Ep. 24 - Jimmy Rout all about Memphis, Blues, and Juke Joints

Transcript

Drew (00:15):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews. I'm your host, drew Hamish, the Amazon bestselling author of Whiskey Lord's Travel Guide to Experience in Kentucky Bourbon. And I want to welcome you to an encore interview that I conducted at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis back in late 2020 with Jimmy Route, the Shelby County historian. And if you don't know where Shelby County is, well that is actually the county where Memphis is, and you may not believe this, but Beale Street, that world famous thoroughfare in Memphis had actually been left for dead for several decades. And it was in 1984 when they started to bring it back. And Jimmy, he was there at that time, and he's going to give us some of the background on that story. We'll also talk about the myth of how the city was founded over drinks, the stories around the juke joints. We'll hear about WC Handy and also about the speakeasies of the 1920s because we'll dig into a story of a mafia like Mayor named Mr. Krump, a politician who ruled the city and defied the state's prohibition law even when he was forced out of office. So let's jump right into my conversation with Shelby County historian Jimmy Route. All right, so let's talk a little bit about, because you said that you actually worked for Bee Street in getting some of that history out.

Jimmy (01:46):
Yes. I started out, when I graduated from college, I, I was a communications theater major, and so I knew I wanted to do something that allowed me to be a part of not just being an opposite behind a desk. And my family, our family friend was the developer of Built Street, John Elkington. Okay. And so I told him, I said, I love to do things. I love to plan things and do things. And he said, well, come work for us for the summer, which ended up being for three years. So I was the assistant marketing director for BE Street. And at that time, bee Street had been opened three years. There was the Rum Boogie Cafe that had just opened and a few other places on Fridays and Saturday nights, in order to get blues musicians to play on this new Bill Street, I would go to the bank and get $300 worth of $20 bills, and I would go up the street to where there was a retirement home still there, just past that church. And I would say, I'll pay you $20 to play blues on Bill Street so that because it was all fresh and new, beautiful new cobblestones, new buildings in order to get musicians to come back to Bill Street to

Drew (03:03):
Play. Wow. Now what year time

Jimmy (03:04):
Period? 84, 85. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And 81 is really when it started, the renovation started in the new buildings were, the backs of the buildings were all done because the facades are all historic, but it does have a great history. Bill Street was really the soul of the black community in Memphis, and the musicians particularly. And the first two blocks were really the businesses and the immigrants. A lot of the Jewish families in Memphis had businesses. There were also paw shops and the great influx of our Chinese population, chop Sui was down there restaurant called Chop Sui. And they had several laundries were down there, and it really was a very ecumenical society of immigrants, a real melting pot. And then WC Handy talks about how when he came here and he was the son, just first generation out of being his parents were slaves. So he came here and it was like he sees Bill Street and Peewee Saloon was on Bill Street, and Peewee had come to Memphis in the 1880s as a 10 year old boy hobo off of a train and dirty and muddy.

(04:23):
And WC Handy talks about it in his book, how he Got Off the Train, and he went to the Bottoms, gave So Bottoms, which is where Bill Street's built over, and he did a little spit bath, cleaned himself up, and then he found a little crap game and he had 10 cents, and he was playing cards and craps, and he won enough money to be able to go get a hotel room that night for 75 cents or whatever. And then he cleaned up and he would gamble every day. And then finally he got a job, and by the 1,910, I think it was, he owned a saloon on Bill Street. Wow. So nice. Yeah, it is nice. It is. Yeah.

Drew (05:01):
Were they gambling in there? Was the gambling come along with him?

Jimmy (05:06):
Now I've not heard there was, but you and I both know anytime you've got alcohol and you've got men who are bored, you're going to have a little wager going on. Yeah. So I'm sure in the background, there always was, but it did become a, I guess because it was where it was on Bill Street, or maybe it was the largest, it's where all the blues musicians tended to hang out. One thinks nowadays after hours, where do bands go? Right. They have to unwind. So I've always been reading the stories about Peewee Saloon. I'm kind of imagining that's where those musicians went when they unwound at night. And WC Handy says that it was at the Cigar counter, because he sold cigars there too. At the Cigar Counter is when he wrote out the Memphis Blues. Oh, wow. Was there on that cigar counter.

Drew (05:58):
And that song actually has another title.

Jimmy (06:02):
It does Mr. Crump's Blues or Mr. Krump. Yeah. He wrote it. And he was not really a proponent of Mr. K Crump's, but Mr. Krump was a big promoter himself. And anytime you know your name, no. No matter if it's good or bad, it's got your name out there. Yeah, it was, so it was originally Mr. Crump's Blues, but then it was later changed to the Memphis Blues. And WC didn't invent, of course, the blues. Right. But he was the first to publish.

Drew (06:28):
He came up through Mississippi. He was from Alabama. Alabama originally, yeah,

Jimmy (06:32):
Florence, Alabama.

Drew (06:33):
But there was an area, because rag time would've been the music that was popular, I guess. And as I understand it, he had some, he was actually at the World's Fair in, in 1893, and was a musician. And luckily he was playing Ragtime music at that time.

