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Since the hot and dusty autumn of 1915, when W.C. Handy's "Memphis Blues (Talkin' 'bout dem Boss Crump Blues)" hit the top of Circus Tent and Minstrel Show magazine's most requested list of shoutouts for the whole year, Memphis popular music has been defining and setting the course for American music history. The D.W. Griffith scopitone of Handy's hit song (most played in 1915, according to Penny Arcade) coupled with the Handy Orchestra's L&N sponsored barn-storming tour of union lodges and wedding halls catapulted the song from dance hall favorite to political campaign success, forever cementing Memphis' place at the top of the pop music world. Almost one hundred years later, Memphis continues to create and disseminate the finest pop music in the entertainment industry.

On July 28, 2007, Memphis will celebrate the continued fluoridation of indigenous pop music with the 1st Annual Memphis Pops Fest. Bands performing will be the cream of the crop of Memphis' past, present, and future pop stars. Beginning at 6:00 p.m. Saturday at the Hi Tone Cafe 1913 Poplar Ave. in Memphis with the public debut of the Ardent Records 40 Years Story documentary by musicologist Larry Nager, the bands will include Vending Machine, Antenna Shoes, the Carbonas, the Everyday Parade (featuring members of '80s stalwart pop phenoms The Crime), Viva L'American Death Ray plus the always popular special guests!

Order of Events
6:00 p.m. Ardent Records 40th Year Documentary
7:00 Very Special Guests tba
8:15 Vending Machine
9:30 Antenna Shoes
10:45 The Carbonas
12:00 The Everyday Parade
1:15 Viva L'American Death Ray

Advance tickets $10.00 available at www.memphispops.com
Shangri-la Records 1916 Madison Ave.
Goner Records 2152 Young Ave.

Burgers and Hot Dogs will be served. Come early. Stay Late. Don’t miss this summer’s biggest Pop Manifesto!

Brought to you by Ardent Studios, Goner Records, Shangri-la Projects, Shangri-la Records, & Memphis Convention & Visitor’s Bureau

via The Memphis Daily News

Musicians organize 'Rock for Love' concert for Church Health Center

ANDY MEEK | The Daily News

FEEL THE LOVE: Marvin Stockwell - the public relations director for The Church Health Center - sings with his band Pezz, one of several groups performing at a benefit concert for the CHC next week.

When Dr. Scott Morris settles into the front row at a benefit concert later this month in honor of the nonprofit clinic he started 20 years ago, he, like the rest of the crowd, will be ready for some loud exuberant rock music.

But that show, for which eight local bands are slated to take the stage at the Gibson Beale Street Showcase July 27, also will mean something more for the founder of the Church Health Center of Memphis Inc. (CHC).

The concert, "Rock for Love," was organized by the Memphis record label Makeshift Music as well as Marvin Stockwell, the CHC's public relations director. It's intended to raise money and awareness for the clinic founded by Morris, silver-haired and soft-spoken, to the scores of uninsured patients given affordable care at the CHC.

The sound of appreciation

And, naturally, many of those people who walk through the clinic's doors on a tree-lined stretch of Peabody Avenue are musicians. Band members don't exactly get a benefits package in exchange for strapping on a six-string.

That's why it already gives Morris pause to reflect on the fact that the lineup for the coming benefit is filled with uninsured musicians, many of whom have been patients at his clinic. And because the CHC continues to be a saving grace for those and other local musicians, Morris notes with pride, the city's beat goes on.

"They've been a part of our MEMPHIS Plan (a CHC health care coverage program) as well as just come to the clinic, and it's very moving for me to think that they would want to give back to us through a concert like this," he said.

Those appreciative musicians who've grasped at the CHC's lifeline include Christian Walker, bass guitar player for the punk-rock band Pezz, which will perform at the benefit. Stockwell sings and plays guitar for Pezz.

By day, Walker takes on freelance construction work around town. From 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., five days a week, he usually can be found hammering, painting, remodeling and renovating homes of all kinds.

The work is enough to pay the bills, but not enough to assure him of health care that goes beyond simply hoping he doesn't face a major injury or illness.

