This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by [log in to unmask] /-------------------- advertisement -----------------------\ Share the spirit with a gift from Starbucks. Our coffee brewers & espresso machines at special holiday prices. http://www.starbucks.com/shop/subcategory.asp?category_name=Sale/Clearance&ci=274&cookie_test=1 \----------------------------------------------------------/ Memphis Embraces Its Own Gritty Soul January 7, 2002 By EMILY YELLIN MEMPHIS, Jan. 6 - The new Peabody Place mall in the heart of downtown here at first seems indistinguishable from the masses of shopping centers that have sprung up in tourist districts all over the country. But somewhere along the way from the Gap to Victoria's Secret to Starbucks, shoppers with sharp ears can hear a difference. Instead of the usual canned music, Peabody Place pipes in home-grown, original recordings, like the earthy soul music classic "Green Onions," which filled the air one recent afternoon. That song is one of many recorded just a few miles away at Stax Records in the 1960's by the hometown band Booker T. and the MG's, and its being played in one of the city's newest showcases suggests its nascent pride in a largely overlooked part of its cultural heritage: Memphis soul music. Al Green, Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes are just a few of the artists who recorded this raw, stirring sound here on the Stax and Hi Records labels during the 60's and early 70's. Memphis's soul music rivaled Detroit's more polished pop-oriented Motown sound. "Memphis music is grittier than Motown," said Mr. Hayes, a co-writer of songs like "Soul Man" and "Hold On! I'm Comin' " and writer of "Theme From `Shaft,' " for which he won both Grammy and Academy Awards. "It's closer to where blues began. It's down-home soul music, born out of blues and gospel." Perhaps because Memphis soul also became part of the soundtrack of the civil rights movement, it has been slow to re-emerge and be celebrated here, for it evoked this city's most wrenching moment, the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at a downtown motel in 1968. Mr. Hayes, 59, who has homes in New Jersey and Memphis, said he often noticed his hometown ignoring the kind of music he helped create. "All over the world Memphis soul music has been revered and recognized," he said. "Memphis just didn't realize the treasure it had in its own backyard." But, he added, "I think now they are seeing what they've got." The most ambitious example of that new recognition can be found in Soulsville, a $20 million redevelopment project under way on the site of the old Stax recording studios near downtown. It includes a museum of soul music and a music academy for children, now under construction, and there are plans for a performing arts center. Memphis and Shelby County governments are behind the project - contributing a total of $5 million - as part of a push that began about three years ago to tout soul music. Even with a drop in tourism here and across the country in the wake of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, Memphis has kept up that effort. "A lot of things have stopped or slowed down in the wake of 9/11," said Jerry Schilling, who, as president of the city and county music commission, is charged with promoting Memphis music. "But I think the leaders of this city continue to support efforts to highlight our soul music heritage, because they're looking at that longer term as a key to the future here." Developing economic opportunity around its musical heritage is a formula the city first learned from rock 'n' roll. Elvis Presley of course became ubiquitous here after his death in 1977, and his Memphis home, Graceland, annually attracts more than 700,000 visitors. The Sun Records studio - famous for early recordings of Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison - routinely draws a healthy share of musical devotees. By the 1990's the Memphis blues tradition, too, was getting its due with the resurgence of Beale Street downtown, boasting dozens of blues clubs, like the flagship B. B. King's Blues Club. The city's Convention and Visitors Bureau even adopted a new slogan, "Memphis: Home of the Blues, Birthplace of Rock 'n' Roll." Then in 1998 came one of the first signs that the city was finally beginning to embrace its soul music heritage. WRBO-FM (103.5), a 100,000- watt station, came on the air and shot to No. 1 among all listeners in its market within six months by playing only soul music from the 60's to the mid-70's. "The music was living all along," said Henry Nelson, program director of the station, whose playlist is weighted toward classic Memphis soul. "It just wasn't living commercially. People had it in their hearts, in their homes. But you never heard it on the radio." As the station continued to thrive, Mr. Hayes - whose own career had been revived with the remake of "Shaft," his role as the voice of Chef on the animated television show "South Park" and a stint on WRKS- FM (known as KISS-FM) in New York - became a D.J. on WRBO five nights a week. He records his show of classic soul music in New York exclusively for the Memphis station. In 2000 another beacon appeared. The Smithsonian Institution opened its 8,000-square-foot Memphis Rock 'n' Soul Museum just off Beale Street. It is the Smithsonian's first permanent exhibition outside Washington and New York. "What happened in Memphis was what happened in