Jimmy (06:52):
But we have to remember, as I said, he's just first generation from the slaves. So he had that rag time and all, but he had to have heard at home some good negro spirituals. So music was probably ingrained in him that whole Mississippi Delta, Florence Alabama's also where Sam Phillips, by the way, is Oh, okay. Who discovered Elvis. But the whole Mississippi Delta, all those blues is Clarksdale, Clarksville, all those places down in there, the crossroads, and they all kind of come from you. If you close your eyes and you think about it, you can hear the people in the fields and the end of the day, and they're tired, and they're communicating, singing those black Negro spirituals. And then as the decades go by and they gain their emancipation, and then they're going and picking up other, all of that musical heritage all stems back from those negro spirituals and in their, the churches. Yeah. So it's just a rich area full of a music history.

Drew (07:52):
So one of the terms that I'm following here is the term juke joint. And the idea of the juke joint, as I understand it, goes all the way back into slavery that was there were collecting places for the slaves to have their time away from their toil. And how that all evolved. I mean, is that what's interesting is we take these words like that, or we take those concepts and then we kind of forget that they have this

Jimmy (08:27):
An origin.

Drew (08:28):
Origin. Exactly. Yeah. That goes all the way back. Because you'll see juke joints in movies, and sometimes they're out in the country, but then you'll also hear people talking about them. They were in town, and this was just kind of a regular bar that you, and they're

Jimmy (08:47):
More like a prop in that situation. Yes. They're almost like it's just a character or a prop. Yeah. Well, when I think about juke joints, I think exactly like you said, they evolve because they're a sanctuary. They're a place you can go. Forget about the day, forget about the family, forget about the job, forget about the problems. You just relax. And in many cases, it helped to have a little whiskey to help relax. And we all know what happens when we have a little whiskey conversation. Sing alongs, music, you want to dance. And so the jut joint really became a place where all inhibitions were gone. You could be yourself, where there was no master telling you what to do, no wife telling you what to do, nothing. It just was a place to be you. I think nowadays, I look at the parallel nowadays, and I think it's what we call dive joints. When you want to go to a dive, why do you want to go? Because you don't want to worry about wearing the right clothes. You don't want to worry about barbecue sauce on your shirt. You just want to relax.

Drew (09:51):
Yeah, absolutely. So did that come into the city at all?

Jimmy (09:56):
It did. And you got to remember Memphis. Memphis is on the river. So Shelby County was founded Shelby County, largest county in Tennessee. Memphis, the largest of our seven municipalities was on the river. Great Commerce. 1819 is when it was chartered by the state after the Indian se secession. They bought the Chickasaw lands. And one of the great tavern whiskey stories is that the founding fathers, Andrew Jackson and John Overton and James Winchester met in a bar Bell Tavern, and they laid out the city of Memphis. Well, the only problem with that is none of the three founders was ever in the city at the same time. And in 1819, the Bell Tavern wasn't even in existence yet. Wow. Yeah.

Drew (10:44):
Now,

Jimmy (10:44):
The Irishman, pat Maher that had the Bell Tavern, he was here in the 18 fourteens. He had a boarding house. And so very possibly one of them stayed there and all, but we were a rowdy rivertown. So you can imagine in the 18 hundreds, those boats coming up and down the river, they were not what you call the country club set. So as they would come off the river, who knows how long they'd been on that river, they'd come up the first thing they'd want, they'd get their wages. What do they want to do? They want to drink. So Memphis always had a lot of bars and places where you could go to find things to drink. And Bell Tavern was one of the ones that was there for a long time in downtown Memphis. And as time continues to go on, by the time that prohibition comes at 19 hundreds, there were like 600 of these places where you could go to get a drink.

(11:49):
Now, whether they were all legal, whether they were not, you know, had to imagine. And then I was reading recently about the prohibition is that once the national prohibition went in 300 more were discovered because everyone's wanting to just kind of do it, because you can't do it right. You know, just tell somebody you can't drink. What are you going to do? You're going to go drink. So I think Memphis has always been a lively town. So I would imagine that we don't have chronicled, perhaps all the little most interesting juke joints or dives. But there had to be a lot of back rooms, backs of stores, backs of theaters after a theatrical production where people were enjoying, and it was their job joint, their individual. I do have a lady who, who's now in her eighties, and she recently told me that her first job, and she was 18 or 19 years old, in the late sixties, she worked at a hospital in the rural Shelby County called Oakville Hospital.

(12:54):
And that on Friday nights behind the hospital, there was a row of about seven shotgun buildings. They had a been shotgun houses, but there was a man, Mr. Tate, she said, I lived in one of those houses. And she said, you could be assured that on Friday night after our shift, we'd go down there. And it was like being, she said in the best little juke joint in town. She said, we could all relax after a busy week, and we could all have a little bite and have a little nip and have a little dance. So here again, juke joints, they're a way, a sanctuary, a place to escape and be yourself.

Drew (13:33):
So anything that we would see these days, I mean, what would be the last juke joint we probably would've seen in this area? Or about what time? Probably. Did they fade away or do we still have them, but they're kind of commercialized?

