Coordinates	12°58′0″N77°34′0″N
Name	Memphis
Settlement type	City
Nickname	The River City, The Bluff City, M-Town
Website	www.memphistn.gov
Image flagsize	15px
Image seal	Memphis TE Seal-.svg
Image sealsiza	15px
Map caption	Location in Shelby County and the state of Tennessee
Pushpin map	USA
Pushpin map caption	Location in the United States
Coordinates region	US-TN
Subdivision type	Country
Subdivision type1	State
Subdivision type2	County
Subdivision name	United States
Subdivision name1	Tennessee
Subdivision name2	Shelby
Leader title	Mayor
Leader name	A C Wharton
Established title	Founded
Established title2	Incorporated
Established date	1819
Established date2	1826
Area magnitude	1 E8
Area total km2	763.4
Area total sq mi	313.8
Area land km2	723.4
Area land sq mi	302.3
Area water km2	40.0
Area water sq mi	15.4
Population as of	2010
Population total	646,889 (20th)
Population metro	1,316,100
Population blank1 title	Demonym
Population blank1	Memphian
Population density sq mi	2140
Timezone	CST
Utc offset	-6
Timezone dst	CDT
Utc offset dst	-5
Elevation m	103
Elevation ft	337
Postal code type	ZIP Codes
Postal code	37501, 37544, 38002, 38016, 38018, 38028, 38088, 38101, 38103–38109, 38111–38120, 38122, 38124–38128, 38130–38139, 38141, 38145, 38147–38148, 38150–38152, 38157, 38159, 38161, 38163, 38166–38168, 38173–38175, 38177, 38181–38182, 38184, 38186–38188, 38190, 38193–38194, 38197
Area code	901
Blank name	FIPS code
Blank info	47-48000
Blank1 name	GNIS feature ID
Blank1 info	1326388

Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4^th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers.

Memphis had a population of 646,889 at the 2010 census, making it the biggest city in the state of Tennessee, the third largest in the Southeastern United States, and the 20th largest in the United States. The greater Memphis metropolitan area, including adjacent counties in Mississippi and Arkansas, had a 2010 population of 1,316,100. This makes Memphis the second largest metropolitan area in Tennessee, surpassed only by metropolitan Nashville, which has overtaken Memphis in recent years. Memphis is the youngest of Tennessee's major cities. A resident of Memphis is referred to as a ''Memphian'', and the Memphis region is known, particularly to media outlets, as the "Mid-South".

History

Early history

Because it occupies a substantial bluff rising from the Mississippi River, the site of Memphis is a natural location for settlement. The area was first settled by the Mississippian Culture and then by the Chickasaw Indian tribe. For 10,000 years they occupied the bluffs along the river, building a large mound on the bluff. European exploration came later, beginning in the 16th century with Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto and French explorers led by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle.

In 1795 the Spanish governor of Louisiana, Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, acquired land for a fort from the Chickasaw. Fort San Fernando de las Barrancas was built in the summer of 1795 on the fourth Chickasaw Bluff, just south of the Wolf River. It gave Spain control of navigation on the Mississippi River in the region until 1797 when it was abandoned in keeping with Pinckney's Treaty. The fort was dismantled, its lumber and iron shipped away. Its ruins went unnoticed when Memphis was laid out twenty years later.

The land comprising present-day Memphis remained in a largely unorganized territory throughout most of the 18th century. In 1796, the site became the westernmost point of the newly admitted state of Tennessee, located in the Southwest United States.

19th century

Memphis was founded in 1819 by John Overton, James Winchester and Andrew Jackson. The city was named after the ancient capital of Egypt on the Nile River. Memphis developed as a transportation center in the 19th century because of its flood-free location, high above the Mississippi River.

As the cotton economy of the antebellum South depended on the forced labor of large numbers of African-American slaves, Memphis became a major slave market. In 1857, the Memphis and Charleston Railroad was completed, the only east-west railroad across the southern states prior to the Civil War.

Tennessee seceded from the Union in June 1861, and Memphis briefly became a Confederate stronghold. Union ironclad gunboats captured the city in the naval Battle of Memphis on June 6, 1862, and the city remained under Union control for the duration of the war. Memphis became a Union supply base and continued to prosper throughout the war. Meanwhile, Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest harassed Union forces in the area.

In the 1870s, a series of yellow fever epidemics devastated Memphis. The worst outbreak, in 1878, reduced the population by nearly 75% as many people died or fled the city permanently. Property tax revenues collapsed, and the city could not make payments on its municipal debts. As a result, Memphis temporarily lost its city charter and was a taxing district from 1878–1893. The city was rechartered in 1893.

20th century

Memphis grew into the world's largest spot cotton market and the world's largest hardwood lumber market. Into the 1950s, it was the world's largest mule market.

From the 1910s to the 1950s, Memphis was a place of machine politics under the direction of E. H. "Boss" Crump. During the Crump era, Memphis developed an extensive network of parks and public works as part of the national City Beautiful movement. Determined never to suffer plagues again, it rebuilt with meticulous sanitation and drainage. But it did not encourage heavy industry and allowed Mr. Crump's censor to ban movies.

During the 1960s, the city was at the center of civil rights issues, notably a sanitation workers' strike. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel, the day after giving his prophetic ''I've Been to the Mountaintop'' speech at the Mason Temple.

Memphis is well known for its cultural contributions to the identity of the American South. Many renowned musicians grew up in and around Memphis and moved from the Mississippi Delta. These included such musical greats as Elvis Presley, Three 6 Mafia, Jerry Lee Lewis, Muddy Waters, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Robert Johnson, W. C. Handy, B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Isaac Hayes, Booker T. Jones, Al Green, and many others.

Geography

Memphis is located in southwestern Tennessee at . According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 313.8 sq mi (763.4 km²), of which 302.3 square miles (723.4 km²) is land and 15.4 square miles (40.0 km²), or 5.24%, is water.

Cityscape

Downtown Memphis rises from a bluff along the Mississippi River, and the city sprawls outward over southwest Tennessee and into northern Mississippi and eastern Arkansas. Several large parks are scattered through the city, notably Overton Park in Midtown and the 4,500 acre Shelby Farms. The city is a national transportation hub and Mississippi River crossing for Interstate 40, (east-west), Interstate 55 (north-south), barge traffic, Memphis International Airport (Fed Ex's home) and numerous freight railroads that serve the city.

Aquifer

Shelby County is located over four natural aquifers, one of which is recognized as the "Memphis sand aquifer" or simply as the "Memphis aquifer". This artesian water is pure and soft. This particular water source, located some underground, is estimated by Memphis Light, Gas and Water to contain more than 100 trillion gallons (380 km³) of water.

Climate

Memphis has a humid subtropical climate, with four distinct seasons. Winter weather comes from the upper Great Plains or from the Gulf of Mexico, leading to drastic swings in temperature. Summer weather may come from Texas (very hot and dry) or the Gulf (hot and humid). July has an average high and low of and , with high levels of humidity due to moisture encroaching from the Gulf of Mexico. Afternoon and evening thunderstorms are frequent during some summers, but usually brief, lasting no longer than an hour. Early autumn is pleasantly drier and mild, but can be hot until late October. Late autumn is rainy and cooler; precipitation peaks again in November and December. Winters are mild to chilly, with average January high and low temperatures of and . Snow occurs sporadically in winter, with an average yearly snowfall of . Ice storms are a bigger danger, pulling tree limbs down on power lines.

Annual precipitation is high () and is relatively evenly distributed throughout the year, though August through October is much drier, and peaks in March–May and November/December.

Demographics

For historical population data, see: History of Memphis, Tennessee.

According to the 2006–2008 American Community Survey, the racial composition of Memphis was:

Black or African American: 62.6%

White: 31.7% (Non-Hispanic Whites: 29.5%)

Hispanic or Latino (of any race): 5.0%

Asian: 1.7%

Native American: 0.2%

Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander: 0.1%

Some other race: 2.7%

Two or more races: 1.2%

As of the census of 2000, there were 650,100 people, 250,721 households, and 158,455 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,327.4 people per sq mi (898.6/km²). There were 271,552 housing units at an average density of 972.2 per sq mi (375.4/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 61.41% African American, 34.41% White, 1.46% Asian, 0.19% Native American, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 1.45% from other races, and 1.04% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.97% of the population.

The median income for a household in the city was $32,285, and the median income for a family was $37,767. Males had a median income of $31,236 versus $25,183 for females. The per capita income for the city was $17,838. About 17.2% of families and 20.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 30.1% of those under age 18 and 15.4% of those age 65 or over.

The Memphis Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), the 42nd largest in the United States, has a 2010 population of 1,316,100 and includes the Tennessee counties of Shelby, Tipton, and Fayette, as well as the Mississippi counties of DeSoto, Marshall, Tate, and Tunica, and the Arkansas county of Crittenden.

Religion

Since its founding, Memphis has been home to persons of many different faiths. An 1870 map of Memphis shows religious buildings of the Baptist, Catholic, Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregational, and other Christian denominations and a Jewish congregation. In 2009, places of worship exist for Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims.

The international headquarters of the Church of God in Christ, the largest Pentecostal denomination in the United States, is located in Memphis. Named after the denomination's founder, Charles Harrison Mason, Mason Temple is where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech the day before he was killed. The church's Temple of Deliverance is the venue of the National Civil Rights Museum's Freedom Awards.

Bellevue Baptist Church is a Southern Baptist megachurch in Memphis that was founded in 1903. Its current membership is approximately 27,000. For many years, it was led by the now late Adrian Rogers, a three-term president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has two stakes and one temple in Memphis as well as two Family History Centers/Genealogical Libraries.

Other notable and/or large churches in Memphis include Second Presbyterian Church (EPC), Evergreen Presbyterian Church (PCUSA), Colonial Park United Methodist Church, Christ United Methodist Church, Idlewild Presbyterian Church (PCUSA), The Pentecostal Church (UPCI), Calvary Episcopal Church, and Elliston Baptist Church.

Memphis is home to two cathedrals. The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception is the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Memphis, and St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral is the seat of the Episcopal Diocese of West Tennessee.

Memphis is home to an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Muslims of various cultures and ethnicities.

Memphis is home to Temple Israel, a Reform synagogue that has approximately 7,000 members, making it one of the largest Reform synagogues in the country. Baron Hirsch Synagogue is the largest Orthodox shul in the United States.

Culture

Cultural events

One of the largest celebrations the city has is Memphis in May. The month-long series of events promotes Memphis' heritage and outreach of its people far beyond the city's borders. There are four main events, the Beale Street Music Festival, International Week, the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, and the Sunset Symphony. The World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest is the largest pork barbecue cooking contest in the world.

In April, there is an event in downtown Memphis called Africa in April Cultural Awareness Festival, or simply known as Africa in April. The festival was designed to celebrate the arts, history, culture, and diversity of the African diaspora. Africa in April is a three-day festival with vendor's markets, fashion showcases, blues showcases, and an international diversity parade.

During June, Memphis is home to the Memphis Italian Festival at Marquette Park. For over 20 years, the festival has hosted musical acts, local artisans, and Italian cooking competitions. It also presents chef demonstrations, the Coors Light Competitive Bocce Tournament, the Galtelli Cup Recreational Bocce Tournament, a volleyball tournament, and pizza tossing demonstrations.

Carnival Memphis, formerly known as the Memphis Cotton Carnival, is an annual series of parties and festivities in June that salutes various aspects of Memphis and its industries. An annual King and Queen of Carnival are secretly selected to reign over Carnival activities. The African-American community staged a parallel event known as the Cotton Makers Jubilee from 1935 to 1982, when it merged with Carnival Memphis.

A market and arts festival, the Cooper-Young Festival, is held annually in September in the Cooper-Young district of Midtown Memphis. The event draws artists from all over North America and includes local music, art sales, contests, and displays.

Memphis is also home to several film festivals, the Indie Memphis Film Festival, Outflix, and the Memphis International Film and Music Festival. Indie Memphis Film Festival is in its 14th year and held November 3-6 in 2011. Recognized by MovieMaker Magazine as one of 25 "Coolest Film Festivals" (2009) and one of 25 "Festivals Worth the Entry Fee" (2011), Indie Memphis offers Memphis year-round independent film programming including Global Lens international film series, IM Student Shorts student films, and an outdoor concert film series at the historic Levitt Shell. The Outflix Film Festival, also in its 14th year, takes place September 9-15 in 2011. Outflix features a full week of GLBT interested cinema, including short films, features, and documentaries. The Memphis International Film and Music Festival is held in April and is in its 11th year and takes place at Malco's Ridgeway Four.

Formerly titled the W.C. Handy Awards, the International Blues Awards are presented by the Blues Foundation (headquartered in Memphis) for Blues music achievement, with weeklong competitions and an awards banquet including a night of performance and celebration.

The arts

Memphis is the home of founders and establishers of various American music genres, including blues, gospel, rock n' roll, Buck, crunk, and "sharecropper" country music (in contrast to the "rhinestone" country sound of Nashville). Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Sam & Dave and B.B. King all got their start in Memphis in the 1950s/60s.

Beale Street is a national historical landmark, and showcases the impact Memphis has had on American blues, particularly after World War II as electric guitars took precedence. Sam Phillips' Sun Studio, the most seminal recording studio in American popular music, still stands, and is open for tours. Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison all made their first recordings there and were "discovered" by Phillips. Many great blues artists recorded there prior to that as well. Lastly, Stax Records created a classic 60's soul music, much grittier and horn-based than Motown. Booker T. and the M.G.'s were the label's backing band for most of the classic hits that came out of Stax, by Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and many more. The sound still lives on in the ''Blues Brothers'' movie, in which many of the players themselves starred.

Several notable singers are from the Memphis area, including Ruth Welting and Kallen Esperian. Justin Timberlake also grew up in the Memphis area. The Metropolitan Opera began coming to Memphis in 1906, their first road show, but in the 1990s decided to only visit larger cities.

Well-known writers from Memphis include American Civil War historian Shelby Foote. Novelist John Grisham grew up in nearby DeSoto County, Mississippi, and many of his books are set in Memphis.

Visual art

In addition to the Brooks Museum and Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis plays host to two burgeoning visual art areas, one city-sanctioned, and the other organically formed.

The South Main Arts District is an arts neighborhood in south downtown. Over the past 20 years, the area has morphed from a derelict brothel and juke joint neighborhood to a gentrified, well-lit, nicely paved home of the "Trolley Night" where patrons of the arts stroll down the street witnessing fire spinners, djs playing in front of clubs, specialty shops and galleries.

Another developing arts district in Memphis is Broad Street. Broad Street (really an east-west avenue) is undergoing neighborhood revitalization by the influx of visual artists and taking up residence and studios in the area. An art professor from Rhodes College holds small openings on the first floor of his home for local students and professional artists. Odessa, another art space on Broad Street, hosts student art shows and local electronic music. Other galleries come and go for semiannual artwalks.

Outside these two areas, Memphis has non-commercial visual arts organizations and spaces, including local painter Pinkney Herbert's Marshall Arts gallery, on Marshall Ave. near Sun Studios, another arts neighborhood characterized by affordable rent.

