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Memphis, TN, est. 1819, pop. 650,000
• in the 1950s, in a small studio on Union, Ave., Sam C. Phillips (1923-2003) recorded music that is "one of the true touchstones of American culture" —Escott, Hawkins, Good Rockin' Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock 'N' Roll
• this two-story corner bldg. is located in Memphis's Edge district • before becoming the Sun Studio Café, the 1st floor housed Taylor's Fine Food restaurant (1948-1981) [photo] • owned by Dell Taylor (1911-2003) & husband, Carlos (1914-1976) • 2nd floor was a rooming house
• the 1908 bldg. shares a partywall with a 1-story storefront at no. 706, built in 1916 [photos] • this small adjacent structure became Memphis Recording Service & later, Sun Studio [discography], where Elvis Presley (1935-1977) began his recording career
"Dell M. Taylor served up country fried steak and gentle mothering to the emerging stars of Sun Studio… Mrs. Taylor saw to it that Elvis Presley, Rufus Thomas, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Charlie Rich and Carl Perkins, — along with the mechanics and other workers from the auto dealership row on Union — had the freshest greens and vegetables… Many a song was written in the booths, as the musicians would come in to eat during a break in recording at Sun Studio next door… Sun Studio founder Sam Phillips, credited with discovering Elvis and others, often did his bookkeeping at the restaurant." —Chris Conley, The Commercial Appeal (Memphis), 24 Feb., 2003
• Sam Phillips, who claimed he didn't have a desk, had his own booth at Taylor's to pore over paperwork • "That's where all the guys did their writing and talking, and that's where the Sun sound was really born." –Jack Clement (1931-2013), Sun Studio producer
• exhausted musicians often spent the night in one of "Miss Taylor's" upstairs rooms • while recording at Sun the mid-1950s, Roy Orbison had a two-room apartment there
• the bldg. now serves as visitor center for the recording studio, which is open to the public for tours
Marker: Elvis Presley and Sun Records
In July 1954 Sun Records released Elvis Presley's first recording. That record, and Elvis' four that followed on the Sun label, changed popular music. Elvis developed an innovative and different sound combining blues, gospel, and country. That quality made Elvis a worldwide celebrity within two years. He went on to become one of the most famous and beloved entertainers in history. Sun Records introduced many well known people in all fields of music. Generations of musicians have been affected by those who recorded here and especially by the music Elvis Presley first sang at Sun Records
National Historic Landmark Nomination: (unedited version with citations available here)
Marion Keisker (1917-1989), Phillips's sole assistant & employee when he started his business said he "would talk about this idea he had, this dream, I suppose, to have a facility where black people could come and play their own music, a place where they would feel free and relaxed to do it. One day we were riding along, and he saw that spot on Union, and he said, 'That's the spot I want.' With many difficulties we got the place, and we raised the money, and between us we did everything. We laid all the tile, we painted the acoustic boards, I put in the bathroom, Sam put in the control room—what little equipment he had always had to be the best." — quoted by Peter Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley
Phillips started his own record company, Sun Records, in 1952, "the first great rock 'n' roll record label." • Some of the artists Phillips recorded would redefine the musical genres in which they worked. Many of them made for Phillips not only their first recordings but also their best.
Before World War II most black music was blues, and a lot of those were country blues of the Mississippi Delta, the raw, gut-wrenching folk music of rural African Americans… Black migration out of the rural South accelerated during the First World War and exploded after World War II when manual cotton picking came to an end. Synthetic materials took over the market after the discovery of nylon in 1939, and the mechanical cotton picker, able to do the work of fifty people, arrived soon after. "The main musical result of the great migration was the blues came to town, and not to any old town: to Memphis, which acted as the local focus for migration from the Delta." — Sir Peter Hall, Cities in Civilization
In Memphis, WDIA started out in 1947 as a popular and country music radio station. The station switched formats in 1948 and began programming for a black audience after the success of a show called "Black America Speaks," hosted by Memphis's first black on-air personality, Nat Williams (1907-1983) [editorial: Color the Issue, A Point of View by Nat L. Williams]
Also in 1948, Dewey Phillips (1926-1968), a white radio announcer from rural Tennessee, began to host a show on WHBQ. "Red Hot and Blue" [listen] expanded from fifteen minutes to three hours daily during its first year on the air. Phillips played "an eclectic mix of blues, hillbilly, and pop that would become an institution in Memphis, and his importance to the cross-cultural miscegenation that became Rock 'n' Roll is incalculable." By 1951, word began to spread that white kids were buying "race records."
Sam Phillips was born on January 5, 1923 in the northwest corner of Alabama near Florence, about 150 miles east of Memphis. He got his first radio job in 1940 at WLAY in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and later took correspondence courses in radio engineering. He worked at WMSL in Decatur, Alabama, and at WLAC in Nashville before moving to Memphis in 1945.
In January 1950, Phillips started his own recording business in addition to his regular jobs. The Memphis Recording Service opened at 706 Union Avenue, about a mile east of the downtown area. The small one-story brick building had a reception area/office at the front of the building, a recording studio in the middle section, and a small control room in the rear. The entire building is only about 18 feet wide and 57 feet long. Phillips's business card read "We Record Anything—Anywhere—Anytime." Initially that included weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs, advertisements for radio, etc., in addition to musicians in his studio.
"I opened the Memphis Recording Service with the intention of recording singers and musicians from Memphis and the locality who I felt had something that people should be able to hear. I'm talking about blues—both the country style and the rhythm style—and also about gospel or spiritual music and about white country music. I always felt that people who played this type of music had not been given the opportunity to reach an audience . . . My aim was to try and record the blues and other music I liked and to prove whether I was right or wrong about this music. I knew, or I felt I knew, that there was a bigger audience for blues than just the black man of the mid-South. There were city markets to be reached, and I knew that whites listened to blues surreptitiously." —Escott, op. cit.
Phillips also functioned as a folklorist, documenting music that was fading into the past. "With the jet age coming on, with cotton-picking machines as big as a building going down the road, with society changing, I knew that this music wasn't going to be available in a pure sense forever."
Recording the Blues
video: Sam Phillips: The Man who Invented Rock & Roll Part 1 (44:22) & Part 2 (45:59)
His first deal, with 4 Star/Gilt Edge Records, was a song by a blind pianist from south Memphis. Lost John Hunter's "Boogie for Me Baby" [listen] was "a crude boogie blues that could pick up some southern juke coin," according to the review in Billboard, a record business trade publication.
In late summer 1950, Phillips launched his own record company with partner Dewey Phillips (the hot Memphis radio announcer, no relation) in order to issue and promote his own products. They called their label Phillips, but it only lasted a few weeks, issuing three hundred copies of Joe Hill Louis's "Boogie in the Park" in August 1950 [listen]
Phillips soon began working with Modern Records of Los Angeles, owned and operated by the Bihari brothers. Their new subsidiary, RPM Records, was looking for "new music with a down- home feel." Jules Bihari sent a guitar player from Indianola, Mississippi, to Sam Phillips to record. Riley King was already popular locally and known as B.B. King (for Blues Boy, or more likely, Black Boy). Phillips recorded King, one of the first artists on the new RPM label, from mid-1950 until mid-1951 [listen].
Even at this early stage in his career, Sam Phillips used recording techniques that were soon recognized as hallmarks of his records. He put up-tempo boogies on the front sides of records, slow numbers on back sides, and overamplified on faster songs to get a primitive fuzzy sound… These early recording sessions with King also document Phillips's skill as a record producer. King's version of a Tampa Red song had an explosiveness missing from the original record.
"Rocket '88'," a song about a hot Oldsmobile, is one of the contenders for the title "first rock 'n' roll record." It featured Jackie Brenston, the singer, and Ike Turner, the bandleader, on piano. "Rocket '88'" [listen] was released in April 1951. It hit number 1 on Billboard's R&B chart in June and eventually became the second biggest R&B hit of the year. According to Sam Phillips, "Rocket '88'" was the record that really kicked it off for me as far as broadening the base of music and opening up wider markets for our local music." Phillips resigned from WREC in June 1951 after "Rocket '88'" became a hit. — [more] on the history of “Rocket 88”
The Commercial Appeal (Memphis), 28 Mar, 1951: "[Sam Phillips] has agreements with two recording companies to locate and record hillbilly and race music. Race numbers are those tailored for the Negro trade. Sam auditions musicians with original songs. When he finds something he's sure will sell, he gets it on acetate and sends it to one of the companies. He doesn't charge the musicians anything . . . Sam may branch out one day, so he says if anyone wants to bring him a pop song, he'll be glad to look it over." • full article
• Sam Phillips first recorded Chester Burnett (The Howlin' Wolf) in the spring of 1951. Born near Aberdeen, Mississippi, Howlin' Wolf (1910-1976) was a singer who gave the traditional Delta blues another dimension. They recorded "Moanin' at Midnight" and "How Many More Years" [listen] in August 1951… In Phillips's estimation, the Wolf was his greatest discovery.
• Even though he preferred the creative side of the business, Phillips started his own record company early in 1952… With his own label, Phillips could run the business like he wanted and release records that other labels rejected.
"When I was leasing to other labels, they wanted me to compromise. They wanted a fuller blues sound than I did. They were selling excitement. I was recording the feel I found in the blues. I wanted to get that gut feel onto record. I realized that it was going to be much more difficult to merchandise than what Atlantic or Specialty, for example, were doing, but I was willing to go with it."
Phillips named his new company Sun Records and selected an eye-catching record label [photo] designed by John G. Parker (1925-2012), who also designed the tiger stripe helmet for the Cincinnati Bengals football team and packages for Alka-Seltzer and Super Bubble gum… "The sun to me—even as a kid back on the farm—was a universal kind of thing. A new day, a new opportunity." —Sam Phillips
The first record issued on the new Sun label (March 27, 1952), Sun number 175, was an original instrumental, "Drivin' Slow," by alto saxophonist Johnny London.
"Even on this first release, all the hallmarks of a Sam Phillips Sun record were in place: the raw sound, the experimental origin, the dark texture, even the trademark echo. Phillips and London created the illusion of a sax heard down a long hallway on a humid night by rigging something like a telephone booth over London's head while he played. The record's appeal had more to do with feeling than virtuosity—in short, it offered everything music buyers could expect from Sun for the remainder of the decade." [listen]
The first recording on the Sun label considered to be a classic was Easy, an instrumental released in March 1953 by Walter Horton (1921-1981) (Little Walter, and later, Big Walter).
". . . Horton played the same theme five times, with mounting intensity. By the fourth chorus, he was playing with such intensity that his harmonica sounded like a tenor saxophone. Phillips' virtuosity with tape delay echo was rarely used to better advantage: he made three instruments [harmonica, guitar, drums] sound as full as an orchestra. Any other instrument would have been redundant." [listen]
Sun Records had its first national hit in the spring of 1953 with "Bear Cat," [listen] which went to number 3 on the national R&B chart. It was an "answer song" to "Hound Dog" by Big Mama Thornton aka Willie Mae Thornton (1926-1984), sung by local radio announcer Rufus Thomas. "Bear Cat" was the first record to make money for Sun Records and it put the company on the map. "Feelin' Good" by Little Junior's Blue Flames (released in July 1953), was also commercially successful, reaching number 5 on the national R&B chart.
Sun's next hit was "Just Walkin' in the Rain" [listen] by The Prisonaires, a black vocal group of five inmates from the Tennessee State Penitentiary in Nashville. They sang close-harmony gospel style and came under armed guard to record at 706 Union on June 1, 1953. As part of the warden's rehabilitation program, they were allowed to perform on radio, in concerts, and at the Governor's mansion, but "Just Walkin' in the Rain" was their only hit.
Phillips recorded a number of important blues artists in the early 1950s, including "Sleepy" John Estes, Little Milton Campbell, Rosco Gordon, Dr. Ross, Harmonica Frank Floyd, Willie Nix, Billy "The Kid" Emerson, and Bobby "Blue" Bland.
". . . It's safe to say that the blues has never sounded as mean, raw, or intense as it did on countless days and nights at 706 Union Avenue. Amplifiers were cranked way past the point of distortion, guitars slashed like straight razors, rickety drum kits were pounded with fury and abandon, and the stories both sung and shouted spanned the gamut of the black Southern experience…
"Even if he'd never issued a record on the shining yellow Sun label, even if Elvis Presley had never entered his small recording studio..., Phillips would rank as one of the most visionary record producers of our time on the basis of his early fifties blues work." —John Floyd, Sun Records: An Oral History
In May 1954, Phillips recorded "Cotton Crop Blues" with James Cotton on vocals and Auburn "Pat" Hare on guitar. This was "one of the truly great blues recordings," but recording of traditional blues at 706 Union fell off in 1954 with the growing popularity of R&B music. Sun Records soon became synonymous with rock 'n' roll, overshadowing Phillips's role in blues recording "and the insight that [he] brought to recording the blues. He worked hard to get the best from his artists . . . Phillips would sit behind his tape deck until sunup if he thought the musicians on the studio floor might capture the sound that he heard in his head."
Phillips struggled to make money in the record business for almost six years. Eventually he saw that the market at that time was too small for the kind of music he was recording.
"The base wasn't broad enough because of racial prejudice. It wasn't broad enough to get the amount of commercial play and general acceptance overall—not just in the South . . . Now these were basically good people, but conceptually they did not understand the kinship between black and white people in the South. So I knew what I had to do to broaden the base of acceptance." —Escott, op. cit.