Jimmy (13:50):
Well, we do still have them. Yeah. There's a couple, of course, their names escape me at the moment, but there's a couple of them right now. There's a great, and I've noticed that juke joints too, I think they had a transition when country music started to come into mainstream, because you have a lot of juke joints that are all country themed. Okay. So do you really call 'em juke joints, right? Or are they country dives? It's the same principle. Yeah, but it's a different musical theme there that thematics are different. There's a great one called Hernandez Hideaway. Oh, isn't that

Drew (14:30):
Great? I was going to say there was a song called Hernandez,

Jimmy (14:34):
And there is, as we do a historical research on that place for a historical marker, it's a 50 50. Did that lead into the name because it was in the movie or that it's on Hernando Road and people used to use it, so perhaps it was an influence and all. It's a great dive. It's a great juke joint. It's still got the low ceilings, and it's still packed with cigarette smoke, even in this day and age. And you can smell your feet stick to the floor. It's great.

Drew (15:06):
Oh man. Oh man.

Jimmy (15:07):
Yeah. And there's always good live music, and it's from people that you love the music, but you never heard of the recording artists because they're not a recording artist, they're just an individual. And then there's a lot of, we're university town. We've got some great universities here. So there's a lot of taverns. Alex Tavern, near Rhodes College here. Great. After 11 o'clock at night, you'll find great live music and the whiskey is flowing and the lights are dark, and it's more like what a jute joint would be. And then there's who've just kind of one or two of 'em that are around. Cause it's important. You have one and it's a commercial success and that's why they do it. Yeah. One of the more interesting ones is called Ernestine and Hazels, it's just south of where we are, here at the Peabody Hotel on South Main, not too far from the Lorraine Hotel where Dr.

(15:58):
King was assassinated, Ernestine and Hazels was across the street from a train station, our union station, and it was a brothel, and it was owned by two, I think they're two sisters, Ernestine, Hazel. And they'd come downstairs, you'd have your juke joint, and then upstairs there were other pleasures you could partake on. And all it still, it's still alive and going. Not the upstairs portion of the business, but it still is a great weekend place where you can see all sorts of an eclectic crowd and a great jukebox doesn't have live music, but it has a great jukebox, great greasy hamburgers, great whiskey and draft beer, and it's a good place to be. So juke joints are very important, very, very important. I think they're a release for humanity.

Drew (16:47):
So would you say that Bee Street in say the 1920s and thirties, probably more so the twenties when it was legal, and you could have it out front, was closer to the juke joint types of establishments or closer to, for instance, when I go out to a jazz club and it's, you'll be drinking scotch there, it's a more, almost trying to be up more upper class kind of a thing. What was Beal Street's feel back then?

Jimmy (17:23):
I think be Street was not that high end. I think that there were clubs, there was Club Handy, there was the Palace Theater. There were some that in the earlier parts of the evening. Sure, yeah. You could take a date and there might be a black band, there might be a WC Handy band there, or some other band might be there. And it would be a nice cordial place. You could take a date and you could have a great time. And then as the evening progressed, there was activity up until the wee hours of the morning. The stories you can read, people still walking the streets of Bill Street in the twenties and thirties as if it was 12 o'clock noon because it was so busy. So you have to imagine, is it because maybe people were getting off work? They've come for the latter part of the shift, but it's always been colorful. So probably the most enjoyable time of Bill Street would be at the evening time when it was more the juke joint feeling. But it did have the nice places where you could take a date and have a nice evening out and maybe if you had a fun date, you'd want to stay till the latter part of the

Drew (18:31):
Mind

Jimmy (18:32):
And enjoy the juing and the joint. Right.

Drew (18:35):
So the other thing about Memphis that I just learned, I didn't know a lot about the back history, but there was a yellow fever epidemic here. Three three. And a lot of that was based around the fact that they didn't really have a good water system here and people were drinking out of the Mississippi River, and how good is that going to be? And well, no, I've never tried it, so I'm not sure about it. Sewage and the rest, it's probably not the greatest in the world. And it really changed the makeup of the people of Memphis because the upper class moved out because they could afford to,

Jimmy (19:19):
And not just the upper class. So we did not have a drainage system. And the guy who Guso Bayou, it kind of ends at Bill Street. And so as things were built, they filled in the Bayou, and of course it was built on top of it. And it wasn't so much, I don't think, drinking from the river as disposing of the sewage and all the waste into the community. And they still remember, they didn't realize mosquitoes were the transmission for it. When you've got a river which has little tributaries, the Lua, Hatchie River and the Bayou, and then you've got other standing sewage waters, you're going to have a problem with that. Well, what happened during the yellow fever, Memphis was really settled by a huge amount of Germans. We had a great influx of Germans, and they brought in wonderful theater and opera and wonderful the engineering and doctors and architects, some of the earliest ones. And then we had a great Italian and influx. But when the yellow fever came, they fled

Drew (20:29):
Okay

Jimmy (20:30):
Not to come back. So Memphis, really, their trajectory as really maybe a high end, nice East Coast version on the Mississippi River, it left when the great immigrants who came from in Europe, and they knew the great opera story, opera houses and all. And then of course, being in the delta after emancipation, all of this works at 1870s, our last epidemic of the yellow fever. We were a huge congregating city for all of the emancipated slaves because we were so close by here and all. And so we still had a great amount of some families that stuck it out who were able to go out in the country during the yellow fever and come back. But the demographics in it changed and remember too, during yellow fever and before you drank liquor and whiskey because it was safe.

