Memphis Blues Quotes

Facinating." He broke into a wide grin. "I've discovered something, Khufu. This is not Memphis, Egypt." Khufu gave me a sideways look, and I could swear his expression meant, Duh. "I've also discovered a new form of magic called blues music," the man continued. "And barbecue. Yes, you must try barbecue.

An’ here I sit so patiently
 Waiting to find out what price
 You have to pay to get out of
 Going through all these things twice
 Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
 To be stuck inside of Mobile
 With the Memphis blues again -Bob Dylan, “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” (1966)

And here I sit so patiently Waiting to find out what price You have to pay to get out of Going through all these things twice. From "Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again

The butterflies are what solidified my fascination. Small and periwinkle-blue, they danced within the canopy. The butterflies were African violets come alive. It was the finishing touch to a Southern symphony all conducted on a quarter-acre plot.

The rock there is described as “blue-gray true unfading slate.” It is strong but “soft,” and will accept a polishing that makes it smoother than glass. From Memphis to St. Joe, from Joplin to River City, there is scarcely a hustler in the history of pool who has not racked up his runs over Martinsburg slate. For anybody alive who still hears corruption in the click of pocket billiards, it is worth a moment of reflection that not only did all those pool tables accumulate on the ocean floor as Ordovician guck but so did the blackboards in the schools of all America.

The Delta region of Mississippi is an expansive alluvial plain, shaped like the leaf of a pecan tree hanging lazily over the rest of the state. Stretching some 220 miles from Vicksburg to Memphis, it is bounded on the west by the Mississippi River, and extends eastward for an average of 65 miles, terminating in hill country, with its poorer soil and different ways of life, and the Yazoo River, which eventually joins the Mississippi at Vicksburg. For blues fans, this is the Delta...

to Memphis." So Abi returned to the white-walled city of Memphis and sat there sullenly, putting it about that a plot was on foot to deprive him of his heritage. But Kaku shook his head, saying in secret that the Star, Neter-Tua, would arise, for so it was decreed by Amen, father of the gods. CHAPTER III RAMES, THE PRINCESS, AND THE CROCODILE At the appointed time to Ahura, the royal wife, was born a child, a girl with a fresh and lovely face and waving hair and eyes that from the first were blue like the summer sky at even. Also on her breast was a mole of the length of a finger nail, which mole was shaped like the holy Sign of Life. Now Pharaoh and his house and the priests in every temple, and indeed all Egypt went mad with joy, though there were many who in secret mourned over the sex of the infant, whispering that a man and not a woman should wear the Double Crown. But in public they said nothing, since the story of this child had gone abroad and folk declared that it was sent by the gods, and divine, and that the goddesses, Isis, Nepthys, and Hathor, with Khemu, the Maker of Mankind, were seen in the birth chamber, glowing like gold. Also Pharaoh issued a decree that wherever the name of the Queen Ahura was graven in all the land, to it should be added the title "By the will of Amen, Mother of his Morning Star," and that a new hall should be built in the temple of Amen in the Northern Apt, and all about it carved the story of the coming of Prince Abi and of the vision of the Queen. But Ahura never lived to see this glorious place, since from the hour of her daughter's birth she began to sink. On the fourteenth day, the

in Banjo on My Knee (December 11, 1936). He plays Joel McCrea’s father, a wizened old river denizen and musician who goes off in search of his son, who is himself looking for his estranged wife (Barbara Stanwyck). Brennan dominates scene after scene. He becomes iconic, the very spirit of the fiercely independent and rugged river people. William Faulkner was assigned this picture, and though he was taken off it early, the spirit of the novelist’s country people seems to suffuse Brennan’s performance. He plays a character thirty years older than his actual age—not through makeup or mannerisms, so much as with his reedy voice, semi-toothless grin, and adroitly mussed and thinning hair, all of which projects an age-old and indomitable presence. When Brennan gets to Memphis, just north of Faulkner’s Jefferson, Mississippi, he becomes a hit performer after a club owner discovers him. Brennan’s performance on banjo, harmonica, drums, and various other instruments—while also singing the “Saint Louis Blues”—is pure vaudeville, which is to say, pure Walter Brennan. And it’s worth noting that the scene is also a ruse, since Brennan played no instruments; six musicians actually produced the sound that seems to be coming out of his nimble fingers.