Many works of fiction and literature use Memphis as their setting, giving a diverse portrait of the city, its history, and its citizens. These include ''The Reivers'' by William Faulkner (1962), ''September, September'' by Shelby Foote (1977), ''The Old Forest and Other Stories'' by Peter Taylor (1985), the Pulitzer Prize-winning ''A Summons to Memphis'' by Peter Taylor (1986), ''The Firm'' (1991) and ''The Client'' (1994), both by John Grisham, ''Memphis Afternoons: a Memoir'' by James Conaway (1993), "Plague of Dreamers" by Steve Stern (1997) ''Cassina Gambrel Was Missing'' by William Watkins (1999), ''The Guardian'' by Beecher Smith (1999), "We are Billion-Year-Old Carbon" by Corey Mesler (2005), ''The Silence of the Lambs'' by Thomas Harris, and ''The Architect'' by James Williamson (2007).

Cultural references

Memphis is the subject of numerous pop and country songs, including "The Memphis Blues" by W. C. Handy, "Memphis, Tennessee" by Chuck Berry, "Queen of Memphis" by Confederate Railroad, "Memphis Soul Stew" by King Curtis, "Maybe It Was Memphis" by Pam Tillis, "Graceland" by Paul Simon, "Memphis Train" by Rufus Thomas, "All the Way from Memphis" by Mott the Hoople, "Wrong Side of Memphis" by Trisha Yearwood, "Walking in Memphis" by Marc Cohn, "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" by Bob Dylan, "Memphis Skyline" by Rufus Wainwright, and "Sequestered in Memphis" by The Hold Steady.

In addition, Memphis is mentioned in scores of other songs, including "Proud Mary" by Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Honky Tonk Women" by The Rolling Stones, "Life Is a Highway" by Tom Cochrane, "Black Velvet" by Alannah Myles, "Cities" by Talking Heads, "Crazed Country Rebel" by Hank Williams III, "Pride (In the Name of Love)" by U2, "M.E.M.P.H.I.S." by the Disco Biscuits and many others.

Economy

The city's central location has led to much of its business development. Located on the Mississippi River and intersected by five major freight railroads and two Interstate highways, I-40 and I-55, Memphis is ideally located for commerce in the transportation and shipping industry. A third interstate, I-69, is under construction, and a fourth, I-22, has recently been designated from the former High Priority Corridor X. River barges are unloaded onto trucks and trains. The city is home to Memphis International Airport, the world's busiest cargo airport, which serves as the primary hub for FedEx Express shipping and was a secondary hub for Delta Air Lines after it merged with Northwest Airlines in 2008.

Memphis is the home of three Fortune 500 companies: FedEx Corporation, AutoZone Incorporated, and International Paper. In addition, Memphis is home to the pharmaceutical/healthcare firm Schering-Plough Corporation, serving as the company's research and development center. In 2006, a fourth Fortune 500 company, ServiceMaster, announced it was moving its corporate headquarters from Downers Grove, Illinois, to Memphis. In 2007, ServiceMaster became a private company. Other major corporations based in Memphis include Medtronic Sofamor Danek, First Horizon National Corporation, Pinnacle Airlines, Thomas and Betts Corporation, Mueller Industries, Fred's, Verso Paper, Allenberg Cotton Co., Dunavant Enterprises, Accredo Health Group, GE Capital Aviation Services, Baptist Memorial Hospital, Methodist LeBonheur Healthcare, and Baker Donelson, among others. Corporations with major operations based in the Memphis area include Hilton Worldwide, Technicolor Home Entertainment Services, Smith & Nephew, Sharp Manufacturing, Brother International, and Caesars Entertainment Corporation.

The entertainment and film industries have discovered Memphis in recent years. Several major motion pictures have been filmed in Memphis, including ''Making the Grade'' (1984), ''Great Balls of Fire!'' (1988), ''Mystery Train'' (1989), ''The Firm'' (1993), ''Cast Away'' (2000), ''Forty Shades of Blue'' (2005), ''Walk the Line'' (2005), ''Hustle & Flow'' (2006), ''Soul Men'' (2008), and ''The Grace Card'' (2011). ''The Blind Side'' (2009) was set in Memphis but filmed in Atlanta. The 1992 television movie ''Memphis'', starring Memphis native Cybill Shepherd, who also served as executive producer and writer, was also filmed in Memphis. The state of Tennessee has lacked sufficient tax breaks available in other states to compete for many productions that have been interested in filming in Memphis or in the state as a whole. Besides ''The Blind Side'', whose production was lured to Georgia, ''Memphis Beat'', a television series on TNT set in Memphis, has been lured to Louisiana.

Law and government

Memphis is governed by a mayor and thirteen City Council members, six elected at large from throughout the city and seven elected from geographic districts. In 1995, the council adopted a new district plan which changed council positions to all districts. This plan provides for nine districts, seven with one representative each and two districts with three representatives each. The previous mayor of the city of Memphis was W. W. Herenton. He resigned from his office, effective July 30, 2009. After Herenton's resignation, Myron Lowery served as Mayor Pro Tem for less than three months, one of the shortest terms in Memphis history. Former Shelby County mayor A C Wharton is the current mayor.

In recent years, there have been often rancorous discussions of the potential of a consolidation of unincorporated Shelby County and Memphis into a metropolitan government. Consolidation was a referendum item on the 2010 ballot in Memphis and Shelby County, but failed with 85% of the county vote against it.

Crime

Although in 2004 violent crime in Memphis reached a record low for over a decade, that trend subsequently reversed. In 2005, Memphis was ranked the 4th most dangerous city with a population of 500,000 or higher in the U.S. Crime in Memphis increased in 2005, and saw a dramatic rise in the first half of 2006. Nationally, cities follow similar trends, and crime numbers tend to be cyclical. Local experts and criminologists cite gang recruitment as one possible cause of the rise in crime in Memphis and to a reduction of 66% of federal funding to the Memphis Police Department.

In the first half of 2006, robbery of businesses increased 52.5%, robbery of individuals increased 28.5%, and homicide increased 18% over the same period of 2005. The Memphis Police Department has responded with the initiation of Operation Blue C.R.U.S.H. (Crime Reduction Using Statistical History), which targets crime hotspots and repeat offenders. Memphis ended 2005 with 154 murders, and 2006 ended with 160. 2007 saw 164 murders, 2008 had 138, and 2009 had 132. Violent crimes dropped from 12,939 in 2008 to 12,047. Robbery dropped from 4,788 in 2008 to 4,137 in 2009. Aggravated assault dropped 53,870 in 2008 to 47,158 in 2009 (FBI's UCR). In 2006 and 2007, the Memphis metropolitan area ranked second most dangerous in the nation among cities with a population over 500,000. It also ranked as most dangerous in 2002 and second most dangerous in 2001. In 2006, the Memphis metropolitan area ranked number one in violent crimes for major cities around the U.S according to the FBI's annual crime rankings, whereas it had ranked second in 2005.

Recent statistics show a downward trend in crime in Memphis. Between 2006 and 2008, the crime rate fell by 16%, while the first half of 2009 saw a reduction in serious crime of over 10% from the previous year. The Memphis Police Department's use of the FBI National Incident Based Reporting System, which is a more detailed method of reporting crimes than that used in many other major cities, has been cited as a reason for Memphis's frequent appearance on lists of most dangerous U.S. cities.

Education

The city is served by Memphis City Schools, while surrounding suburbs in other areas of Shelby County are served by Shelby County Schools.

The Memphis City School System is home to over 200 elementary, middle, and high schools.

The Memphis area is home to many private, college-prep schools: Briarcrest Christian School (co-ed), Christian Brothers High School (boys), Evangelical Christian School (co-ed), First Assembly Christian School (co-ed), Hutchison School (girls), Lausanne Collegiate School (co-ed), Memphis University School (boys), Saint Benedict at Auburndale (co-ed), St. George's Independent School (co-ed), St. Agnes Academy (girls), Immaculate Conception Cathedral School (girls), and St. Mary's Episcopal School (girls). Also included in this list is Memphis Harding Academy, a co-ed school affiliated with the Churches of Christ.

Colleges and universities located in the city include the University of Memphis (a comprehensive state university), Rhodes College (formerly Southwestern at Memphis), Memphis College of Art, LeMoyne–Owen College, Christian Brothers University, Baptist College of Health Sciences (formerly Baptist Memorial Hospital School of Nursing), Memphis Theological Seminary, Harding School of Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary (satellite campus), William R. Moore College of Technology, Southern College of Optometry, Southwest Tennessee Community College, Tennessee Technology Center at Memphis, and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (colleges of Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Graduate Health Sciences and Allied Health Sciences). Memphis also has campuses of several for-profit post-secondary institutions, including Victory University (formerly Crichton College), Concorde Career College, ITT Technical Institute, Remington College, and University of Phoenix.

The University of Tennessee College of Dentistry was founded in 1878, making it the oldest dental college in the South, and the third oldest public college of dentistry in the United States.

Infrastructure

Transportation

Highways

The Interstate Highways, Interstate 40, Interstate 55, and Interstate 240, are the main expressways in the Memphis area. Interstates 40 and 55 cross the Mississippi River at Memphis into the state of Arkansas.

The nearly-completed Interstate 22 connects Memphis with Birmingham, Alabama, via northern Mississippi (including Tupelo) and northwestern Alabama. This expressway follows the same route as U.S. Route 78. Other important federal highways though Memphis include the east-west U.S. Route 70, U.S. Route 64, and U.S. Route 72; and the north-south U.S. Route 51 and U.S. Route 61, which is the historic highway north to Chicago via Cairo, Illinois.

The future Interstate 69 from northeast to southwest will pass through Memphis when it is completed, linking Brownsville, Texas to the already-existing portion that runs from Indianapolis, Indiana to Port Huron, Michigan. Segments of this highway are complete in DeSoto County, just south of Memphis. The segment of the I-69 Corridor running through the Memphis area is scheduled for completion in 2012.

Railroads

A large volume of railroad freight moves through Memphis, because of its two heavy-duty Mississippi River railroad crossings, which carry several major east-west railroad freight lines, and also because of the major north-south railroad lines through Memphis which connect with such major cities as Chicago, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Louisville, New Orleans, Dallas, Houston, Mobile, and Birmingham.

By the early 20th century, Memphis had two major passenger railroad stations. After passenger railroad service declined heavily through the middle of the 20th century, the Memphis Union Station was demolished in 1969. The Memphis Central Station was eventually renovated, and it still serves the city.

The only inter-city passenger railroad service to Memphis for many decades has been the daily ''City of New Orleans'' train, operated by Amtrak, which has one train northbound and one train southbound each day between Chicago and New Orleans.

Airports

Memphis International Airport is the global "SuperHub" of FedEx Express, the world's largest airline in terms of freight tons flown, and has the largest cargo operations by volume of any airport worldwide.

Memphis International is also a secondary hub of Delta Air Lines and was used by almost 10 million passengers in 2009. Delta operates around 220 daily flights from the airport, including a nonstop transatlantic flight to Amsterdam. Other airlines providing passenger service are Air Canada Jazz, AirTran, American Airlines, Continental Airlines, SeaPort Airlines, United Airlines and US Airways.

There are also several general aviation airports in the Memphis Metropolitan Area, including the Millington Regional Jetport, located at the former Naval Air Station in Millington, Tennessee.

River port

Memphis has the second-busiest cargo port on the Mississippi River, which is also the fourth-busiest inland port in the United States. The International Port of Memphis covers both the Tennessee and Arkansas sides of the Mississippi River from river mile 725 (km 1167) to mile 740 (km 1191). A focal point of the river port is the industrial park on President's Island, just south of Downtown Memphis.

Bridges

Four railroad and highway bridges cross the Mississippi River at Memphis. In order of their opening years, these are the Frisco Bridge (1892, single-track rail), the Harahan Bridge (1916, a road-rail bridge until 1949, currently carries double-track rail), the Memphis-Arkansas Memorial Bridge (Highway, 1949; later incorporated into Interstate 55), and the Hernando de Soto Bridge (Interstate 40, 1973).

Utilities

Memphis's primary utility provider is the Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division (MLGW). This is the largest three-service municipal utility in the United States, providing electricity, natural gas, and pure water service to all residents of Shelby County. Prior to that, Memphis was served by two primary electric companies, which were merged into the Memphis Power Company. The City of Memphis bought the private company in 1939 to form MLGW, which was an early customer of electricity from the Tennessee Valley Authority.

MLGW still buys most of its power from TVA, and the company pumps its own fresh water from the Memphis Aquifer, using more than 180 water wells.

Health care

The Memphis and Shelby County region supports numerous hospitals, including the Methodist and Baptist Memorial health systems, two of the largest private hospitals in the country.

Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, the largest healthcare provider in the Mid-South, operates seven hospitals and several rural clinics. ''Modern Healthcare'' magazine ranked Methodist Healthcare in the top 100 integrated healthcare networks in the United States. Methodist Healthcare operates, among others, the Le Bonheur Children's Hospital, which offers primary level 1 pediatric trauma care, as well as a nationally recognized pediatric brain tumor program.

Baptist Memorial Healthcare operates fifteen hospitals (three in Memphis), including Baptist Memorial Hospital. According to Health Care Market Guide's annual studies, Mid-Southerners have named Baptist Memorial their "preferred hospital choice for quality".

The St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, leading pediatric treatment and research facility focused on children's catastrophic diseases, resides in Memphis. The institution was conceived and built by the late entertainer Danny Thomas in 1962 as a tribute to St. Jude Thaddeus, patron saint of impossible, hopeless, and difficult causes.

Memphis is also home to the Regional Medical Center at Memphis, which is locally referred to as "The Med". In recent years, the hospital has experienced severe funding difficulties that nearly led to a reduction or elimination of emergency room services. In July 2010, The Med received approximately $40.6 million in federal and local funding to keep the Elvis Presley Trauma Center operational.

Memphis is home to Delta Medical Center of Memphis, which is the only employee-owned medical facility in North America.

Tourism and recreation

Museums and art collections

Many museums of interest are located in Memphis.

National Civil Rights Museum The National Civil Rights Museum is located in the former Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. It includes a historical overview of the American civil rights movement.

Brooks Museum of Art The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, founded in 1916, is the oldest and largest fine art museum in the state of Tennessee. The Brooks' permanent collection includes works from the Italian Renaissance and Baroque eras to British, French Impressionists, and 20th-century artists.

Children's Museum of Memphis The Children's Museum of Memphis exhibits interactive and educational activities for children to take part in, including a skyscraper maze, an airplane cockpit (donated by FedEx), a fire engine, an art studio, grocery store, and, most recently, a mechanic's garage sponsored by AutoZone, Inc.

Graceland Graceland, the former home of music legend Elvis Presley, is one of the most visited houses in the United States (second only to the White House), attracting over 600,000 domestic and international visitors a year. Featured at Graceland are two of Presley's private airplanes, his extensive automobile and motorcycle collection and other Elvis memorabilia. On November 7, 1991, Graceland was listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Pink Palace The Pink Palace Museum serves as the Mid-South's major science and historical museum, and features exhibits ranging from archeology to chemistry. It includes the third largest planetarium in the United States and an IMAX theater. One exhibit features a replica of the original Piggly Wiggly store, the first self-service grocery store, commemorating the invention of the supermarket by Memphian Clarence Saunders in 1916.