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley graduated from Humes High School in north Memphis on June 3, 1953 and went to work at M.B. Parker Machinists on July 1. Later that summer, he recorded a personal record at the Memphis Recording Service. Presley paid $3.98 for an acetate with two sides, both ballads. While he was there, Presley talked with Marion Keisker, a long-time Memphis radio personality who helped Sam Phillips run his businesses at 706 Union, and asked if she knew of a band that needed a singer.
He made an impression on Keisker which she later remembered well, especially his answer to her question about which hillbilly singer he sounded like: "I don't sound like nobody." At that time, Presley had a child's guitar that he played in the park, on his porch steps, and in a band with his buddies around their housing project. He soon aspired to be a member of the Songfellows, an amateur church quartet. —Guralnick, op. cit.
Presley dropped by 706 Union a number of times after that initial meeting to see if Ms. Keisker had any leads for him. In January 1954, Presley paid for a second personal record, and tried out for a professional band that spring. Eddie Bond (1933-2003), the band leader, told him to keep driving a truck because he would never make it as a singer. Presley later revealed that Bond's rejection "broke my heart." —Guralnick, op. cit.
". . . There is little question that he stepped through the doorway [at 706 Union] with the idea, if not of stardom . . . at the very least of being discovered. In later years he would always say that he wanted to make a personal record "to surprise my mother." Or "I just wanted to hear what I sounded like." But, of course, if he had simply wanted to record his voice, he could have paid twenty-five cents at W. T. Grant's on Main Street . . . Instead, Elvis went to a professional facility, where a man who had been written up in the papers would hear him sing." —Guralnick, op. cit.
Marion Keisker finally called Presley on Saturday, June 26 to set up an appointment, almost a year after he recorded his first personal disc. On a recent trip to Nashville, Phillips had gotten an acetate of a song that reminded him of Presley's voice. They worked on "Without You" [listen] for a long time that afternoon, and Phillips had Presley sing a number of other songs after his unsuccessful attempts with "Without You."
A week later, Phillips set Presley up with two members of the Starlite Wranglers [photos], Scotty Moore (guitar) and Bill Black (bass), and the three of them went to the studio on Monday, July 5 so Phillips could hear them on tape. Nothing special happened at the session until they took a break and Presley began fooling around and playing an old blues song by Arthur Crudup, "That's All Right [Mama] [listen]."
"Sam recognized it right away. He was amazed that the boy even knew Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup—nothing in any of the songs he had tried so far gave any indication that he was drawn to this kind of music at all. But this was the sort of music that Sam had long ago wholeheartedly embraced . . . And the way the boy performed it, it came across with a freshness and an exuberance, it came across with the kind of clear-eyed, unabashed originality that Sam sought in all the music that he recorded—it was "different," it was itself." —Guralnick, op. cit.
Phillips got his friend and kindred spirit, disc jockey Dewey Phillips, to play "That's All Right" [listen] on his radio show "Red Hot and Blue," then near the height of its popularity. The response was immediate—hundreds of phone calls and telegrams. Dewey played the song a number of times that night and also interviewed Presley during the show.
By the time the record was pressed and ready for release, there were 6,000 orders for it locally. Sun record number 209 was released on Monday, July 17, 1954. Phillips had been "looking for something that nobody could categorize," and this song did not sound exclusively black or white or country or pop. Initially, many people who heard the song thought that Presley was a black man. —Guralnick, op. cit.
Elvis Presley's first big public appearance with Scotty and Bill, the Blue Moon Boys, was on Friday, July 30 at Memphis's outdoor amphitheater in Overton Park [photos]. The show featured Slim Whitman, a star from the Louisiana Hayride, which some called the Grand Ole Opry's "farm club." He drew a hillbilly crowd, but they went wild when Elvis shook and wiggled his legs, his natural way of performing.
The new record made Billboard's regional charts by the end of August, but it was the B side that was more popular. Phillips backed "That's All Right" with an unorthodox version of "Blue Moon of Kentucky" [listen], a waltz that was a hit in 1946 for Bill Monroe, country music's elder statesman. By early September, "Blue Moon" was number 1 on the Memphis C&W chart and "That's All Right" was number 7. —Guralnick, op. cit.
Sun released Presley's second record in late September. "It was . . . an even bolder declaration of intent than the first, especially the strident blues number 'Good Rockin' Tonight' [listen], which rocked more confidently than anything they could have imagined in those first, uncertain days in the studio." The original jump blues version was written and recorded by Roy Brown in 1947 [listen]
Presley's growing popularity enabled Phillips to arrange a guest appearance on the Grand Ole Opry for October 2, even though the Opry had never before scheduled a performer at such an early stage in his career. The performance of "Blue Moon of Kentucky" by Elvis Presley, Scotty and Bill received a "polite, but somewhat tepid, reception," and the Opry's manager told Phillips that Presley "just did not fit the Opry mold."
It was a big disappointment for Elvis. But soon they were off to Louisiana for Presley's first appearance on the Louisiana Hayride, "the Opry's more innovative rival in Shreveport" that had a show every Saturday night. On the third Saturday of the month the show broadcast with a 50,000 watt signal that reached up to twenty-eight states.48 After only one guest appearance, Presley signed a standard one year contract to be one of the Hayride's regular members, and he and his band quit their day jobs. —Guralnick, op. cit.
For the next year, Elvis Presley and the Blue Moon Boys toured almost constantly... Presley took his first airplane flight and first trip to New York City on March 23, 1955 to try out for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts contest, but he did not pass the audition. [A] tour with Hank Snow/Jamboree Attractions began on May 1 in New Orleans, visiting twenty cities in three weeks, including a number of stops in Florida. There was a "riot" backstage after the concert in Jacksonville …
The audiences had never heard music like Presley played before, and they had never seen anyone who performed like Presley either. The shy, polite, mumbling boy gained self-confidence with every appearance, which soon led to a transformation on stage. People watching the show were astounded and shocked, both by the "ferocity of his performance,"49 and the crowd's reaction to it.
Even in the early days, Elvis almost always stole the show from the headliners, and concert lineups had to be rearranged accordingly. Nobody followed Elvis. Roy Orbison saw Presley for the first time in Odessa, Texas: "His energy was incredible, his instinct was just amazing . . . I just didn't know what to make of it. There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it."—Guralnick, op. cit.
"'He's the new rage,' said a Louisiana radio executive… 'Sings hillbilly in R&B time. Can you figure that out? He wears pink pants and a black coat . . .'" —Guralnick, op. cit.
Elvis caused a great commotion everywhere he went. Throughout the South, Presley had girls screaming and fainting and chasing after him.
Sam Phillips was also on the road constantly after the Overton Park performance in July 1954, promoting the new records to distributors, disc jockeys, record store owners, and jukebox operators. His experiences, however, were entirely different. Time and again, disc jockeys who were old friends and/or long-standing business associates told Phillips they could not play the Presley records. A country deejay said "Sam, they'll run me out of town." To an R&B deejay, "That's All Right" was a country song. A major pop station disc jockey told Phillips, "your music is just so ragged. I just can't handle it right now. Maybe later on." —Guralnick, op. cit.
WELO in Tupelo, Mississippi, Presley's hometown, would not even play the record, in spite of many requests from teenagers, because the deejay did not like the new music. —Guralnick, op. cit.
Sam Phillips persevered in spite of all the rejection he was getting, and kept trying to turn it around. "I needed the attention that I got from the people that hated what I was doing, that acted like: 'Here is somebody trying to thrust junk on us and classify it as our music.'"—Guralnick, op. cit.
"He was a man swept up by a belief, in a sound and in an idea. And as discouraged as he might sometimes get, as harsh as the reality of selling this new music might be, he never strayed from his belief, he never allowed himself to be distracted from his main goal. Which was to get them to listen." —Guralnick, op. cit.
Phillips could feel a revolution was on the way. There were already lots of country boys coming to his studio to play the new music, which initially got the name rockabilly. "Sam knew that a day was coming . . . when the music would prevail." —Guralnick, op. cit.
Presley was still a regional sensation and unknown to the national market when he got the record industry's attention. By the summer of 1955, almost all the major and independent record labels were inquiring about him. Sam Phillips had mixed feelings about selling Presley's contract, but his operations could not accommodate the Presley phenomenon, his finances were very tight, and he had other artists who needed his attention.
Presley's parents signed a contract in August which soon forced the issue. Col. Tom Parker (1909-1997) became "special adviser to Elvis Presley." He was the head of Jamboree Attractions, one of the major promoters and bookers of country and western talent, and had booked Presley on the Hank Snow package tours earlier that year. At that time, Parker was known as the best promoter in the business. In October Parker asked Phillips to name his price for Presley's contract, and Parker made sure that it was met.
The deal was signed at 706 Union Avenue on November 21, 1955. RCA-Victor bought Elvis Presley's contract from Sun Records for $35,000, plus $5,000 in back royalties owed to Presley. The story ran in the Memphis Press-Scimitar the next day:
"Elvis Presley, 20, Memphis recording star and entertainer who zoomed into big- time and the big money almost overnight, has been released from his contract with Sun Record Co. of Memphis . . . . Phillips and RCA officials did not reveal terms but said the money involved is probably the highest ever paid for a contract release for a country-western recording artist. 'I feel Elvis is one of the most talented youngsters today,' Phillips said, 'and by releasing his contract to RCA-Victor we will give him the opportunity of entering the largest organization of its kind in the world, so his talents can be given the fullest opportunity.'" —quoted in Guralnick, op. cit.
Sam Phillips never regretted his decision to sell Elvis Presley's contract. In many ways, Presley's departure was like a new beginning for Sun Records. Many country musicians aspiring to play rockabilly began to make their way to 706 Union Avenue. As Johnny Cash said many years later, "Elvis was a beacon that brought us all there." —Peter Guralnick, "Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll," VHS (A&E Biography, 2000)
Sun Studio
After Sam Phillips moved his companies to the new location on Madison Avenue, 706 Union Avenue housed a number of different businesses in the 1960s and 1970s, including a barber shop, an auto parts store, and a scuba shop. The building was vacant in 1985 when it became the site of a family reunion of sorts. An album entitled “Class of '55: Memphis Rock 'n' Roll Homecoming“ was recorded here to celebrate and remember the "Class of '55" on their 30th "anniversary." Record producer Chips Moman convened Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison to record together for the first time at the Sun studio in September 1985.
Not long after that event, 706 Union Avenue became a stop for visitors on tours to Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley, which opened to the public in 1982. The building opened as the Sun Studio for tours in 1987—the name Sun Records and the original Sun record label design still belong to Shelby Singleton, who bought the company in 1969. The current property owner also purchased the adjacent two-story brick building that housed a café and a boarding house in the 1950s. That building now serves as a soda shop, gallery, and gift shop for visitors to Sun Studio.
The Sun Studio also operates as a full service 24-track recording studio for professional musicians, as well as anyone who wants to make a personal record, just like Elvis. In 1987, the Irish rock band U2 recorded several songs here for their album "Rattle and Hum," including "When Love Comes to Town" featuring B.B. King. Several hundred thousand visitors have made the pilgrimage to this extraordinary place.
• National Register # 03001031, 2003 • designated a National Historic Landmark, 2003
Memphis, TN, est. 1819, pop. 650,000
• in the 1950s, in a small studio on Union, Ave., Sam C. Phillips (1923-2003) recorded music that is "one of the true touchstones of American culture" —Escott, Hawkins, Good Rockin' Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock 'N' Roll
• this two-story corner bldg. is located in Memphis's Edge district • before becoming the Sun Studio Café, the 1st floor housed Taylor's Fine Food restaurant (1948-1981) [photo] • owned by Dell Taylor (1911-2003) & husband, Carlos (1914-1976) • 2nd floor was a rooming house
• the 1908 bldg. shares a partywall with a 1-story storefront at no. 706, built in 1916 [photos] • this small adjacent structure became Memphis Recording Service & later, Sun Studio [discography], where Elvis Presley (1935-1977) began his recording career
"Dell M. Taylor served up country fried steak and gentle mothering to the emerging stars of Sun Studio… Mrs. Taylor saw to it that Elvis Presley, Rufus Thomas, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Charlie Rich and Carl Perkins, — along with the mechanics and other workers from the auto dealership row on Union — had the freshest greens and vegetables… Many a song was written in the booths, as the musicians would come in to eat during a break in recording at Sun Studio next door… Sun Studio founder Sam Phillips, credited with discovering Elvis and others, often did his bookkeeping at the restaurant." —Chris Conley, The Commercial Appeal (Memphis), 24 Feb., 2003
• Sam Phillips, who claimed he didn't have a desk, had his own booth at Taylor's to pore over paperwork • "That's where all the guys did their writing and talking, and that's where the Sun sound was really born." –Jack Clement (1931-2013), Sun Studio producer
• exhausted musicians often spent the night in one of "Miss Taylor's" upstairs rooms • while recording at Sun the mid-1950s, Roy Orbison had a two-room apartment there
• the bldg. now serves as visitor center for the recording studio, which is open to the public for tours
Marker: Elvis Presley and Sun Records
In July 1954 Sun Records released Elvis Presley's first recording. That record, and Elvis' four that followed on the Sun label, changed popular music. Elvis developed an innovative and different sound combining blues, gospel, and country. That quality made Elvis a worldwide celebrity within two years. He went on to become one of the most famous and beloved entertainers in history. Sun Records introduced many well known people in all fields of music. Generations of musicians have been affected by those who recorded here and especially by the music Elvis Presley first sang at Sun Records
National Historic Landmark Nomination: (unedited version with citations available here)
Marion Keisker (1917-1989), Phillips's sole assistant & employee when he started his business said he "would talk about this idea he had, this dream, I suppose, to have a facility where black people could come and play their own music, a place where they would feel free and relaxed to do it. One day we were riding along, and he saw that spot on Union, and he said, 'That's the spot I want.' With many difficulties we got the place, and we raised the money, and between us we did everything. We laid all the tile, we painted the acoustic boards, I put in the bathroom, Sam put in the control room—what little equipment he had always had to be the best." — quoted by Peter Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley
Phillips started his own record company, Sun Records, in 1952, "the first great rock 'n' roll record label." • Some of the artists Phillips recorded would redefine the musical genres in which they worked. Many of them made for Phillips not only their first recordings but also their best.