Drew (21:24):
Yeah,

Jimmy (21:25):
That was a great reason to. And so things changed a little bit after that. But no, we've always had a great diverse period. And I always wonder what would've happened at the Yellow Fever hadn't come with our great immigrant population.

Drew (21:42):
Memphis was what the second biggest city in the south. It was south at that time.

Jimmy (21:45):
It was busiest before the war, and it was the busiest after the war. We kind of succeeded the last to succeed and the first to get back into the union because we're kind of on that middle. People say, well, Tennessee's not the South. And I said, well, it's strictly not the North, so kind of where is it and all. So we were spared lots of destruction. But yeah, we were saved a lot. And we had a lot of union soldiers who have some, there's some great union stories in diaries about them going to the juke joints and drinking here in town, the camps. Yeah.

Drew (22:17):
So

Jimmy (22:18):
There's always whiskey.

Drew (22:20):
Well, and this area was also heavily Irish.

Jimmy (22:23):
Very much the whole police department was Irish,

Drew (22:26):
Which, so I can draw some correlations between New York and how Tammany Hall ran in New York, and it sounds like there was a bit of that kind of the spoiled system and the rest going on here as well. Patronage and all of that. So this is where we get to a guy named Boss Krump. So

Jimmy (22:54):
The H Krump, Edward Hole,

Drew (22:55):
Krump. Talk a little bit about how he came up and his ties to whiskey, because this is a very interesting it interesting

Jimmy (23:06):
Story. So he was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi. And it's interesting, as you and I have talked today, kind of like the Delta heart of the Delta is said to be in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel because anybody, everybody comes to the Peabody. I now believe that all roads lead to Memphis. No matter where you are in the world, all roads lead to Memphis. So Edward Hole, Crump was from Holly Springs, Mississippi, ironically the same place Ida B. Wells was from. Okay. As we've spoken earlier, yes, about Ida B. But he came to Memphis and was a young businessman and ingratiated himself with realizing there was change and opportunity here and ran for public office and the the early 19 hundreds. And he did run. But then as prohibition came around, saloons played a big part in elections because they were polling places also.

(24:11):
So you could get your ballot there and fill your ballot out. Well, now, if you're a politician like Edward Hole, Crump, Crump, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I got a lot of people to go to the bar. They're my friends. They vote for me. If we don't have liquor to drink, where am I going to make sure I get my votes? So he wasn't against it, he wasn't for it. He just kind of turned his back on it. Well, he was having a bit of a political rivalry with the governor at the time, Malcolm Patterson and Malcolm Patterson. It was just, he was a thorn in his flesh. Crump was, and he thought, I'm going to, what can I do? I know what I'm going to do. And he got the legislatures, the legislators at the time to come up with what's called the Tennessee Alster Law.

(24:58):
And what it says was for, and there's a couple of different categories, but one of them is if the elected official does not enact the laws of the state, the federal, the local, they can be ousted from office. It passed the legislature. And lo and behold, they accuse Mayor Crump of not enforcing the prohibition laws. Well, he wasn't going to enforce them. So as they came down to let him know you're about to be ousted, he resigned from office with a year left in his term. And I think that's probably, and these are all, this is an assumption, but you think about it. So if you're humiliated, if you want to call it humiliation, if you thought, darn it, he got me, how do I keep from doing that? I'll develop a power base, but I won't be elected. And that's exactly what he did. He became a king maker. But the Tennessee Alster law kind of came out of prohibition. And I really had not known until a couple of weeks ago when you and I had taught that saloons were such a big part of the balloting system, which makes perfect sense. Yeah. Maybe we had to try it now.

Drew (26:12):
Well, we talk about our forefathers, and I'm going to build an episode around this one of these days. I remember reading a book on James Madison and James Madison. One of the things he didn't really appreciate when he ran for Congress was that he had to go out to the polling places and promise alcohol to people. And back then they used to just vote open. They would say who they were voting for. Yes. So you hand them a cup of whiskey on their way out when they say you. And so all of a sudden people are seeing that and everybody's coming in. Yeah. Yes. Voting for you. So,

Jimmy (26:46):
Well, now the same lady I told you about who told me the juke joint story, Ms. Mary Mitchell, she's a wonderful, she's a historian, a black historian, and she lives in Orange Mound, which is the oldest African American dedicated neighborhood in the United States of America. It was created and built and designed just for blacks, by blacks in 1919. She tells me the story about when her father, in the forties, when they would get, she'd get him by the hand and he'd say, we got ano. I got a call. I got notice that my shipment's in and down at the grocery, at the Sundry store, they were just blue collar, working black folk. They didn't have no shipments coming in. What are you doing? They'd go down there and Mr. Crump's deliveries, were there a fifth of bourbon for every man in the Poland place. And you'd go pick up your bourbon and you'd come back and say, she said she remember, she asked her, daddy, daddy, why is Mr.