Memphis Walk of Fame The Memphis Walk of Fame is a public exhibit located in the Beale Street historic district, which is modeled after the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but is designated exclusively for Memphis musicians, singers, writers, and composers. Honorees include W. C. Handy, B.B. King, Bobby Blue Bland, and Alberta Hunter, among others.

Mud Island River Park Mud Island River Park and Mississippi River Museum is located on Mud Island in downtown Memphis. The park is noted for its River Walk, a 2112:1 scale working model showing of the Lower Mississippi River, from Cairo, Illinois to New Orleans, Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico. in the model equal of the Mississippi River. The Walk stretches roughly , allowing visitors to walk in the water and see models of cities and bridges along the way.

Victorian Village Victorian Village is a historic district of Memphis featuring a series of fine Victorian-era mansions, some of which are open to the public as museums.

Cotton Museum The Cotton Museum is a museum that opened in March 2006 on the old trading floor of the Memphis Cotton Exchange at 65 Union Avenue in downtown Memphis.

Stax Museum The Stax Museum is a museum located at 926 McLemore Avenue, the former location of Stax Records. The original building, a converted movie theatre where artists such as Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, Sam & Dave and many others recorded throughout the 60's and 70's, was torn down, but the original front was reconstructed on the original property. It is operated by Soulsville USA, which also operates the adjacent Stax Music Academy. The original Satellite Record Shop was also reconstructed beside it. It is the only museum in the United States to be devoted entirely to soul music.

Chucalissa Indian Village Chucalissa Indian Village is a Walls Phase mound and plaza complex that was occupied, abandoned and reoccupied several times throughout its history, spanning from 1000 to 1550 CE. Civilian Conservation Corps workers discovered Native American artifacts on the site in 1938 and archaeological excavations of this Mississippian mound complex were initiated. The facility has been operated by the University of Memphis since 1962. In 1973 Chucalissa Indian Village was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Later, in 1994, it was declared a National Historic Landmark. It is the site of the Southeast Indian Heritage Festival held annually in October.

Parks

Major Memphis parks include W.C. Handy Park, Tom Lee Park, Audubon Park, Overton Park including the Old Forest Arboretum, the Lichterman Nature Center (a nature learning center), and the Memphis Botanic Garden.

Shelby Farms park, located at the eastern edge of the city, is one of the largest urban parks in the United States.

Cemeteries

The Memphis National Cemetery is a United States National Cemetery located in north Memphis.

Historic Elmwood Cemetery is one of the oldest rural garden cemeteries in the South, and contains the Carlisle S. Page Arboretum. Memorial Park Cemetery is noted for its sculptures by Mexican artist Dionicio Rodriguez.

Elvis Presley was originally buried in Forest Hill Cemetery, the resting place of his backing band's bassist, Bill Black, but after an attempted grave robbing, his body was moved to the grounds of Graceland.

Other points of interest

Beale Street Blues fans can visit Beale Street, which used to be the center of the Black community, where a young B.B. King used to play his guitar. He occasionally appears there at the club bearing his name, which he partially owns. Street performers play live music, and bars and clubs feature live entertainment until dawn.

Memphis Zoo The Memphis Zoo, which is located in midtown Memphis, features many exhibits of mammals, birds, fish, and amphibians from all over the world. The zoo's giant panda exhibit is one of only five in North America. The Memphis Zoo is one of few that have successfully resulted in live births of rhinoceros in captivity.

Peabody Hotel The Peabody Hotel is well-known for the "Peabody Ducks" that live on the hotel rooftop, making the journey to the hotel lobby in a daily "March of Ducks" ritual.

Sun Studio Sun Studio is available for tour, which is where Elvis Presley first recorded "My Happiness" and "That's When Your Heartaches Begin". Other famous musicians who got their start at Sun include Johnny Cash, Rufus Thomas, Charlie Rich, Howlin' Wolf, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis. It now contains a museum as well as the still-functioning and operating studio.

The Orpheum Theatre The Orpheum Theatre was built in 1928 upon the former property of the Grand Opera House, which was burnt to the ground in 1923 during a strip tease performance by Blossom Seeley. After vaudeville's popularity waned, the building was purchased by the Malco theater chain in 1940 and presented first-run movies until Malco sold the building in 1976. The Orpheum is now managed by the Memphis Development Foundation and presents 10 to 12 Broadway shows each year. The theatre is also home to two of Memphis' local arts groups, Ballet Memphis and Opera Memphis.

The New Daisy Theater The New Daisy Theater is an all-ages concert venue located on Beale Street. After 11 PM, only those at least 18 years of age are allowed on Beale—unless they are going to (or from) a destination point like the New Daisy. The New Daisy routinely presents some of the biggest acts to come to the Mid South. Possibly the most popular venue in Memphis, past acts have included Ani DiFranco, AFI, Cannibal Corpse, GWAR, Insane Clown Posse, Keller Williams, Lamb of God, and Led Zeppelin, among many others. The venue also, on occasion, hosts the Gorilla Production Battle of the Bands as well as Mixed Martial Arts fights.

Mud Island Amphitheater Located on Front Avenue, the Mud Island Amphitheater is a concert venue with an approximate capacity of 5,000 viewers. As one of the two major concert venues in Memphis, past acts have included the likes of R.E.M., Phish, 311, The Black Crowes, Fall Out Boy, Journey, New Kids on the Block, O.A.R., Pat Benatar, Smashing Pumpkins, Steely Dan, and Willie Nelson.

The Pyramid The Pyramid Arena is a former athletic and music venue. It is one of the first sights seen when entering the city from West Memphis via the Memphis-Arkansas Memorial Bridge. The facility was built in 1991 and was originally owned and operated jointly by the city of Memphis and Shelby County. Its unique structure plays on the city's namesake in Egypt, known for its ancient pyramids. At , it is the sixth-largest pyramid in the world behind the Great Pyramid of Giza (456 ft), Khafre's Pyramid (448 ft), the Luxor Hotel (348 ft), the Red Pyramid (341 ft) and the Bent Pyramid (332 ft). As a music venue, it was the largest in Memphis, presenting such acts as R.E.M., Phish, Aerosmith, Janet Jackson, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, The Doobie Brothers, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band is reputed to be the last concert ever held in The Pyramid.

It has been host to the University of Memphis NCAA basketball team, the Memphis Grizzlies NBA team, the Great Midwest Conference basketball tournament, the Southeastern Conference basketball tournament, the Conference USA basketball tournaments, and the 2003 Conference USA women's basketball tournament. It has also hosted first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament and a pay-per-view event by the WWF. The Pyramid was the venue of the boxing match between Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson in 2002.

In 2008, the City of Memphis began leasing The Pyramid to Bass Pro Shops; the facility is to become Bass Pro's largest superstore in the country with a projected grand opening in November 2011.

Other Other Memphis attractions include the Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium, the FedExForum, and Mississippi riverboat day cruises.

Sports

The University of Memphis college basketball team, the Memphis Tigers, has a strong following in the city due to its recent competitive success. The Tigers finished 2nd to the Kansas Jayhawks in the 2008 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship. However, in 2009, an NCAA investigation revealed that Derrick Rose's SAT scores had been invalidated, making him retroactively ineligible to play for Memphis. As a result, the NCAA vacated Memphis' entire 2007-08 season, including the tournament appearance, and forced the University to repay all tournament revenues. Head Coach John Calipari, having already left Memphis to coach for the University of Kentucky, was not reprimanded by the NCAA. The current coach of the Memphis Tigers is Josh Pastner, who coached the Tigers to an NCAA appearance in the 2010-2011 season.

The Memphis Grizzlies of the National Basketball Association is the only club from one of the "big four" major sports leagues in the city; however, the minor leagues are well represented. The Memphis Redbirds of the Pacific Coast League is a Class AAA baseball farm team for the St. Louis Cardinals. The Mississippi RiverKings, formerly the Memphis RiverKings, is a professional hockey team of the Central Hockey League "Class AA" which plays its home games in DeSoto County.

Memphis is home to Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium, the site of University of Memphis football, the Liberty Bowl and the Southern Heritage Classic. The annual St. Jude Classic, a regular part of the PGA Tour, is also held in the city. Each February the city hosts the Regions Morgan Keegan Championships and the Cellular South Cup, which are men's ATP World Tour 500 series and WTA events, respectively.

Memphis has a significant history in pro wrestling. Jerry "The King" Lawler is the sport's greatest name to come out of the city. Sputnik Monroe, a wrestler of the 1950s, like Lawler, promoted racial integration in the city. Ric Flair also noted Memphis as his birthplace.

Memphis has been represented by several now-defunct professional sports franchises, including the Memphis Pharaohs of Arena Football, the Memphis Maniax of the XFL, the Memphis Xplorers of the AF2, the Memphis Showboats of the USFL, the Memphis Southmen of the WFL, the Memphis Houn'Dawgs of the ABA, the Memphis Sounds of the original ABA in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the Memphis Mad Dogs of the CFL.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, the former WFL franchise Memphis Southmen / Memphis Grizzlies sued the NFL in an attempt to be accepted as an expansion franchise. In 1993, the Memphis Hound Dogs was a proposed NFL expansion that was passed over in favor of the Jacksonville Jaguars and Carolina Panthers. Memphis also served as the temporary home of the former Tennessee Oilers while the city of Nashville worked out stadium issues.

See also

1865 Memphis earthquake

List of mayors of Memphis, Tennessee

List of neighborhoods in Memphis, Tennessee

List of people from Memphis, Tennessee

Memphis Mafia

References

Further reading

Dowdy, G. Wayne. ''Crusades for Freedom: Memphis and the Political Transformation of the American South'' (University Press of Mississippi; 2010); 176 pages. Examines the political rise of two minorities, African-Americans and Republicans, after the demise of the machine politics of the Shelby County Democratic Party and the political boss Ed Crump.

Rushing, Wanda. ''Memphis and the Paradox of Place: Globalization in the American South''. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009, on economic development

Rushing, Wanda. "Memphis: Cotton Fields, Cargo Planes, & Biotechnology" ''Southern Spaces'' (2009) online

External links

City of Memphis official website

Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau

Memphis Chamber of Commerce

Memphis History

Memphis Daily Newspaper - The Commercial Appeal

Memphis, Back in the Day - slideshow by ''Life magazine''

Bird's eye view of the city of Memphis, Tennessee 1870. (Library of Congress)

Perspective map of the city of Memphis, Tenn. 1887. (Library of Congress)

Category:Cities in Tennessee Category:County seats in Tennessee Category:Memphis metropolitan area Category:Planned cities in the United States Category:Populated places established in 1819 Category:Tennessee populated places on the Mississippi River Category:Populated places in Tennessee with African American majority populations Category:United States places with Orthodox Jewish communities

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Coordinates	12°58′0″N77°34′0″N
name	Tennessee
flag	Flag of Tennessee.svg
seal	Tennesseestateseallrg.png
nickname	The Volunteer State
motto	Agriculture and Commerce
capital	Nashville
amphibian	Salamander
bird	Mockingbird
fish	Channel Catfish Bass
flower	Iris
folkdance	Square dance
rock	Agate
gemstone	Tennessee River Pearl
insect	Honeybee
quarter	2002 TN Proof.png
quarterreleasedate	2002
reptile	Eastern Box Turtle
tree	Tulip Poplar
wildflower	Passion Flower
staterock	Limestone
song	7 Songs
tartan	Tennessee State Tartan }}

Tennessee () () is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area. Tennessee is bordered by Kentucky and Virginia to the north, North Carolina to the east, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to the south, and Arkansas and Missouri to the west.

The Appalachian Mountains dominate the eastern part of the state, and the Mississippi River forms the state's western border. Tennessee's capital and second largest city is Nashville, which has a population of 626,144. Memphis is the state's largest city, with a population of 670,902. Nashville has the state's largest metropolitan area, at 1,589,934 people.

The state of Tennessee is rooted in the Watauga Association, a 1772 frontier pact generally regarded as the first constitutional government west of the Appalachians. What is now Tennessee was initially part of North Carolina, and later part of the Southwest Territory. Tennessee was admitted to the Union as the 16th state on June 1, 1796. In the early 19th century, Tennessee was home to some of American history's most colorful political figures, among them Davy Crockett, Andrew Jackson, and Sam Houston. Tennessee was the last state to leave the Union and join the Confederacy at the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War in 1861, and the first state to be readmitted to the Union at the end of the war.

Tennessee furnished more soldiers for the Confederate Army than any other state, and more soldiers for the Union Army than any other Southern state. Tennessee has seen some of the nation's worst racial strife, from the formation of the Ku Klux Klan in Pulaski in 1866 to the assassination of Martin Luther King in Memphis in 1968. In the 20th century, Tennessee transitioned from an agrarian economy to a more diversified economy, aided at times by federal entities such as the Tennessee Valley Authority. In the early 1940s, Oak Ridge, Tennessee was established to house the Manhattan Project's uranium enrichment facilities, helping to build the world's first atomic bomb.

Tennessee has played a critical role in the development of rock and roll and early blues music. Beale Street in Memphis is considered by many to be the birthplace of the blues, with musicians such as W.C. Handy performing in its clubs as early as 1909. Memphis was also home to Sun Records, where musicians such as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, and Charlie Rich began their recording careers, and where rock and roll took shape in the 1950s. The 1927 Victor recording sessions in Bristol generally mark the beginning of the country music genre, and the rise of the Grand Ole Opry in the 1930s helped make Nashville the center of the country music recording industry.

Tennessee's major industries include agriculture, manufacturing, and tourism. Poultry, soybeans, and cattle are the state's primary agricultural products, and major manufacturing exports include chemicals, transportation equipment, and electrical equipment. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the nation's most visited national park, is headquartered in the eastern part of the state, and a section of the Appalachian Trail roughly follows the Tennessee-North Carolina border. Other major tourist attractions include Elvis Presley's Graceland in Memphis and the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga.

Geography

Tennessee borders eight other states: Kentucky and Virginia to the north; North Carolina to the east; Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi on the south; Arkansas and Missouri on the Mississippi River to the west. Tennessee ties Missouri as the state bordering the most other states. The state is trisected by the Tennessee River.

The highest point in the state is Clingmans Dome at 6,643 feet (2,025 m). Clingmans Dome, which lies on Tennessee's eastern border, is the highest point on the Appalachian Trail. The state line between Tennessee and North Carolina crosses the summit. The lowest point is the Mississippi River at the Mississippi state line. The geographical center of the state is located in Murfreesboro.

The state of Tennessee is geographically and constitutionally divided into three Grand Divisions: East Tennessee, Middle Tennessee, and West Tennessee. Tennessee features six principal physiographic regions: the Blue Ridge, the Appalachian Ridge and Valley Region, the Cumberland Plateau, the Highland Rim, the Nashville Basin, and the Gulf Coastal Plain. Tennessee is home to the most caves in the United States, with over 8,350 caves registered to date.