"I'm a self-employed carpenter, musician and actor, so I don't make a whole lot of money," he said. "The way the health care system is nowadays, there's not a lot of support for the working poor, and (the CHC) provides that service for people like me. If I was to get hurt on the job without insurance, it would break me."

Symphony of collaboration

Because of the CHC, Walker doesn't have that same worry anymore, nor do the 36,000 patients who visit the clinic each year.

The appreciation of that fact is where the idea for the show came from. J.D. Reager, co-owner of Makeshift Music, was hanging out with Stockwell one day and started kicking the idea around.

Reager already has been a member at the Hope and Healing Center - the CHC's companion wellness facility on Union Avenue - for about a year.

"Marv and I just got to talking," Reager said. "And just over the course of talking about stuff came this idea of, 'Wouldn't it be great to throw a rock show benefit?' Then, we just started brainstorming ideas."

Then, the concept grew into something bigger. What began as a conversation about throwing a small concert bash for the health clinic ballooned into a charity event that scores of Memphis businesses, artists and musicians have asked to take part.

Local groups sponsoring the show and a companion CD that will be released include Ardent Studios, the Center City Commission (CCC), TCB Concerts, the Memphis Music Commission and Spin Street. Music Commission officials will be on hand the night of the concert to sign up anyone interested in enrolling in the CHC's Memphis Musician's Healthcare Plan, which is offered through a partnership with the CHC.

Saturday September 15th!!!

By Chris Herrington

On July 31st, celebrated rock duo the White Stripes will play the Snowden Grove Amphitheatre in Southaven, Mississippi. It's one of only a handful of U.S. dates the band has booked for this summer (as of press time) and the band's first Memphis area concert since September 10th, 2001, when guitarist Jack White and his drummer "sister" Meg set up in the middle of the room at South Main bar Earnestine & Hazel's, surrounded by a capacity crowd, with perhaps even more people peering through the bar windows from outside.

But this month's concert won't be Jack White's first return to Memphis since that night in 2001. White has spent time in Memphis recording studios in the intervening years, mixing the White Stripes album Get Behind Me Satan, the Loretta Lynn album Van Lear Rose, which he produced, and the debut album from his side band the Raconteurs.

As a matter of fact, the White Stripes' now-legendary concert at Earnestine & Hazel's was also a bit of a celebrated return, as the band's then just-about-to-breakout 2001 album White Blood Cells, had been recorded in Memphis earlier in the year.

*****

Memphis has inspired out-of-town songwriters, with celebrated songs such as Chuck Berry's "Memphis," Paul Simon's "Graceland," and Marc Cohn's "Walking in Memphis" only the tip of an enormous iceberg of pop songs that name check the city.

By the Sixties, Memphis' musical rep-utation made it a Mecca of sorts — not just a place for outside artists to reference, but also a place to be, and plenty of artists have made recording pilgrimages to the city in the past decade. British rock super group the Yardbirds recorded at Sun Studio in the Sixties, a trip that has been made by countless artists since, most notably U2. Neil Diamond was among the many to record at American Studio. Folk singer John Prine was a Memphis regular during his Seventies heyday, recording Common Sense at Ardent and Pink Cadillac at Sam Phillips Recording Service. In the Nineties, Easley-McCain emerged as a go-to studio for indie and alt-rock bands, hosting the likes of Sonic Youth, Pavement, Guided by Voices, and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

But the most commonly visited studio might be Midtown's Ardent, which has drawn artists as disparate as blues-rocker Stevie Ray Vaughan, reggae legend Toots Hibberts, alt-rock legends R.E.M., and radio-rockers Three Doors Down.