Before World War II most black music was blues, and a lot of those were country blues of the Mississippi Delta, the raw, gut-wrenching folk music of rural African Americans… Black migration out of the rural South accelerated during the First World War and exploded after World War II when manual cotton picking came to an end. Synthetic materials took over the market after the discovery of nylon in 1939, and the mechanical cotton picker, able to do the work of fifty people, arrived soon after. "The main musical result of the great migration was the blues came to town, and not to any old town: to Memphis, which acted as the local focus for migration from the Delta." — Sir Peter Hall, Cities in Civilization
In Memphis, WDIA started out in 1947 as a popular and country music radio station. The station switched formats in 1948 and began programming for a black audience after the success of a show called "Black America Speaks," hosted by Memphis's first black on-air personality, Nat Williams (1907-1983) [editorial: Color the Issue, A Point of View by Nat L. Williams]
Also in 1948, Dewey Phillips (1926-1968), a white radio announcer from rural Tennessee, began to host a show on WHBQ. "Red Hot and Blue" [listen] expanded from fifteen minutes to three hours daily during its first year on the air. Phillips played "an eclectic mix of blues, hillbilly, and pop that would become an institution in Memphis, and his importance to the cross-cultural miscegenation that became Rock 'n' Roll is incalculable." By 1951, word began to spread that white kids were buying "race records."
Sam Phillips was born on January 5, 1923 in the northwest corner of Alabama near Florence, about 150 miles east of Memphis. He got his first radio job in 1940 at WLAY in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and later took correspondence courses in radio engineering. He worked at WMSL in Decatur, Alabama, and at WLAC in Nashville before moving to Memphis in 1945.
In January 1950, Phillips started his own recording business in addition to his regular jobs. The Memphis Recording Service opened at 706 Union Avenue, about a mile east of the downtown area. The small one-story brick building had a reception area/office at the front of the building, a recording studio in the middle section, and a small control room in the rear. The entire building is only about 18 feet wide and 57 feet long. Phillips's business card read "We Record Anything—Anywhere—Anytime." Initially that included weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs, advertisements for radio, etc., in addition to musicians in his studio.
"I opened the Memphis Recording Service with the intention of recording singers and musicians from Memphis and the locality who I felt had something that people should be able to hear. I'm talking about blues—both the country style and the rhythm style—and also about gospel or spiritual music and about white country music. I always felt that people who played this type of music had not been given the opportunity to reach an audience . . . My aim was to try and record the blues and other music I liked and to prove whether I was right or wrong about this music. I knew, or I felt I knew, that there was a bigger audience for blues than just the black man of the mid-South. There were city markets to be reached, and I knew that whites listened to blues surreptitiously." —Escott, op. cit.
Phillips also functioned as a folklorist, documenting music that was fading into the past. "With the jet age coming on, with cotton-picking machines as big as a building going down the road, with society changing, I knew that this music wasn't going to be available in a pure sense forever."
Recording the Blues
video: Sam Phillips: The Man who Invented Rock & Roll Part 1 (44:22) & Part 2 (45:59)
His first deal, with 4 Star/Gilt Edge Records, was a song by a blind pianist from south Memphis. Lost John Hunter's "Boogie for Me Baby" [listen] was "a crude boogie blues that could pick up some southern juke coin," according to the review in Billboard, a record business trade publication.
In late summer 1950, Phillips launched his own record company with partner Dewey Phillips (the hot Memphis radio announcer, no relation) in order to issue and promote his own products. They called their label Phillips, but it only lasted a few weeks, issuing three hundred copies of Joe Hill Louis's "Boogie in the Park" in August 1950 [listen]
Phillips soon began working with Modern Records of Los Angeles, owned and operated by the Bihari brothers. Their new subsidiary, RPM Records, was looking for "new music with a down- home feel." Jules Bihari sent a guitar player from Indianola, Mississippi, to Sam Phillips to record. Riley King was already popular locally and known as B.B. King (for Blues Boy, or more likely, Black Boy). Phillips recorded King, one of the first artists on the new RPM label, from mid-1950 until mid-1951 [listen].
Even at this early stage in his career, Sam Phillips used recording techniques that were soon recognized as hallmarks of his records. He put up-tempo boogies on the front sides of records, slow numbers on back sides, and overamplified on faster songs to get a primitive fuzzy sound… These early recording sessions with King also document Phillips's skill as a record producer. King's version of a Tampa Red song had an explosiveness missing from the original record.
"Rocket '88'," a song about a hot Oldsmobile, is one of the contenders for the title "first rock 'n' roll record." It featured Jackie Brenston, the singer, and Ike Turner, the bandleader, on piano. "Rocket '88'" [listen] was released in April 1951. It hit number 1 on Billboard's R&B chart in June and eventually became the second biggest R&B hit of the year. According to Sam Phillips, "Rocket '88'" was the record that really kicked it off for me as far as broadening the base of music and opening up wider markets for our local music." Phillips resigned from WREC in June 1951 after "Rocket '88'" became a hit. — [more] on the history of “Rocket 88”
The Commercial Appeal (Memphis), 28 Mar, 1951: "[Sam Phillips] has agreements with two recording companies to locate and record hillbilly and race music. Race numbers are those tailored for the Negro trade. Sam auditions musicians with original songs. When he finds something he's sure will sell, he gets it on acetate and sends it to one of the companies. He doesn't charge the musicians anything . . . Sam may branch out one day, so he says if anyone wants to bring him a pop song, he'll be glad to look it over." • full article
• Sam Phillips first recorded Chester Burnett (The Howlin' Wolf) in the spring of 1951. Born near Aberdeen, Mississippi, Howlin' Wolf (1910-1976) was a singer who gave the traditional Delta blues another dimension. They recorded "Moanin' at Midnight" and "How Many More Years" [listen] in August 1951… In Phillips's estimation, the Wolf was his greatest discovery.
• Even though he preferred the creative side of the business, Phillips started his own record company early in 1952… With his own label, Phillips could run the business like he wanted and release records that other labels rejected.
"When I was leasing to other labels, they wanted me to compromise. They wanted a fuller blues sound than I did. They were selling excitement. I was recording the feel I found in the blues. I wanted to get that gut feel onto record. I realized that it was going to be much more difficult to merchandise than what Atlantic or Specialty, for example, were doing, but I was willing to go with it."
Phillips named his new company Sun Records and selected an eye-catching record label [photo] designed by John G. Parker (1925-2012), who also designed the tiger stripe helmet for the Cincinnati Bengals football team and packages for Alka-Seltzer and Super Bubble gum… "The sun to me—even as a kid back on the farm—was a universal kind of thing. A new day, a new opportunity." —Sam Phillips
The first record issued on the new Sun label (March 27, 1952), Sun number 175, was an original instrumental, "Drivin' Slow," by alto saxophonist Johnny London.
"Even on this first release, all the hallmarks of a Sam Phillips Sun record were in place: the raw sound, the experimental origin, the dark texture, even the trademark echo. Phillips and London created the illusion of a sax heard down a long hallway on a humid night by rigging something like a telephone booth over London's head while he played. The record's appeal had more to do with feeling than virtuosity—in short, it offered everything music buyers could expect from Sun for the remainder of the decade." [listen]
The first recording on the Sun label considered to be a classic was Easy, an instrumental released in March 1953 by Walter Horton (1921-1981) (Little Walter, and later, Big Walter).
". . . Horton played the same theme five times, with mounting intensity. By the fourth chorus, he was playing with such intensity that his harmonica sounded like a tenor saxophone. Phillips' virtuosity with tape delay echo was rarely used to better advantage: he made three instruments [harmonica, guitar, drums] sound as full as an orchestra. Any other instrument would have been redundant." [listen]
Sun Records had its first national hit in the spring of 1953 with "Bear Cat," [listen] which went to number 3 on the national R&B chart. It was an "answer song" to "Hound Dog" by Big Mama Thornton aka Willie Mae Thornton (1926-1984), sung by local radio announcer Rufus Thomas. "Bear Cat" was the first record to make money for Sun Records and it put the company on the map. "Feelin' Good" by Little Junior's Blue Flames (released in July 1953), was also commercially successful, reaching number 5 on the national R&B chart.
Sun's next hit was "Just Walkin' in the Rain" [listen] by The Prisonaires, a black vocal group of five inmates from the Tennessee State Penitentiary in Nashville. They sang close-harmony gospel style and came under armed guard to record at 706 Union on June 1, 1953. As part of the warden's rehabilitation program, they were allowed to perform on radio, in concerts, and at the Governor's mansion, but "Just Walkin' in the Rain" was their only hit.
Phillips recorded a number of important blues artists in the early 1950s, including "Sleepy" John Estes, Little Milton Campbell, Rosco Gordon, Dr. Ross, Harmonica Frank Floyd, Willie Nix, Billy "The Kid" Emerson, and Bobby "Blue" Bland.
". . . It's safe to say that the blues has never sounded as mean, raw, or intense as it did on countless days and nights at 706 Union Avenue. Amplifiers were cranked way past the point of distortion, guitars slashed like straight razors, rickety drum kits were pounded with fury and abandon, and the stories both sung and shouted spanned the gamut of the black Southern experience…
"Even if he'd never issued a record on the shining yellow Sun label, even if Elvis Presley had never entered his small recording studio..., Phillips would rank as one of the most visionary record producers of our time on the basis of his early fifties blues work." —John Floyd, Sun Records: An Oral History
In May 1954, Phillips recorded "Cotton Crop Blues" with James Cotton on vocals and Auburn "Pat" Hare on guitar. This was "one of the truly great blues recordings," but recording of traditional blues at 706 Union fell off in 1954 with the growing popularity of R&B music. Sun Records soon became synonymous with rock 'n' roll, overshadowing Phillips's role in blues recording "and the insight that [he] brought to recording the blues. He worked hard to get the best from his artists . . . Phillips would sit behind his tape deck until sunup if he thought the musicians on the studio floor might capture the sound that he heard in his head."
Phillips struggled to make money in the record business for almost six years. Eventually he saw that the market at that time was too small for the kind of music he was recording.
"The base wasn't broad enough because of racial prejudice. It wasn't broad enough to get the amount of commercial play and general acceptance overall—not just in the South . . . Now these were basically good people, but conceptually they did not understand the kinship between black and white people in the South. So I knew what I had to do to broaden the base of acceptance." —Escott, op. cit.
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley graduated from Humes High School in north Memphis on June 3, 1953 and went to work at M.B. Parker Machinists on July 1. Later that summer, he recorded a personal record at the Memphis Recording Service. Presley paid $3.98 for an acetate with two sides, both ballads. While he was there, Presley talked with Marion Keisker, a long-time Memphis radio personality who helped Sam Phillips run his businesses at 706 Union, and asked if she knew of a band that needed a singer.
He made an impression on Keisker which she later remembered well, especially his answer to her question about which hillbilly singer he sounded like: "I don't sound like nobody." At that time, Presley had a child's guitar that he played in the park, on his porch steps, and in a band with his buddies around their housing project. He soon aspired to be a member of the Songfellows, an amateur church quartet. —Guralnick, op. cit.
Presley dropped by 706 Union a number of times after that initial meeting to see if Ms. Keisker had any leads for him. In January 1954, Presley paid for a second personal record, and tried out for a professional band that spring. Eddie Bond (1933-2003), the band leader, told him to keep driving a truck because he would never make it as a singer. Presley later revealed that Bond's rejection "broke my heart." —Guralnick, op. cit.
". . . There is little question that he stepped through the doorway [at 706 Union] with the idea, if not of stardom . . . at the very least of being discovered. In later years he would always say that he wanted to make a personal record "to surprise my mother." Or "I just wanted to hear what I sounded like." But, of course, if he had simply wanted to record his voice, he could have paid twenty-five cents at W. T. Grant's on Main Street . . . Instead, Elvis went to a professional facility, where a man who had been written up in the papers would hear him sing." —Guralnick, op. cit.
Marion Keisker finally called Presley on Saturday, June 26 to set up an appointment, almost a year after he recorded his first personal disc. On a recent trip to Nashville, Phillips had gotten an acetate of a song that reminded him of Presley's voice. They worked on "Without You" [listen] for a long time that afternoon, and Phillips had Presley sing a number of other songs after his unsuccessful attempts with "Without You."
A week later, Phillips set Presley up with two members of the Starlite Wranglers [photos], Scotty Moore (guitar) and Bill Black (bass), and the three of them went to the studio on Monday, July 5 so Phillips could hear them on tape. Nothing special happened at the session until they took a break and Presley began fooling around and playing an old blues song by Arthur Crudup, "That's All Right [Mama] [listen]."