East Tennessee

The Blue Ridge area lies on the eastern edge of Tennessee, bordering North Carolina. This region of Tennessee is characterized by the high mountains and rugged terrain of the western Blue Ridge Mountains, which are subdivided into several subranges, namely the Great Smoky Mountains, the Bald Mountains, the Unicoi Mountains, the Unaka Mountains and Roan Highlands, and the Iron Mountains.

The average elevation of the Blue Ridge area is 5,000 feet (1,500 m) above sea level. Clingmans Dome, the state's highest point, is located in this region. The Blue Ridge area was never more than sparsely populated, and today much of it is protected by the Cherokee National Forest, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and several federal wilderness areas and state parks.

Stretching west from the Blue Ridge for approximately 55 miles (88 km) is the Ridge and Valley region, in which numerous tributaries join to form the Tennessee River in the Tennessee Valley. This area of Tennessee is covered by fertile valleys separated by wooded ridges, such as Bays Mountain and Clinch Mountain. The western section of the Tennessee valley, where the depressions become broader and the ridges become lower, is called the Great Valley. In this valley are numerous towns and two of the region's three urban areas, Knoxville, the 3rd largest city in the state, and Chattanooga, the 4th largest city in the state.

The Cumberland Plateau rises to the west of the Tennessee Valley; this area is covered with flat-topped mountains separated by sharp valleys. The elevation of the Cumberland Plateau ranges from 1,500 to over 2,000 feet (450 to over 600 m) above sea level.

Middle Tennessee

West of the Cumberland Plateau is the Highland Rim, an elevated plain that surrounds the Nashville Basin. The northern section of the Highland Rim, known for its high tobacco production, is sometimes called the Pennyroyal Plateau; it is located primarily in Southwestern Kentucky. The Nashville Basin is characterized by rich, fertile farm country and great diversity of natural wildlife.

Middle Tennessee was a common destination of settlers' crossing the Appalachians from Virginia in the late 18th century and early 19th century. An important trading route called the Natchez Trace, created and used for many generations by Native Americans, connected Middle Tennessee to the lower Mississippi River town of Natchez. The route of the Natchez Trace was used as the basis for a scenic highway called the Natchez Trace Parkway.

Some of the last remaining large American Chestnut trees grow in this region. They are being used to help breed blight-resistant trees.

Middle Tennessee is one of the primary state population and transportation centers along with the heart of State government. Nashville (the capitol), Clarksville and Murfreesboro are its largest cities. Fifty percent of the US population is within 600 miles of Nashville. US Interstate Highways I-24, I-40 and I-65 trisect the Division.

West Tennessee

West of the Highland Rim and Nashville Basin is the Gulf Coastal Plain, which includes the Mississippi embayment. The Gulf Coastal Plain is, in terms of area, the predominant land region in Tennessee. It is part of the large geographic land area that begins at the Gulf of Mexico and extends north into southern Illinois. In Tennessee, the Gulf Coastal Plain is divided into three sections that extend from the Tennessee River in the east to the Mississippi River in the west.

The easternmost section, about 10 miles (16 km) in width, consists of hilly land that runs along the western bank of the Tennessee River. To the west of this narrow strip of land is a wide area of rolling hills and streams that stretches all the way to Memphis; this area is called the Tennessee Bottoms or bottom land. In Memphis, the Tennessee Bottoms end in steep bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River. To the west of the Tennessee Bottoms is the Mississippi Alluvial Plain, less than 300 feet (90 m) above sea level. This area of lowlands, flood plains, and swamp land is sometimes referred to as the Delta region.

Most of West Tennessee remained Indian land until the Chickasaw Cession of 1818, when the Chickasaw ceded their land between the Tennessee River and the Mississippi River. The portion of the Chickasaw Cession that lies in Kentucky is known today as the Jackson Purchase.

Public lands

Areas under the control and management of the National Park Service include:

Andrew Johnson National Historic Site in Greeneville

Appalachian National Scenic Trail

Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area

Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park

Cumberland Gap National Historical Park

Foothills Parkway

Fort Donelson National Battlefield and Fort Donelson National Cemetery near Dover

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Natchez Trace Parkway

Obed Wild and Scenic River near Wartburg

Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail

Shiloh National Cemetery and Shiloh National Military Park near Shiloh

Stones River National Battlefield and Stones River National Cemetery near Murfreesboro

Trail of Tears National Historic Trail

Fifty-four state parks, covering some 132,000 acres (534 km²) as well as parts of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Cherokee National Forest, and Cumberland Gap National Historical Park are in Tennessee. Sportsmen and visitors are attracted to Reelfoot Lake, originally formed by the New Madrid earthquake; stumps and other remains of a once dense forest, together with the lotus bed covering the shallow waters, give the lake an eerie beauty.

Climate

Most of the state has a humid subtropical climate, with the exception of some of the higher elevations in the Appalachians, which are classified as having a mountain temperate climate or a humid continental climate due to cooler temperatures. The Gulf of Mexico is the dominant factor in the climate of Tennessee, with winds from the south being responsible for most of the state's annual precipitation. Generally, the state has hot summers and mild to cool winters with generous precipitation throughout the year. On average the state receives 50 inches (130 cm) of precipitation annually. Snowfall ranges from 5 inches (13 cm) in West Tennessee to over 16 inches (41 cm) in the higher mountains in East Tennessee.

Summers in the state are generally hot and humid, with most of the state averaging a high of around 90 °F (32 °C) during the summer months. Winters tend to be mild to cool, increasing in coolness at higher elevations. Generally, for areas outside the highest mountains, the average overnight lows are near freezing for most of the state. The highest recorded temperature is at Perryville on August 9, 1930 while the lowest recorded temperature is at Mountain City on December 30, 1917.

While the state is far enough from the coast to avoid any direct impact from a hurricane, the location of the state makes it likely to be impacted from the remnants of tropical cyclones which weaken over land and can cause significant rainfall, such as Tropical Storm Chris in 1982. The state averages around 50 days of thunderstorms per year, some of which can be quite severe. Tornadoes are possible throughout the state, with West and Middle Tennessee the most vulnerable. On average, the state has 15 tornadoes per year. Tornadoes in Tennessee can be severe, and Tennessee leads the nation in the percentage of total tornadoes which have fatalities. Winter storms are an occasional problem, although ice storms are a more likely occurrence. Fog is a persistent problem in parts of the state, especially in much of the Smoky Mountains.

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History

Early history

The area now known as Tennessee was first inhabited by Paleo-Indians nearly 12,000 years ago. The names of the cultural groups that inhabited the area between first settlement and the time of European contact are unknown, but several distinct cultural phases have been named by archaeologists, including Archaic (8000–1000 BC), Woodland (1000 BC–1000 AD), and Mississippian (1000–1600 AD), whose chiefdoms were the cultural predecessors of the Muscogee people who inhabited the Tennessee River Valley prior to Cherokee migration into the river's headwaters.

The first recorded European excursions into what is now called Tennessee were three expeditions led by Spanish explorers, namely Hernando de Soto in 1540, Tristan de Luna in 1559, and Juan Pardo in 1567. Pardo recorded the name "Tanasqui" from a local Indian village, which may have evolved to the state's current name. At that time, Tennessee was inhabited by tribes of Muscogee and Yuchi people. Possibly because of European diseases devastating the Native tribes, which would have left a population vacuum, and also from expanding European settlement in the north, the Cherokee moved south from the area now called Virginia. As European colonists spread into the area, the native populations were forcibly displaced to the south and west, including all Muscogee and Yuchi peoples, the Chickasaw, and Choctaw.

The first British settlement in what is now Tennessee was Fort Loudoun, near present-day Vonore. Fort Loudoun became the westernmost British outpost to that date. The fort was designed by John William Gerard de Brahm and constructed by forces under British Captain Raymond Demeré. After its completion, Captain Raymond Demeré relinquished command on August 14, 1757 to his brother, Captain Paul Demeré. Hostilities erupted between the British and the neighboring Overhill Cherokees, and a siege of Fort Loudoun ended with its surrender on August 7, 1760. The following morning, Captain Paul Demeré and a number of his men were killed in an ambush nearby, and the most of the rest of the garrison was taken prisoner.

In the 1760s, long hunters from Virginia explored much of East and Middle Tennessee, and the first permanent European settlers began arriving late in the decade. The vast majority of 18th century settlers were English or of primarily English descent but nearly 20% of them were also Scotch-Irish. These settlers formed the Watauga Association, a community built on lands leased from the Cherokee peoples.

During the American Revolutionary War, Fort Watauga at Sycamore Shoals (in present-day Elizabethton) was attacked (1776) by Dragging Canoe and his warring faction of Cherokee who were aligned with the British Loyalists. These renegade Cherokee were referred to by settlers as the Chickamauga. They opposed North Carolina's annexation of the Washington District and the concurrent settling of the Transylvania Colony further north and west. The lives of many settlers were spared from the initial warrior attacks through the warnings of Dragging Canoe's cousin, Nancy Ward. The frontier fort on the banks of the Watauga River later served as a 1780 staging area for the Overmountain Men in preparation to trek over the Appalachian Mountains, to engage, and to later defeat the British Army at the Battle of Kings Mountain in North Carolina.

Three counties of the Washington District (now part of Tennessee) broke off from North Carolina in 1784 and formed the State of Franklin. Efforts to obtain admission to the Union failed, and the counties (now numbering eight) had re-joined North Carolina by 1789. North Carolina ceded the area to the federal government in 1790, after which it was organized into the Southwest Territory. In an effort to encourage settlers to move west into the new territory, in 1787 the mother state of North Carolina ordered a road to be cut to take settlers into the Cumberland Settlements—from the south end of Clinch Mountain (in East Tennessee) to French Lick (Nashville). The Trace was called the “North Carolina Road” or “Avery’s Trace,” and sometimes “The Wilderness Road (although it should not be confused with Daniel Boone's "Wilderness Road" through the Cumberland Gap).

Statehood (1796)

Tennessee was admitted to the Union in 1796 as the 16th state. It was the first state created from territory under the jurisdiction of the United States federal government. Apart from the former Thirteen Colonies only Vermont and Kentucky predate Tennessee's statehood, and neither were ever federal territories. The state boundaries, according to the Constitution of the State of Tennessee, Article I, Section 31, stated that the beginning point for identifying the boundary was the extreme height of the Stone Mountain, at the place where the line of Virginia intersects it, and basically ran the extreme heights of mountain chains through the Appalachian Mountains separating North Carolina from Tennessee past the Indian towns of Cowee and Old Chota, thence along the main ridge of the said mountain (Unicoi Mountain) to the southern boundary of the state; all the territory, lands and waters lying west of said line are included in the boundaries and limits of the newly formed state of Tennessee. Part of the provision also stated that the limits and jurisdiction of the state would include future land acquisition, referencing possible land trade with other states, or the acquisition of territory from west of the Mississippi River.

During the administration of U.S. President Martin Van Buren, nearly 17,000 Cherokees—along with approximately 2,000 black slaves owned by Cherokees—were uprooted from their homes between 1838 and 1839 and were forced by the U.S. military to march from "emigration depots" in Eastern Tennessee (such as Fort Cass) toward the more distant Indian Territory west of Arkansas. During this relocation an estimated 4,000 Cherokees died along the way west. In the Cherokee language, the event is called ''Nunna daul Isunyi''—"the Trail Where We Cried." The Cherokees were not the only Native Americans forced to emigrate as a result of the Indian removal efforts of the United States, and so the phrase "Trail of Tears" is sometimes used to refer to similar events endured by other Native American peoples, especially among the "Five Civilized Tribes". The phrase originated as a description of the earlier emigration of the Choctaw nation.

Civil War and Reconstruction

In February 1861, secessionists in Tennessee's state government—led by Governor Isham Harris—sought voter approval for a convention to sever ties with the United States, but Tennessee voters rejected the referendum by a 54–46% margin. The strongest opposition to secession came from East Tennessee (which later tried to form a separate Union-aligned state). Following the Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter in April and Lincoln's call for troops from Tennessee and other states in response, Governor Isham Harris began military mobilization, submitted an ordinance of secession to the General Assembly, and made direct overtures to the Confederate government. The Tennessee legislature ratified an agreement to enter a military league with the Confederate States on May 7, 1861. On June 8, 1861, with people in Middle Tennessee having significantly changed their position, voters approved a second referendum calling for secession, becoming the last state to do so.

Many major battles of the American Civil War were fought in Tennessee—most of them Union victories. Ulysses S. Grant and the U.S. Navy captured control of the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers in February 1862. They held off the Confederate counterattack at Shiloh in April. Memphis fell to the Union in June, following a naval battle on the Mississippi River in front of the city The Capture of Memphis and Nashville gave the Union control of the western and middle sections; this control was confirmed at the Battle of Murfreesboro in early January 1863 and by the subsequent Tullahoma Campaign.

Confederates held East Tennessee despite the strength of Unionist sentiment there, with the exception of extremely pro-Confederate Sullivan County. The Confederates besieged Chattanooga during the Chattanooga Campaign in early fall 1863, but were driven off by Grant in November. Many of the Confederate defeats can be attributed to the poor strategic vision of General Braxton Bragg, who led the Army of Tennessee from Perryville, Kentucky to Confederate defeat at Chattanooga.

The last major battles came when the Confederates invaded Middle Tennessee in November 1864 and were checked at Franklin, then completely diminished by George Thomas at Nashville in December. Meanwhile the civilian Andrew Johnson was appointed military governor of the state by President Abraham Lincoln.

When the Emancipation Proclamation was announced, Tennessee was mostly held by Union forces. Thus, Tennessee was not among the states enumerated in the Proclamation, and the Proclamation did not free any slaves there. Nonetheless, enslaved African Americans escaped to Union lines to gain freedom without waiting for official action. Old and young, men, women and children camped near Union troops. Thousands of former slaves ended up fighting on the Union side, nearly 200,000 in total across the South, and some 30,000 blacks fought for the Confederates.

Tennessee's legislature approved an amendment to the state constitution prohibiting slavery on February 22, 1865. Voters in the state approved the amendment in March. It also ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (abolishing slavery in every state) on April 7, 1865.

In 1864, Andrew Johnson (a War Democrat from Tennessee) was elected Vice President under Abraham Lincoln. He became President after Lincoln's assassination in 1865. Under Johnson's lenient re-admission policy, Tennessee was the first of the seceding states to have its elected members readmitted to the U.S. Congress, on July 24, 1866. Because Tennessee had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, it was the only one of the formerly secessionist states that did not have a military governor during the Reconstruction period.

After the formal end of Reconstruction, the struggle over power in Southern society continued. Through violence and intimidation against freedmen and their allies, White Democrats regained political power in Tennessee and other states across the South in the late 1870s and 1880s. Over the next decade, the state legislature passed increasingly restrictive laws to control African Americans. In 1889 the General Assembly passed four laws described as electoral reform, with the cumulative effect of essentially disfranchising most African Americans in rural areas and small towns, as well as many poor Whites. Legislation included implementation of a poll tax, timing of registration, and recording requirements. Tens of thousands of taxpaying citizens were without representation for decades into the 20th century. Disfranchising legislation accompanied Jim Crow laws passed in the late 19th century, which imposed segregation in the state. In 1900, African Americans made up nearly 24% of the state's population, and numbered 480,430 citizens who lived mostly in the central and western parts of the state.