(27:45):
Crump giving you liquor? He says, because he wants me to vote for him. And she said, she would say, are you going to vote for him just because of that? And she'd say, I can remember. He'd look down at me and he'd say, nobody knows who a man votes for when he marks that ballot. Well, what he didn't know is probably that the Crump did. Yeah, they tallied every one. Yeah. And they kept little cards and all that. But here again, he was buying the whiskey and he'd buy watermelons. I mean, it just would depend. But yeah, you could get the votes. So the alcohol and the saloons, they were really, really an important part of the voting Pro, which makes sense if you think about it, when communities don't have, early on, particularly 18 hundreds, they don't have a lot of money. They may not have a big fancy courthouses. They've just started. They don't have big churches being like, where do people congregate? They're always at a bar at a saloon. So it makes sense when you think about it rationally.

Drew (28:41):
So the story of the Peabody, because it was built around

Jimmy (28:44):
8, 19 25.

Drew (28:45):
Okay. So when this was built, there's a little story that you told me, and we actually got to go see these ducks, ducks, ducks that are actually in the lobby of the hotel, swimming around in the little fountains. Yeah. So what is the story behind

Jimmy (29:03):
That? So in the late 18 hundreds, Colonel Brinkley was a businessman here, and he wanted to build a hotel. He had been traveling on a cruise in Europe, and he had met a Mr. A man named George Peabody. And George Peabody helped him raise the money. Ultimately, when he told him of his cheol to build a hotel, a nice hotel in Memphis, the finest hotel in Memphis at the time, it was air conditioned and had running water and all this in the late 18 hundreds. And so he built the hotel and for some 20, 25, I guess 40 years, it was in a different location. And then the location it is now, it was 1925, they built this fabulous, wonderful new hotel, the grandest in the South it was called. And the lobby's got this wonderful travertine marble statue and fountain and all these big flowers. Well, 1933, the manager of the hotel was a Mr. Frank Chut, S C H U T T. And his good friend, chip Barwick had gone over across the river to West Memphis and were duck hunting. And in those days, live decoys were allowed, were not allowed to have live decoys anymore. But they had, so they also had their ducks with them in

Drew (30:20):
The Peabody lobby. Nice.

Jimmy (30:21):
So the tail doesn't tell you did the manager, well, he was the manager, but if there was a problem with the ducks being rowdy or whatever, but they just decided, where are we going to put these darn ducks? Just put 'em in the fountain. That's where the water is. Put 'em in the fountain. So they put their ducks in the fountain, and once they were there, they didn't want to get out. And so they're still there

Drew (30:44):
From 1933.

Jimmy (30:45):
They're still there.

Drew (30:46):
Of course, they're due ducks. And there's a whole ceremony around,

Jimmy (30:48):
There is, it's the procession of the duck at 11:00 AM every morning. The ducks are brought from their plaza, their hotel at the top of the Peabody outside, and they're put in the elevator. They come down, a red carpet is rolled out, and John Phillips Sousa Ban has a tape recording that he plays, and they march out with the man behind him who's their trainer. And they stay there until five o'clock. And then five o'clock it is in reverse. Nice. And they exit and they go up. They've had the honor of being on the Tonight Show with I believe Johnny Carson. Okay. But they're quite famous. You'll have to look up the Peabody Ducks all you listeners out there. And you'll also find that Duck is not listed on any menu at the Peabody Hotel. That's

Drew (31:37):
Good. Yes. Not even gra, you don't want him to feel bad. No. You don't want him to be upset.

Jimmy (31:42):
Could be a cousin or a distant relative.

Drew (31:44):
Oh, this is a beautiful hotel. A absolutely amazing. You see it from the outside, and I mean, it has that kind of art Deco time period look to it. But then you come inside and it really is just an amazing real

Jimmy (31:59):
Old world. And then it, it's easy to go back in time in buildings like this and to try to imagine what things were, and like I said, it, the saying is the Delta begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel. And so happy Hour in the Peabody lobby is very happy indeed, with the player piano and the ducks in there and splashing around. Nice. It's always a good time.

Drew (32:24):
So what I knew of Memphis before I came here to learn a little bit more, I learned from a couple of sources, I've been to Graceland,

Jimmy (32:37):
Everyone needs to go in their lifetime. You cannot drive if we're going to

Drew (32:40):
Graceland, bend to Graceland. I got to tell you, the best way to do this is I drove up from South Carolina the first time I came, and I went to Tupelo, and I went to his birthplace, and I went to the museum there, and I came to Graceland the same day and finished out my day at The Eternal Flame. Yes. And I have to tell you, I'm, I'm not a huge Elvis fan, but I felt myself getting Misty when I got to that eternal flame at the end. So I know my experience with Memphis is part of that. Another part of it is the movie, the Firm with Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise. Oh. Because that took place here. And then the other is the song Walking in Memphis, ma Cohen. So every time I'm walking down the street and I see Union Avenue, or I see Beale Street, that song's just in my head. So you were working for the street at that time when that song was released, did you see an increase in traffic? Did that kind of spur some more interest for the area? And how did Beale Street kind of disappear and then come back?

