In the first full length episode of Beyond Beale's inaugural season, we dive into the historical context of the Memphis Country Blues Festival: what were the 60s like, and what were they like in Memphis? Warning: there are curse words in this episode that are uncensored. There is also a reference to a racial slur that is censored.
This episode features interviews from Augusta Palmer, Robert Gordon, Chris Wimmer, Jimmy Crosthwait, Henry Nelson, Earl “The Pearl” Banks, Ric Whitney, and “Daddy” Mac Orr, in order of appearance.
Emma Jane Hopper: You’ve heard it before. Memphis is a music town, there’s history here. But what do you know about the music aside from Elvis? Do you know the history of HI records? What’s hiding beneath the landmarks, behind Graceland, beyond Beale? That’s what we’re here to uncover.
Emma Jane Hopper: Welcome to the first full-length episode of the inaugural season of Beyond Beale where we’ll be discussing the Memphis Country Blues Festival. If you’ve listened to our minisode you’ll have an idea already of this piece of Memphis history, but if not, a quick overview: the festival went on from 1966 to 1970, it was integrated, and it was at the Levitt Shell in Overton Park. It featured old blues legends like Furry Lewis, Reverend Robert Wilkins, and Sleepy John Estes.
Emma Jane Hopper: In today’s show we’re going to discuss the historical context of the festival, what made the 60s unique, and Memphis music culture during that time. We’re going to hear from people who were there and people who’ve been studying it. From the Mike Curb Institute at Rhodes College, I’m Emma Jane Hopper, stay with us.
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Augusta Palmer: The way it played out in Memphis is unique to Memphis in some ways.
Emma Jane Hopper: That’s Augusta Palmer. She’s a documentarian, and she’s making her third film, called Blues Society, about the festival. She’s got a personal connection to it, too--her father, Robert Palmer, was a founder.
Augusta Palmer: I mean, you know, we're thinking about the time of the Vietnam War and a time when young people's confidence in the government was nonexistent.
Robert Gordon: ….at the time the people who made this music were despised and despicable according to the dominant white society. And. People who were interested in this music were despicable and despised. So you're talking about Memphis at the time, what wanted to believe it was this sophisticated European influenced white chiffon town, you know, it was total bullshit…. this was a town of hatred and of of of of racial abuse on a massive, massive scale….
Emma Jane Hopper: That’s Robert Gordon. He wrote a book about the same era and music called It Came From Memphis. He’s written 6 books in all and worked on documentaries. He’s even won a Grammy for an essay he wrote about the band Big Star for a 2010 box set and an Emmy for his 2017 documentary Best of Enemies.
Robert Gordon: ...The neighbors are you know, the neighbors are living in a reefer madness world, a world where, you know, where they're completely separated from reality and they live in this fear of unreality that's been foisted on them… The idea of race mixing, the simple notion of a black person and a white person hanging out together was diabolical and revolutionary at the time.
Emma Jane Hopper: As most know, fear often turns into violence. Chris Wimmer was a founding member of the Memphis Country Blues Society. He helped run the festival, a peaceful, integrated event, which was an anomaly of its time.
Chris Wimmer: … It was a very trying time in this area during those years, you know, it was just after the Freedom Riders in Mississippi and then murders just down in Mississippi, Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman. Just. It was a scary time down there…
Emma Jane Hopper: The Freedom Riders were voters’ registration activists, three of whom were murdered for registering Black people up in Neshoba County, Mississippi, in June of 1964. Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were white, and James Chaney was Black. Just knocking on the wrong door could get you killed back then.
Chris Wimmer: ...I think, of course, in 68 in the spring of 68, was the sanitation workers strike here, with Dr. King leading a couple of marches. And then ended up being assassinated in Memphis in 68. Then just prior to our 1968 show at the Shell, as I recall the things like, there was a Ku Klux Klan rally held in the same venue and. Also, because we were all long haired hippies or whatever at that time, we were also the enemy. So.