In 1897, Tennessee celebrated its centennial of statehood (though one year late of the 1896 anniversary) with a great exposition in Nashville. A full scale replica of the Parthenon was constructed for the celebration, located in what is now Nashville's Centennial Park.

20th century

On August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the thirty-sixth and final state necessary to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provided women the right to vote. Disfranchising voter registration requirements continued to keep most African Americans and many poor whites, both men and women, off the voter rolls.

The need to create work for the unemployed during the Great Depression, a desire for rural electrification, the need to control annual spring flooding and improve shipping capacity on the Tennessee River were all factors that drove the Federal creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in 1933. Through the power of the TVA projects, Tennessee quickly became the nation's largest public utility supplier.

During World War II, the availability of abundant TVA electrical power led the Manhattan Project to locate one of the principal sites for production and isolation of weapons-grade fissile material in East Tennessee. The planned community of Oak Ridge was built from scratch to provide accommodations for the facilities and workers. These sites are now Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Y-12 National Security Complex, and the East Tennessee Technology Park.

Despite recognized effects of limiting voting by poor whites, successive legislatures expanded the reach of the disfranchising laws until they covered the state. In 1949 political scientist V. O. Key Jr. argued that "the size of the poll tax did not inhibit voting as much as the inconvenience of paying it. County officers regulated the vote by providing opportunities to pay the tax (as they did in Knoxville), or conversely by making payment as difficult as possible. Such manipulation of the tax, and therefore the vote, created an opportunity for the rise of urban bosses and political machines. Urban politicians bought large blocks of poll tax receipts and distributed them to blacks and whites, who then voted as instructed."

In 1953 state legislators amended the state constitution, removing the poll tax. In many areas both blacks and poor whites still faced subjectively applied barriers to voter registration that did not end until after passage of national civil rights legislation, including the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Tennessee celebrated its bicentennial in 1996. With a yearlong statewide celebration entitled "Tennessee 200", it opened a new state park (Bicentennial Mall) at the foot of Capitol Hill in Nashville.

Demographics

The center of population of Tennessee is located in Rutherford County, in the city of Murfreesboro.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2006, Tennessee had an estimated population of 6,038,803, which is an increase of 83,058, or 1.4%, from the prior year and an increase of 349,541, or 6.1%, since the year 2000. This includes a natural increase since the last census of 142,266 people (that is 493,881 births minus 351,615 deaths), and an increase from net migration of 219,551 people into the state. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 59,385 people, and migration within the country produced a net increase of 160,166 people. 20% of Tennesseans were born outside the South, compared to a figure of 13.5% in 1990.

In recent years, Tennessee has received an influx of people relocating from several northern states, California, and Florida, for the low cost of living, and the booming healthcare and automobile industries. Metropolitan Nashville is one of the fastest-growing areas in the country due in part to these factors.

In 2000, the five most common self-reported ethnic groups in the state were: American (17.3%), African American (16.4%), Irish (9.3%), English (9.1%), and German (8.3%). Most Tennesseans who self-identify as having American ancestry are of English and Scotch-Irish stock. An estimated 21–24% of Tennesseans are of predominantly English ancestry.

6.6% of Tennessee's population were reported as under 5 years of age, 24.6% under 18, and 12.4% were 65 or older. Females made up approximately 51.3% of the population.

On June 19, 2010, the Tennessee Commission of Indian Affairs granted state recognition to six Indian tribes which was later repealed by the state's Attorney General because the action by the commission was illegal. The tribes were as follows:

The Cherokee Wolf Clan in western Tennessee, with members in Carroll County, Benton, Decatur, Henderson, Henry, Weakley, Gibson and Madison counties.

The Chikamaka Band based historically on the South Cumberland Plateau, said to have members in Franklin, Grundy, Marion, Sequatchie, Warren and Coffee counties.

Central Band of Cherokee, also known as the Cherokee of Lawrence County, Tennessee.

United Eastern Lenapee Nation of Winfield, Tennessee.

The Tanasi Council, said to have members in Shelby, Dyer, Gibson, Humphreys and Perry counties; and

Remnant Yuchi Nation, with members in Sullivan, Carter, Greene, Hawkins, Unicoi, Johnson and Washington counties.

Religion

The religious affiliations of the people of Tennessee are:

Christian: 82%

*Baptist: 39%

*Methodist: 10%

*Church of Christ: 6%

*Roman Catholic: 6%

*Presbyterian: 3%

*Church of God: 2%

*Lutheran: 2%

*Pentecostal: 2%

*Other Christian (includes unspecified "Christian" and "Protestant"): 12%

Islam: 1%

Other religions: 2%

Non-religious: 9%

The largest denominations by number of adherents in 2000 were the Southern Baptist Convention with 1,414,199; the United Methodist Church with 393,994; the Churches of Christ with 216,648; and the Roman Catholic Church with 183,161.

Tennessee is home to several Protestant denominations, such as the National Baptist Convention (headquartered in Nashville), the Church of God in Christ and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church (both headquartered in Memphis), the Church of God and The Church of God of Prophecy (headquartered in Cleveland, Tennessee). The Free Will Baptist denomination is headquartered in Antioch, and its main Bible college is in Nashville. The Southern Baptist Convention maintains its general headquarters in Nashville. Publishing houses of several denominations are located in Nashville.

Economy

According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, in 2005 Tennessee's gross state product was $226.502 billion, making Tennessee the 18th largest economy in the nation. In 2003, the per capita personal income was $28,641, 36th in the nation, and 91% of the national per capita personal income of $31,472. In 2004, the median household income was $38,550, 41st in the nation, and 87% of the national median of $44,472.

Major outputs for the state include textiles, cotton, cattle, and electrical power. Tennessee has over 82,000 farms, roughly 59 percent of which accommodate beef cattle. Although cotton was an early crop in Tennessee, large-scale cultivation of the fiber did not begin until the 1820s with the opening of the land between the Tennessee and Mississippi Rivers. The upper wedge of the Mississippi Delta extends into southwestern Tennessee, and it was in this fertile section that cotton took hold. Currently West Tennessee is also heavily planted in soybeans, focusing on the northwest corner of the state.

Major corporations with headquarters in Tennessee include FedEx Corporation, AutoZone Incorporated and International Paper, all based in Memphis; Pilot Corporation and Regal Entertainment Group, based in Knoxville; Eastman Chemical Company, based in Kingsport, the North American headquarters of Nissan, based in Franklin; and the head-quarters of Caterpillar Financial (the finance division of the well known mining company Caterpillar) based in Nashville. Tennessee is also the location of the Volkswagen Chattanooga Assembly Plant and a 1.2 Billion dollar polysilicon production facility by Hemlock Semiconductor Group in Clarksville.

Tennessee is a right to work state, as are most of its Southern neighbors. Unionization has historically been low and continues to decline as in most of the U.S. generally. As of January 2010, the state's unemployment rate is 10.7%.

Tax

The Tennessee income tax does not apply to salaries and wages, but most income from stocks, bonds and notes receivable is taxable. All taxable dividends and interest which exceed the $1,250 single exemption or the $2,500 joint exemption are taxable at the rate of 6%. The state's sales and use tax rate for most items is 7%. Food is taxed at a lower rate of 5.5%, but candy, dietary supplements and prepared food are taxed at the full 7% rate. Local sales taxes are collected in most jurisdictions, at rates varying from 1.5% to 2.75%, bringing the total sales tax to between 8.5% and 9.75%, one of the highest levels in the nation. Intangible property is assessed on the shares of stock of stockholders of any loan company, investment company, insurance company or for-profit cemetery companies. The assessment ratio is 40% of the value multiplied by the tax rate for the jurisdiction. Tennessee imposes an inheritance tax on decedents' estates that exceed maximum single exemption limits ($1,000,000 for deaths 2006 and after.)

Transportation

Interstate highways

Interstate 40 crosses the state in a west-east orientation. Its branch interstate highways include I-240 in Memphis; I-440 in Nashville; and I-140 and I-640 in Knoxville. I-26, although technically an east-west interstate, runs from the North Carolina border below Johnson City to its terminus at Kingsport. I-24 is an east-west interstate that runs cross-state from Chattanooga to Clarksville.

In a north-south orientation are highways I-55, I-65, I-75, and I-81. Interstate 65 crosses the state through Nashville, while Interstate 75 serves Chattanooga and Knoxville and Interstate 55 serves Memphis. Interstate 81 enters the state at Bristol and terminates at its junction with I-40 near Dandridge. I-155 is a branch highway from I-55. The only spur highway of I-75 in Tennessee is I-275, which is in Knoxville.

Airports

Major airports within the state include Nashville International Airport (BNA), Memphis International Airport (MEM), McGhee Tyson Airport (TYS) in Knoxville, Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport (CHA), Tri-Cities Regional Airport (TRI), and McKellar-Sipes Regional Airport (MKL), in Jackson. Because Memphis International Airport is the major hub for FedEx Corporation, it is the world's largest air cargo operation.

Railroads

Memphis and Newbern, Tennessee, are served by the Amtrak City of New Orleans line on its run between Chicago, Illinois, and New Orleans, Louisiana.

Nashville is served by the Music City Star commuter rail service.

Governance

Tennessee's governor holds office for a four-year term and may serve a maximum of two consecutive terms. The governor is the only official who is elected statewide. Unlike most states, the state does not elect the lieutenant governor directly; the Tennessee Senate elects its Speaker, who serves as lieutenant governor.

The Tennessee General Assembly, the state legislature, consists of the 33-member Senate and the 99-member House of Representatives. Senators serve four-year terms, and House members serve two-year terms. Each chamber chooses its own speaker. The speaker of the state Senate also holds the title of lieutenant-governor. Constitutional officials in the legislative branch are elected by a joint session of the legislature.

The highest court in Tennessee is the state Supreme Court. It has a chief justice and four associate justices. No more than two justices can be from the same Grand Division. The Supreme Court of Tennessee also appoints the Attorney General, a practice that is not found in any of the other 49 states in the Union. Both the Court of Appeals and the Court of Criminal Appeals have 12 judges. A number of local, circuit, and federal courts provide judicial services.

Tennessee's current state constitution was adopted in 1870. The state had two earlier constitutions. The first was adopted in 1796, the year Tennessee joined the union, and the second was adopted in 1834. The Tennessee Constitution outlaws martial law within its jurisdiction. This may be a result of the experience of Tennessee residents and other Southerners during the period of military control by Union (Northern) forces of the U.S. government after the American Civil War.

Politics

+ Presidential elections results
! Year	Republican Party (United States)>Republican	Democratic Party (United States)>Democratic
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Tennessee politics, like that of most U.S. states, is dominated by the Republican and the Democratic Parties. Except for in two nationwide Republican landslides of the 1920s (in 1920, when Tennessee narrowly supported Warren G. Harding over Ohio Governor James Cos, and in 1928, when it more decisively voted for Herbert Hoover over New York Governor Al Smith), the state was part of the Democratic Solid South until the 1950s, when it twice voted for Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower. Tennessee has since voted for Republicans in most presidential elections, though it tends to be somewhat more moderate than its staunchly conservative neighbors to the south.

While the Republicans control slightly more than half of the state, Democrats have moderate support in parts of rural Middle Tennessee and northern West Tennessee and have strong support in the cities of Nashville and Memphis. The latter area includes a large African-American population. Historically, Republicans had their greatest strength in East Tennessee prior to the 1960s. Tennessee's 1st / 2nd congressional districts based in East Tennessee are one of the few historically Republican districts in the South; the 1st has been in Republican hands continuously since 1881, and the 2nd district has been held continuously by Republicans since 1873.

In contrast, long disfranchisement of African Americans and their proportion as a minority (16.45% in 1960) meant that white Democrats generally dominated politics in the rest of the state until the 1960s. The GOP in Tennessee was essentially a sectional party. Former Gov. Winfield Dunn and former U.S. Sen. Bill Brock wins in 1970 built the Republican Party into a competitive party for the statewide victory. Tennessee has selected governors from different parties since 1970.

In the 2000 presidential election, Vice President Al Gore, a former U.S. Senator from Tennessee, failed to carry his home state, an unusual occurrence. Support for Republican George W. Bush increased in 2004, with his margin of victory in the state increasing from 4% in 2000 to 14% in 2004. Democratic presidential nominees from Southern states (such as Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton) usually fare better than their Northern counterparts do in Tennessee, especially among split-ticket voters outside the metropolitan areas.

Tennessee sends nine members to the US House of Representatives, of whom there are seven Republicans and two Democrats. Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey is the first Republican speaker of the state Senate in 140 years. In 2008 elections, the Republican party gained control of both houses of the Tennessee state legislature for the first time since Reconstruction. Now considered as 30% of the state's electorate are independents.

The ''Baker v. Carr'' (1962) decision of the US Supreme Court, which established the principle of one man, one vote, was based on a lawsuit over rural-biased apportionment of seats in the Tennessee legislature. This significant ruling led to an increased (and proportional) prominence in state politics by urban and, eventually, suburban, legislators and statewide officeholders in relation to their population within the state. The ruling also applied to numerous other states long controlled by rural minorities, such as Alabama.

Law enforcement

State agencies

The state of Tennessee maintains four dedicated law enforcement entities: the Tennessee Highway Patrol, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA), the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI), and the Tennessee State Parks Department.

The Highway Patrol is the primary law enforcement entity that concentrates on highway safety regulations and general non-wildlife state law enforcement and is under the jurisdiction of the Tennessee Department of Safety. The TWRA is an independent agency tasked with enforcing all wildlife, boating, and fisheries regulations outside of state parks. The TBI maintains state-of-the-art investigative facilities and is the primary state-level criminal investigative department. Tennessee State Park Rangers are responsible for all activities and law enforcement inside the Tennessee State Parks system.

Local government

Local law enforcement is divided between County Sheriff's Offices and Municipal Police Departments. Tennessee's Constitution requires that each County have an elected Sheriff. In 94 of the 95 Counties the Sheriff is the chief law enforcement officer in the County and has jurisdiction over the county as a whole. Each Sheriff's Office is responsible for warrant service, court security, jail operations and primary law enforcement in the unincorporated areas of a county as well as providing support to the Municipal Police Departments. Incorporated municipalities are required to maintain a Police Department to provide police services within their corporate limits.

The three Counties in Tennessee to adopt Metropolitan governments have taken different approaches to resolving the conflict that a Metro government presents to the requirement to have an elected Sheriff.

Nashville/Davidson County split law enforcement duties and authority between the Metro Sheriff and the Metro Police Chief. In this instance the Sheriff is no longer the chief law enforcement officer for Davidson County. The Davidson County Sheriff's duties focus on warrant service and jail operations. The Metropolitan Police Chief is the chief law enforcement officer and the Metropolitan Police Department provides primary law enforcement for the entire county.

Lynchburg/Moore County took a much simpler approach and abolished the Lynchburg Police Department when it consolidated and placed all law enforcement responsibility under the Sheriff's Office.