Jimmy (33:54):
Well, yeah, bill Street. Bill Street had, as we said, had its heyday in the forties, fifties, and the sixties. And doctor, it really probably started having a decline. Dr. King started one of the big marches and it came down Bill Street, and there was some rioting. And I would imagine if you took articles and you traced back and you looked at exactly when things started to shut down and you saw it, I would imagine it's going to be in the late sixties. And then we had this great who at Urban Renewal Project going on in America. And it was just like, well, okay, well, we'll just get rid of those bad places perceived to be bad places. And so there absolutely was a eight to 10 foot chainlink fence all around Bill Street. And it was locked up. There were no businesses. There was one business, Mr.

(34:54):
Schwabs, Aw Schwabs, it's still there. And they had put the fence to where he could still do his business. And he had opened up in the 18 hundreds, a Jewish vendor there. But it literally had, it was locked with chainlink fences because it was blight, considered blight. And we had a thing in the seventies called the Memphis Jobs Conference, where the governor and the state of Tennessee said, I will give you money for worthy projects in your downtown area, but you've got to figure out what those projects are going to be. And from that came a lot of the revitalization of downtown Memphis, the Orphan Theater, which is our big theater here. The renovation of that came from the jobs conference as did a lot for Bee Street. And the city decided that they would renovate it and let a private developer do it. And John Elkington is the one who decided to do it and devoted his life to it.

(35:51):
Because as you can imagine, it is not an easy task to recreate. First off, you can never, and John will tell you this, you can never recreate what it was, but you can recreate what it feels and the feeling that you get from being there. So we can never create the Club Handy or Peewee Saloon. But the feeling that the patrons got then was it was a great fun place to go, and we loved it there. And it was our place. We can recreate that and the current. So it's a little frustrating. Even in 1984 and five, when I was down here as assistant marketing director ball, there was so much blues, so much blues, and it really kind of frustrates me. But it is what it is. You go there now, it's so much rock and roll, so much rock and roll. It's harder and harder to find from the blues.

(36:45):
So the street was repaved, the old street was cleared out in new pavements. Pavers were put in the original street was, and trying to be as authentic to being original music and not music with headliners coming on a circuit to play. But local musicians, which was exactly what Bill Street was for, the African American community, was the local musicians. And that really caught on probably one of the biggest pluses. Bill Street is only, I think they're the third now, only the third historic district in the country where you can purchase a drink and walk outside on the street within the district. Yeah. Open openly with your drink.

Drew (37:37):
This you have in common with New Orleans and Bourbon Street.

Jimmy (37:39):
Yes, exactly. And I do believe there's one other history district somewhere that was recently within the last five years. But that was a huge thing, as you can well imagine, if you have colleges in your town and you have that ability. Yeah. Yeah. Fridays and Saturday nights are going to be happening. Yeah, absolutely. So that also was a great benefit. And of course, that was right after, and an 81, 82 83, Elvis hadn't been dead five or six, seven years. So Graceland was beginning great to become a tourist. What are we going to do with Graceland? Ironically, the city of Memphis was offered Graceland because Elvis's estate was down to less than half a million dollars. What are we going to do with it? Wow. Do you want to run it as a museum? Well, the mayor at the time was an interim because the mayor had resigned to become a judge. And the thought was, what are we going to do at the house of an old dead rock and roll man? There's a losing situation. And the city declined it.

Drew (38:40):
Oh my goodness. But

Jimmy (38:42):
We say that, but it's probably the best thing that happened to Graceland, because then it forced the estate to decide on what to do. And they got a great company out of Kansas City to come in, and Jack Soden is still there. The original man who came in Wow. Is still there. And it's become so it was bringing in the tourist, and so all the kind of cards kind of fell. So it all really worked out very well for Bill Street. Now though, it's nothing like, I mean, if WC Handy walked in there now, he wouldn't recognize the facades only for, oh, I remember the building, but he wouldn't recognize the contents or anything. But he would feel the energy and he would still feel all of that musical energy that he gets from all the musicians that are in there playing all that music.

Drew (39:36):
So it's still rock and roll down there. Oh,

Jimmy (39:38):
It's still rock and roll, unfortunately.

Drew (39:40):
No jazz clubs. Are there any jazz clubs? There

Jimmy (39:42):
Is. Yeah. There's handy halls down there. And there are some at different points in times that you, you'll have strictly all blues, BB Kings. Yeah. Has still got a lot of a great blues in there. But some of the Coyote, whatever it's called, and something Coyote, it's got a lot of rock and roll stuff. And they're all great. And they're all local. Yeah. And they're all good music. Yeah. It makes me wonder, in 10 years, what the one thing that has not necessarily gone on so well down there, and they've tried it was country. There was a bar down there at one point in time that we had that had a country, I don't know if it's just the patrons didn't get along with the other patrons on the airline. Nobody went, but it didn't last very long.

