Wow, what a trip! On Friday, Tut and I left his house at 7:00 in the morning. We headed to Johnny's house to pick him up. He lives south of Valley Springs. Our itinerary was Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee.
“Memphis, home of the blues, birthplace of Rock & Roll.” That is the city's slogan. Our first stop in Memphis was the Gibson factory. Gibson has 3 factories. One in Memphis, Tennessee; one in Nashville, Tennessee; and one in Montana. Seeing the Gibson plant was pretty interesting, seeing how the Les Pauls and ES-335s were made. They make everything at Gibson hand made. There are no production lines at Gibson. It helps keep the idea of quality made. 4 out of every 100 guitars do end up getting “axed” though, but that's not too bad. They destroy the ones that don't make it to Gibson standards because Gibson doesn't sell 2nd quality instruments.
After we left Gibson, we drove to 926 E. McLemore, off of McLemore and College. Does anyone know what stood here once in music history? A show of hands? Soulsville, USA once was here. Yes, folks. Stax Records. Stax Records was owned by Jim STewart and Estelle AXton. Have you figured out where the name STAX Records came from yet? It had to be torn down though back in the late 1990s, and when they rebuilt it, it became a museum. Within this 10 mile radius of the city lived several really well known musicians in the 1960s and they all recorded there. All of them being white and black proving that music knows no colors. Music knows no race. That really hit me hard! It really made me teary eyed. Another thing that touched me was the control room and studio part of the museum. Where the studio part of the museum is at is the same exact spot where the original studio stood. This is where Booker T. & the MGs (Memphis Group), Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Sam Cooke, among others have all recorded. Everything in the studio area was rebuilt to look exactly like the original, except for the “burn holes in the carpet.” The control room area even had the original equipment used and even the original master tapes. They were saved after rioting broke out in 1968 when Martin Luther King was assassinated outside his hotel room at Lorraine Motel which is also in Memphis. It is now known as the Civil Rights Museum.
It is really very sad what happens to places because of what people can do. After Martin Luther King was killed, rioting broke out in every major city in America, including Memphis and the cities never really did recover. It really made black folks hate white folks, which made Stax fall under because at Stax white and black people got along together well, and that didn't happen anymore after King's assassination. And when Otis Redding was killed at the young age of 26, a year shy to be in the 27 club*, around the same time, the company just folded. Isaac Hayes and a few other soul kats tried to keep it going, but because of the assassination in 1968, Stax never really returned to its old ways. After a few years of struggling, the company folded. In 1974 the building got boarded up, and over the years it started getting run down. It had stayed that way for 30 years. In the late 1990s, the city of Memphis realized how historical the building was and tried to remodel and renovate it without much success so they tore it down and rebuilt it in the original location. If King wasn't shot, Stax would still be going strong today. All of America's ghettos probably wouldn't be as run down as they are now, also.
On Saturday, we went to Daniel Brom's repair shop in Fairview, Tennessee. Fairview happens to be a suburb of music city. Nashville, Tennessee. He is supposed to be the greatest guitar luthier ever. It was really awesome to see what he does with restoring guitars to get them to the original look. After spending 2 hours at his shop, we went to downtown Nashville where Gruhn Guitars is located. Gruhn Guitars is the most famous vintage guitar shop in the country, if not the world. It now sits where a place called Buckley Records once was. George Gruhn used to have his business 2 stores up before his business boomed in the early 1990s. Tut apparently has 30 or so guitars on consignment there, 10 or so on the lower level that everyone can see and 15 or so on the 2nd level. The 2nd level is where “special clientele” gets to go shop. Vince Gill was on the 2nd floor a couple months ago filming something for New Years on PBS. He picked up one of Tut's guitars and started playing it and said he really liked this guitar and that he was too poor so maybe Amy (his wife) can get it for him. After that film was shown on PBS, there was so much interest in that guitar that Tut thought it finally was going to sell, but it never did.