"Sam recognized it right away. He was amazed that the boy even knew Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup—nothing in any of the songs he had tried so far gave any indication that he was drawn to this kind of music at all. But this was the sort of music that Sam had long ago wholeheartedly embraced . . . And the way the boy performed it, it came across with a freshness and an exuberance, it came across with the kind of clear-eyed, unabashed originality that Sam sought in all the music that he recorded—it was "different," it was itself." —Guralnick, op. cit.
Phillips got his friend and kindred spirit, disc jockey Dewey Phillips, to play "That's All Right" [listen] on his radio show "Red Hot and Blue," then near the height of its popularity. The response was immediate—hundreds of phone calls and telegrams. Dewey played the song a number of times that night and also interviewed Presley during the show.
By the time the record was pressed and ready for release, there were 6,000 orders for it locally. Sun record number 209 was released on Monday, July 17, 1954. Phillips had been "looking for something that nobody could categorize," and this song did not sound exclusively black or white or country or pop. Initially, many people who heard the song thought that Presley was a black man. —Guralnick, op. cit.
Elvis Presley's first big public appearance with Scotty and Bill, the Blue Moon Boys, was on Friday, July 30 at Memphis's outdoor amphitheater in Overton Park [photos]. The show featured Slim Whitman, a star from the Louisiana Hayride, which some called the Grand Ole Opry's "farm club." He drew a hillbilly crowd, but they went wild when Elvis shook and wiggled his legs, his natural way of performing.
The new record made Billboard's regional charts by the end of August, but it was the B side that was more popular. Phillips backed "That's All Right" with an unorthodox version of "Blue Moon of Kentucky" [listen], a waltz that was a hit in 1946 for Bill Monroe, country music's elder statesman. By early September, "Blue Moon" was number 1 on the Memphis C&W chart and "That's All Right" was number 7. —Guralnick, op. cit.
Sun released Presley's second record in late September. "It was . . . an even bolder declaration of intent than the first, especially the strident blues number 'Good Rockin' Tonight' [listen], which rocked more confidently than anything they could have imagined in those first, uncertain days in the studio." The original jump blues version was written and recorded by Roy Brown in 1947 [listen]
Presley's growing popularity enabled Phillips to arrange a guest appearance on the Grand Ole Opry for October 2, even though the Opry had never before scheduled a performer at such an early stage in his career. The performance of "Blue Moon of Kentucky" by Elvis Presley, Scotty and Bill received a "polite, but somewhat tepid, reception," and the Opry's manager told Phillips that Presley "just did not fit the Opry mold."
It was a big disappointment for Elvis. But soon they were off to Louisiana for Presley's first appearance on the Louisiana Hayride, "the Opry's more innovative rival in Shreveport" that had a show every Saturday night. On the third Saturday of the month the show broadcast with a 50,000 watt signal that reached up to twenty-eight states.48 After only one guest appearance, Presley signed a standard one year contract to be one of the Hayride's regular members, and he and his band quit their day jobs. —Guralnick, op. cit.
For the next year, Elvis Presley and the Blue Moon Boys toured almost constantly... Presley took his first airplane flight and first trip to New York City on March 23, 1955 to try out for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts contest, but he did not pass the audition. [A] tour with Hank Snow/Jamboree Attractions began on May 1 in New Orleans, visiting twenty cities in three weeks, including a number of stops in Florida. There was a "riot" backstage after the concert in Jacksonville …
The audiences had never heard music like Presley played before, and they had never seen anyone who performed like Presley either. The shy, polite, mumbling boy gained self-confidence with every appearance, which soon led to a transformation on stage. People watching the show were astounded and shocked, both by the "ferocity of his performance,"49 and the crowd's reaction to it.
Even in the early days, Elvis almost always stole the show from the headliners, and concert lineups had to be rearranged accordingly. Nobody followed Elvis. Roy Orbison saw Presley for the first time in Odessa, Texas: "His energy was incredible, his instinct was just amazing . . . I just didn't know what to make of it. There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it."—Guralnick, op. cit.
"'He's the new rage,' said a Louisiana radio executive… 'Sings hillbilly in R&B time. Can you figure that out? He wears pink pants and a black coat . . .'" —Guralnick, op. cit.
Elvis caused a great commotion everywhere he went. Throughout the South, Presley had girls screaming and fainting and chasing after him.
Sam Phillips was also on the road constantly after the Overton Park performance in July 1954, promoting the new records to distributors, disc jockeys, record store owners, and jukebox operators. His experiences, however, were entirely different. Time and again, disc jockeys who were old friends and/or long-standing business associates told Phillips they could not play the Presley records. A country deejay said "Sam, they'll run me out of town." To an R&B deejay, "That's All Right" was a country song. A major pop station disc jockey told Phillips, "your music is just so ragged. I just can't handle it right now. Maybe later on." —Guralnick, op. cit.
WELO in Tupelo, Mississippi, Presley's hometown, would not even play the record, in spite of many requests from teenagers, because the deejay did not like the new music. —Guralnick, op. cit.
Sam Phillips persevered in spite of all the rejection he was getting, and kept trying to turn it around. "I needed the attention that I got from the people that hated what I was doing, that acted like: 'Here is somebody trying to thrust junk on us and classify it as our music.'"—Guralnick, op. cit.
"He was a man swept up by a belief, in a sound and in an idea. And as discouraged as he might sometimes get, as harsh as the reality of selling this new music might be, he never strayed from his belief, he never allowed himself to be distracted from his main goal. Which was to get them to listen." —Guralnick, op. cit.
Phillips could feel a revolution was on the way. There were already lots of country boys coming to his studio to play the new music, which initially got the name rockabilly. "Sam knew that a day was coming . . . when the music would prevail." —Guralnick, op. cit.
Presley was still a regional sensation and unknown to the national market when he got the record industry's attention. By the summer of 1955, almost all the major and independent record labels were inquiring about him. Sam Phillips had mixed feelings about selling Presley's contract, but his operations could not accommodate the Presley phenomenon, his finances were very tight, and he had other artists who needed his attention.
Presley's parents signed a contract in August which soon forced the issue. Col. Tom Parker (1909-1997) became "special adviser to Elvis Presley." He was the head of Jamboree Attractions, one of the major promoters and bookers of country and western talent, and had booked Presley on the Hank Snow package tours earlier that year. At that time, Parker was known as the best promoter in the business. In October Parker asked Phillips to name his price for Presley's contract, and Parker made sure that it was met.
The deal was signed at 706 Union Avenue on November 21, 1955. RCA-Victor bought Elvis Presley's contract from Sun Records for $35,000, plus $5,000 in back royalties owed to Presley. The story ran in the Memphis Press-Scimitar the next day:
"Elvis Presley, 20, Memphis recording star and entertainer who zoomed into big- time and the big money almost overnight, has been released from his contract with Sun Record Co. of Memphis . . . . Phillips and RCA officials did not reveal terms but said the money involved is probably the highest ever paid for a contract release for a country-western recording artist. 'I feel Elvis is one of the most talented youngsters today,' Phillips said, 'and by releasing his contract to RCA-Victor we will give him the opportunity of entering the largest organization of its kind in the world, so his talents can be given the fullest opportunity.'" —quoted in Guralnick, op. cit.
Sam Phillips never regretted his decision to sell Elvis Presley's contract. In many ways, Presley's departure was like a new beginning for Sun Records. Many country musicians aspiring to play rockabilly began to make their way to 706 Union Avenue. As Johnny Cash said many years later, "Elvis was a beacon that brought us all there." —Peter Guralnick, "Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll," VHS (A&E Biography, 2000)
Sun Studio
After Sam Phillips moved his companies to the new location on Madison Avenue, 706 Union Avenue housed a number of different businesses in the 1960s and 1970s, including a barber shop, an auto parts store, and a scuba shop. The building was vacant in 1985 when it became the site of a family reunion of sorts. An album entitled “Class of '55: Memphis Rock 'n' Roll Homecoming“ was recorded here to celebrate and remember the "Class of '55" on their 30th "anniversary." Record producer Chips Moman convened Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison to record together for the first time at the Sun studio in September 1985.
Not long after that event, 706 Union Avenue became a stop for visitors on tours to Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley, which opened to the public in 1982. The building opened as the Sun Studio for tours in 1987—the name Sun Records and the original Sun record label design still belong to Shelby Singleton, who bought the company in 1969. The current property owner also purchased the adjacent two-story brick building that housed a café and a boarding house in the 1950s. That building now serves as a soda shop, gallery, and gift shop for visitors to Sun Studio.
The Sun Studio also operates as a full service 24-track recording studio for professional musicians, as well as anyone who wants to make a personal record, just like Elvis. In 1987, the Irish rock band U2 recorded several songs here for their album "Rattle and Hum," including "When Love Comes to Town" featuring B.B. King. Several hundred thousand visitors have made the pilgrimage to this extraordinary place.
• National Register # 03001031, 2003 • designated a National Historic Landmark, 2003
www.jackie alpers.com
The recipe is available on my blog Jackie's Happy Plate.
jackieshappyplate.com/2013/08/10/breakfast-popsicles-a-go...
I didn't have much time to think of anything creative today, so this was a five minute photo effort this morning before I had to run off to do a hundred different things.
This is the book I'm reading for my monthly book club. I started reading it yesterday and so far I'm enjoying it. I love books...a day doesn't feel complete unless I've lost myself in some or other story. I'd love to write one myself (heaven knows I've got enough good material!), it's just not easy to find six months or more to dedicate to writing something that no one might ever want to publish!
The following is a brief biography of Fredric Brown from the Goodreads website (at www.goodreads.com/author/show/51503.Fredric_Brown):
"Fredric Brown was an American science fiction and mystery writer. He was one of the boldest early writers in genre fiction in his use of narrative experimentation. While never in the front rank of popularity in his lifetime, Brown has developed a considerable cult following in the almost half century since he last wrote. His works have been periodically reprinted and he has a worldwide fan base, most notably in the U.S. and Europe, and especially in France, where there have been several recent movie adaptations of his work. He also remains popular in Japan.
"Never financially secure, Brown - like many other pulp writers - often wrote at a furious pace in order to pay bills. This accounts, at least in part, for the uneven quality of his work. A newspaperman by profession, Brown was only able to devote 14 years of his life as a full-time fiction writer. Brown was also a heavy drinker, and this at times doubtless affected his productivity. A cultured man and omnivorous reader whose interests ranged far beyond those of most pulp writers, Brown had a lifelong interest in the flute, chess, poker, and the works of Lewis Carroll. Brown married twice and was the father of two sons."
Manhattan, NY (settled 1624, pop. 1.6MM) • East Village
• Grace Episcopal Church • French Gothic Revival design by 25 yr. old James Renwick, Jr. (1818-1895), his first major commission • cornerstone laid, 1843 • church consecrated, 1846 • church history
• built of “Sing Sing marble,” actually Tuckahoe Marble quarried from the Sing Sing Quarry [photo] by Sing Sing Correctional Facility prisoners
• spire, 226’ high, was among the tallest points on the early NYC skyline • originally wood, was replaced by a marble spire, 1883
• situated in one of the most visible locations in Manhattan, the corner of East 10th St. where Broadway bends S/SE, aligning w/ the city’s avenues [c. 1900 photo]
• for much of the mid/late 19th C., considered NYC’s most fashionable church & most prestigious site for marriage or burial • like many other churches, charged “pew rents,” an annual fee for the use of its seats • initial pew rents were $3/wk. (= $114 today), thus the congregation in the early years consisted largely of wealthy New Yorkers [1918 video]
“In his 1882 New York by Gaslight, author James, D. McCabe, Jr. would point out, “At the morning service a greater display of wealth and fashion is presented here than at any other city church. Grace Church has been the scene of more fashionable weddings and funerals than any other place of worship.” —Daytonian in Manhattan
• on 10 Feb, 1863, the American Civil War was raging, demonstrations, protesting the country’s first military draft were on the verge of becoming full-blown draft riots, and a widely anticipated event took place in Grace Church; Charles Sherwood Stratton (1838-1883) — a wealthy, international celebrity better known as General Tom Thumb — and Mercy Lavinia Warren (1841-1919) exchanged wedding vows • both were proportionate dwarfs in the employ of P.T. Barnum, performers at his American Museum
• Stratton was a gifted entertainer who sang, danced & performed physical comedy, stage name taken from “The History of Tom Thumbe,” a story first published in 1621, attributed to London romance writer Richard Johnson (1573–c.1659) • Lavinia began her career performing on a river boat, signed w/Barnum, age 21
“The church was comfortably filled by a highly select audience of ladies and gentlemen, none being admitted except those having cards of invitation. Among them were governors of several of the States, to whom I had sent cards, and such of those as could not be present in person were represented by friends, to whom they had given their cards. Members of Congress were present, also generals of the army, and many other prominent public men. Numerous applications were made from wealthy and distinguished persons, for tickets to witness the ceremony, and as high as sixty dollars [= $1,400 today] was offered for a single admission. But not a ticket was sold; and Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren were pronounced ‘man and wife’ before witnesses.” —P.T. Barnum, “Struggles and Triumphs”
• the Brooklyn Eagle editorialized, “We are surprised that the clergy, or representatives of so respectable a body as the Episcopal Church should, for a moment, allow themselves to be used by this Yankee showman to advertise his business”
• amid widespread criticism of the church for it’s complicity in what was widely viewed as another Barnum publicity stunt, Stratton responded, “It is true we are little but we are as God made us, perfect in our littleness. We are simply man and woman of like passions and infirmities with you and other mortals. The arrangements for our marriage are controlled by no showman.”