Of the scores of significant albums made in Memphis by non-local artists, here are four of the most significant:

White Blood Cells

The White Stripes

Recorded in early 2001 at Easley-McCain, with Jack White producing and Memphian Stuart Sikes engineering, this album was as responsible as any for putting "alternative" rock back on the radio and stands as one of the best and most important records of the decade. In its own way, it was as cognizant of American pop-song traditions as that other 2001 classic, Bob Dylan's Love And Theft — and may have been more organically female-friendly than any significant hard-rock record since Nirvana's Nevermind. Offering a negation equally relevant to both the womanizing hipsters within his own subculture and the macho metal bullies crowding the marketplace, Jack White pulls no punches in negotiating his battle of the sexes but also never offers less than plain, simple decency, all while ex-wife Meg watches his back by keeping the beat. The result is a blues-rock masterpiece suffused with an uncommon blast of freedom, best summed up by the rollicking contentment of the single "Hotel Yorba": "It might sound silly for me to think childish thoughts like these/But I'm so tired of acting tough and I'm gonna do what I please."

Dusty in Memphis

Dusty Springfield

Rivaling Ray Charles' Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music as one of pop music's most successfully audacious artistic reinventions, this acknowledged classic paired British pop singer Springfield with a Memphis soul band in a blend of grit and sophistication that may have set the stage for the ambitious, pop-inflected soul that artists such as Al Green and Isaac Hayes made Memphis' signature sound in the Seventies. Recorded mostly in a week at American Studio during the summer of 1968 (with some subsequent sessions in New York), the unlikely match of Memphis and Springfield was engineered by Atlantic records executive Jerry Wexler, who had seen Memphis' potential as a recording center early on via Atlantic's partnership with Stax records. On the deep-soul single "Son of a Preacher Man," Springfield almost out-Arethas Memphis-born Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin. Still probably the most high-profile out-of-towner Memphis production.

Pleased to Meet Me

The Replacements

The second major-label from one of the most respected rock bands of the Eighties, Pleased to Meet Me was recorded at Ardent in 1987, with local legend Jim Dickinson producing. Replacements frontman Paul Westerberg was a huge fan of Memphis cult band Big Star, with whom Dickinson had produced the classic album Third/Sister Lovers at Ardent. Westerberg paid his respects with "Alex Chilton," a homage to Big Star's frontman. And Chilton joined in on guitar for "Can't Hardly Wait," a perfect mix of Eighties alt-rock and Southern soul, with Memphis Horn Andrew Love on Sax. Pleased to Meet Me was named the third best album of 1987 in the national critics poll conducted by the Village Voice (behind Prince's Sign O the Times and Bruce Springsteen's Tunnel of Love and just ahead of U2's The Joshua Tree).

Eliminator

ZZ Top

Texas blues-rock trio ZZ Top became regulars at Ardent during their prime, recording 1973's Tres Hombres there. But their biggest record by far — and one of the biggest commercial rock records of the Eighties — was 1983's Ardent-recorded Eliminator, which went on the sell more than 10 million copies. A synthesized, arena-sized record that united the band's dustier Seventies style with the sleeker productions of the day, Eliminator was a record that took hard rock back to its roots as white blues. The band's cartoonish persona and slick riffs made them the Seventies rock warhorse best equipped to thrive in the MTV era — and videos for Elimina

via Chicago Sun-Times

Detours | There's more to Memphis than Graceland

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- If there is anything left to be unearthed on Planet Elvis, it can be found on the Ultimate Memphis Rock 'n' Roll Tour. Elvis can be an ordeal for longtime Memphians, much as "Sweet Home Chicago" is a drain on veteran Chicagoans. But the rock 'n' roll tour delivers fresh insight by introducing edgy Memphis culture into the King's court.

A week's worth of Elvis activities will be held Saturday-Aug. 19 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Presley's death as well as the 50th anniversary of his Graceland estate. This year's Elvis Week is anticipated to be the biggest ever in terms of attendance. More than 50,000 music fans are expected to descend on the Southern town.

Elvis Presley Enterprises has rolled out a new exhibit featuring 56 of the King's jumpsuits as well as the new Elvis After Dark museum. Both exhibits are in the plaza across the street from Graceland. Open until 8 p.m., Elvis After Dark features recent acquisitions such as the RCA television set the King shot out with a pistol while watching Robert Goulet. At least Presley isn't around for Taylor Hicks.