America," said Charlie McGovern, curator of cultural history at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. "We hoped to offer Memphians as well as visitors the sense of how important their own history was to American culture." The inclusion of the word soul in the museum's name was not lost on Memphis. "By saying rock and soul, we were trying to show that black and white cultures intermixed over a long period of time beginning back before the blues and country music," Mr. McGovern said. "But for the period that the exhibit focuses on, from the late 40's to the mid-70's, you really see the interplay of white and black forms of popular music." Mr. Schilling, a friend and associate of Presley and former road manager for the Beach Boys and Billy Joel, agreed. "Most of Memphis music, even the rock stuff, is really based on our soul and rhythm-and- blues heritage," he said. "That's where Elvis got his music." The Soulsville redevelopment project, which was officially begun last spring, encompasses a 27,000- square-foot academy to help troubled students through music and a 17,000-square-foot museum of American soul music, both of which are under construction. A 500-seat performing arts center is also planned. The Soulsville project has raised $15 million in public and private money, including $1 million in federal funds approved by Congress in November. And during a two-day, grass-roots fund-raiser on WRBO in October, another $70,000 was raised, with many of the $5 to $25 pledges coming from residents of the surrounding economically depressed neighborhood. That district, a roughly three-square-mile area known as Soulsville U.S.A., encompasses musical landmarks including the house in which Aretha Franklin was born. "We have so much here that we have not properly mined," said Andy Cates, chairman of Soulsville. "And I think we are mining it in a respectful way. We are doing this purely nonprofit. We're trying to create a musical village and to use the music as a gateway to revitalize and restore a neighborhood." Deanie Parker, director of Soulsville and a former Stax employee, said the music academy and community building were essential to the museum project. "It would be very selfish," she said, "if we were to look back at soul music without a sense of social conscience." In the 60's, when racial mixing was rare, especially in the South, Stax Records provided a haven of sorts for young white and black musicians. That was reflected most clearly in Booker T. and the MG's, the Stax house band, led by the organist Booker T. Jones. The group consisted of two black and two white members. "We were living the dream," said Ms. Parker, who wrote and recorded a few songs herself while working as Stax's publicity director. "We were people of different races, religions, genders working together. And it affected the writers, who were clearly writing songs that reflected the emotions of both black and white America." Mr. Hayes said, "We had a great relationship at Stax, because it represented a lot of races in Memphis." But after the King assassination the bottom fell out. "It affected me in the most profound way," Mr. Hayes remembered. "I was just devastated. I was confused. I marched with him in his last march, and the dogs were sicced on us, and we were Maced. White people were doing that. Some of my friends got beat so bad. It paralyzed my creativity for a year, because I was bitter." Mr. McGovern of the Smithsonian said: "This is a moment where the wider world intrudes. And it encourages a kind of musical expression that was much more overt. We went from `Soul Man' to `Respect Yourself' and `Shaft' in the matter of a couple of years. The course is clear, and while songs were still about love and stuff, over this period soul music really began to speak to black life, and there were more people listening." Referring to his composition and performance of the "Shaft" theme in 1971, Mr. Hayes said, "You had a black man onscreen at last being a hero, so you wrote about that with a bit of bravado. You know, he's a `bad mother - shut your mouth.' " But by 1976 Stax had gone bankrupt. "With the death of soul music in this city coming a few years after the assassination, there was sadness, there was hate, there was grief," Mr. Nelson of WRBO remembered. "And for years nobody wanted to talk about it. We swept this music under the rug. Then there was this resurgence of Elvis that kind of overshadowed it." Now, though, it seems Memphis has banked much of its future on a full recognition of its cultural past, with the Rock 'n' Soul Museum, Graceland, Sun Studios, Beale Street, the weekly Sunday church service conducted by the soul and gospel star the Rev. Al Green, a new namesake restaurant and nightclub downtown owned by Mr. Hayes, WRBO-FM, and the nearly 10-year-old National Civil Rights Museum built on the site where Dr. King was assassinated. In addition, Soulsville is scheduled to open next fall. "Years later, it's not just about Elvis," Mr. Nelson said. "There is a rich heritage in R&B in Memphis that we can now celebrate." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/07/arts/music/07SOUL.html?ex=1011397733&ei=1&en=ab4e907a9cacbf84 HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact Alyson Racer at [log in to unmask] or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to [log in to unmask] Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). 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