to Memphis." So Abi returned to the white-walled city of Memphis and sat there sullenly, putting it about that a plot was on foot to deprive him of his heritage. But Kaku shook his head, saying in secret that the Star, Neter-Tua, would arise, for so it was decreed by Amen, father of the gods. CHAPTER III RAMES, THE PRINCESS, AND THE CROCODILE At the appointed time to Ahura, the royal wife, was born a child, a girl with a fresh and lovely face and waving hair and eyes that from the first were blue like the summer sky at even. Also on her breast was a mole of the length of a finger nail, which mole was shaped like the holy Sign of Life. Now Pharaoh and his house and the priests in every temple, and indeed all Egypt went mad with joy, though there were many who in secret mourned over the sex of the infant, whispering that a man and not a woman should wear the Double Crown. But in public they said nothing, since the story of this child had gone abroad and folk declared that it was sent by the gods, and divine, and that the goddesses, Isis, Nepthys, and Hathor, with Khemu, the Maker of Mankind, were seen in the birth chamber, glowing like gold. Also Pharaoh issued a decree that wherever the name of the Queen Ahura was graven in all the land, to it should be added the title "By the will of Amen, Mother of his Morning Star," and that a new hall should be built in the temple of Amen in the Northern Apt, and all about it carved the story of the coming of Prince Abi and of the vision of the Queen. But Ahura never lived to see this glorious place, since from the hour of her daughter's birth she began to sink. On the fourteenth day, the day

Rick contacted me about the session, but he didn't know who in hell was coming in. I said, "Who you got?" He said, "Aretha Franklin." I said, "Boy, you better get your damn shoes on. You getting someone who can sing." Even the Memphis guys didn't really know who in the hell she was. I said, "Man, this woman gonna knock you out." They're all going, "Big deal!" When she come in there and sit down at the piano and hit that first chord, everybody was just like little bees just buzzing around the queen. You could tell by the way she hit the piano the gig was up. It was, "Let's get down to serious business." That first chord she hit was nothing we'd been demoing, and nothing none of them cats in Memphis had been, either. We'd just been dumb-dumb playing, but this was the real thing. That's the prettiest session picture I can ever remember. If I'd had a camera, I'd have a great film of that session, because I can still see it in my mind's eye, just how it was - Spooner on the organ, Moman playing guitar, Aretha at the piano - it was beautiful, better than any session I've ever seen, and I seen a bunch of 'em.' Spooner Oldham, the weedy keyboard player who is most known for never playing the same licks twice and who is ordinarily the most reticent of men, speaks in similar superlatives. 'I was hired to play keyboards. She was gonna stand up in front of the microphone and sing. She was showing us this song she had brought down there with her, she hit that magic chord when Wexler was going up the little steps to the control room, and I just stopped. I said, "Now, look, I'm not trying to cop out or nothing. I know I was hired to play piano, but I wish you'd let her play that thing, and I could get on organ and electric." And that's the way it was. It was a good, honest move, and one of the best things I ever done - and I didn't do nothing.

To rectify this situation, planters organized the General Levee Board in 1858. This body was dedicated to constructing 262 miles of levees from Memphis to Vicksburg at a cost of $6.25 million. Although only 142 miles were completed prior to the Civil War, the projected increase in property values by the year 1868 was put at $150 million. One of the world’s largest public works projects, the levee system was, and is, one of the defining features of Delta capitalism.57

