MONKEY USA PART 5: SUN RECORDS, MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE

Some people are nuts for the Sun sound. I listen to it, like it, respect it, but it lags a long way behind in my affections when compared to Chess, Motown and Stax. Having already visited the sites of those three meccas Sun had its work cut out to compete, yet a combination of me being less pernickety/knowledgeable about the subject and having the best guided tour of the four meant - bar the shivers of walking into Studio A at Motown – this was possibly the best of the bunch.

I knew Sun Records was at 706 Union Avenue but its surrounding area, a fifteen minute walk from Beale Street, still took me a bit by surprise. Once again my London brain assumed it would be the corner of narrow busy street but it stood alone on the corner of wide road facing what the locals, I believe, call a gas station. With the surrounding buildings knocked down, its uneven brown brick construction like a building left standing after the Blitz; albeit one with a giant golden guitar hanging outside.

Walking through the door we were immediately into a room that operates as the reception, a souvenir shop and a cosy diner; mainly a diner/café. There were a couple of booths by the window and five red leather stools at the bar emblazed with the names Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison and Elvis Presley across them. I nabbed Johnny’s. Despite the stocks of t-shirts and stacks of gift items it didn’t feel especially touristy; just a cool place to order a bottle of coke and sit listening to the boom-chicka-booming in the background. The big geezer with the big quiff behind the counter was nuts for the Sun sound, it was obvious enough without the need for him to pull up his yellow Sun t-shirt to reveal a huge yellow Sun tattoo across his ample chest. All the people that worked there were undoubtedly Sun freaks first, employees second.

Jason was our tour guide and owner of a fine head of hair and bushy beard. Lord knows how many times he’d conducted this tour but he still sounded so passionate and excited his enthusiasm rubbed off instantly. He led us (a dozen yanks and us two limeys) upstairs to the tiny museum stuffed with old Ampex recording equipment, posters, records, stage outfits, all the usual stuff.

Sam Phillips set up shop here in 1950 as the Memphis Recording Service - he hadn’t yet started Sun as a label - so when Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm drove through the rain in March 1951 to record “Rocket 88” (credited to Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats, a decision that must’ve irked Ike for the rest of his life) it was released on Chess, giving Chess in the North and Sun in the South join claims on what is broadly accepted as “the first rock and roll record”. Jason liked talking about firsts, or to be more accurate, “very” firsts, which is before your bog-standard first. He told us about “Rocket 88” and after giving it a big build-up as “the very first rock and roll record, made in this very building” hit a remote control in his hand and bang, Ike’s tinkling the ivories and Jackie’s honking his sax and bellowing about his jalopy. It was a simple idea yet bought the music and the place together perfectly in a way other studios (and I’m especially looking at you Motown with your singing flunkies) failed to do.

Howlin’ Wolf also recorded here during ’51 and as the unsuspecting punters stood before a cardboard Wolfman they got a blast of “Moanin’ At Midnight”. The look on their faces, eyes widening, as the Wolf’s guttural moans came booming out of nowhere was a sight to behold. Most of these people had never heard such a noise. The kid in front of me looked terrified. Hot on Wolf’s heels was the mighty “Bear Cat” by Rufus Thomas. The gathering had little difficulty in recognising the blatant rip from “Hound Dog” (so blatant the resulting lawsuit almost bankrupt Sun with its first hit), which finally led us to Elvis Aaron Presley.

Public Enemy spat out “Elvis was a hero to most but he never meant shit to me” on “Fight The Power” which is broadly how I feel (although Chuck D followed that with “straight up racist” which I don’t believe) but its churlish to come to Memphis and be snooty about Elvis. Jason told us about the very first time Elvis came to Sun; he played us his very first recording; we hear him played on the radio for the very first time; and we see his very first television appearance. He was all right though that Elvis. Nice voice, good looking lad.

We then shuffled downstairs into the studio. It felt like a studio because it still is. Vintage equipment was pushed to the sides of the small white pegboard walled room and folk were in the control booth looking like they were working. Amazingly when the premises had other uses (including life as a fishing tackle shop) before reopening as Sun in 1987, it stayed relatively untouched (even down to the light fittings), and if you believe Jason the marks and dents and grooves in the original linoleum floor show where the musicians stood and played. He hit his remote again and led us through a succession of classic cuts. They sounded bloody good too, although Mrs Monk and I disagree on whether Roy Orbison’s “Ooby Dooby” is a good record or not. I say yes but know she’s probably right.

The money shot when it came to the photo opportunity was the chance to pose with a vocal microphone used on recordings here in the 50s, in the shadow of an Elvis picture using a similar one. Jason urged people to have a go and recreate the curled lip. Despite feeling a wally I did quickly attempt to channel Johnny Cash recording “Get Rhythm” and due to the mic being used Johnny Rotten in the “God Save The Queen” video. I got it spot on too. Unfortunately Mrs Monk’s trigger finger was far too slow and snapped me looking like an embarrassed girl instead.

If anyone goes to Memphis they have to brace themselves to be asked on their return, “Did you go to Graceland?” We caught the shuttle bus from Sun and had a nose around “The King’s” gaff. I’d love to live there in its mid-70s time capsule: to chill in his TV/record room; to shoot pool in the pool room; to get smashed with my mates in the jungle room; and to have my cook knock up a few burgers in the tiny kitchen. None of the rooms were big and the main building was a lot smaller than expected. I bet Chuck D lives in a bigger house.