Drew (40:26):
So this is something else I've learned while I've been in Memphis, which is that Memphis, I'm from Detroit originally. And Detroit, I'm sorry. Now see, and this is a tie I'm going to make between Detroit and Memphis, is that people in Detroit have a little chip on their shoulder about Chicago. And I was told here that people in Memphis has have a little chip on their shoulder about Nashville. Nashville. So maybe the country wasn't working because of the chip on the shoulder. Well, and

Jimmy (40:59):
Also because of Cleveland. Why is the Rock and Roll Museum in Cleveland?

Drew (41:03):
What's really funny is that I was sitting there thinking just this week after reading a bit on Memphis, I said, man, I mean, I've always argued that Detroit would've been better than Cleveland for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But I mean Memphis, holy cow. I mean, we had Motown, but you had stacks and you had blues, and you, I mean, everything was here before it went up

Jimmy (41:29):
There. And as Hindsight's always better, as you look back, we do have a wonderful blues museum here down in South Main, down near the Lorraine Hotel on, and the Handy Awards are given here, the Blues Handy Awards every year given here. But you look and you think, why is it that country music, when you think Tennessee, you think country music, Nashville, Elvis, Memphis, as opposed to rock and roll Memphis or Blues Me? I think it's all in it. How it was marketed early on and how the founding fa, the City fathers at that time during that period, how they embraced it or chose not to embrace it. And I'm not so sure that that leadership at the time wanted to be known as a rock and roll city. Maybe when you're trying to get FedEx's and auto zones and international papers, you want to be known as a rock and roll city in auto.

(42:23):
But it is what we are home of the blue home of the blues and birthplace of rock and roll. And it's ironic that recently the cvb, that was the catch line for a long time. And the CVB wanted Convention and Visitors Bureau wanted to update their logo. And so you've got all these ideas from all these out of towners, these young folks who say, oh, this is what is hit, man. This is cool. This is what you need. And was insistent upon, this is the new image of Memphis. Well, they did a little survey and the CVB had wanted to do a logo that was a guitar, and it kind of was pretty basic. And it talked about the music hard of the music or something. Oh man, that's not hit. Well, guess what came back in the survey? The national survey. Yeah. They didn't want hit.

Drew (43:11):
They

Jimmy (43:11):
Love the guitar. So nice. So I think Memphis is finally to realizing music is their soul. Yeah. Music is the heart here.

Drew (43:21):
Well, I think maybe that's where the reason why you don't want to identify with just rock and roll is because you also have Blues. Blues, and you have r and b.

Jimmy (43:32):
Well, you also have black spiritual Reverend Herbert Brewster who wrote the Majo, tremendous number amount of hymns that are in hymns right now. Yeah. So we've got Aretha Franklin was born here for, didn't stay here long, but she's born here. Went to Detroit. Went to Detroit. That's right. Went to Detroit.

Drew (43:49):
She got competition here. She got way

Jimmy (43:51):
Leg went to Detroit. Yeah. But yeah, I think that, yeah, it is. And so maybe it's just music in general, but it's interesting. Music is a great unifier. And you don't often find music that someone doesn't have a liquor's tail to go along with the music tale. Yeah. They always have a, well, I remember sitting in this joint or this bar or this, whatever, but music reminds you of things. And you talk about going to Graceland, you don't have to be an Elvis fan, but when you walk in there, it's very humble. The house is very humble, a lot of gold, but it's very humble. But then you go and you see the massive numbers of gold records. Oh yeah. You see what happens when you see video of the crowds and all, you realize he was a force of nature. Yeah. Yeah. He was in a time when we didn't know that there were, we're used to. Now, lady Diana's, Megan Markle we're used to super, we're all this media stuff that was not, he was the first of that kind. And he really, people were just drawn to him and there was a thirst for it. That's what created, so you have to give him his kudos for a wow, what a force he was. And you are moved when you go there.

Drew (45:14):
You really, yeah. It's interesting because the first thing you do when you walk up to the house and then you walk in the front doors, you go, this is it. This is, yeah. So small mean you see a picture of it and you think it's a mansion. Yes. But when you walk up to it, it's like you're walking into anybody old.

Jimmy (45:31):
And we talk about how the rack time and with the WC handy and that music was a release for a certain demographic. And it was their release, I think the 1950s with Elvis, after the years, the kids of the forties and fifties, they were itching. They were itching for a change. And that was their release. So I say that to say, you go out there now and they'll be six year olds. They clearly were not alive, and they're Elvis fans. So his music just struck a chord. And it's just timeless. It's timeless. But Memphis is a great place. Smooth is smooth. Sort of like that blue, that joint bourbon, that blue note has, it's smooth as smooth. We love our blues here. We love our blues. Blues brews, and barbecues. So

Drew (46:25):
Where is the barbecue place that you had? Oh, wet or dry to

Jimmy (46:28):
Go wet or dry? You like 'em wet or you 'em dry? You like the ribs?

Drew (46:31):
I actually 'em wet actually. Yeah. Really?