Emma Jane Hopper: Chris Wimmer, Robert Palmer, Bill Barth, and Nancy Jeffries were the main players. Palmer, Barth, and Jeffries made up a band called the Insect Trust. There were others involved in the festival: Luke Faust, Jim Dickinson and John Fahey, for example. They all had a few things in common: they were white, well-educated, and well-off. They were spending a decent amount of time in New York, but they weren’t carpetbaggers--Palmer was from Little Rock, and Wimmer’s mom was close enough that her home served as the Blues Society’s mailing address--but they definitely weren’t in Memphis full time. That’s not to say that being up north had suddenly enlightened them: Dr. Palmer pointed out that antiracism wasn’t in anyone’s vocabulary in the 60s.
Augusta Palmer: ...I think that's that's really important to note that like, you know, racism was pretty virulent in the north, in New York and places like that as well.
Augusta Palmer: ….There was you know de facto segregation. Most places it wasn’t segregation always like, you know, enforced by law, but it was enforced by all kinds of other powers.
Emma Jane Hopper: Black Memphians certainly weren’t afforded the same privileges of White Memphians.
Augusta Palmer: ...at the same time, I think they're. I think. Racism was pretty deeply embedded, so people didn't. Didn't didn't want full integration, then again.
Emma Jane Hopper: This followed a national trend. The 60s were a constant, turbulent fight, according to Jimmy Crosthwait. He emcee’d the 1968 show and performed, too, playing washboard for Booker White, one of the country blues legends featured at the festival. Mr. Crosthwait was in a band called Mud Boy and the Neutrons at the time, and was well known for his puppetry, too.
Jimmy Crosthwait: ...I mean, there was so much either, you know, black people wanting the vote and civil rights and white hippies not wanting to be in Vietnam and, you know, protesting the war... Yes, the sixties, I'm trying to tell you. The 60s were just quite volatile and moved at a just a fantastical pace, that honest to God two or three months were worth at least the year of the times we've had lately…
Emma Jane Hopper: Mr. Wimmer also spoke to the racial divide in the 60s. While the schools were integrated in theory and on paper, they weren’t really integrated in Memphis until a 1973 federal bussing order.
Chris Wimmer: ...I think Henry Loeb, who was mayor during the 60s and during the sanitation workers strike and all of that. Yes. I think Henry Loeb was a racist. I do indeed. And I think racism was deep-seated in not just Memphis, but the entire South. That's just the way it was. I mean, I grew up with white and colored water fountains and complete segregation. I never went to school with a black guy until I went to college. And then there were two, you know… But it goes beyond just the racism. It goes and just a, a kind of a country, small town mentality and not an appreciation. Appreciating music, not appreciating art, not appreciating architecture, not appreciating literature.
Emma Jane Hopper: Mr. Wimmer and Mr. Crosthwait may have noticed racism, but as white men, neither of them experienced it.
Jimmy Crosthwait: ...I mean, when when King was assassinated, the city had a curfew that was put in, that you couldn't be anywhere after 10 o'clock. I was more or less oblivious to that because I was leaving John McIntyre's house one night in my white Volkswagen bus. And the National Guard stopped me somewhere in Midtown saying, who are you? Where you going? Where you been? And I had a bus load of black trunks, all of them were filled with puppets. But y'know to look inside my bus, it looked like I kind of had guns and bombs and whatever. Anyway, the cops said what? What's in there? And I said puppets. And he sort of laughed and said, go on. You know, there is a curfew you've broken. Get on out of here and get home. So it was odd to me that he believed me because who would lie about puppets? About, you know, was a bunch of puppets in those trucks and not guns and bombs.
Jimmy Crosthwait: Jeez, I mean, anyway, that's... That was sort of my experience of the aftermath of the King assassination. I was just. Oblivious to curfews and actually able to say puppets, and they were actually able to laugh and say, get out of here. Y'know.
Emma Jane Hopper: That was Mr. Crosthwait again.
Jimmy Crosthwait: ...Had I been black, everything would have been different. Yeah, y'know….
Emma Jane Hopper: Henry Nelson attended the festival when he was 15. As a Black teenaged hippie, he experienced the 60s differently.
Henry Nelson: ...in the eighth grade, the day after Dr. King was assassinated, three young white boys, you know, and not in a malicious way, just kind of teasing, you know, came close to me saying that "they killed that n****r" and it... That kind of shocked me, you know…
Emma Jane Hopper: Mr. Nelson found the Shell and the festival not long after that. With it, he found a community to which he felt he belonged.