“The more than 2,000 invited wedding guests [photo] appeared to be a who’s who of American nobility, including a number of congressmen and high-ranking generals, in addition to the thousands of average New Yorkers who showed up hoping to catch a glimpse of the famous tiny couple.” —A General, a Queen and the President
“The wedding party’s arrival outside the church at half past noon touched off a stampede among combatants fighting for a close-up view. The police restrained them only with extreme exertion. Inside, ‘an instantaneous uprising ensued,’ The New York Times reported the following day. ‘All looked, few saw. Many stood upon the seats, others stood upon stools placed on the seats. By many, good breeding was forgotten. By very many the sanctity of the occasion and the sacredness of the ceremonies were entirely ignored. As the little party toddled up the aisle, a sense of the ludicrous seemed to hit many a bump of fun, and irrepressible and unpleasantly audible giggles ran through the church.’” —Boundary Stones
• the couple received wedding presents from wealthy Americans, including a miniature horse-drawn carriage fashioned by Tiffany & Co. • the ceremony, officiated by Stratton’s hometown minister, Junius Willey, was followed by a reception at the Metropolitan Hotel, attended by guests who had purchased tickets from Barnum
• the newlyweds [illustration] then traveled to Washington where Charles’s brother was stationed w/ the Union Army • checked in to Willard’s Hotel
• on 13 Feb, 1863, a well-publicized reception for the couple was held in the East Room of the Lincoln White House, hosted by First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln & America’s tallest president [illustration] —Andrew Martin
Livinia Warren: “[The] President took our hands and led us to the sofa, lifting the General up and placed him at his left hand, while Mrs. Lincoln did the same serve for me, placing me at her right… Tad, the favorite son, stood beside his mother and gazing at me… whispered to his mother, ‘Mother if you were a little woman like Mrs. Stratton you would look just like her.'”
“The marriage of Gen. Tom Thumb cannot be treated as an affair of no moment -- in some respects it is most momentous. Next to LOUIS NAPOLEON, there is no one person better known by reputation to high and low, rich and poor, than he…
“Those who did and those who did not attend the wedding of Gen. Thomas Thumb and Queen composed the population of this great Metropolis yesterday, and thenceforth religious and civil parties sink into comparative insignificance before this one arbitrating query of fate -- Did you or did you not see Tom Thumb married?” —NYT 22 Feb, 1863
• Stratton retired wealthy • couple lived in a Bridgeport, CT mansion, owned a yacht, a summer home in Massachusetts [photo] and a custom-built cottage on Cut in Two Island East in Connecticut’s Thimble Islands • in 1855, when bad investments forced Barnum to file for bankruptcy, Stratton provided financial assistance d& became Barnum’s business partner
• 28 yrs. later, Charles died of a stroke • the couple’s lavish lifestyle had reduced their wealth but enough remained to support Lavinia’s retirement • chose instead to return to the stage, used the stage name “Mrs. Tom Thumb” & assembled a troupe of touring “Liliputians”
• married Italian proportionate dwarf Count primo Magri (1849-1920), who, with his brother, joined the troupe • Count & Countess [photo] lived in Middleborough, MA, • summers, operated a roadside general store for auto tourists called Primo’s Pastime, where they posed for photos w/customers —Atlas Obscura
• the Mrs. Tom Thumb company toured the country [photo], garnering favorable reviews, e.g., “The entertainment given by the Mrs. Tom Thumb Company Saturday was really a fine thing. The little people cannot help being interesting and the tricks of magic were also good, as were the music and trained birds, but the suspension in mid- air of the little countess and change of character was the best thing of the kind ever seen here,” —Newburyport (MA) Herald following a 2 July, 1889 performance at the Exeter (NH) Opera House
• shortly after Stratton’s death, theaters began staging re-enactments of the couple's nuptials • “Tom Thumb weddings,” aka "miniature weddings, became a fad in the 1890s-1900s and continued to be staged by churches, community organizations and charities well into the late 20th C., mainly as fundraisers [photo]
• Grace Church is a National Historic Landmark designated for its architectural significance and place within the history of New York City, and the entire complex is a New York City landmark • one of seven New York City buildings designated by the Municipal Art Society as being of national importance, to be preserved at all costs
designations:
NY Landmarks Preservation Commission:
• church & rectory landmarked, 1966
• Fourth Avenue church houses landmarked, 1977
National Register of Historic Places:
• church & dependencies, # 74001270, 1974
• national historic landmark, 1977
Joe Servello's art is reminiscent of a classic paperback book cover:
www.flickr.com/photos/57440551@N03/12331859333/in/album-7...
The following is a brief biography of Fredric Brown (1906-1972) from the Goodreads website (at www.goodreads.com/author/show/51503.Fredric_Brown):
"Fredric Brown was an American science fiction and mystery writer. He was one of the boldest early writers in genre fiction in his use of narrative experimentation. While never in the front rank of popularity in his lifetime, Brown has developed a considerable cult following in the almost half century since he last wrote. His works have been periodically reprinted and he has a worldwide fan base, most notably in the U.S. and Europe, and especially in France, where there have been several recent movie adaptations of his work. He also remains popular in Japan.
"Never financially secure, Brown - like many other pulp writers - often wrote at a furious pace in order to pay bills. This accounts, at least in part, for the uneven quality of his work. A newspaperman by profession, Brown was only able to devote 14 years of his life as a full-time fiction writer. Brown was also a heavy drinker, and this at times doubtless affected his productivity. A cultured man and omnivorous reader whose interests ranged far beyond those of most pulp writers, Brown had a lifelong interest in the flute, chess, poker, and the works of Lewis Carroll. Brown married twice and was the father of two sons."
Fiction Week! Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho If you like MPoC, you’re probably going to like this novel. I consider it to be the second-best book of 2015. Why is that? Well, this is what happens when you take characters who are relentlessly marginalized in Alternate History genre novels and make them the center of the story, the Hinges of History, the Fate of the Universe resting in their hands, and a partridge in a pear tree. It’s A M A Z I N G. This book could have gone off the rails very easily at a few important plot points. Instead, it steers itself back to where it needs to be by introducing several painfully uncomfortable emotional questions and faces necessary moral quandaries, as well as showing how there really isn’t a difference to speak of between the two. Zacharias Wythe is the titular Sorcerer Royal, new-minted head of the Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers, and inheritor of a very confounding problem. You see, there just isn’t as much magic around as there used to be, and it’s in the Society’s best interests if this problem is somehow fixed without anyone else ever finding out about it. Everyone around him is waiting for him to fail because he is Black and they are old, white racists with too much power. If he doesn’t ruin everything on his own, well, they’re ready, able and willing to ensure his failure by any means at their disposal. Zacharias is also in the very unfortunate position of having been named successor immediately after his benefactor/adopted “father”‘s death….death being not quite as final as most of us have been led to believe. Prunella Gentleman, meanwhile, is the mixed race and illegitimate daughter of a… well, a gentleman, and has grown up in a school of sorcery for women-in which the main objective is to make absolutely sure that none of the young ladies who graduate ever show the slightest hint of magical ability. Chafing under the restrictions she’s been living under and facing the reality of her own unprecedented magical abilities, she must uncover the secrets of her parentage and her inheritance before she can move forward to save her country, the world, and also fix racism and sexism while she’s at it. I’ve seen a lot of people comparing this book to Austen, Fforde, and Heyer because they’re fans of that type of work. I personally am not a fan of that type of work; I’m much more into Epic or Medieval Fantasy but let me tell you, I Loved. This. Story. If the whole Regency England Hoity Toity Drama of Manners thing puts you off, trust me, you still are going to want to read this. I don’t think it really comes off as that type of work at all, but I can still see how fans of that genre would find it very appealing. If you want that book that’s not too long or too short, not too wordy or too shallow, not overly ‘delightful’ and not too much of a downer; in short, if you want that novel that will be 100% just right, this is The One. Amazon | Goodreads | Barnes and Noble If you want to get into the content a little more, here are some other reviews: Magic, Murder, and Microaggressions in Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown by Alex Brown Sorcerer to the Crown Review at The Book Smugglers: thebooksmugglers.com/2015/09/book-review-sorcerer-to-the-...
Vicksburg, Mississippi est. 1825, pop. (2013) 23,542 • MS Delta
• site crowns the highest hill in Vicksburg • land donated by the family of the city's founder, Newitt Vick • built by the Weldon Brothers, immigrants from County Antrim, Ireland • Greek Revival design attributed to William Weldon in collaboration with slave John Jackson, a noted draftsman & artist who "drew the plans for many of the public buildings erected by [the Weldon's], including the courthouses still standing at Raymond and Vicksburg." —"The Emergence of the Cotton Kingdom in the Old Southwest: Mississippi, 1770--1860," John Hebron Moore, 1988
"The Weldon Brothers... Well known in Mississippi as large building and bridge contractors, owned and educated to mechanic pursuits, 100 slaves, many of whom are now residing in the river counties of the State, and most of them are well-to-do. Their draughtsman, John Jackson, a natural genius in that line, lives now at Port Gibson, the scene of much of the work of the Weldons. He painted the handsome drop curtain at Odd Fellow’s Hall, Port Gibson, and assisted in drawing the plans of the handsome Court house at Vicksburg, which the Weldons built in 1858.
"The writer had large dealings with these brothers in the days of their activity, and knows that while they were strict and exacting with their slaves, they were yet kind in their treatment; feeding and clothing them well; and they were not unmindful of their proper enjoyment; the suppers and music at their Christmas balls costing sometimes as much as $600. Tom Weldon was a very passionate man, as well as powerful and brave. Sometimes he would strike the negroes with his fist, and if they showed fight, it was his boast that he always gave them a white man’s chance, and fought fairly with them to the end. He had a fine mind, and but for his profanity was an eloquent talker.
"He equipped a company for the war at Natchez – the Weldon rebels [Co. L, 44th Mississippi Reg., C.S.A.] – but was employed, himself, chiefly in the secret service of the Confederate Government. George, the oldest of the three brothers, was very loquacious, and a great reader. William was a milder mannered man than the others, and very intelligent." —"Random Recollections of Early Days in Mississippi", Horace Smith Fulkerson, 1885
• Thomas Weldon (1816-1865) is said to have been instrumental in developing an electric spark underwater torpedo (naval mine) • on 12 Dec, 1862 it sank the USS Cairo, the first US warship ever destroyed by this type of weapon • "USS Cairo gunboat sunk by an IED" —Standing Well Back
• the Weldons utilized ~100 highly skilled slave artisans at the job site to burn brick & erect the $100K courthouse • the Ionic capitals were cast by Baker Iron Company, Cincinnati & transported to the site by river boat • stucco finish applied to exterior, 1907 • bldg. retains original iron doors & shutters
• Jefferson Davis (1808-1889), a local planter who became president of the Confederacy, launched his political career on these grounds • bldg. targeted by Union warships on Mississippi River during the American Civil War's 47-day Siege of Vicksburg • became the symbol of Confederate resistance • following the city's surrender, 4 July, 1863, Union soldiers under Maj. Gen. U. S. Grant replaced the Confederate flag with the Union flag on the Courthouse cupola [photo]
• U.S. Presidents Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, William McKinley & Theodore Roosevelt spoke here, as did woman's suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt & black American icon Booker T. Washington
• bldg. was neglected after the completion of the New Warren County Courthouse (1940) • damaged by the 1953 Vicksburg Tornado • demolition considered • aware of the building's historical significance, Eva ("Miss Eva") Whitaker Davis (1892-1974) established the Vicksburg & Warren County Historical Society in order to to preserve it • on 3 June, 1948, the courthouse reopened as the Old Courthouse Museum • exhibits reflect the heritage of the area from pre-historic Indians through the present day • has one of the largest Civil War collections in the U.S.A.
• named one of the 20 most outstanding courthouses in America by the American Institute of Architects • Old Courthouse History • Court House Lagniappe Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
• Historic Vicksburg District • HABS MS-119 • designated Mississippi Landmark, 1986 • National Register 68000029, 1968 • designated National Landmark, 1968
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Goodreads Book Giveaway
by Bob Bruhin
Giveaway ends June 04, 2021.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
Via: Book Giveaway For Walking the Eraserhood
bob-bruhin.com/2021/05/20/book-giveaway-for-walking-the-e...
M. Wylie Blanchet wrote the extraordinary book "The Curve of Time", which was published in 1961, about her family's travels in CAPRICE.
This is a photograph of one of the pictures which accompanied the article in Rudder magazine. CAPRICE was 25 feet long, 6 feet 6 inches wide, with a 40 inch draft, and powered by a 20hp gas engine. She was so lightly built that her 1/2-inch deck planking flexed under the canvas in any kind of a seaway.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Wylie_Blanchet
www.canadiancontent.ca/issues/0999curvetime.html
www.goodreads.com/book/show/4156867-following-the-curve-o...
“42% of women voted for [the ugly apricot]. I just can’t comprehend the 42% of women thing. I still can’t really comprehend any of it. This is going to be one of those things I just have to be ok with not understanding.” ―Anonymous
www.goodreads.com/book/show/2418776.Look_Back_With_Love
DONALD TRUMP’S FIRING OF JAMES COMEY IS AN ATTACK ON AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/donald-trump-has-atta...
Created for Marcus Ranum Challenge #127
Model with thanks to Marcus Ranum
I've been working my way through Philippa Gregory's Cousin's War
www.goodreads.com/series/55424-the-cousins-war
series after watching 'The White Queen'
Joan of Arc figures highly in the first two books of the series so I had her story rolling around in my subconscious while was making this
© Miguel Ángel Vilela (miguev.net)
_____________________________________________________________________________
about a dozen books, some in a hurry, others taking it so easy it's been already years, but I hadn't been so comfortable with reading several books at the same time.