Jimmy (46:34):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I still would say then go to the Rendezvous right across the street from the Peabody in an alley. Yeah. Great. Ribs Smoke day overnight within, they take the brine from the pickle juice to help brine 'em and all. And then we've got some others. Cor Keys is another good one for good wet. But then you've got interstate, you've got the small mom and pop ones that have been around for 40 and 50 years. Yeah. So lemme tell you that pit, it's just as delicious because all that crus on that pit, and it is just roasting that barbecue wonderfully.

Drew (47:09):
So you put me on the spot when you asked me that question, we better drop. It's funny. Yeah, because it's funny growing up in North Carolina and we got the vinegar base bar vinegar

Jimmy (47:18):
Based barbecue sauce, and we're sweet Here we have a more sweet

Drew (47:21):
Taste, which I like the KC style. Yes. So I'm sure I'll fit right. Oh,

Jimmy (47:25):
KC style. Kcs more beef. Kansas City's more.

Drew (47:30):
Well, I always seem to order pork when I'm there. Okay. Well

Jimmy (47:32):
There's a lot of beef up there that they're wannabes.

Drew (47:35):
Okay, I hear you. I hear you. But yeah, I remember that the first time I had barbecue, I had it wet. And so I always looked for it wet. But in South Carolina where I live now, the mustard stuff is down south. We don't deal with that. But you have your choice in the upstate of South Carolina what you want. But they serve it dry. But the thing that I learned is that if that pork is cooked just right, it's not really dry.

Jimmy (48:08):
No, it's not at

Drew (48:09):
All. It's, it's moist. Yeah, it is.

Jimmy (48:11):
It's about the outside juicy. Yeah, it's about the outside. It's just

Drew (48:13):
That you get to put on as much sauce as you want to. Yeah. So I actually pre prefer it that way. But if I had dry pork, yeah. I would rather them go ahead and just marinate it in the

Jimmy (48:24):
Yeah. Well what I do is I like to get, because you're right, and all of the places that we, and I can't tell you if a place in Memphis that has bad barbecue, it's all going to fall off the bone. Yeah. It's done so well. But what my preference is, is to get them dry, not slathered. And then I can put a little bit of sauce as I begin to eat them. But when you order wet ribs around here, just slathered. I mean, get out the cherry cloth towel. You're going to have it everywhere. You're going to lean, know all over your face and everywhere else. Yeah. So yeah, it's a good beer and a good bourbon or a good scotch or

Drew (48:59):
Exactly.

Jimmy (49:01):
Barbecue goes with anything. Yeah.

Drew (49:03):
Well, I appreciate your time today, Jimmy. This is great. I learned a lot about come

Jimmy (49:07):
Back, come back and we'll have to visit some of the job joint

Drew (49:10):
And Turkey. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Now I got to figure out what different types of whiskeys they were drinking here. And

Jimmy (49:16):
Well, you know, can imagine, I, I'd imagine as I thought about your visit here, there were a lot of stills in Shelby County and that's, but stills aren't aged. Right. Whiskey, they're not aged at all. But I could imagine that the climate changes humidity and all probably had a good deal of reason why parts of this region. We've got so many craft, craft ones, people now who are doing bourbons and doing all, it's because it's kind of a neat aging process.

Drew (49:48):
You get good temperature swings here

Jimmy (49:50):
And those, which is so

Drew (49:51):
Important. Those make a big difference. And part of the reason why whiskey's so popular in the middle of Kentucky and Tennessee is because of the limestone

Jimmy (50:01):
Shelf. Yes. The shelf. Yes,

Drew (50:02):
Exactly. And so that just is conducive to, you don't have to do anything with your water, your water's ready to go because it's already had all the iron taken out of

Jimmy (50:11):
It. And we've got the artesian wells here with the artesian water. So I think a lot of the new people are, that helps playing around with the artesian whale water.

Drew (50:18):
Yeah. As well. Louisville has some of the best water around from their aquifer under the city. So I if the water's already good. Yeah, that's helpful. Climate is got the nice extremes that help it go in and out of the barrel to have better effect on maturation. So that's a big reason you don't have to wait 16 years for it to age for to age they do in Scotland because their weather doesn't change. Doesn't change at all. That's right. Yeah. It's just miserable. Yeah. Although when I went, I was there, I was there for two weeks, my first trip to Scotland, and it was sunny every day. Oh wow. Good for you. And somebody told me towards the end of it, they said, yeah, this isn't normal. Not at all. All right. But my pictures were great. Yeah. Everywhere. This is your face, your Facebook and Instagram is a major hit.

(51:15):
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, let's go get a drink. That sounds good to me. All right, thanks. Well, thanks to Jimmy for sharing some fun stories of whiskey and history in Memphis. And if you want to see my photos from my trips to Memphis, then all you have to do is go to instagram.com/whiskey lore or facebook.com/whiskey lore and follow me there. Also, if you want to get a copy of my book, grab show notes. So get some Whiskey lore swag. You can just head to whiskey lore.com. I'm your host, drew Hamish. And until next time, cheers. And SL JVA Whiskey Lores a production of Travel Fuel's Life, L L C.