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 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers.

Memphis had a population of 662,897 at the 2010 census, making it the largest 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".

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.

Tennessee (ⁱ/tɛnɨˈsiː/) (Cherokee: ᏔᎾᏏ) is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. Tennessee is the 36th most extensive and the 17th most populous of the 50 United States. 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.

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. 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.

Johnny Rivers (born John Henry Ramistella, November 7, 1942, New York City) is an American rock and roll singer, songwriter, guitarist, and record producer. His styles include folk songs, blues, and revivals of old-time rock 'n' roll songs and some original material. Rivers's greatest success came in the mid- to late-1960s with a string of hit songs (including the #1 hit "Poor Side of Town", "Summer Rain", and "Secret Agent Man"), but he has continued to record and perform to the present.

The Ramistella family moved from New York to Baton Rouge, Louisiana when Johnny's father lost his job while Johnny was still young. Without any formal music lessons, he began playing guitar, which he learned from his father and uncle, at the age of eight, and was influenced by the distinctive music of Louisiana. While in junior high school he started sitting in with a band called The Rockets led by Dick Holler who later wrote a number of songs including "Abraham, Martin and John" and "Snoopy vs. The Red Baron".

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 No. 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.

Jarvis Branson Cocker (born 19 September 1963) is an English musician and frontman for the band Pulp. Through his work with the band, Cocker became a figurehead of the Britpop movement of the mid-1990s. Following Pulp's hiatus, Cocker has led a successful solo career, and currently presents his own radio show on BBC Radio 6 Music, Jarvis Cocker's Sunday Service.

Cocker founded "Arabacus Pulp" (named after a tradeable commodity he saw in an economics class) at the age of 15 while he was still at The City School. After numerous line-up changes, and a shortening of the name to "Pulp", they eventually found fame in the 1990s with the success of the albums His 'n' Hers (1994) and Different Class (1995). As Pulp's front-man, part of his trademark image was his glasses, which seemed to "stay magically on his face" no matter his antics on stage, apparently this was achieved with "a huge rubber band round the back".

Pulp released two more albums (This Is Hardcore and We Love Life) to critical acclaim, though neither achieved the commercial success of Different Class. After releasing a greatest hits album, the band was on hiatus from 2003 to 2010, but returned to activity in 2011.