IF YOU GO
Ultimate Memphis Rock n' Roll Tour: The three-hour trip includes a choice of one stop at either Sun Records, Stax Museum, Graceland, Gibson's Guitar Factory or the Memphis Rock 'n' Soul Museum. Prices are $150 for two people, the Graceland side visit is $180. Call (901) 359-3102 or visit www.memphisrocktour.com.

Wilmott operates his Ultimate Memphis Rock 'n' Roll Tour from a silver 11-passenger Chevy van with music and photographs synched up with tour stops.

Wilmott meets the challenge of finding out-of-the-way Elvis connections such as the Assembly of God Church, 1084 E. McLemore, near the birthplace of Aretha Franklin (406 Lucy). The church is where a 19-year-old Presley heard the white gospel of the Blackwood Brothers. The King then walked one block south to the Rev. Herbert Brewster's East Trigg Avenue Baptist Church, 1189 Trigg Ave., to hear black gospel. Brewster wrote "Move On Up A Little Higher," recorded by Mahalia Jackson in 1948. Sam Cooke and Jackson were guest singers at the church.

Unique to Memphis, these black and white churches were 300 yards apart.

And Elvis really never left these buildings.

Wilmott's three-hour tour also covers glorious obscurities such as the Taco Bell at 1447 Union, which was the site of the Taliesyn Ballroom and one of the Sex Pistols final American gigs during their 1978 tour. Wilmott's tour is different than Tad Pierson's American Dream Safari (www.AmericanDreamSafari.com), where tourists tool around Memphis and the Delta in a 1955 Cadillac. Pierson's trip is about the experience, stopping off at juke joints and plantations. Wilmott gets deeper into music history.

For my recent tour, Wilmott customized it with Elvis stops. He said 90 percent of his clients request Elvis sites. "People enjoy the tour," said Wilmott, who has lived in Memphis since 1974. "But I don't think they have any idea of the breadth of Memphis music history. They know of Elvis, they know the blues, but they don't necessarily know the gospel or the depth of soul music beyond Stax."

Presley's early years

Wilmott spins by the refurbished 1935 public housing project Lauderdale Courts where the Presley family lived when they arrived in Memphis from Tupelo. (You can stay in Elvis' bedroom. Visit my Scratch Crib blog: blogs.suntimes.com/hoekstra, for a recap of my night in Elvis' crib.) Reservations are not accepted Aug. 14-19 -- Elvis Week -- when Apartment 328 is open for tours.

The tour also checks out Humes High School, where Presley attended, and the site of Crown Electric (now an Exxon gas station at Poplar and Danny Thomas Boulevard), the last place Presley worked as a delivery man before becoming the King. Poplar Tunes is still across the street at 309 Poplar (901-525-6348). The mom and pop record store was established in 1945 and Presley often popped in to cash his Crown Electric checks. You can still buy a record at Poplar. The tour includes the sites of all three studios Elvis recorded in Memphis: Sun Records, American Studios and Stax.

Wilmott, 43, is the former owner of Shangri-la Records, 1916 Madison Ave. (901-274-1916), one of my favorite independent record stores in America. Stop by for a burger and a beer across the street at Huey's, 1927 Madison Ave. (901-726-4372). Wilmott still owns the Shangri-la imprint, an umbrella for his tour, books and independent CD releases.

The tour is a spin off Shangri-la's popular Kreature Comforts: Low-Life Guide to Memphis that highlights Bluff City landmarks like the Mason Temple (930 Mason St.) where Dr. Martin Luther King gave his "Mountaintop" speech on April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated, and the site of the Chisca Hotel (272 S. Main), the home of WHBQ-AM and manic DJ Dewey Phillips, who in 1954 played "That's All Right, Mama," the first Elvis record. The empty building still stands. It is owned by the Church of God and Christ.

The tour takes in the vintage Sam Phillips Recording Service, 639 Madison. Wilmott looked at the art deco studio and said, "This is one of the few recording studios you will see here that was built as a studio. Memphis people are poor, thrifty and creative. Most of the studios are reusages of older buildings. Sun was an old car parts store. Stax and Hi [Records] were neighborhood movie theaters. But Sam had some money. This was state of the art." Elvis gave Sam his earliest RCA gold records and they are on display in the musician's lounge.

