trace someone named Zorro via the white pages.

Backroads art director Justin Fox Burks felt a connection to one such artist's work, who signed his bright stylings "Brick." Undaunted by the absence of anyone named Brick in the phone book, Justin wandered around the South Memphis neighborhood of Orange Mound like a Mormon missionary until he met the artist. His words and pictures tell the story here.

http://www.backroadsofamericanmusic.com/archive/2008/03/31/james-quot-brick-quot-brigance-south-memphis-muralist.aspx

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James "Brick" Brigance: South Memphis Muralist

Preston — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:23:00 GMT

[Words and photos by Justin Fox Burks]

While working on a story about Memphis rappers 8Ball and MJG for Wax Poetics, I started to notice all the hand-painted signs on buildings around the neighborhood Orange Mound. The ones that stood out to me were all signed by ‘Brick.’ His larger-than-life, colorful animations of creatures and letters are more than just signs for local businesses. Whether his work depicted a hawk or lion or car, he seemed to understand scale: a lion from 100 yards away had to be five times life-size. I began to feel connected with his paintings before I even knew who he was.

I started to ask around the area: who is Brick? Most people stared at me blankly. But one morning a guy buying a forty at a sundry store on Park Avenue told me, “I know where his brother lives.” The guy took off down the street, and I followed in my truck. Two blocks down, he pointed at a house. A man opened the aluminum screen door, and inside, I spotted a painting of a pink bird in the style I had come to know so well. Thomas Brigance, Brick’s brother, put me in touch with Doris, their sister. The next week, she took me to see Brick, who I came to know as James Brigance, in a nursing home in Marion, Arkansas.

James Brigance is an amazing man, but he is ill: he has lost both of his legs due to complications from diabetes. Now in his mid-fifties, he lives in a nursing home. He explained his paintings by simply saying, “I pick the color; they buy the paint.” In our conversation, he mentioned that once he was up on a ladder at a job, he would be in a trance, painting. He painted for thirty years on the interior and exterior walls in his Orange Mound neighborhood. He still draws every day, using markers now. He plans to one day "get back up on them walls."

This work, above all else, is a documentation of Brick’s paintings, because they are disappearing; they are being painted over every day. To me, it reveals the way that real people are living around true art away from gallery walls and pretense. I see these images as a collaboration between myself and Brick.

Click here to visit the "Brick" gallery.

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R-E-S-P-E-C-T for O.V.

Preston — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 11:47:00 GMT

I called Howard Grimes, drummer of the Hi Rhythm section, on the anniversary of O.V. Wright’s death, and asked if he’d join me in paying respects at O.V.’s grave. Howard’s a soft-spoken, highly spiritual man. He always takes a moment to digest and answer questions thoughtfully, but this one excited him.
    “What are you going to that graveyard for?” he bellowed without the normal pause to reflect.
    I explained that I wanted to find O.V.’s grave and pay my respects.
    “Ain’t nobody in that grave,” Howard thundered back.
    I wondered if I’d stumbled into some scandalous secret. I’d heard stories about Wright’s substance abuse problems, time in the pen, and the two O.V. Wright Juniors. His life had lacked neither color nor drama. Had he pulled the great illusion that only his fellow Memphian Elvis Aron Presley had been thought capable of?
    Ahhh, no.
    I asked Howard what he meant. This, like many of Howard’s explanations of the world, was rooted in the Old Testament. He quoted Ecclesiastes 12:7, “…the dust returneth to earth as it was, and the spirit returneth unto God who gave it.”
    He feels that grave hunting’s a tad overrated.
    So I went by myself, and met the cemetery owner. He knew who O.V. was and pointed me directly to the bare rectangle of earth that O.V. rests beneath. (Pictured here. The marker at the top of the picture belongs to someone else.)

Months later, by happenstance, I learned that O.V.’s colleague James Carr, himself a tortured soul — in my book, each rivals only the other for emotional depth in song — recently received a headstone at his own unmarked grave. In spreading this news to the global community of Carr fans, I mentioned that Wright’s grave remained unmarked. This triggered offers of donation and calls to action. The response has been nothing short of inspiring. In fact, it inspired myself and other soul fans to do something about it — to fill that empty space with a monument.
    Though his body returned to dust, and his soul to God, his fans and his family want something to honor him at his final resting place. His widow Alberta gave the project her blessing, saying simply: “That will help.”
    So if you want to be part of this, please give what you can. Every bit helps, and none of it will go to waste. We’d like to dedicate the monument on the next anniversary of Wright’s death, November 16, 2008. Stay tuned for updates, as we hope to organize a ceremony. Show O.V. Wright how strong your love is. Follow this link to donate to the O.V. Wright Memorial Fund.

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