Hartsville/Trousdale County, although the smallest county in Tennessee, adopted a system similar to Nashville's that retains the Sheriff's Office but also has a Metropolitan Police Department.

Important cities and towns

The capital is Nashville, though Knoxville, Kingston, and Murfreesboro have all served as state capitals in the past. Memphis has the largest population of any city in the state. Nashville's 13-county metropolitan area has been the state's largest since c. 1990. Chattanooga and Knoxville, both in the eastern part of the state near the Great Smoky Mountains, each has approximately one-third of the population of Memphis or Nashville. The city of Clarksville is a fifth significant population center, some 45 miles (70 km) northwest of Nashville. Murfreesboro is the sixth-largest city in Tennessee, consisting of some 108,755 residents. {| |- |valign="top"| Major cities

Chattanooga

Clarksville

Knoxville

Memphis

Murfreesboro

Nashville

Secondary cities

Bartlett

Brentwood

Bristol

Cleveland

Collierville

Columbia

Cookeville

Franklin

Germantown

Hendersonville

Jackson

Johnson City

Kingsport

Morristown

Oak Ridge

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Education

Tennessee has a rich variety of public, private, charter, and specialized education facilities ranging from pre-school through university education.

Colleges and universities

Public Higher education is under the oversight of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission which provides guidance to two public university systems – the University of Tennessee system and the Tennessee Board of Regents. In addition a number of private colleges and universities are located throughout the state.

American Baptist College Aquinas College (Tennessee) The Art Institute of Tennessee- Nashville Austin Peay State University Baptist Memorial College of Health Sciences Belmont University Bethel College Bryan College Carson-Newman College Chattanooga State Technical Community College Christian Brothers University Columbia State Community College Crichton College Cumberland University Dyersburg State Community College East Tennessee State University Emmanuel School of Religion Fisk University Free Will Baptist Bible College Freed-Hardeman University Jackson State Community College Johnson University King College Knoxville College Lambuth University Lane College Lee University LeMoyne-Owen College Lincoln Memorial University Lipscomb University Martin Methodist College Maryville College Meharry Medical College Memphis College of Art Memphis Theological Seminary

Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary Middle Tennessee State University Milligan College Motlow State Community College Nashville School of Law Nashville State Community College Northeast State Technical Community College Nossi College of Art O'More College of Design Pellissippi State Technical Community College Rhodes College Roane State Community College Southern Adventist University Southern College of Optometry Southwest Tennessee Community College Tennessee State University Tennessee Technological University Tennessee Temple University Tennessee Wesleyan College The University of the South Trevecca Nazarene University Tusculum College Union University University of Memphis University of Tennessee System *University of Tennessee (Knoxville) **University of Tennessee Health Science Center (Memphis) **University of Tennessee Space Institute *University of Tennessee at Chattanooga *University of Tennessee at Martin Vanderbilt University Volunteer State Community College Walters State Community College Watkins College of Art and Design

Local school districts

Public primary and secondary education systems are operated by county, city, or special school districts to provide education at the local level. These school districts operate under the direction of the Tennessee Department of Education. Private schools are found in a many counties.

Sports

Professional teams

!Club	!Sport	!League
Memphis Redbirds	Baseball
Nashville Sounds	Baseball
Chattanooga Lookouts	Baseball
Tennessee Smokies	Baseball
Jackson Generals	Baseball
Elizabethton Twins	Baseball
Greeneville Astros	Baseball
Johnson City Cardinals	Baseball
Kingsport Mets	Baseball
Memphis Grizzlies	Basketball	National Basketball Association
Franklin Knights	Basketball	WBA
Tennessee Titans		National Football League
Nashville Predators	Ice hockey	National Hockey League
Knoxville Ice Bears	Ice hockey	Southern Professional Hockey League
Nashville Metros		USL Premier Development League
Chattanooga FC	Soccer	USL Premier Development League

Tennessee is also home to Bristol Motor Speedway which features NASCAR Sprint Cup racing two weekends a year, routinely selling out more than 160,000 seats on each date as well as Nashville Superspeedway.

Name origin

The earliest variant of the name that became ''Tennessee'' was recorded by Captain Juan Pardo, the Spanish explorer, when he and his men passed through a Native American village named "Tanasqui" in 1567 while traveling inland from South Carolina. In the early 18th century, British traders encountered a Cherokee town named Tanasi (or "Tanase") in present-day Monroe County, Tennessee. The town was located on a river of the same name (now known as the Little Tennessee River), and appears on maps as early as 1725. It is not known whether this was the same town as the one encountered by Juan Pardo, although recent research suggests that Pardo's "Tanasqui" was located at the confluence of the Pigeon River and the French Broad River, near modern Newport.

The meaning and origin of the word are uncertain. Some accounts suggest it is a Cherokee modification of an earlier Yuchi word. It has been said to mean "meeting place", "winding river", or "river of the great bend". According to James Mooney, the name "can not be analyzed" and its meaning is lost.

The modern spelling, ''Tennessee'', is attributed to James Glen, the governor of South Carolina, who used this spelling in his official correspondence during the 1750s. The spelling was popularized by the publication of Henry Timberlake's "Draught of the Cherokee Country" in 1765. In 1788, North Carolina created "Tennessee County", the third county to be established in what is now Middle Tennessee. (Tennessee County was the predecessor to current-day Montgomery County and Robertson County). When a constitutional convention met in 1796 to organize a new state out of the Southwest Territory, it adopted "Tennessee" as the name of the state.

Nickname

Tennessee is known as the "Volunteer State," a nickname earned during the War of 1812 because of the prominent role played by volunteer soldiers from Tennessee, especially during the Battle of New Orleans.

State symbols

State symbols include:

State bird – "Northern Mockingbird"

State game bird – "Bobwhite Quail"

State wild animal – "Raccoon"

State sport fish – "Largemouth Bass"

State commercial fish – "Channel Catfish"

State horse – "Tennessee Walking Horse"

State insect – "Lightning Bug and the Lady Bug"

State cultivated flower – "Purple Iris"

State wild flower – "Passion Flower"

State tree – "Tulip Poplar"

State fruit – "Tomato"

State reptile – "Box turtle"

See also

List of National Register of Historic Places in Tennessee

List of people from Tennessee

U.S. state

References

Further reading

External links

State Government Website

Tennessee Department of Tourist Development

Tennessee State Databases – Annotated list of searchable databases produced by Tennessee state agencies and compiled by the Government Documents Roundtable of the American Library Association.

Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture

Tennessee State Library and Archives

Energy Profile for Tennessee

USGS real-time, geographic, and other scientific resources of Tennessee

U.S. Census Bureau

Tennessee Blue Book – All things Tennessee

Timeline of Modern Tennessee Politics

Tennessee State Facts

Tennessee landforms

The Annals of Tennessee to the End of the Eighteenth Century – a history by J. G. M. Ramsey, 1853

Category:States of the Confederate States of America Category:States of the United States Category:States and territories established in 1796 Category:States of the Southern United States

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Coordinates	12°58′0″N77°34′0″N
name	Chuck Berry
birth name	Charles Edward Anderson Berry
background	solo_singer
born	October 18, 1926St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
instrument	Guitar, vocals
genre	Rock and roll, blues,
occupation	Musician, songwriter
years active	1955–present
label	Chess, Mercury, Atco
website	www.chuckberry.com
notable instruments	Gibson ES-355 }}

Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry (born October 18, 1926) is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), Chuck Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics focusing on teen life and consumerism and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music.

Born into a middle class family in St. Louis, Missouri, Berry had an interest in music from an early age and gave his first public performance at Sumner High School. While still a high school student he served a prison sentence for armed robbery between 1944 and 1947. On his release, Berry settled into married life and worked at an automobile assembly plant. By early 1953, influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship techniques of blues player T-Bone Walker, he was performing in the evenings with the Johnnie Johnson Trio. His break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955, and met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess of Chess Records. With Chess he recorded "Maybellene"—Berry's adaptation of the country song "Ida Red"—which sold over a million copies, reaching #1 on Billboard's Rhythm and Blues chart. By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star with several hit records and film appearances to his name as well as a lucrative touring career. He had also established his own St. Louis-based nightclub, called Berry's Club Bandstand. But in January 1962, Berry was sentenced to three years in prison for offenses under the Mann Act—he had transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines.

After his release in 1963, Berry had several more hits, including "No Particular Place To Go", "You Never Can Tell", and "Nadine", but these did not achieve the same success, or lasting impact, of his 1950s songs, and by the 1970s he was more in demand as a nostalgic live performer, playing his past hits with local backup bands of variable quality. His insistence on being paid cash led to a jail sentence in 1979—four months and community service for tax evasion.

Berry was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on its opening in 1986, with the comment that he "laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance." Berry is included in several ''Rolling Stone'' "Greatest of All Time" lists, including being ranked fifth on their 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll included three of Chuck Berry's songs: "Johnny B. Goode", "Maybellene", and "Rock and Roll Music". Today – at the age of – Berry continues to play live.

Early life and apprenticeship with Johnnie Johnson (1926–54)

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Berry was the fourth child in a family of six. He grew up in the north St. Louis neighborhood known as "The Ville," an area where many middle class St. Louis people lived at the time. His father, Henry, was a contractor and deacon of a nearby Baptist church, his mother Martha a certified public school principal. His middle class upbringing allowed him to pursue his interest in music from an early age and he gave his first public performance in 1941 while still at Sumner High School. Just three years later, in 1944, while still at Sumner High School, he was arrested and convicted of armed robbery after robbing three shops in Kansas City and then stealing a car at gunpoint with some friends. Berry's own account in his autobiography is that his car broke down and he then flagged down a passing car and stole it at gunpoint with a non-functional pistol. Berry was sent to the Intermediate Reformatory for Young Men at Algoa, near Jefferson City, Missouri, where he formed a singing quartet and did some boxing.

After his release from prison on his 21st birthday in 1947, Berry married Themetta "Toddy" Suggs on 28 October 1948, who gave birth to Darlin Ingrid Berry on 3 October 1950. Berry supported his family doing a number of jobs in St. Louis: working briefly as a factory worker at two automobile assembly plants, as well as being janitor for the apartment building where he and his wife lived. Afterwards he trained as a beautician at the Poro College of Cosmetology, founded by Annie Turnbo Malone. He was doing well enough by 1950 to buy a "small three room brick cottage with a bath" in Whittier Street, which is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

By the early 1950s, Berry was working with local bands in the clubs of St. Louis as an extra source of income. He had been playing the blues since his teens, and he borrowed both guitar riffs and showmanship techniques from blues player T-Bone Walker, as well as taking guitar lessons from his friend Ira Harris that laid the foundation for his guitar style. By early 1953 Berry was performing with Johnnie Johnson's trio, starting a long-time collaboration with the pianist. Although the band played mostly blues and ballads, the most popular music among whites in the area was country. Berry wrote, "Curiosity provoked me to lay a lot of our country stuff on our predominantly black audience and some of our black audience began whispering 'who is that black hillbilly at the Cosmo?' After they laughed at me a few times they began requesting the hillbilly stuff and enjoyed dancing to it."

Berry's calculated showmanship, along with mixing country tunes with R&B; tunes, and singing in the style of Nat "King" Cole to the music of Muddy Waters, brought in a wider audience, particularly affluent white people.

Signing with Chess: "Maybellene" to "Come On" (1955–62)

In May 1955, Berry traveled to Chicago where he met Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess of Chess Records. Berry thought his blues material would be of most interest to Chess, but to his surprise it was an old country and western recording by Bob Wills, entitled "Ida Red" that got Chess's attention. Chess had seen the rhythm and blues market shrink and was looking to move beyond it, and he thought Berry might be the artist for that purpose. So on May 21, 1955 Berry recorded an adaptation of "Ida Red"—"Maybellene"—which featured Johnnie Johnson on piano, Jerome Green (from Bo Diddley's band) on the maracas, Jasper Thomas on the drums and Willie Dixon on the bass. "Maybellene" sold over a million copies, reaching #1 on Billboard's Rhythm and Blues chart and #5 on the 10 September 1955 Billboard Best Sellers in Stores chart.

At the end of June 1956, his song "Roll Over Beethoven" reached #29 on the ''Billboard Top 100'' chart, and Berry toured as one of the "Top Acts of '56". He and Carl Perkins became friends. Perkins said that "I knew when I first heard Chuck that he'd been affected by country music. I respected his writing; his records were very, very great." As they toured, Perkins discovered that Berry not only liked country music, but knew about as many songs as he did. Jimmie Rodgers was one of his favorites. "Chuck knew every Blue Yodel and most of Bill Monroe's songs as well," Perkins remembered. "He told me about how he was raised very poor, very tough. He had a hard life. He was a good guy. I really liked him."

In late 1957, Berry took part in Alan Freed's "Biggest Show of Stars for 1957" United States tour with the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, and others. He also guest starred on ABC's ''The Guy Mitchell Show'', having sung his hit song "Rock 'n' Roll Music". The hits continued from 1957 to 1959, with Berry scoring over a dozen chart singles during this period, including the top 10 US hits "School Days", "Rock and Roll Music", "Sweet Little Sixteen", and "Johnny B. Goode". He appeared in two early rock and roll movies. The first was ''Rock Rock Rock,'' released in 1956. He is shown singing "You Can't Catch Me." He had a speaking role as himself in the 1959 film ''Go, Johnny, Go!'' along with Alan Freed, and was also shown performing his songs "Johnny B. Goode," "Memphis, Tennessee," and "Little Queenie." His performance of "Sweet Little Sixteen" at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958 is captured in the motion picture ''Jazz on a Summer's Day''.

By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star with several hit records and film appearances to his name, as well as a lucrative touring career. He had established a racially integrated St. Louis-based nightclub, called Berry's Club Bandstand, and was investing in real estate. But in December 1959, Berry was arrested under the Mann Act after an allegation that he had sex with a 14-year-old Apache waitress whom he had transported over state lines to work as a hat check girl at his club. After an initial two-week trial in March 1960, Berry was convicted, fined $5,000, and sentenced to five years in prison. Berry's appeal that the judge's comments and attitude were racist and prejudiced the jury against him was upheld, and a second trial was heard in May and June 1961, which resulted in Berry being given a three-year prison sentence. After another appeal failed, Berry served one and one half years in prison from February 1962 to October 1963. Berry had continued recording and performing during the trials, though his output had slowed down as his popularity declined; his final single released before being imprisoned was "Come On".

"Nadine" and move to Mercury (1963–69)

When Berry was released from prison in 1963, he was able to return to recording and performing due to the British invasion acts of the 1960s—most notably The Beatles and The Rolling Stones—having kept up an interest in his music by releasing cover versions of his songs; along with other bands reworking his songs, such as the Beach Boys basing their 1963 hit "Surfin' USA" on Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen". In 1964–65 Berry released eight singles, including three, "No Particular Place to Go" (a reworking of "School Day"), "You Never Can Tell", and "Nadine," which achieved commercial success, reaching the top 20 of the Billboard 100. Between 1966 and 1969 Berry released five albums on the Mercury label, including his first live album ''Live at Fillmore Auditorium'' in which he was backed by the Steve Miller Band.