Not that having a baby gives you time to read... it makes you wish you had four (or more) prehensile hands, or developed extra pairs of arms. I set up for this shot in a couple of minutes, when Emma seemed to be sleeping, but after a handful shots there was a knock on the door, I knew the shoot was over...
So, how comes? Goodreads — best social network ever ;)
Precisely because my time to read has dropped significantly, I find it more efficient to read each time a bit of whichever book I feel like. Different mood, different book. Page by page, slowly but comfortably, I've gotten around to read 3 books in a month —January. I had never done that before!
If you enjoy reading books, even if you're not currently reading any, have a look at Goodreads and give it a go ;)
_____________________________________________________________________________
unos doce libros, algunos con prisas, otros con tanta calma que llevan años ahí, but nunca me había sentido tan cómodo leyendo varios libros al mismo tiempo.
No es que tener un bebé te dé tiempo para leer... te hace desear que tuvieras cuatro (o más) manos prensiles, o que te salieran más pares de brazos. Preparé este montaje en un par de minutos, cuando parecía que Emma dormía, pero tras un puñado de tomas tocaban a la puerta, supe que se había terminado...
Entonces, ¿a qué viene esto? Goodreads — la mejor red social ;)
Precisamente porque mi tiempo para leer se ha reducido drásticamente, me resulta más eficiente leer en cada momento un trozo del libro que me me apetezca en ese momento. Distinto ánimo, distindo libro. Página a página, despacito pero cómodamente, me acabé leyendo 3 libros en un mes —enero. ¡No lo había conseguido nunca!
Si te gusta leer libros, aunque ahora mismo no estés leyendo ninguno, échale un vistazo a Goodreads y pruébalo ;)
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Camera Info: Nikon D700 | 85mm(ƒ/1.8) | ƒ/1.8 | 1/200s — Tripoded and tethered
Strobist info: SB-600 1/8 @14mm into white shoot-through 45" umbrella, 5' left and up from books, triggered with pop-up flash as commander.
Processed with Raw Therapee for slight crop, exposure and color temperature tweaks.
No GIMP to fake black background this time — it's a real black background, at last :)
السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته،
أحباب الفلكر، كنت ولا زلت الصديق لكم، ولا زال هذا الموقع الأول بالنسبة لي في مجال التصوير الضوئي لأن فيه يجتمع الأجاويد من محترفين وهواة.
واسمحوا بتقديم إصداري الأول بعنوان: يوسف عليه السلام القصة الكاملة.
تفاصيل الكتاب وآراء القراء هذا على هذا الرابط
Salam Dear Flickrs
I miss you !
I'm working now on a new Arabic series books about the prophets.
The first book is about prophet Joseph and it contains articles about prophets' history and egyptology. Later, there will be another editions in English and other languages.
=-)
WATCH ONLINE >> Nightmare Alley [1947]
www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F9A4C226B31C2373
****
Nightmare Alley [1947] @ American Film Institute
Production Date: 19 May--late Jul 1947; addl scenes early Oct 1947
Premiere Information: New York opening: 9 Oct 1947
>> DETAILED NOTES SECTION
>> EXTENSIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY
www.afi.com/members/catalog/DetailView.aspx?s=&Movie=...
*************************************************************************************
NIGHTMARE ALLEY By WILLIAM LINDSAY GRESHAM
New York: Rinehart, 1946
MOVIE Tie-In Edition: Triangle Books, 1947
N.Y.: Signet Books, 1949 #738 - Cover By James Avati
N.Y.R.B.: 2110
*ALL* Editions - Including KINDLE
www.amazon.com/Nightmare-Alley-William-Lindsay-Gresham/dp...
AND
www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=Gresham&tn=...
AND
www.goodreads.com/book/show/548019.Nightmare_Alley
*************
MOVIE Tie-In Edition: Triangle Books, 1947
www.amazon.com/Nightmare-alley-William-Lindsay-Gresham/dp...
****
NEW Edition (New York Review Books, 2110): Nightmare Alley By William Lindsay Gresham,
introduction by Nick Tosches - *Links* to buy
www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/nightmare-alley/
AND
www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781590173480
****
Cult classic 'Nightmare Alley' resurfaces more macabre than ever
Baltimore-born writer William Lindsay Gresham could be seen as an heir to Edgar Allan Poe
By Michael Sragow, The Baltimore Sun - michael.sragow@baltsun.com
articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-04-16/services/bs-ae-night...
" It's time for Baltimore to claim William Lindsay Gresham as one of the city's literary native sons and a proper heir to Edgar Allan Poe — and not just because he was born here in 1909. He fits the funk-art aspect of this town as well as James M. Cain or John Waters...
..."Nightmare Alley" is about a geek — but the word means something vastly different in the carnival of this novel than it does in teen comedies, where it serves as a synonym for "nerd. " For the denizens of Gresham's not-so-greatest show on earth, the geek is, in Tosches' words, "a drunkard driven so low that he would bite the heads off chickens and snakes just to get the booze he needed."
Gresham first heard about this kind of geek when he was 29 years old, waiting to return to the U.S. after defending the Republic in the Spanish civil war. The story connected so deeply with Gresham's internal agony that he said, "to get rid of it, I had to write it out."...
He later described the novel's gestation as "years of analysis, editorial work, and the strain of children in small rooms." He alleviated anxieties with liquor — and became an alcoholic. In the middle of this chaos, he wrote a fictional chart of the lowest depths of drunkenness that also included, in Tosches' estimation, "the most viciously evil psychologist in the history of literature." Along the way, Gresham managed to debunk feel-good spiritualism and pseudo-paranormal trickery. But the book isn't an Upton Sinclair-like expose. It's a lowdown American tragedy...
Tosches, who has been researching Gresham's life on and off for ten years, says over the phone from New York that he's clearer on the novel's roots than he is on Gresham's. He hasn't located a marriage certificate for Gresham's mother and father, "and the Maryland State Archives has stated categorically there isn't one for them." He knows Gresham was born on McCulloh Street and that his family moved to Fall River, Mass., when he was 7, and then to New York City. "But even though he left Baltimore at an early age, he claimed that the strongest influence on his life was his mother's mother, Amanda, whose family, the Lindsays, came from Snow Hill, and who embodied, at least to him, the spirit of the antebellum South," says Tosches. (The Greshams came from the Piney Neck area of Kent County.)..
Everything in the book emerges from observation and authentic obsession. "He had a wonderfully perverse mind," recalls his last agent, the legendary Carl Brandt. "I remember with great fondness and amusement that he took me out to lunch once with the Witch Doctor's Club, a group of magicians who would meet, as I remember, monthly, in a hardly glamorous restaurant." Brandt's father had been Gresham's magazine agent, and Brandt thinks the drying-up of the once-lucrative magazine-fiction market partly contributed to Gresham's growing despair.
In the end, Gresham shared Stan Carlisle's nightmare vision of life as a dark alley, "the buildings vacant and menacing on either side," and a light he couldn't reach at the end of it, with "something behind him, close behind him, getting closer until he woke up trembling." Tosches found "a bizarre letter" Gresham wrote a few years before his suicide. "In it he wrote: ‘Stan is the author.' "...
articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-04-16/services/bs-ae-night...
****
REVIEW
By Michael Dirda @ washingtonpost.com
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/12/...
" While I've known for a long time that William Lindsay Gresham's "Nightmare Alley" (1946) was
an established classic of noir fiction, I was utterly unprepared for its raw, Dostoevskian power.
Why isn't this book on reading lists with Nathanael West's "Miss Lonelyhearts" and
Albert Camus' "The Stranger"?
It's not often that a novel leaves a weathered and jaded reviewer like myself utterly flattened,
but this one did...
In the opening pages, set in the dilapidated Ten-in-One "carny," handsome blond Stan Carlisle stares at a geek, a supposed wild man who bites the heads off live chickens and drinks their blood. Stan, we soon learn, has been working as a magician and sleight-of-hand artist, but he's got dreams about the big time...
Throughout these early pages, the carny atmosphere is redolent of sweat, dust, alcohol and pent-up desire. While sex in "Nightmare Alley" is never graphically described, it is always strikingly perverse or distinctly sadomasochistic...
Like many good artists (and con artists), Gresham isn't locked into a single style: He can swiftly modulate from the colorfully vulgar conversation of the carnies to their smooth, stage-show patter, from the professional lingo of sheriffs, psychologists and wealthy businessmen to a drunk's hallucinatory stream of consciousness...
Gresham lived a colorful if troubled life. According to the biographical note to this edition, he "lost himself in a maze of what proved to be dead-ends for him, from Marxism to psychoanalysis to Christianity to Alcoholics Anonymous to Rinzai Zen Buddhism." All these contribute to the earthy richness of "Nightmare Alley." ..
Certainly, Gresham's book chronicles a truly horrific descent into the abyss. Yet it's more than just a steamy noir classic. As a portrait of the human condition, "Nightmare Alley" is a creepy, all-too-harrowing masterpiece..."
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/12/...
******************************************************
The Book You Have to Read:
“Nightmare Alley,” by William Lindsay Gresham
The Rap Sheet
" If noir is the stuff of nightmares--you know what I mean, the kind in which (according to the popular conference definition of the genre) you’re fucked from page one--then a one-off, nearly forgotten classic called Nightmare Alley is surely the biggest freak show of them all...
...Gresham’s book is sumptuous, rich, redolent, and literary. Fused with a classically tragic structure, the plot and characters roil and roll in your head, guests who will never leave. In some ways, it’s a bitter, cynical take on the Horatio Alger myth, a commentary on the Americans America left behind...
...In 1947, Nightmare Alley was fortunate enough to be made into one of the greatest of all film noirs.
Starring a terrific Tyrone Power (if you don’t think he could act, you’re in for a surprise) and a strong supporting cast which included the lovely ingénue Colleen Gray, Joan Blondell, and noir stalwarts Mike Mazurki and Helen Walker, the movie is available on DVD. Rent it soon and often, or better yet buy a copy.
With a crackling good script by Jules Furthman (The Shanghai Gesture, The Big Sleep), and atmospherically directed by Edmund Goulding (Grand Hotel, The Old Maid--we can only wish he’d been given more crime films), Nightmare Alley is a rare example of a movie almost as good as its source material..."
therapsheet.blogspot.com/2009/11/book-you-have-to-read-ni...
*************************************************
Carnival of lost souls: Nightmare Alley
REVIEW By JB @ thephantomcountry
Nightmare Alley covers a lot of territory, both psychologically and geographically, crossing the US by truck, train, car, and on foot until Stan’s world seems not larger but smaller, shrinking to a blackened point. His carnival experience comes full circle, like the embrace of a family whose door always remains forbiddingly open, and some of Gresham’s finest passages evoke for us this family on the move, seductive and grotesque and leaving only cavities in its wake: “It came like a pillar of fire by night, bringing excitement and new things into the drowsy towns—lights and noise and a chance to win an Indian blanket, to ride on the ferris wheel, to see the wild-man who fondles those rep-tiles as a mother would fondle her babes. Then it vanished in the night, leaving the trodden grass of the field and the debris of popcorn boxes and rusting tin ice-cream spoons to show where it had been.”
thephantomcountry.blogspot.com/2010_05_01_archive.html
William Lindsay Gresham (August 20, 1909–September 14, 1962) @ Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lindsay_Gresham
AND
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmare_Alley
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Fox Studio Classics – Film Noir – Nightmare Alley – Point Of View
The film Nightmare Alley laid in copyright limbo for over fifty years, a struggle between the estates of producer George Jessel, author W.L. Gresham and the 20th Century Fox Film Corporation. In that time, its cult status continued to grow. Not just from the rarity of its screenings on television and at film festivals, but from the later suicides of the book’s author and the movie’s director, and its remarkably grim, bold, and disturbing look at hucksterism and its milieu.
It was 1946 and Tyrone Power, Fox’s leading male star, had returned from service in World War II. From an acting family and a stage background, he had grown tired of the empty “pretty boy” image that had made him a matinee idol. He wanted a different role. One that would showcase his range and depth and change the public’s (and industry’s) perception of him from a toothpaste ad to a serious actor. He had leaned toward that end with his first post-war duty role by playing Larry Darrell in Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge.
Power leveraged his past success (and the considerable money he made for the studio) to make Nightmare Alley his prestige project. Studio Head Daryl F. Zanuck was against it from the start but he owed Power gratitude and a bit of artistic license so he green-lighted the film. Ultimately, Zanuck’s instincts would prove correct (as they so often did). The film failed miserably at the box office and Power ended up returning to the adventurous, swashbuckling roles that had made him famous. Interestingly, many of 20th Century Fox’s most unique and enduring pictures were made in this vein, by a proven film artist’s passionate plea and Zanuck’s begrudging nod.
War weary audiences of the late ’40s were not ready for it. Although film noir was seeping into the mainstream, an “A” picture starring the dashing and overwhelmingly handsome Tyrone Power as a greedy, manipulative charlatan was too much for them. Adding to this shock was the story, adapted from a novel immersed in the sleazy world of carny, portraying the darker realities of alcoholism, marital infidelity, religion, spiritualism and ambition by an author who was a known communist, drunkard and wife beater.