Foreword As a true blue Southern girl I have often wondered…if preppies could have their own handbook…why not us? And now at last, my two good friends Deborah Ford and Edie Hand have written the definitive handbook for Southern gals raised in the South. One must simply not leave home without it! It deserves a place on your shelf between Gone With the Wind and the Memphis Junior League cookbook, and I predict in years to come it will be passed down to daughters along with the family silver and great-grandmother’s lace doilies. It is funny, wise, charming, and smart, just like the two gals who wrote it. As modern Southern women we have learned to network with one another and share all the good advice and recipes and rules of accepted behavior that have been handed down to us (it’s a rough world out there). And so in keeping with that wonderful tradition I would like to share some advice my own wise Southern mother gave to me. When I was in high school contemplating whether to take Home Economics or not, my mother exclaimed: “Oh no, darling…you must never learn to cook and clean or they will expect you to do it!” It is advice that has served me well throughout the years. Good luck in all you do! -Fannie Flagg

In 1969 the Swedish folklorist Bengt Olsson and his partner, Peter Mahlin, spent a summer loitering around Beale Street in Memphis, interviewing and recording blues musicians. I'm certain it was hot, thankless work. In 1970, Olsson compiled some of those interviews into a short, now long-out-of-print book called Memphis Blues. In it, Olsson recounts a conversation with the guitarist Furry Lewis, who was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1893 and come up playing blues with the Memphis legend W.C. Handy. Olsson never did much editorializing on the page - he just presented the material he'd collected - but there's a quote toward the end of the Lewis chapter that's become lodged permanently in my cortex, repeating endlessly like a koan: 'The people I used to play around with, they all done died out,' Lewis tells Olsson. 'And sometimes I get scared myself, 'cause it look like to me it gonna be mine next. You know, it's a funny thing, but you can do a thing for a-many years, and all of them die out and you still here,' he continued. 'And you know, that's more than a notion if you come up and just think about it.' I had thought about it. And I knew they were all still here, together, etched into shellac, tucked into sleeves. I could hear them.

You know what Forrest had the nerve to do?” “Son of a bitch has the nerve to do damn near anything. That's what makes him such a nuisance,” Major Bradford said. “What is it this time?” “He sent Memphis a bill for the five thousand and however many dollars Colonel Hurst squeezed out of Jackson while he held it,” Leaming said. Bradford laughed again, this time on a different note. “He better not hold his breath till he gets it, that's all I've got to say. He'll be a mighty blue man in a gray uniform if he does.

All colors were unable to compete with the blue glory of these Tennessee mountains. She was home, or close to

It wasn’t until I moved to Virginia, to a pleasant valley near the Blue Ridge, that I first experienced sky deprivation, or forest claustrophobia. In Virginia I felt gloomy without knowing why—it was only after many drives home to Texas that the reason finally became clear. I began to notice that once I crossed the Mississippi at Memphis and began to proceed across the delta, the Arkansas flats, my spirits would suddenly lift. The sky had quickly opened up, become a Western sky, with Western horizons beneath it. Coming into that openness, time after time, brought relief and indeed a kind of exhilaration. This lifting (and a corresponding lowering as I drove back east) occurred many times; I began to understand that it bespoke a kind of sky longing which many Westerners have.

New York is a blue state because its urban population is larger than its rural population. Ohio is the quintessential purple state—one that swings back and forth—because none of its major cities—Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati—are especially large, so it lacks the urban population base for Democrats to win regularly. Tennessee is red because its cities—Nashville and Memphis—are relatively small, and the rest of the state is rural.

My earliest recollection of blues is hearing it in Memphis as a kid in the fifties. It came from the black workers in the fields along Cyprus Creek near the dead-end road I lived on with my mother. The emotion I felt in that music wrapped itself around me and touched my heart. It was very comforting. It gave my loneliness and sadness a sweetness. A kind of hope. Their blues expressed how I felt, too. My parents were divorced; I was an only child; I felt alone as my mother worked long and late hours. I was adrift and out of place when blues floated in like a dream and touched my heart. The blues rescued me. That’s when the blues overtook me. Over the years blues have continued to express how I feel as a human being. Now, more than forty years later, as I work as a blues musician, the music I heard as a kid

But the blues is a more sustained illumination, against the humiliation, rage, and sadness of life, and in turn invests the artist with not eternal youth but a scarred mortality, blessed with poetry.