While this was not a successful period for studio work, Berry was still a top concert draw. In May 1964, he did a successful tour of the UK, though when he returned in January 1965 his behavior was erratic and moody, and his touring style of using unrehearsed local backing bands and a strict non-negotiable contract was earning him a reputation as a difficult yet unexciting performer. He also played at large events in North America, such as the Schaefer Music Festival in New York City's Central Park in July 1969, and the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival in October.

Back to Chess: "My Ding-a-Ling" to White House concert (1970–79)

}} Berry returned to Chess from 1970 to 1973. There were no hit singles from the 1970 album ''Back Home'', then in 1972 Chess released a live recording of "My Ding-a-Ling", a novelty song which Berry had recorded in a different version on his 1968 LP ''From St. Louie to Frisco'' as "My Tambourine". The track became Berry's only No. 1 single. A live recording of "Reelin' And Rockin'" was also issued as a follow-up single that same year and would prove to be Berry's final top-40 hit in both the US and the UK. Both singles were featured on the part-live/part-studio album ''The London Chuck Berry Sessions'' which was one of a series of London Sessions albums which included other Chess mainstay artists Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. Berry's second tenure with Chess ended with the 1975 album ''Chuck Berry'', after which he did not make a studio record until 1979's ''Rock It'' for Atco Records, his last studio album to date.

In the 1970s Berry toured on the basis of his earlier successes. He was on the road for many years, carrying only his Gibson guitar, confident that he could hire a band that already knew his music no matter where he went. Allmusic has said that in this period his "live performances became increasingly erratic, [...] working with terrible backup bands and turning in sloppy, out-of-tune performances" which "tarnished his reputation with younger fans and oldtimers" alike. Among the many bandleaders performing a backup role with Chuck Berry were Bruce Springsteen and Steve Miller when each was just starting his career. Springsteen related in the video ''Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll'' that Berry did not even give the band a set list and just expected the musicians to follow his lead after each guitar intro. Berry neither spoke to nor thanked the band after the show. Nevertheless, Springsteen backed Berry again when he appeared at the concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. At the request of Jimmy Carter, Chuck Berry performed at the White House on June 1, 1979.

Berry's type of touring style, traveling the "oldies" circuit in the 1970s (where he was often paid in cash by local promoters) added ammunition to the Internal Revenue Service's accusations that Berry was a chronic income tax evader. Facing criminal sanction for the third time, Berry pleaded guilty to tax evasion and was sentenced to four months in prison and 1,000 hours of community service—doing benefit concerts—in 1979.

Still on the road (1980–present)

Berry continued to play 70 to 100 one-nighters per year in the 1980s, still traveling solo and requiring a local band to back him at each stop. In 1986, Taylor Hackford made a documentary film, ''Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll'', of a celebration concert for Berry's sixtieth birthday, organised by Keith Richards, in which Berry reveals his bitterness at the fame and financial success that Richards achieved on the back of Berry's songs. Eric Clapton, Etta James, Julian Lennon, Robert Cray and Linda Ronstadt, among others, appeared with Berry on stage and film. During the concert, Berry played a Gibson ES-355, the luxury version of the ES-335 that he favored on his 1970s tours. Richards played a black Fender Telecaster Custom, Cray a Fender Stratocaster and Clapton a Gibson ES 350T, the same guitar Berry used on his early recordings.

In the late 1980s, Berry bought a restaurant in Wentzville, Missouri, called The Southern Air, and in 1990 he was sued by several women who claimed that he had installed a video camera in the ladies' bathroom. Berry claimed that he had the camera installed to catch red-handed a worker who was suspected of stealing from the restaurant. Though his guilt was never proven in court, Berry opted for a class action settlement with 59 women. Berry's biographer, Bruce Pegg, estimated that it cost Berry over $1.2 million plus legal fees. It was during this time that he began using Wayne T. Schoeneberg as his legal counsel. Reportedly, a police raid on his house did find videotapes of women using the restroom, and one of the women was a minor. Also found in the raid were 62 grams of marijuana. Felony drug and child-abuse charges were filed. In order to avoid the child-abuse charges, Berry agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor possession of marijuana. He was given a six-month suspended jail sentence, two years' unsupervised probation, and ordered to donate $5,000 to a local hospital.

In November 2000, Berry again faced legal charges when he was sued by his former pianist Johnnie Johnson, who claimed that he co-wrote over 50 songs, including "No Particular Place to Go", "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "Roll Over Beethoven", that credit Berry alone. The case was dismissed when the judge ruled that too much time had passed since the songs were written.

Currently, Berry usually performs one Wednesday each month at Blueberry Hill, a restaurant and bar located in the Delmar Loop neighborhood in St. Louis. In 2008, Berry toured Europe, with stops in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland, Poland, and Spain. In mid-2008, he played at Virgin Festival in Baltimore, MD. He presently lives in Ladue, Missouri, approximately 10 miles west of St. Louis. During a New Year's Day 2011 concert in Chicago, Berry, suffering from exhaustion, passed out and had to be helped off stage.

Legacy

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A pioneer of rock music, Berry was a significant influence on the development of both the music and the attitude associated with the rock music lifestyle. With songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), Chuck Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics successfully aimed to appeal to the early teenage market by using graphic and humorous descriptions of teen dances, fast cars, high-school life, and consumer culture, and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music. His records are a rich storehouse of the essential lyrical, showmanship and musical components of rock and roll; and, in addition to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, a large number of significant popular-music performers have recorded Berry's songs. Though not technically accomplished, his guitar style is distinctive – he incorporated electronic effects to mimic the sound of bottleneck blues guitarists, and drew on the influence of guitar players such as Charlie Christian, and T-Bone Walker, to produce a clear and exciting sound that many later guitar musicians would acknowledge as a major influence in their own style. In the film ''Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll!'' Eric Clapton states 'If you wanna play rock and roll - or any upbeat number - and you wanted to take a guitar ride you would end up playing like Chuck...because there is very little other choice. There's not a lot of other ways to play rock and roll other than the way Chuck plays it; he's really laid the law down..." In 1992 Keith Richards told ''Best of Guitar Player'' "Chuck was my man. He was the one who made me say 'I want to play guitar, Jesus Christ!'...Suddenly I knew what I wanted to do." Berry's showmanship has been influential on other rock guitar players, particularly his one-legged hop routine, and the "duck walk", which he first used as a child when he walked "stooping with full-bended knees, but with my back and head vertical" under a table to retrieve a ball and his family found it entertaining; he used it when "performing in New York for the first time and some journalist branded it the duck walk."

The rock critic Robert Christgau considers him "the greatest of the rock and rollers," while John Lennon said that "if you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'." Ted Nugent said "If you don't know every Chuck Berry lick, you can't play rock guitar." Among the honors he has received, have been the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2000, and being named seventh on ''Time'' magazine's 2009 list of the 10 best electric guitar players of all-time. On May 14, 2002, Chuck Berry was honored as one of the first BMI Icons at the 50th annual BMI Pop Awards. He was presented the award along with BMI affiliates Bo Diddley and Little Richard.

Berry is included in several ''Rolling Stone'' "Greatest of All Time" lists. In September 2003, the magazine named him number 6 in their list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". This was followed in November of the same year by his compilation album ''The Great Twenty-Eight'' being ranked 21st in the Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The following year, in March 2004, Berry was ranked fifth out of "The Immortals – The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time". In December 2004, six of his songs were included in the "Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", namely "Johnny B. Goode" (# 7), "Maybellene" (# 18), "Roll Over Beethoven" (# 97), "Rock and Roll Music" (#128), "Sweet Little Sixteen" (# 272) and "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" (# 374). In June 2008, his song "Johnny B. Goode" ranked first place in the "100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time".

A statue tall of Berry, funded by donations, has been erected along the St. Louis Walk of Fame. The dedication ceremony attended by Berry was held on July 29, 2011.

Discography

References

External links

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Official website

* Category:1926 births Category:Living people Category:African American guitarists Category:African American singer-songwriters Category:African American rock singers Category:American rock guitarists Category:American blues guitarists Category:American rhythm and blues guitarists Category:American male singers Category:American robbers Category:American rock singer-songwriters Category:American people convicted of tax crimes Category:Baptists from the United States Category:Blues Hall of Fame inductees Category:Chess Records artists Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:Lead guitarists Category:Musicians from St. Louis, Missouri Category:People convicted of robbery Category:People convicted of violating the Mann Act Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Category:St. Louis blues musicians

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Coordinates	12°58′0″N77°34′0″N
name	Jerry Lee Lewis
background	solo_singer
landscape	yes
alias	The Killer
birth date	September 29, 1935
origin	Ferriday, Louisiana, U.S.
instrument	Vocals, piano, guitar
genre	Rock and roll, country, rockabilly, blues, Honky tonk, gospel
occupation	Singer, songwriter, pianist
label	Sun, Mercury, Sire/Warner Bros, MCA
years active	1954–present
website	www.jerryleelewis.com}}

Jerry Lee Lewis (born September 29, 1935) is an American rock and roll and country music singer-songwriter and pianist. An early pioneer of rock and roll music, Lewis's career faltered after he married his young cousin, and he afterwards made a career extension to country and western music. He is known by the nickname 'The Killer'. His guitarist for more than 40 years is Kenny Lovelace.

Lewis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, and his pioneering contribution to the genre has been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. In 2003, Rolling Stone Magazine listed his box set ''All Killer, No Filler: The Anthology'' number 242 on their list of "500 greatest albums of all time". In 2004, they ranked him number 24 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. In 2008, he was inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame.

Jerry Lee Lewis is the last surviving member of both Sun Records' Class of 55 and the Million Dollar Quartet - which both alltogether included Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, and Elvis Presley, as well as Lewis himself.

Early life

Lewis was born to the poor family of Elmo and Mamie Lewis in Ferriday in Concordia Parish in eastern Louisiana, and began playing piano in his youth with two cousins, Mickey Gilley and Jimmy Swaggart. His parents mortgaged their farm to buy him a piano. Influenced by a piano-playing older cousin, Carl McVoy (who later recorded with Bill Black's Combo), the radio, and the sounds from the black juke joint across the tracks, Haney's Big House, Lewis main influence growing up was Moon Mullican.

His mother enrolled him in Southwest Bible Institute in Waxahachie, Texas, so that her son would be exclusively singing his songs to the Lord. But Lewis daringly played a boogie woogie rendition of "My God Is Real" at a church assembly that sent him packing the same night. Pearry Green, then president of the student body, related how during a talent show Lewis played some "worldly" music. The next morning, the dean of the school called Lewis and Green into his office to expel them. Lewis said that Green should not be expelled because "he didn't know what I was going to do." Years later Green asked Lewis: "Are you still playing the devil's music?" Lewis replied "Yes, I am. But you know it's strange, the same music that they kicked me out of school for is the same kind of music they play in their churches today. The difference is, I know I am playing for the devil and they don't."

After that incident, he went home and started playing at clubs in and around Ferriday and Natchez, Mississippi, becoming part of the burgeoning new rock and roll sound and cutting his first demo recording in 1954. He made a trip to Nashville circa 1955 where he played clubs and attempted to build interest, but was turned down by the Grand Ole Opry as he had been at the Louisiana Hayride country stage and radio show in Shreveport. Recording executives in Nashville suggested he switch to playing a guitar.

Lewis traveled to Memphis, Tennessee in November 1956, to audition for Sun Records. Label owner Sam Phillips was in Florida, but producer and engineer Jack Clement recorded Lewis's rendition of Ray Price's "Crazy Arms" and his own composition "End of The Road". During December 1956, Lewis began recording prolifically, as a solo artist and as a session musician for such Sun artists as Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. His distinctive piano can be heard on many tracks recorded at Sun during late 1956 and early 1957, including Carl Perkins' "Matchbox", "Your True Love", "You Can Do No Wrong", and "Put Your Cat Clothes On", and Billy Lee Riley's "Flyin' Saucers Rock'n'Roll". Formerly, rockabilly had rarely featured piano, but it proved an influential addition and rockabilly artists on other labels also started working with pianists.

On December 4, 1956, Elvis Presley dropped in on Phillips to pay a social visit while Perkins was in the studio cutting new tracks with Lewis backing him on piano. Johnny Cash was also there watching Perkins. The four started an impromptu jam session, and Phillips left the tape running. These recordings, almost half of which were gospel songs, survived, and have been released on CD under the title ''Million Dollar Quartet''. Tracks also include Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel" and "Paralyzed", Chuck Berry's "Brown Eyed Handsome Man", Pat Boone's "Don't Forbid Me" and Presley doing an impersonation of Jackie Wilson (who was then with Billy Ward and the Dominoes) on "Don't Be Cruel".

Lewis's own singles (on which he was billed as "Jerry Lee Lewis and his Pumping Piano") advanced his career as a soloist during 1957, with hits such as "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and "Great Balls of Fire", his biggest hit, bringing him international fame, despite criticism for the songs' overtly sexual undertones which prompted some radio stations to boycott them. In 2005, "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" was selected for permanent preservation in the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress.

According to several first hand sources, including Johnny Cash, Lewis himself, who was devoutly Christian, was also troubled by the sinful nature of his own material, which he firmly believed was leading himself and his audience to hell. This aspect of Lewis's character was depicted in Waylon Payne's portrayal of Lewis in the 2005 film ''Walk the Line'', based on Cash's autobiographies.

Lewis would often kick the piano bench aside and play standing, rake his hands up and down the keyboard for dramatic accent, sit on the keyboard and even stand on top of the instrument. His first TV appearance, in which he demonstrated some of these moves, was on ''The Steve Allen Show'' on July 28, 1957, where he played the song "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin On". It is widely believed that he once set fire to a piano at the end of a live performance, in protest at being billed below Chuck Berry. but he is quoted in an online article in Esquire Magazine as saying "I never set fire to a piano. I'd like to have got away with it, though. I pushed a couple of them in the river. They wasn't any good."

His dynamic performance style can be seen in films such as ''High School Confidential'' (he sang the title song from the back of a flatbed truck), and ''Jamboree''. He has been called "rock & roll's first great wild man" and also "rock & roll's first great eclectic." Classical composer Michael Nyman has also cited Lewis's style as the progenitor of his own aesthetic.

Scandal

Lewis's turbulent personal life was hidden from the public until a May 1958 British tour where Ray Berry, a news agency reporter at London's Heathrow Airport (the only journalist present), learned about Lewis's third wife, Myra Gale Brown. She was Lewis's first cousin once removed and only 13 years old. (Brown, Lewis, and his management all insisted she was 15). Lewis was nearly 23 years old. The publicity caused an uproar and the tour was cancelled after only three concerts.

The scandal followed Lewis home to America, and as a result, he was blacklisted from radio and almost vanished from the music scene. Lewis felt betrayed by numerous people who had been his supporters. Dick Clark dropped him from his shows. Lewis even felt that Sam Phillips had sold him out when the Sun Records boss released "The Return of Jerry Lee", a bogus "interview" cut together by Jack Clement from excerpts of Lewis's songs, which made light of his marital and publicity problems. Only Alan Freed stayed true to Jerry Lee Lewis, playing his records until Freed was removed from the air because of payola allegations.