******************************
BOOKS INTO FILM: Nightmare Alley
by William Lindsay Gresham
reviewed by Jim Hitt
www.booksintofilms.straitjacketsmagazine.com/support-file...
" In the world of noir novels, Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham stands apart as a totally originally and innovative piece of literature.
As in most noir works, the protagonist Stan Carlisle is a flawed individual, and the world in which he lives is a dark world where predator and prey become one.
But Gresham's world is not the world of Cornell Woolrich where the events rush relentlessly toward the climax. On the contrary, the events in Nightmare Alley unfold in at a slower, more deliberate pace, and the construction of the novel is closer to William Faulkner than Cornell Woolrich...
...William Lindsay Gresham wrote only one more novel, the equally bleak Limbo Tower (1949) about Asa Kimball and other men slowly dying of fear, depression, and tuberculosis in hospital.
He then fought his own battles against alcohol.
His second wife Joy divorced him and taking their two sons, moved to England where she later married C. S. Lewis. Their relationship became the basis for the stage play and film Shadowlands .
When in 1962 Gresham discovered he had cancer, he checked into the run-down Dixie Hotel, registering as 'Asa Kimball,' and took his own life...
...Just before he died, Gresham, reflecting on his life, told a fellow veteran from Spain, "I sometimes think that if I have any real talent it is not literary but is a sheer talent for survival. I have survived three busted marriages, losing my boys, war, tuberculosis, Marxism, alcoholism, neurosis and years of freelance writing. Just too mean and ornery to kill, I guess."...
...Print quality : An absolutely gorgeous print. I doubt it looked this good in the theaters when it was first released.
Sound : Sharp and clear.
Extras : A theatrical trailer that appears spliced together from various scenes rather than a true trailer. Also a commentary by film historians James Ursini and Alain Silver. The commentary sounds more like a conversation between two knowledgeable experts rather than a straight commentary, and this casual approach works very well. Their comments are insightful if not exactly spirited...
Summary : A terrific film noir, one of the best. Off beat in the sense that it foregoes crimes and violence, which is at the center of most noir films. The characters are full of life and always interesting. Only the part of Molly rings a bit false, especially considering the ill-advised end, which does little to affect the gritty and honest movie. Time has vindicated Tyrone Power's faith in this material.
Grade: A-
www.booksintofilms.straitjacketsmagazine.com/support-file...
*********************************************************************
Nightmare Alley: Faustian Carnival Noir: The rise and fall: From Divinity to Geek
REVIEW By monstergirl @ The Last Drive In
MANY Dozens of Screencaps
monstergirl.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/nightmare-alleyfaust...
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Nightmare Alley (film and stage musical)
Understanding Screenwriting #46
BY TOM STEMPEL @ slantmagazine.com
The best article on Nightmare Alley is by Clive T. Miller and appears in the 1975 book
"Kings of the Bs: Working Within the Hollywood System"...
www.slantmagazine.com/house/2010/05/understanding-screenw...
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Mister, I was made for it
A region 2 DVD review of NIGHTMARE ALLEY by Slarek
www.dvdoutsider.co.uk/dvd/reviews/n/nightmare_alley.html
SUMMARY
Let's not sod about, Nightmare Alley is a terrific film noir, a joyously dark story of a destructive and ultimately self-destructive ambition in which just about everyone is attempting to manipulate others for their own ends. It's cult status was built in part on its long term unavailability, but can now continue on the back of the film's cinematic strengths, which are considerable.
Eureka's Masters of Cinema label does the film proud, with a superb transfer and some very worthwhile extras. Noir fans should run to get their hands on it. "
www.dvdoutsider.co.uk/dvd/reviews/n/nightmare_alley.html
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William Lindsay Gresham's Nightmare Alley Tarot: Carnival Trumps
Tarot Hermeneutics: Exploring How We Create Meaning with Tarot
William Lindsay Gresham, Joy Davidman Gresham (poetry pseudonym: "Joy Brown"), and C.S. Lewis
***UNUSUAL***, Detailed, Worthwhile
tarothermeneutics.com/tarotliterature/nightmarealley.html
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LISTEN >>
Naxos Audiobooks "Nightmare Alley"
Read by : Adam Sims
ISBN: 1843794829
ISBN-13: 9781843794820
Format: CD - Search for other formats
www.audiobooksdirect.com.au/William-Lindsay-Gresham/Night...
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GRAPHIC NOVEL [= Comic Books for Literary types]
Nightmare Alley: Spain Hernandez’s graphic adaptation of the William Lindsay Gresham novel
*Links* to Buy >>
www.indiebound.org/book/9781560975113?aff=sfnybal
"...Spain Hernandez’s graphic adaptation of Nightmare Alley is at least as successful as its predecessor versions. The artwork is black and white; sometimes cartoony, sometimes realistic. Close-up character studies alternate with splash pages and occasional landscape shots so well done that they resemble woodcuts. Hernandez’s story-line follows Gresham’s novel closely; I don’t recall any major scenes or sequences being left out. He does not stint on quoting Gresham’s dialogue; his word balloons are as packed as any I have ever seen. The story of Stan Carlyle’s rise and fall is as compelling in graphic novel form as it was in earlier versions.
Nightmare Alley is an important work of American crime fiction; it is perhaps unique in that memorable versions of the story are now available in three different media."
www.crimeculture.com/21stC/fried.html
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Gresham, William Lindsay (1909-1962) | Wheaton College Archives & Special Collections
archon.wheaton.edu/index.php?p=creators/creator&id=77
Location: Archon
Send Email | Wheaton College Archives & Special Collections
archon.wheaton.edu/index.php?p=core/contact&f=email&a...
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"Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind."
— James Russell Lowell
just finished re-reading Queen City Jazz by Kathleen Ann Goonan... great book, great series!
You can find me here on GoodReads
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Summer Abstractions Series #2
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* Pentax K20D + Samsung 50-200mm Lens - Single Shot
"All women are bitches," I said. She smiled at me. Her eyes were deep and black. "All women are cheats and liars and bitches," I told her.
"I'm not," she said. "I'm a whore."
"You're different," I said. "I mean real women."
" CRISS-CROSS " By DON TRACY
N.Y.: Vanguard Press, 1934
London: Constable, 1935
N.Y.: Triangle Books 1948
Toronto: Harlequin Books #67, August 1950
N.Y.: Lion Books, 1951 & 1956 as "The Cheat'
" He'd been smarter than me.
All along I'd thought he was dumb and that I was giving him the big cross and now I was finding out that he knew all along and was just waiting to throw it into me.
I was the dumb one.
And I was paying for being dumb. "
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" CRISS-CROSS " By DON TRACY
*ALL* Editions
www.abebooks.co.uk/search/sortby/3/an/Don+Tracy+/tn/+Cris...
AND
www.biblio.com/books/95613936.html
FIRST EDITION (1934)
www.saratogabooks.com/shop/saratoga/014832.html
www.goodreads.com/book/show/6192947-criss-cross
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Don Tracy (20 August 1905 - 1976) @ openlibrary.org
>>ALL Book titles *Hyperlinked*
"...Don Tracy, was born in New Britain, Connecticut. He worked as a reporter for local newspapers in New Brittain from 1926-1928, then as editor of Radio News in New York from 1928-1934. In 1934, his first novel, All Sold!, and his second novel, Flash, were published. After World War II, he also taught summer courses at Syracuse University from 1955-1960, and become fairly well known for his historical novels, without abandoning the crime novel. Toward the end of his life, he met the president of the New Life Foundation, an anti-alcohol league. Under the pseudonym "Roger Fuller", he wrote novelizations of the films The Sign Of The Pagan (1954) and the television series The Defenders (1964, 1965), The Fugitive and Peyton Place. He died in Florida after a battle with cancer in 1976..."
openlibrary.org/authors/OL1768610A/Don_Tracy
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REVIEW: Criss-Cross -- Don Tracy
By Bill Crider
billcrider.blogspot.com/2007/12/criss-cross-don-tracy.html
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REVIEW: Criss-Cross -- Don Tracy
BY AUGUST WEST @ Vintage Hardboiled Reads
Well written and sharp. I really enjoyed the novel and it's atmosphere of the struggling times of 1930s Baltimore. If you read it, you'll enjoy the numerous boxing references in the story-the author uses them to help define the character of Johnny Thompson. And the novel contains one of the great lines that I read recently:
A big girl in a white evening dress came out and sang "For All We Know" in a voice like a dentist's drill.
vinpulp.blogspot.com/2008/08/criss-cross-by-don-tracy.html
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Friday's Forgotten Book: Don Tracy's Criss-Cross
pulpetti.blogspot.com/2010/01/fridays-forgotten-book-don-...
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Tracy, Don (pulp fiction writer)
(1905-1976)
Also wrote as: Roger Fuller, Barnaby Ross
" A neglected figure (at least in his own country; his crime fiction has a cult following in France), Tracy was an amazingly fertile talent whose broad interests and experiences animated both hack assignments and more personal works through nearly 50 years of professional writing. Born in New Britain, Connecticut, he worked as a journalist as a young man, first at the New Britain Herald, then at the Baltimore Post in Maryland. The move south would prove significant, as much of Tracy's subsequent creative output would find inspiration in the people and places, the history, and current social mores of the South's eastern shore, from Maryland to Florida..."
www.the-crankshaft.info/2010/10/tracy-don-pulp-fiction-wr...
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BOOKS by DON TRACY
www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&...
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FILM NOIR
' Criss Cross " (1949) directed by Robert Siodmak from a novel by Don Tracy.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criss_Cross_(film)
***
IMDb
www.imdb.com/title/tt0041268/combined
***
PHOTO GALLERY - Trailer;
www.ciakhollywood.com/hp/doppiogioco/
***
OVERVIEW >> Turner Classic Movies
www.tcm.com/thismonth/article.jsp?cid=24088&mainArtic...
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DVD Review
Gary George @ Film Noir of the Week
www.noiroftheweek.com/2006/05/criss-cross-1949.html
AND
www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2010/06/criss-cross...
AND
filmjournal.net/clydefro/2007/04/17/criss-cross/
AND
filmsnoir.net/film_noir/criss-cross-1949.html
AND
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DVD Review @ dvdbeaver.com
DETAILED -- COMPREHENSIVE: ALL REGIONS & EDITIONS
www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReview3/crisscross.htm
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Criss Cross (1949) - Film Locations
ROBBY CRESS@ Dear Old Hollywood
EXCELLENT Resource: Many Past/Present photos
"...There are some great Los Angeles locations used in the film.
Most notable are locations in what used to be the Bunker Hill neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles and Union Station. Here are a few of those locations:..."
dearoldhollywood.blogspot.com/2010/10/criss-cross-1949-fi...
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Burt Lancaster: The Brute Artisan
TRIBUTE >> GOOD ONE: Pics, clips, links
www.vintageculture.net/burt-lancaster/
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DOWNLOAD >>
"CRISS-CROSS"
www.moviedir.com/download/criss-cross-movie-11057.html
AND
www.findhotfile.com/showthread.php?1781-Criss-Cross-(1949...
AND
www.freshwap.net/forums/movies/1011621-criss-cross-1949-b...
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BUY >> " Criss Cross " DVD
www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=6739624
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What is 'Noir'?
Excerpt from the book 'Film Noir' by Alain Silver and James Ursini
How did a cycle of the American cinema become one of the most influential movements in film history? During its classic period, which lasted from 1941 to 1958, noir films were derided by critics of the time...
...The publication of several essays in English on noir, most importantly Raymond Durgnat`s ‘Paint It Black: The Family Tree of Film Noir` (Cinema 6/7, August 1970) and Paul Schrader`s ‘Notes on Film Noir` (Film Comment 8, Spring 1972), followed in the early 1970s. Still, when the first comprehensive survey of film noir in English, Film Noir, An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style, first appeared in 1979, the term ‘film noir` was still mostly unknown outside of film school circles. Finally, with the added impact of a burgeoning neo-noir movement in the 1980s, the mainstream press took up the term. By the time the Terminator blasted through a nightclub called Tech Noir in 1984, the debate over what constitutes film noir was in full swing.
Cont...On Film Noir...Page Three
The Film Noir Directory...
www.lefilmsdarkdelivresetdemusique.net/apps/blog/show/178...