Music's the draw

Visitors can step outside of Wilmott's van and catch some fresh air at the Overton Park Band Shell in Overton Park in Midtown. The band shell was built in 1935 as a WPA project. Wilmott looked at the bandshell set off in a grove and said, "Right after recording for Sun in July, 1954 Elvis opened for Slim Whitman here." The shell has been closed for two and a half years, but a Memphis nonprofit is slated to reopen the shell next spring.

"Music is the big draw here," Wilmott said. "But it is tied in with the cotton, the culture and the food, of course." Kreature Comforts has a couple of pages of restaurant recommendations ranging from Ellen's Soul Food, 601 S. Parkway E., to Dyer's, 205 Beale, that feature burgers fried in grease that hasn't been changed since 1928.

My only beef with the tour were the empty spaces I saw. I suppose it is a philosophical question if that's a problem of the tour or an issue with the city of Memphis, but even ghost sites give tourists an idea how cultures collide in Memphis neighborhoods.

"Physically, the coolest thing on the tour is still the Overton shell," Wilmott said. "Symbolically, the most important thing is Lauderdale Courts. There's a boy from the projects who made it. And the most interesting thing is the black and white music Elvis was absorbing from the churches. Its an incredible story. And people want to get to know a little more of Elvis. They all want a piece of him."

From Rufus Thomas, Othar Turner, Laura Dukes, Charlie Musselwhite, Ann Peebles, to Alex Chilton, the Memphis Music and Heritage Festival has presented the best musicians, dancers, artisans and storytellers from our diverse Mid-South community. This year's 20th festival on September 1 and 2 will be no exception to that tradition.

"This year's festival will grow to five stages to present more than 100 performers in rock, blues, jazz, rockabilly, country, gospel and reggae along with crafts people, storytellers, dancers, puppeteers and culinary artists," said Judy Peiser, executive producer and co-founder of the Center for Southern Folklore.

"Our goal is to present the best musicians and artists in a safe, family friendly environment with stages that allow an up close experience with all of the artists," added Peiser. The festival is free and will take place in downtown Memphis at the intersection of Main Street and Peabody Place, on Saturday and Sunday, September 1 and 2, 2007.

Performances begin at 11:00 AM and will end by 11:00 PM each day. (For a complete schedule, please call the Center for Southern Folklore at 901-525-3655 or check out their website at www.memphismusicandheritagefestival.com.)

Hi folks,

This is a gentle reminder that we have extended the earlybird registration deadline for the next International Folk Alliance until September 10. In order to qualify for the lowest price on registration, please make sure your registration is either postmarked by September 10 or you have completed the online registration by September 10. A credit card is required to use the online registration. You can pay via check, money order, or credit card
using our downloadable forms on our website under forms:
http://www.folkalliance.org/index.php?name=Forms

Thanks and have a great Labor Day weekend.

Louis

The documentary "Nobody" won Best Documentary and the Kodak Tennessee Filmmakers Awards at the Indie Memphis Film Festival and was an official selection at the prestigious Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina. The soundtrack for the film was recorded at Ardent Studios with local musician Ron Franklin who scored the film.

Other local musicians who lent their talent include:

RISING STAR FIFE AND DRUM BAND
Drum corps

JOHN ARGROVES
Medicine drum, anvil, blow torch

DAVE SOLDIER
Fiddle

JONATHAN KIRKSCEY
Cello

ANNA ACOSTA
Violin

JIM SPAKE
Clarinet

BEN LEWIS
Trumpet

ALEX GREENE
Organ

Film Synopsis:

In the winter of 2001, a drifter walked into the Memphis Coast Guard station seeking a boat to take on the Mississippi River. He spoke about a red-haired vixen named Mitzi, a Midwestern steel shop where he worked 90 hours a week, and an epic journey down four rivers from Marion, Indiana to Memphis, Tennessee.

Coast guard Lt. Dale Folsom introduced Jerry to filmmakers Lance Murphey and Alan Spearman. A few months later, a tragic phone call sent Jerry hurtling over the edge – and sent us on a five-year journey that would transform all of our lives. The result is a deeply personal portrait of a man running from his demons while finding grace in unlikely places.

