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Although Memphis is in Tennessee, it's so close to the Mississippi state line it feels like the capital city of the Delta, the urban magnet that pulls people in from the rural regions to the south. From 1945 through 1975, the city felt like the gateway to hope and opportunity for one generation of singers and musicians after another, thanks to the ingenuity, adaptability and vision of several music-minded businessmen, and in particular these four - Sam Phillips, Jim Stewart, Chips Moman and Willie Mitchell. For fans of American music, Memphis is revered as the place where the parallel currents of black and white music came together in swirls of sound that swept across all the boundaries that were so vigorously defended elsewhere. Down south in New Orleans, the stronghold of black music, only a few white singers and musicians found a way to join in; to the north east in Nashville, the capital city of country music, it was the other way round, with few black singers or musicians able to make a base there. Not that Memphis was ever a paragon of racial equality; but at least it was possible for people to work together, and they did. While
it lasted, the sound of Memphis during the 1950s and '60s was a
potent alternative to the formulas of Nashville, making a virtue
of the black influences that Nashville's country producers worked
so hard to eliminate or minimise. But if the unique Memphis blend
of black and white, of gospel, country and blues is no longer a
viable alternative to Nashville's commercialism, the music made
in Memphis between 1950 and 1975 retains a magic that has never
lost its mysterious power to affect us.
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