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" CRISS-CROSS " (1948) on FACEBOOK
Jackson, MS (est. 1821, pop. 165,000)
• Home Dining Room, owned by Mrs. Robinson • relocated here from across the street post-1954 • catered to churchgoing people & gospel quartets — Church Street: The Sugar Hill of Jackson, Mississippi
The Farish Street Historic District
“but out of the bitterness we wrought an ancient past here in this separate place and made our village here.” —African Village by Margaret Walker (1915-1998)
• during the Reconstruction era that followed the American Civil War, white Southerners struggled to reclaim their lives as millions of black Southerners sought new ones • with the stroke of a pen, the Emancipation Proclamation had transformed African slaves into African Americans & released them into a hostile, vengeful & well-armed white community amid the ruins of a once flourishing society
• the antebellum South had been home to over 262,000 rights-restricted "free blacks" • post-emancipation, its free black population soared to 4.1 million • given that the South had sacrificed 20% of it's white males to the war, blacks now comprised well over half the total population of many southern states • uneducated & penniless, most of the new black Americans depended on the Freedman's Bureau for food & clothing
• the social & political implications of the sudden shift in demographics fueled a violence-laced strain of conventional American racism • in this toxic environment, de facto racial segregation was a given, ordained as Mississippi law in 1890 • with Yankees (the U.S. Army) patrolling the city & Maine-born Republican Adelbert Ames installed in the Governor's Mansion, the Farish Street neighborhood was safe haven for freedmen
• as homeless African American refugees poured into Jackson from all reaches of the devastated state, a black economy flickered to life in the form of a few Farish Street mom-and-pops • unwelcome at white churches, the former slaves built their own, together with an entire neighborhood's worth of buildings, most erected between 1890 & 1930
• by 1908 1/3 of the district was black-owned, & half of the black families were homeowners • the 1913-1914 business directory listed 11 African American attorneys, 4 doctors, 3 dentists, 2 jewelers, 2 loan companies & a bank, all in the Farish St. neighborhood • the community also had 2 hospitals & numerous retail & service stores —City Data
• by mid-20th c. Farish Street, the state's largest economically independent African American community, had become the cultural, political & business hub for central Mississippi's black citizens [photos] • on Saturdays, countryfolk would come to town on special busses to sell produce & enjoy BBQ while they listened to live street music • vendors sold catfish fried in large black kettles over open fires • hot tamales, a Mississippi staple, were also a popular street food —The Farish District, Its Architecture and Cultural Heritage
“I’ve seen pictures. You couldn’t even get up the street. It was a two-way street back then, and it was wall-to-wall folks. It was just jam-packed: people shopping, people going to clubs, people eating, people dancing.” — Geno Lee, owner of the Big Apple Inn
• as Jackson's black economy grew, Farish Street entertainment venues prospered, drawing crowds with live & juke blues music • the musicians found or first recorded in the Neighborhood include Robert Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson II & Elmore James
• Farish Street was also home to talent scouts & record labels like H.C. Speir, & Trumpet Records, Ace Records • both Speir & Trumpet founder Lillian McMurry were white Farish St. business owners whose furniture stores also housed recording studios • both discovered & promoted local Blues musicians —The Mississippi Encyclopedia
• Richard Henry Beadle (1884-1971), a prominent Jackson photographer, had a studio at 199-1/2 N. Farish • he was the son of Samuel Alfred Beadle (1857-1932), African-American poet & attorney • born the son of a slave, he was the author of 3 published books of poetry & stories
• The Alamo Theatre was mainly a movie theater but periodically presented musical acts such as Nat King Cole, Elmore James & Otis Spann • Wednesday was talent show night • 12 year old Jackson native Dorothy Moore entered the contest, won & went on to a successful recording career, highlighted by her 1976 no. 1 R&B hit, "Misty Blue" [listen] (3:34)
• in their heyday, Farish Street venues featured African American star performers such as Bessie Smith & the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington & Dinah Washington played Farish Street venues —Farish Street Records
• on 28 May, 1963, John Salter, a mixed race (white/Am. Indian) professor at historically black Tougaloo College, staged a sit-in with 3 African American students at the "Whites Only" Woolworth's lunch counter in downtown Jackson • they were refused service • an estimated 300 white onlookers & reporters filled the store
• police officers arrived but did not intercede as, in the words of student Anne Moody, "all hell broke loose" while she and the other black students at the counter prayed • "A man rushed forward, threw [student] Memphis from his seat and slapped my face. Then another man who worked in the store threw me against an adjoining counter." • this act of civil disobedience is remembered as the the signature event of Jackson's protest movement —L.A. Times
"This was the most violently attacked sit-in during the 1960s and is the most publicized. A huge mob gathered, with open police support while the three of us sat there for three hours. I was attacked with fists, brass knuckles and the broken portions of glass sugar containers, and was burned with cigarettes. I'm covered with blood and we were all covered by salt, sugar, mustard, and various other things." —John Salter
• the Woolworth Sit-in was one of many non-violent protests by blacks against racial segregation in the South • in 1969 integration of Jackson's public schools began • this new era in Jackson history also marked the beginning of Farish Street's decline —The Farish Street Project
"Integration was a great thing for black people, but it was not a great thing for black business... Before integration, Farish Street was the black mecca of Mississippi.” — Geno Lee, Big Apple Inn
• for African Americans, integration offered the possibility to shop outside of the neighborhood at white owned stores • as increasing numbers of black shoppers did so, Farish Street traffic declined, businesses closed & the vacated buildings fell into disrepair
• in 1983, a Farish St. redevelopment plan was presented
• in 1995 the street was designated an endangered historic place by the National Trust for Historic Preservation
• in the 1990s, having redeveloped Memphis' Beale Street, Performa Entertainment Real Estate, was selected to redevelop Farish St
• in 2008, The Farish Street Group took over the project with plans for a B.B. King's Blues Club to anchor the entertainment district
• in 2012, having spent $21 million, the redevelopment — limited to repaving of the street, stabilizating some abandoned buildings & demolishing many of the rest — was stuck in limbo —Michael Minn
• 2017 update:
"Six mayors and 20 years after the City of Jackson became involved in efforts to develop the Farish Street Historic District, in hopes of bringing it back to the bustling state of its heyday, the project sits at a standstill. Recent Mayor Tony Yarber has referred to the district as “an albatross.” In September of 2014, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development sanctioned the City of Jackson, the Jackson Redevelopment Authority, and developers for misspending federal funds directed toward the development of the Farish Street Historic District. Work is at a halt and "not scheduled to resume until December 2018, when the City of Jackson repays HUD $1.5 million." —Mississippi Dept. of Archives & History
• Farish Street Neighborhood Historic District, National Register # 80002245, 1980
Kachinas are spirit beings in western Pueblo religious beliefs, often represented through masks and dolls, as shown here. This snapshot is from a wonderful book by Barton Wright entitled ‘Kachinas: A Hopi Artist's Documentary’, which Adam got for me in a recent trip to New Mexico. I devoured it from cover to cover — and it’s given me a vision for my next art project: an interactive Kachina World with animatronics dolls. Each of the kachinas depicted in these pictures could be characters in that interactive play, dancing to the music and giving you inspiration about the spirits they represent. It was so nice of Adam to give me this marvelous book — he immediately thought of me and thought I should have it. :)
Learn more about Kachinas:
Learn more about the Kachinas book:
www.goodreads.com/book/show/1966616.Kachinas
View photos of our related Wonderbots experiment:
Kachinas are spirit beings in western Pueblo religious beliefs, often represented through masks and dolls, as shown here. This snapshot is from a wonderful book by Barton Wright entitled ‘Kachinas: A Hopi Artist's Documentary’, which Adam got for me in a recent trip to New Mexico. I devoured it from cover to cover — and it’s given me a vision for my next art project: an interactive Kachina World with animatronics dolls. Each of the kachinas depicted in these pictures could be characters in that interactive play, dancing to the music and giving you inspiration about the spirits they represent. It was so nice of Adam to give me this marvelous book — he immediately thought of me and thought I should have it. :)
Learn more about Kachinas:
Learn more about the Kachinas book:
www.goodreads.com/book/show/1966616.Kachinas
View photos of our related Wonderbots experiment:
Daughters of a Nation: A Black Suffragette Historical Romance Anthology *ahem* Amazon GoodReads SmartBitchesTrashyBooks Washington Post Pick of the Month
Happy Sliders Sunday!
I've been listening to Ken Burns' documentary Jazz and revisiting Pandora Internet Radio, listening to the Coleman Hawkins station. Life is good!
S Jersey Grrl WordPress
Uncovering Ancient Australia by Billy Griffiths.
See an excellent TED Talk here on Deep Listening..
See Goodreads and buy it!
www.goodreads.com/book/show/36986450
Remember your dreams Blog..
planetbotch.blogspot.com/2014/06/how-long-do-you-remember...
Text: I want to tell a story about an invisible elephant.
Once upon a time, when I was in graduate school at UCSB, the department of religious studies held a symposium on diasporic religious communities in the United States. Our working definition for the religious diaspora that day was, “religious groups from elsewhere now residing as large, cohesive communities in the US.” It was a round table symposium, so any current scholar at the UC who wanted to speak could have a seat at the table. A hunch based on hundreds of years of solid evidence compelled me to show up, in my Badass Academic Indigenous Warrior Auntie finery.
There were around 15-20 scholars at the table, and the audience was maybe fifty people. There was one Black scholar at the table, and two Latinx scholars, one of whom was one of my dissertation advisors. The other was a visiting scholar from Florida, who spoke about the diasporic Santería community in Miami. But everyone else at the table were white scholars, all progressively liberal in their politics, many of whom were my friends. Since there was no pre-written agenda, I listened until everyone else had presented. I learned a tremendous amount about the Jewish diaspora in the US, and about the Yoruba/Orisha/Voudou, Tibetan Buddhist, Muslim, and Hindu communities, and even about a small enclave of Zoroastrians.
As they went on, I realized my hunch had been correct, and I listened to them ignore the elephant, invisible and silent, at that table.
So I decided to help her speak the hell up. “Hello, my name is Julie Cordero. I’m working on my PhD in Ethnobotany, Native American Religious Traditions, and the history of global medical traditions. I’d like to talk about the European Catholic and Protestant Christian religious diaspora in the United States, as these are the traditions that have had by far the greatest impact on both the converted and non-converted indigenous inhabitants of this land.”
Total silence. And then several “hot damns” from students and colleagues in the audience. I looked around the table at all the confused white faces. My Latinx advisor slapped his hand on the table and said, “Right!!?? Let’s talk about that, colleagues.”
The Black scholar, who was sitting next to me, started softly laughing. As I went on, detailing the myriad denominations of this European Christian Diaspora, including the Catholic diocese in which I’d been raised and educated, and the brutal and genocidal Catholic and Protestant boarding schools that had horribly traumatized generations of First Nations children, and especially as I touched on how Christians had twisted the message of Christ to try and force people stolen from Africa to accept that their biblically-ordained role was to serve the White Race, her laughs grew more and more bitter.
The Religious Studies department chair, who’d given a brilliant talk on the interplay between Jewish and Muslim communities in Michigan, stopped me at one point, and said, “Julie, I see the point you are so eloquently making, but you’re discussing American religions, not religious diasporic communities.” I referred to the definition of the diaspora we had discussed at the start of the discussion and then said, “No, Clark. If I were here to discuss religions that were not from elsewhere, I’d be discussing the Choctaw Green Corn ceremony, the Karuk Brush Dance, the Big Head ceremonial complex in Northern California, the Lakota Sun Dance, or the Chumash and Tongva Chingichnich ritual complex.”
It got a bit heated for a few moments, as several scholars-without-a-damn-clue tried to argue that we were here to discuss CURRENT religious traditions, not ancient.
Well. I’ll let you use your imagination as to the response from the POC present, which was vigorously backed by the three young First Nations students who were present in the audience (all of whom practice their CURRENT ceremonial traditions). It got the kind of ugly that only happens with people whose self-perception is that they, as liberal scholars of world cultures with lots of POC friends and colleagues, couldn’t possibly be racist.
Our Black colleague stood and left without a word. I very nearly did. But I stayed because of my Auntie role to the Native students in the audience.
I looked around at that circle of hostile faces, and waited for one single white scholar to see how unbelievably racist was this discursive erasure of entire peoples - including my people, on whose homeland UCSB is situated.
Finally, a friend spoke up. “If we are going to adhere to the definition of diaspora outlined here, she is technically correct.”
And then my dear friend, a white scholar of Buddhism: “In the Buddhist tradition, the Second Form of Ignorance is the superimposition of that which is false over that which is true. In this case, all of us white scholars are assuming that every people but white Americans are ‘other,’ and that we have no culture when the underlying fact is that our culture is so dominant that we’ve deluded ourselves into thinking it’s the neutral state of human culture against which all others are foreign. Even the Black people our ancestors abducted and enslaved we treat as somehow more foreign than ourselves. And, most absurdly, the peoples who are indigenous to this land are told that we belong here more than they do.”
People stared at their hands and doodled. The audience was dead quiet.
And you know what happened then? The elephant was no longer invisible, and my colleagues and I were able to have a conversation based on the truths about colonialism and diaspora. We were THEN able to name and discuss the distinctions between colonial settlements and immigrant settlements, and how colonial religious projects have sought to overtake, control, and own land, people, and resources, while immigrant and especially refugee diasporic communities simply seek a home free from persecution.
As we continue this national discussion, it is absolutely key to never, ever let that elephant be invisible or silent. You are on Native Land. Black descendants of human beings abducted from their African homelands are not immigrants. European cultures are just human cultures, among many. And the assignation of moral, cultural, racial superiority of European world views overall non-Euro human cultures is a profound delusion, one that continues to threaten and exterminate all people who oppose it, and even nature itself.
I hope that this story has comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable.
From a Facebook post
The world is visited by aliens, who turn out to be a race of amazonian sized women dressed like intergalactic cheerleaders, controlled by a Weird Sisters-style cabal of old crones. Their motives seem ambiguous and Madame President seeks appeasement, but the men of the Lone Star state take matters into their own hands, infiltrating the invaders and saving the planet, but more importantly freeing all men from the shame of emasculation in the process!
So it's essentially cowboys vs. amazons, with all the chauvinism, ridiculousness and fun that implies. A terribly dated but amusing piece of hokum, tongue-in-cheek enough to forgive the appalling gender politics. [From a review at Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/book/show/3234353-the-girls-from-planet...
I'm sooo close to being done with Camp NaNoWriMo. I have about 900 words left.
I learned a lot about my characters, and I enjoy my new method for writing.
I was inspired by George R R Martin, I read this quote
www.goodreads.com/quotes/749309-i-think-there-are-two-typ...
And I have always thought I was the architect, but turns out I'm more gardener than I thought.