Check out John Beifus' Review

More Info or to Purchase:

http://www.nobodythefilm.com/

http://www.myspace.com/nobodythefilm

GRAMMY OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: FURTHER DOWN

The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences Committee has placed Arkansas’ rock band Further Down on the Official Ballot for the 2008 Grammy Awards in the following categories:

Category 1 - RECORD OF THE YEAR
Further Down – “Hello”
Ballot Entry # 204

Category 2 - ALBUM OF THE YEAR
Further Down – “7 Years Hard Luck”
Producer, Recording Engineer, Mixer, and Mastering Engineer:
Pete Matthews and Brad Blackwood
Ballot Entry # 176

Category 3 - SONG OF THE YEAR
Further Down – “What You Say”
Ballot Entry # 629

Category 4 - BEST NEW ARTIST
Further Down
Ballot Entry # 110

Category 16 - BEST ROCK PERFORMANCE BY A DUO OR GROUP WITH VOCALS Further Down – “Hello”
Ballot Entry # 072

Category 16 - BEST ROCK PERFORMANCE BY A DUO OR GROUP WITH VOCALS Further Down – “One Night Stand Up”
Ballot Entry # 073

Category 20 - BEST ROCK SONG
Further Down – “What You Say”
Ballot Entry # 213

Category 21 - BEST ROCK ALBUM
Further Down – “7 Years Hard Luck”
Ballot Entry # 084

To listen to “What You Say”, “Hello” and “One Night Stand Up” or for more information about Further Down please visit www.sonicbids.com/furtherdown

TUNICA, Miss (October 30, 2007) – Montgomery Gentry is coming to Grand Casino Resort Tunica Friday, November 16, 2007 at 9 p.m. Tickets are $35 and $45 and are available through Ticketmaster at 901-525-1515 or at ticketmaster.com. Guests must be 21 or older.

Fans in the Mid-South can expect to hear hits like: “Something to be Proud of,” “Some People Change,” “She Don’t Tell Me To,” “Lucky Man,” and “My Town” just to name a few.

Montgomery Gentry recorded track for their forthcoming album here at Ardent Studios last month, with Adam Hill assisting.

Robert Plant and Alison Kraus

Via The Pheonix

There’s a blues and old-school R&B resurgence rumbling in the indie-music underground, and it goes well beyond the icky thump of the White Stripes. Its first populist signs are fresh albums featuring Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant collaborating with bluegrass diva Alison Krauss and soul survivor Bettye LaVette teaming with Dirty Southern rockers the Drive-By Truckers.

This creative movement began percolating in the mid ’90s, when the Fat Possum label released the nastiest, punkiest authentic juke-joint blues in decades. Through shrewd marketing, hip-hop remixes, and the support of rockers like Iggy Pop and Jon Spencer, old Mississippi dogs like R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough found a new audience of young pups. Those pups — including Jack White — began digging back to ’60s icons like Fred McDowell and to acoustic Delta kingpins Son House and Robert Johnson, whose songs have since been covered by, among others, the White Stripes (House’s “John the Revelator” and “Death Letter”) and Juliana Hatfield (Johnson’s “Malted Milk”).

In 2000, bluegrass got a big bump thanks to the smash soundtrack for Ethan and Joel Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou? The resulting rediscovery of mountain musicians like Ralph Stanley, Doc Boggs, and Bill Monroe triggered a bluegrass and old-time-music renaissance, with more new bands than you can shake a mandolin at. Charlottesville’s King Wilkie and Boston’s Tarbox Ramblers are among the established exponents. This year, younger outfits like Portland’s Blitzen Trapper and Seattle’s Cave Singer have stepped to the fore.

Now, it seems that blues and R&B are getting their turn. An eruption of new bands, labels, festivals, and musical surprises like Plant & Krauss’s Raising Sand (Rounder) and LaVette’s The Scene of the Crime is generating cultural heat.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

FIRST STUDIO RELEASE ON BAND'S OWN LABEL

The No