Henry Nelson: Well, then I mean, there is that, you know, like I said in my in my mind, in my heart, that I relate to the culture that most hippies believed in. It was about love. It was about togetherness. However, being a person of color outside of that culture, I am just a person of color. And I experienced that absolutely.
Emma Jane Hopper: While Mr. Wimmer identified with that same culture, he benefited from the color of his skin.
Chris Wimmer: ...I graduated from high school, 1963 here. And when we were in high school, a lot of times, we could go out and go into some of the black clubs, not all of them. Now, mind you, but some. And even after that, many times, we'd been, y'know, we would be welcome into the black clubs and that'd mean the owner would come over and, you boys come sit here with me, you know, or somebody would try to take us under their wing if we were coming in just trying to hear the music. But but blacks coming into a white club, was a completely different issue. It just didn't happen.
Emma Jane Hopper: After the festival, when he was old enough to go into clubs, Mr. Nelson experienced that dynamic from the Black perspective.
Henry Nelson: ...there was and sometimes even in Memphis, there were clubs where I wouldn't go because I didn't feel safe. But I lived on North 8th Street, on South 8th Street was Juke Joint Row, so that's and it was all black, so but there were white people. It seems like white people were more invited to come to join than black people were invited to join in clubs especially. So, yeah, there was definitely a sense of separation and not feeling safe in trying to do that…
Emma Jane Hopper: The Bitter Lemon, a coffeehouse that often hired Black musicians to play, still had far from an integrated audience. Mr. Wimmer and the rest of the festival founders spent a lot of their time there with the owner and operator John McIntyre, but they were all white.
Chris Wimmer: ...There may have occasionally been a black person in the bitter lemon, but. And I don't know if the law, you know, the laws were still on the books, so to speak. But black people, as a rule, it was not a heavily integrated clientele... it wasn't a heavily integrated audience. Memphis just was not an integrated town at that time….
Emma Jane Hopper: Earl “The Pearl” Banks is a Black blues musician who was playing in Memphis in the 60s. He didn’t play the festival, but he experienced the white attitude toward Black musicians playing white clubs firsthand.
Earl “the Pearl” Banks: ….if we play, you know, we play music, I play music in white clubs and we had to go... If they didn't have a room, we had to go back on the outside. We played a place called the Crown Lounge in Memphis. That right off of Vance. Yeah that's right off of Vance, and in those days, we had to go outside on our break and stay out there till we get ready to come back and play….
Emma Jane Hopper: The segregated clubs caused some issues for integrated bands, according to Mr. Wimmer.
Chris Wimmer: ...Now, now, Memphis music was interesting, so far as talking about integration… Stax had been integrated for quite a while. But that was in the studio. There was still sometimes a problem playing around in the clubs for an integrated band. Even when Booker T. and the MGs first came out with Green Onions in about sixty two or three somewhere in there. Still them touring... in the South was problematic since it was two Black guys and two white guys. So. Segregation was still a very real issue in Memphis in the 60s.
Emma Jane Hopper: Black musicians have faced a lot of prejudice in Memphis, despite their contributions to both the music and the community.
Ric Whitney: ...Memphis has a long history of the blues music.
Emma Jane Hopper: This is Ric Whitney. He’s from Memphis, but he currently runs a talent management company and a music publishing company in LA. He and his cousin, Stephen Whitney, revived the festival in 2017. We’ll be talking more about that in our last episode.
Ric Whitney: ...the black music element has happened for quite a while. There's no denying that, and the contributions of black musicians have been tremendous to the entertainment field…. blues music is the root and it is the seed that has spawned so many other genres of music…
Ric Whitney: ...there is no mistaking that blues music in that respect is a genre that was developed by black Americans and it influenced so many other genres of music…
Emma Jane Hopper: Memphis’ music scene inspired others to add to it. “Daddy” Mack Orr moved to Memphis in the 60s and was finally driven to play in the 80s. He credits the radio stations for his love for the blues.
“Daddy” Mack Orr: ...when I would listen to the radio, all of this stuff, you know, was from Memphis, you know, like radio stations and stuff like that. All that stuff, you know, coming coming from Memphis. You know, the radio station, and I know you have heard the name Rufus Thomas and he used to have this radio station, come on at night I think it was Jump and Holler or something and I used to love to listen to him because he played them blues at night. And I've also listened to him in the daytime, he'd be playing B.B. King, Albert King, and Muddy Waters, and all them folk, and I'd sit and listen to it and just wish I could do it, you know, cuz I was a boy then. Yeah, I was a boy then.
