Images from Beale Street (1939-1956)
Images from Beale Street (1939-1956)
Related Lessons
lesson:
The Memphis Sound and Racial Integration
How has Memphis music culture provided one example of art’s capacity to challenge the racial boundaries that have so often structured American life?
Related People
people:
B.B. King
(1925 – 2015) The combination of B.B. King’s gut wrenching vocals and his distinctive guitar style — marked by stinging vibrato, deft phrasing and fluid string bending — has made him one on the most recognizable, successful and influential Blues performers of all time. King was born Riley B. King on a cotton plantation in the Mississippi Delta, where his father abandoned the family when King was 4. Raised mostly by his grandmother, he worked the cotton fields and sang gospel by day, and played blues guitar on street corners for dimes by night. In 1947, King hitchhiked north to the thriving music scene of...
people:
Booker T. and the MGs
Booker T. and the MGs were the house band at Stax Records in Memphis, Tenn., and their lean, tough grooves are an integral part of the Stax sound. For years, the group — Booker T. Washington on Hammond organ, Donald "Duck" Dunn on bass, Steve Cropper on guitar and Al Jackson on drums — backed almost every artist to record at the Stax studio, including Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Rufus & Carla Thomas, and Sam & Dave. The band also found time to record instrumentals under their own name, producing hits including "Green Onions," "Time Is Tight" and "Hang 'em High." At the time...
people:
Elvis Presley
(1935 – 1977) Hailed as the “King of Rock and Roll," Elvis Presley is one of the most important cultural icons of the 20th century and is universally credited with breaking Roll and Roll music into the mainstream. Born in Tupelo, Miss., in 1935 and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, Elvis was a product of the musical culture of the American South — from the Gospel he heard in church, the Country music he heard on the radio to the black Blues and R&B he heard on Beale Street as a Memphis teenager, Elvis absorbed it all. He began his singing career with...