Jerry Lee Lewis was still under contract with Sun Records, and kept recording, regularly releasing singles. He had gone from $10,000 a night concerts to $250 a night spots in beer joints and small clubs. He had few friends at the time whom he felt he could trust. It was only through Kay Martin, the president of Lewis's fan club, T. L. Meade, (aka Franz Douskey) a sometime Memphis musician and friend of Sam Phillips, and Gary Skala, that Lewis went back to record at Sun Records.

By this time, Phillips had built a new state-of-the-art studio at 639 Madison Avenue in Memphis, thus abandoning the old Union Avenue studio where Phillips had recorded B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Lewis, Johnny Cash and others, and also opened a studio in Nashville. It was at the latter studio that Lewis recorded his only major hit during this period, a rendition of Ray Charles' "What'd I Say" in 1961. In Europe other updated versions of "Sweet Little Sixteen" (September 1962 UK) and "Good Golly Miss Molly" (March 1963) entered the Hit Parade. On popular EPs, "Hang Up My Rock and Roll Shoes", "I've Been Twistin'", "Money" and "Hello Josephine" also became turntable hits, especially in nascent discothèques. Another recording of Lewis playing an instrumental boogie arrangement of the Glenn Miller Orchestra favorite "In the Mood", was issued on the Phillips International label under the pseudonym of "The Hawk," but disc jockeys quickly figured out the distinctive piano style, and this gambit failed.

Lewis's Sun recording contract ended in 1963 and he joined Smash Records, where he made a number of rock recordings that did not further his career.

His popularity recovered somewhat in Europe, especially in the UK and Germany, during the mid-1960s. A concert album, ''Live at the Star Club, Hamburg'' (1964), recorded with The Nashville Teens, is widely considered one of the greatest live rock and roll albums ever. Music critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine writes: "''Live at the Star Club'' is extraordinary, the purest, hardest rock & roll ever committed to record."

Family

Lewis has been married seven times. His first marriage, to Dorothy Barton, lasted for 20 months, from February 1952 to October 1953 although there is some question that Lewis may have married Barton earlier than 1952. In a 1978 ''People'' magazine interview Lewis stated "I was 14 when I first got married. My wife was too old for me; she was 17." His second marriage to Jane Mitchum was of dubious validity because it occurred 23 days before his divorce from Barton was final. They were married for four years, from September 1953 to October 1957. They had two children. He then married Myra Gale Brown in December 1957. She was his first cousin once removed, and thirteen at the time of the marriage. This marriage caused a scandal that nearly destroyed his career. He had to marry her twice due to not being fully divorced from Jane Mitchum when he married her. They had two children and divorced in December 1970 after 13 years of marriage. His fourth marriage was to Jaren Elizabeth Gunn Pate, and ended when she drowned in the swimming pool at their home. They were married for 12 years, from October 1971 to August 1983. His fifth wife was Shawn Stephens. This marriage ended with her death from a methadone overdose. They were married for three months, from June to August 1984. His seventh marriage was to Kerrie McCarver, with whom he had one child. This marriage lasted 20 years and ended in divorce in 2004.

Lewis has had at least four children. Two additional people have claimed to be his children, but they had no proof. In 1962, his son Steve Allen Lewis drowned in a swimming pool accident when he was three, and in 1973, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jr., was killed at the age of 19 when he overturned the Jeep he was driving. His current living children are a son, Jerry Lee Lewis III, and a daughter, Phoebe Allan Lewis.

Later career

In the 1960s, Lewis's attempts at a comeback as a rock and roll performer had stalled during four years with Smash Records until he began recording country ballads. He had already recorded a country-oriented LP for the label Country Songs for City Folks. In 1968, his single "Another Place, Another Time" became a Top 10 success and led to a string of Top Ten singles including the 1968 number-one country single "To Make Love Sweeter For You" that brought Lewis renewed stardom among country music fans, much like that which ex-rockabilly Conway Twitty began to cultivate during that same time. His shift to country reflected the fact that he had grown up listening to the Grand Ole Opry. Lewis's country hits during this period include "What's Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)", "She Still Comes Around (To Love What's Left of Me)", "She Even Woke Me Up to Say Goodbye", "Once More With Feeling", "There Must Be More to Love Than This", "Touching Home", "Would You Take Another Chance on Me", "Me & Bobby McGee", "Think About It, Darlin'", "Sometimes a Memory Ain't Enough", and "Tell Tale Signs". Lewis's singles and albums were issued on Mercury records instead of Smash from 1970 on. Lewis's renewed popularity encouraged Sun International Inc. to issue previously unpublished recordings dating from 1963 including "Invitation to Your Party", "One Minute Past Eternity", "I Can't Seem To Say Goodbye" and "Waiting For A Train" on singles that also did well on the country music charts in 1969/70. Lewis's successes continued throughout the decade and he eventually began to re-emphasize his rock and roll past with hits like his 1972 revival of The Big Bopper's rock classic "Chantilly Lace" and "Drinkin' Wine Spo dee-o dee" as well as looking at middle age with the 1977 "Middle Age Crazy". In 1979, he signed with Elektra Records and had his last major country hit with 1981's "Thirty-Nine and Holding." He spent a very brief period with MCA Records in 1983 but left the label due to unspecified differences.

In 1989, a major motion picture based on his early life in rock & roll, ''Great Balls of Fire!'', brought him back into the public eye, especially when he decided to re-record all his songs for the movie soundtrack. The film was based on the book by Lewis's ex-wife, Myra Gale Lewis, and starred Dennis Quaid as Lewis, Winona Ryder as Myra, and Alec Baldwin as Jimmy Swaggart. The movie focuses on Lewis's early career and his relationship with Myra, and ends with the scandal of the late 1950s. A year later, in 1990, Lewis made minor news when a new song he co-wrote called "It Was the Whiskey Talking, Not Me" was included in the soundtrack to the hit movie ''Dick Tracy''. The song is also heard in the movie, playing on a radio.

The public downfall of his cousin, television evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, resulted in more adverse publicity to a troubled family. Swaggart is also a piano player, as is another cousin, country music star Mickey Gilley. All three listened to the same music in their youth, and frequented Haney's Big House, the Ferriday club that featured black blues acts. Lewis and Swaggart have had a complex relationship over the years.

Lewis's sister, Linda Gail Lewis has recorded with Lewis, toured with his stage show for a time and more recently recorded with Van Morrison.

"The Killer", a nickname he has had since childhood, is known for his forceful voice and piano production on stage. He was described by Roy Orbison as the best raw performer in the history of rock and roll music.

In 1986, Lewis was one of the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That year, he returned to Sun Studio in Memphis to team up with Orbison, Cash, and Perkins along with longtime admirers like John Fogerty to create the album ''Class of '55'', a sort of followup to the "Million Dollar Quartet" session, though in the eyes of many critics and fans, lacking the spirit of the old days at Sun.

In 1998 he toured Europe with Chuck Berry and Little Richard. On February 12, 2005, he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by The Recording Academy (which also grants the Grammy Awards). On September 26, 2006, a new album titled ''Last Man Standing'' was released, featuring many of rock and roll's elite as guest stars. Receiving positive reviews, the album charted in four different Billboard charts, including a two week stay at number one on the Indie charts.

A DVD entitled ''Last Man Standing Live'', featuring concert footage with many guest artists, was released in March 2007, and the CD achieved Lewis's 10th official gold disk for selling over half-a-million copies in the US alone. ''Last Man Standing'' is Lewis's biggest selling album of all time. It features contributions from Mick Jagger, Willie Nelson, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards and Rod Stewart, among others.

On November 5, 2007, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio honored Jerry Lee Lewis with six days of conferences, interviews, a DVD premiere and film clips, dedicated to him entitled ''The Life And Music of Jerry Lee Lewis.'' On November 10, the week culminated with a tribute concert compered by Kris Kristofferson. Lewis was present to accept the American Music Masters Award and closed his own tribute show with a rendition of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow".

On February 10, 2008, he appeared with John Fogerty and Little Richard on the 50th Grammy Awards Show, performing "Great Balls of Fire" in a medley with "Good Golly Miss Molly".

Lewis now lives on a ranch in Nesbit, Mississippi with his family.

On June 4, 2008, Jerry Lee Lewis was inducted into The Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.

On July 4, 2008, he appeared on ''A Capitol Fourth'' and performed the finale's final act with a medley of "Roll Over Beethoven", "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin On" and "Great Balls of Fire".

In October 2008 as part of a very successful European tour, Jerry Lee Lewis returned to the UK, almost exactly 50 years after his ill-fated first tour. He appeared at two London shows: a special private show at the 100 Club on October 25 and at the London Forum on October 28 with Wanda Jackson and his sister, Linda Gail Lewis.

2009 marked the sixtieth year since Lewis's first public performance when he performed "“Drinking Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee" at a car dealership on November 19, 1949 in Ferriday Louisiana.

In August 2009, in advance of his new album, a single entitled "Mean Old Man" was released for download. It was written by Kris Kristofferson. An EP featuring this song and four more was also released on amazon.com on November 11.

On October 29, 2009, Lewis opened the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary concert at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Discography

Hits and awards

Between 1957 and 2006, the date of his latest release "Last Man Standing", 47 singles plus 22 albums (The Session counted as 2 albums) made the Top Twenty Pop, Jukebox, Rock, Indie and/or Country charts in USA or UK. Fourteen reached the number 1 position. He's had ten official gold disks, the latest being for the 2006 album 'Last Man Standing', plus unofficial ones issued by his record company Mercury for albums which sold over a quarter of a million copies. His 2006 duets CD ''Last Man Standing'' has sold over half a million worldwide, his biggest selling album ever. Jerry Lee Lewis is also among the Top 50 all-time Billboard Country artists. It is also rumored that the soundtrack album to the movie, ''Great Balls Of Fire'', has now sold over a million copies. The original Sun cut of "Great Balls of Fire" was elected to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998, and Jerry's Sun recording of "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin On" received this honor in 1999. Only recordings which are at least 25 years old and have left a lasting impression can receive this honor. Along with Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Roy Orbison, Jerry received a Grammy in the spoken word category for the very rare album of interviews released with some early copies of ''The Class of 55'' album in 1986. On February 12, 2005, Jerry received the Recording Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award the day before the Recording Academy's main Grammy Awards ceremony, which he also attended, picture below. On October 10, 2007, Jerry received the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame's American Music Masters Award.

Compositions by Jerry Lee Lewis

Jerry Lee Lewis has written or co-written many songs during his career:

End of the Road, 1956 – this is indeed an original song and not the same as Irving Berlin's song (that inspired it) as the lyrics and melody are totally different apart from the refrain "the way is dark and the night is long" (which Lewis turns around) and "Waiting at the end of the road".

Jerry's Boogie (a.k.a. 'Black Bottom Stomp'), 1956 – was previously recorded as Black Bottom Stomp by Jelly Roll Morton but Jerry Lee's rendition is his own and changes a lot of the old song.

Lewis Boogie, 1956

Pumpin' Piano Rock, 1957

All Night Long, 1957

High School Confidential, 1958

Live & Let Live, 1958 – sometimes credited to Jerry Lee, but this actually was recorded by Bill Monroe, Moon Mullican, Gene Sullivan & Wiley Walker, and Jimmie Davis before.

Memory Of You, 1958

Hello, Hello Baby, 1958

Baby, Baby, Bye Bye, 1960

Lewis Workout, 1960

Whole Lotta Twistin' Goin' On, 1962 – new lyrics

He Took It Like A Man, 1963

Baby, Hold Me Close, 1965

My Baby Don't Love No One But Me, 1965

Rockin' Jerry Lee, 1966

What A Heck Of A Mess, 1966

Lincoln Limousine, 1966

Alvin, 1970

Pilot Baby, 1980s

Crown Victoria Custom '51, 1995

New Orleans Boogie (Jerry Lee's Boogie), 1952

Blues Like Midnight, 1980s–2000s – a 12 bar blues often done by Jerry Lee in concert. It is sometimes entirely based around Jimmie Rodgers verses but not recorded by Rodgers in this form. On other versions, Lewis adds in original verses as well.

Quotation

''NME'' – June 1963

''NME'' – November 1978

Footnotes

References

External links and sources

The Official Jerry Lee Lewis Website

''Rockin' My Life Away'' by Jimmy Guterman, a full online biography

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Jerry Lee Lewis page for his hits, biography.

Selected videos

Whole Lotta Shakin' Going on

Category:1935 births Category:Living people Category:American country singers Category:American male singers Category:American rock musicians Category:American rock pianists Category:American rock singers Category:American pop singers Category:American pop pianists Category:American singer-songwriters Category:Rockabilly musicians Category:American composers Category:Sun Records artists Category:Sire Records artists Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees‎ Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:American Pentecostals Category:People from Ferriday, Louisiana Category:People from Concordia Parish, Louisiana Category:People self-identifying as substance abusers Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Rockabilly Hall of Fame inductees Category:Mercury Records artists Category:Charly Records artists Category:Smash Records artists

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Coordinates	12°58′0″N77°34′0″N
name	Silicon Teens
background	group_or_band
genre	Electronic
label	Mute RecordsSire/Warner Bros. Records
associated acts	The Normal
notable instruments	}}

Silicon Teens were a virtual British electronic new wave pop group. The project was the creation of Mute Records founder Daniel Miller.

Background

The "group" were publicised as a quartet with members named Darryl, Jacki, Paul and Diane, but in reality these individuals did not exist and for media interviews their parts were played by actors. The project was launched in 1980 with a sole album called ''Music For Parties'', a collection mostly comprising rock n' roll standards from the 1950s and 1960s, played in an upbeat synthpop style. There were four original compositions on the album, those being "TV Playtime", "Sun Flight", and the instrumentals "Chip 'n' Roll" and "State of Shock (Part 2)".

Despite considerable media interest as a novelty, neither the album nor offshoot singles "Memphis Tennessee" and "Judy in Disguise" were ever hits, though their third (double-A side) single "Just Like Eddie" b/w "Sun Flight" did manage some UK Chart success. Film director John Hughes was so taken with it that their rendition of "Red River Rock" (in a re-recorded version) can be heard in the film soundtrack of the Steve Martin and John Candy film ''Planes, Trains, and Automobiles''. The band's rendition of "You Really Got Me" was featured on a compilation album of New Wave songs put out by French covers band Nouvelle Vague.

The group is the subject of a song called "Silicon Teens" by The Pulsars on their 1997 album, Pulsars.

Discography

Memphis Tennessee / Let's Dance (MUTE 003) August 1979

Judy In Disguise / Chip 'n' Roll (MUTE 004)

Just Like Eddie / Sun Flight (MUTE 008)

''Music for Parties'' (album) (STUMM 2) September 1980

References

External links

Silicon Teens at Mute Records Official site

[ ''Music for Parties'' Review]

Silicon Teens Discography at discogs.com

Category:British New Wave musical groups Category:British pop music groups Category:British electronic music groups Category:Mute Records artists Category:Sire Records artists

es:Silicon Teens fi:Silicon Teens sv:Silicon Teens