Emma Jane Hopper: Rufus Thomas had a radio show on WDIA, the nation’s first all-Black radio station. Mr. Thomas put out the first singles ever released out of Stax or Sun Records. B.B. King also played on WDIA, promoting Pep-Ti-Kon during his show.
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Augusta Palmer: Yeah. I mean, the staff restrooms at the Shell were still segregated when in sixty six when the festival started.
Emma Jane Hopper: That’s Dr. Palmer again.
Robert Gordon: ...a week before the first festival and the same site, there'd been a Ku Klux Klan rally. You know, with people in sheets at the shell. And then a week later, there's this blues festival and race mixing and thing.
Emma Jane Hopper: And Mr. Gordon. Mr. Wimmer, who was there, said the festival didn’t actually draw that much negative attention.
Chris Wimmer: ...Memphis had long been known for. At least on the surface, y'know Memphis had been home of the blues and so and when we're advertising blues shows and old Blacks playing, that's not that big a deal, to, and that that in itself wouldn't likely raise the ire of the locals...
Emma Jane Hopper: Still, outside of the festival, the musicians didn’t get a lot of respect. Dr. Palmer said the founders had this in mind when they started the thing.
Augusta Palmer: ...I think they were very aware of segregation and of racism and. You know, I think that was really a driving force for them, because they felt like these people, these blues musicians have been ignored….
Augusta Palmer: They knew that they lived a really different life and a much more privileged life than these African-American musicians. And, you know, they really did want to bring them fame and bring them recognition and bring them a little bit of money.
Emma Jane Hopper: While putting on the show didn’t place anyone in immediate harm, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a dangerous time to promote integration in the South.
Jimmy Crosthwait: Oh, well, there was voters' rights activists were beginning to come from the north into the south. You know, going from house to house, trying to get black people to register to vote. And 3 of them were kidnapped by the sheriff and a bunch of Klan members in some little Mississippi town, and they were killed and buried on a levee somewhere.
Emma Jane Hopper: That was Mr. Crosthwait talking about the Freedom Riders I mentioned earlier. According to him, Bill Barth, who was a festival founder, and John Fahey, who was also involved, were knocking on doors in Mississippi looking to buy old records not long after that tragedy.
Jimmy Crosthwait: ...they were really either quite courageous or quite foolish to be going down into Mississippi knocking on black people's doors. Course, they were looking for old albums. But, you know, any local Klan member might just mistake them for civil rights activists and so they could have wound up with the same fate. Just trying to find the records. But… that was quite a find in terms of locating an old blues legend.
Emma Jane Hopper: The blues legend in question was Skip James. There are a lot of great blues players from the Memphis area that never achieved legend status, though, according to Mr. Orr.
“Daddy” Mack Orr: Yeah, I think it's, you know, just luck, whoever you, you know, did with it or get involved with. So, like I said, it's a lot of good musicians here and never did get that break, you know, can play just as good or better than the, you know, a lot of musicians that made it overnight. That's right, yeah, that's right.
Emma Jane Hopper: The festival aimed to showcase the Black musicians who should’ve made it, or made it but never got paid. To that end, all the proceeds went to the Black musicians. The white musicians and organizers were compensated in a different, less legal way.
Jimmy Crosthwait: ...most of the white musicians in that show, myself included, were paid with about an ounce of hashis. Bill had a big bowl of hash that he divided up into ounces and paid each of us with that. The black blues musicians were paid in real money...
Emma Jane Hopper: That’s Mr. Crosthwait again. Mr. Gordon clarified that hash in the 60s was pretty different from its modern iterations.
Robert Gordon: So, you know, first of all, the big drugs are our hash and pot. And let me say, as a pot smoker from the 70s, the pot is the 60s. You know, it was. It was called grass for a reason. You know, it was nowhere near as strong or as tasty or as potent as the stuff today. So, you know, just to establish. You know, there was not. Great weed around at the time, it was not powerful, but it was so feared.
Emma Jane Hopper: The white musicians were paid in hash so more actual money could go to the Black musicians.