Click on the Monkey USA label below for further adventures: Motown, Stax, Chess and Buddy Guy.

MONKEY USA PART 4: STAX, MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE

“Can you take me to Stax please?” Best sentence I’ve ever said to a cab driver. “Sorry sir, I’m not a taxi.” He was driving a something called a medical transportation vehicle. So, if you were in a Memphis hospital last month waiting for a new kidney, I apologise for the delay.

It did mean I got to say it again before we travelled the couple of miles from the tourist drinking dens of Beale Street to across the tracks to the noticeably non-tourist area of East McLemore Avenue. Funky part of town is the white boy euphemism for a poor black neighbourhood where it wouldn’t be advised to wander around alone. I hate saying things like this as it casts aspersions on the folk there, who – like anywhere – will consist of the friendly and not-so-friendly. The vast majority of Memphis people we met couldn’t have been nicer. However, had Mrs Monkey and I walked this particularly residential route we wouldn’t have looked more out of place had we been wearing Beefeater uniforms and whistling God Save The Queen. And quite frankly, if I were looking for an easy target, I’d pick on us. For a start, nobody in Memphis walks anywhere. It is eerie to walk streets so deserted. On the occasions you do see somebody they are immediately conspicuous. Later we’d walk a few blocks from Beale Street to the Lorraine Motel, the scene of Dr Martin Luther King’s assassination and now home to the National Civil Rights Museum (an extremely uncomfortable and moving experience) and the only person we saw was a toothless dude on a bike harassing us for money. I never fathomed how people got around as there were never many cars either. Maybe the locals have exclusive use of a series of underground tunnels. When the cabby dropped us off at Stax he said not to wander from the front of the building. He needn’t have wasted his breath, we weren’t going anywhere.

Back in 1959 Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton transformed a tired theatre on the corner of E. McLemore Avenue and College Street into the Satellite record shop, recording studio and label that would become Stax. The rest, you know. After Stax went bankrupt in 1975 the building went to ruin. Published in 1997 Rob Bowman’s Soulville USA, the definitive account of the label, ends on a sour note. The final page reading, “Tragically, in 1988 the Stax building was torn down. What should have been a national historic site remains in the late 1990s an empty field containing rubbish and junkie needles. It’s a disgrace, and speaks volumes regarding Memphis’s treatment of its African-American heritage.”

A disgrace indeed but Bowman can now have no complaints after a multi-million dollar investment as produced a tremendous turnaround. Stax – the name and the building - has been rebuilt on the same spot; the façade to the design of the original building, and houses the Museum of American Soul Music. Next door stands the Stax Music Academy, a non-profit organisation which uses “music education as a tool to enrich the lives of potentially at-risk children”. There's soul power, right there.

It’s difficult to fault the museum. Unlike other museum tours on our trip, this one was self-guided. It was huge; packed with over 2000 exhibits within a modern, well designed space. It starts with a short film about Stax beginnings, heyday and resurrection. Although not made too long ago it was noticeable how many artists have since passed away. The scale of the exhibition can be demonstrated by the first area which centres on an old wooden chapel that stood in the Mississippi Delta for over a hundred years. They didn’t just recreate Hoopers A.M.E. Chapel; they picked it up and dropped it here. With a gospel soundtrack playing and video archives around the outer walls, it firmly establishes the roots of soul in the church.

From there in, it’s a chronological story. It makes reference to non-Stax artists from James Brown and Aretha Franklin to the Motown stable and Memphis neighbours at Hi, but its focus is on its own acts, with the higher profile ones each afforded their own display of records, photos, instruments and personal items: Rufus Thomas’s funky boots, Mavis Staples’s dress, Otis Redding’s suede jacket, a suit belonging to Sam or Dave, but the most jaw dropping belongs to Isaac Hayes. Much is made of Stax being the perfect embodiment of racial harmony but after the death of Otis Redding, the assignation of King, and driven on by the new leadership of Al Bell, they became a potent symbol of Black Power. Nothing demonstrated power more than wealth and success and Hayes’s peacock blue 1972 Cadillac El Dorado pimp machine, trimmed with real gold and lined with white fur, with a television in the front and a bar in back, portrayed that in a most ostentatious manner. I’m not one for cars, but this was a sho’ nuff afro turner.

In keeping with the attention to detail spent on the exterior, Studio A has been rebuilt to the exact specifications of the original using previous blueprints, photos and surviving memories. I’d estimate the combined studios of Motown, Chess and Sun would fit within these four walls on this carpeted floor. Again true to the original it had been built on a slope (remember this started life as a theatre) with the raised control room where the stage had been. Set up ready to record another smash was the house band's equipment featuring Al Jackson’s drum kit, Steve Cropper’s guitar and amp, Duck Dunn’s bass combo, Wayne Jackson's trumpet, and the Hammond organ Booker T. used on – amongst other things - “Green Onions”.

There was also the “Hall of Records” which displayed hundreds of album sleeves (loads I’d never seen before) and walls filled with, possibly complete sets, of the blue “falling records” single releases and the yellow “fingersnap” ones. When all said and done, it’s the music that matters. It’s great to see where it was created, to see the stage outfits, to read the stories, to pay tribute, but you can’t put the sound, the feeling, the spirit, the emotion, the soul that comes out of those 7 inch pieces of vinyl into a museum. The subject matter alone makes the Stax Museum of American Soul Music the best museum I’ve been to; it’s as good as it gets, but nothing beats the music itself.

Next stop: Sun Records.