By: Marcia Abramson
On my recent trip to Memphis I had that experience on Beale Street at B.B. King's Club. There, I learned a good deal about the legendary 77-year-old "Man of the Blues" B.B. King who got his real professional start in Memphis after WW II. He sang and played his acoustic guitar at the 16th Street Club and performed as a radio D.J. Today he is a multi-millionaire having appeared all over the world with such music luminaries as Eric Clapton, U2 and the Rolling Stones. His albums have sold in the millions and he has received at least two Grammy Awards. He is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, received the Presidential Medal of the Arts in 1990 and the Kennedy Center Honors in 1995. People at his club confirmed the B.B. King story that appeared on the front page and on two full pages in the main section of the New York Times of Sunday, March 2, 2003 by Bernard Weinraub. This "Memphis Man of Music" is a true Horatio Alger story. He was orphaned at the age of 9. A kindly white plantation owner, Floyd Cartledge, permitted him to live by himself on the land in exchange for milking cows and doing household chores. In his autobiography B.B. King credits this plantation owner, whom he still refers to as "Mr. Flake" and a "decent white man," with advancing him $15 to buy a cherry-red Stella guitar when he was only 12 years old. He is as prolific a musician and as the procreator of 15 children ranging in age from 40 to 54 years of age, whom he loves dearly. Just one block south of Beale Street in the Gibson Guitar Building is the Rock n' Soul Museum. This museum boasts of the first National Museum of American History Smithsonian Institution outside of Washington, D.C. According to the Smithsonian, "In the quest to identify the roots of America's music, all roads lead to Memphis." Jimmy Ogle, the director of operations of the Rock n' Soul Museum is a native of Memphis and is very proud of the musical achievements of this Mississippi Delta city. My journey through the museum took me on a stroll from the Delta fields of the sharecroppers in the 1930s into Memphis and Beale Street in the 1940s to Sun Studio in the 1950s to soul music in the 1960-1970s, via a self-guided digital CD Audio Guide Tour. The Smithsonian takes the position that "Rock n' Soul: Social Crossroads" is the story of the body of music that most influenced the culture and lifestyles of the world during the middle 20th Century until today. The venerable institution takes the position that the way we walked, the way we talked, the way we combed our hair, and the way we dressed - not only in Memphis or the United States but the world is a result of the Memphis beat. In 1922, another Memphis personality, Clarence Saunders, the grocery store tycoon and founder of the Piggly Wiggley grocery stores (akin to the modern day supermarket) announced to the press that he was going to build a huge mansion of pink Georgia marble. Unfortunately, the house with its grand marble entry and pipe organ, ballroom, indoor swimming pool, shooting gallery, bowling alley and eight bedrooms, each with private bathroom, was never completed. Mr. Saunders lost his fortune in what was described as an epic battle with the New York Stock Exchange and the unfinished estate fell into the hands of creditors. The City of Memphis eventually took over the mansion and completed the construction. Today, it is the Memphis Pink Palace Museum with a focus of regional and natural history as well as educational and industrial arts, a planetarium and an IMAX Theater. A great way to spend an afternoon! I enjoyed a fabulous dinner at the Peabody Memphis' award-winning Chez Philippe Restaurant in the company of septuagenarian Patricia Brooks, a member of the Daughters of the American Confederacy whose family founded the Brooks Art Museum. She reminisced about the balls and parties she attended at Peabody Memphis when she was a debutante.
© Copyright Marcia Abramson; E-mail: mascribe@aol.com