Jimmy Crosthwait: ...at the time that kind of hash would have sold for about a hundred dollars an ounce and so Barth probably bought the pound, the 16 ounces for more like seven hundred dollars. And so when he paid us with it, we were feeling like we were getting one hundred dollars worth of hash and it was only costing him less than 50, so...
Jimmy Crosthwait: ….I think they were making one hundred dollars. It all sort of broke down to where it looked like everybody was making a hundred dollars, either in real money or a hundred dollars value of hash.
Emma Jane Hopper: While 100 bucks might pay 1/6th of a month’s worth of Midtown rent nowadays, Mr. Orr said that it went a lot further in the 60s.
“Daddy” Mack Orr: ….I just work a whole week. And came home about forty dollars a week and, you know, take care of everything like paying your house note, wherever you were staying and buy a little groceries and, living stuff, you know, you wouldn't have but forty dollars to do that. But you could take forty dollars and go a long ways back then, you know, in the 60s. Oh, you could go quite a ways, but forty, fifty dollars.
Emma Jane Hopper: The financial support of the festival didn’t last that long, though, and the city wasn’t all that interested in investing in Black musicians, according to Mr. Nelson.
Henry Nelson: ...the city itself at that time, and we're talking Henry Loeb and Chandler and that whole administration and some of the businesses that were involved. They only supported it to the extent that the business could prosper. Meaning a bank or some other individual, but it was never really valued. I think it's always been that way, and unfortunately, it was driven since I was born and I became aware of it, it was driven by race.
Emma Jane Hopper: Here’s Mr. Orr again.
“Daddy” Mack Orr: ...No, it's like, you know, it's a lot of, it's a lot of good musicians in Memphis, Tennessee, a lot of good musicians. In Memphis Tennessee, never, never got that break, you know, to become a big star overnight. But there's a ton of musicians in Memphis just as good as some of the great big musicians, and they still playing for nickels and dimes. I know some good musicians played just as well or better than any guy, you know, you know, got that position. That, you know, get rich overnight. And. I said that all the time, you know, there's a lot of good musicians in Memphis, Tennessee, played just as well or better. Than the musician that got the position to get rich overnight, and that's a known fact. From Daddy Mack. That's a known fact from Daddy Mack. Well.
Emma Jane Hopper: Most of these musicians were Black and played the blues. The local government and the city’s white mainstream didn’t respect them or their genre, and they were treated poorly in the private sector, too.
Henry Nelson: ….when you think about country blues and the lack of popularity and awareness about it, that's cultural. And it's also…. racist in regards to just being separated and unappreciated and devalued and invisible, if you will.
Emma Jane Hopper: That’s Mr. Nelson again. He became a popular radio DJ in his later life, starting a few stations from the ground up. He’s worked with Memphis blues musicians and became familiar with the music industry in town after the festival.
Henry Nelson: It wasn't valued and I would say the same thing for the music business itself, because a lot of the music business, the true beginning of the music business itself, didn't start with Elvis. I mean, Elvis just happened to be around at that time. But it was really from African-American artists and the artists, primarily at Stax and Royal Studios, even in seventy three. Seventy four, I think it was, yeah…. I think the city has always devalued that culture of music…
Emma Jane Hopper: Memphis has a lot of catching up to do. The history here is important, it’s just hidden, obscured by Graceland and Beale Street. Next week we’ll be talking more about the Memphis Country Blues Society and the Levitt Shell, exploring the people involved and the festival itself.
Emma Jane Hopper: Thank you so much for tuning in to Beyond Beale, the Mike Curb Institute’s Memphis music history podcast. Thank you to the interviewees featured in today’s program, in order of appearance, Augusta Palmer, Robert Gordon, Chris Wimmer, Jimmy Crosthwait, Henry Nelson, Earl “The Pearl” Banks, Ric Whitney, and “Daddy” Mac Orr. Today’s episode was written and produced by myself and Eli Matlock with help from our faculty advisor Dr. J. Tyler Fritts. Eli is also our audio engineer. The original music for today’s program was created by Cam Napier. Thank you to Betsy John and Shaliz Barzani for our gorgeous cover art. I’m your host, Emma Jane Hopper, see you soon and stay safe.