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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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PRESTON SHANNON AND THE B.B. KING ALL-STAR ORCHESTRA
B.B. King’s Blues Club, Memphis, Tennessee,
September 22nd 2006 |
| It’s
true. The Mississippi Delta is shining like a National
Steel guitar as we make our way north up Highway
61 to Memphis, and inexorably, Graceland. |
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Simply
put – if you are the sort of person that’s
sad enough to have a list of “Twenty things
to do before you die” then this should be
in the top ten (and I don’t even care much
for Elvis, but
this is my second engrossing and thought provoking
visit). And as it happened we arrived just after
Serge and a party of his French Elvis-loving chums.
Memphis itself seems to ooze music history at every
street corner – and possibly the best is the
home of Sam Phillips’ Memphis Recording Services,
aka the still functioning (albeit after some years
of dereliction) Sun
Studios. A wonderfully tacky tour ends in that
tiny studio where rock and roll history was made,
and if you’re patient enough to wait for the
other visitors to leave then a spine-tingling moment
of communion with the Gods of rock and roll is guaranteed.
Almost worth, as they say, the price of the ticket. |
| Actually
after a few days in Memphis we’re museumed
out. The excellent Stax
Museum of American Soul Music, a new complex
on the site of the original Stax Studios which fell
into decay and were then demolished, after the label
went bankrupt in 1975. It tells the story of the
rise and fall of this most influential of labels,
which “was more than just a label, it was
a culture”, and which was both in terms of
artistes and management (at least until the assassination
of Dr King in 1968) one of the most successfully
integrated companies in the country – as Steve
Cropper is quoted as saying – “no colour
ever came through the door”. In addition to
the exhibits the place hosts a community-focussed
music academy and performance space. The Smithsonian-affiliated
Rock
and Soul Museum starts in the Delta cotton fields
and tries (not always successfully) to put the development
of rock and soul into a social, economic and political
context – the early galleries are really very
good, with some excellent recordings, but as is
often the case – in fact exactly as it should
be, they raise more questions than they answer.
I confess we took a rain-check on the Lorraine Motel
and the National
Civil Rights Museum – time simply didn’t
allow; and as Chef
Wendell, who cooked our supper on Thursday told
us “well you can go, but it’ll just
make you sad, and you’ll be back here saying
‘Wendell, I need a drink’”. He’s
right. I’ve been there before. But it’ll
take you more than a triple Tanqueray to get over
such a profound and lasting experience. |
| In
a sense Beale Street - where the Delta Diaspora
assimilated themselves into the urban milieu before
in many instances travelling north (taking their
music with them) - is a museum too (others would
say tourist trap). In the years following the murder
of Dr King the area was largely cleared and what
remains is surrounded by suspiciously silent yet
swanky shopping malls, sports stadiums, expensive
flats and a Gibson
guitar factory, mostly making ES Series semi-acoustics
and also the custom BB King ‘Lucille’.
Believe me it’s better than a distillery tour,
they only make 40 guitars a week (some stills make
tens of thousands of bottles); they have a truly
‘interactive’ shop (you can sample thousands
of pounds worth of guitars for as long as you like)
and you can buy things there too (I got a key ring).
|
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Brandon
Santini (Delta Highway) and Sonny Boy Williamson's
grave |
| Anyway,
if you’re from out of town Beale Street is
where you head for music. It’s on the street
during the day and at night in the numerous clubs
and bars that line both sides. And whilst some of
it sounds appalling and offers uncomfortable echoes
of New Orleans’s boozy Bourbon Street (don’t
go there Memphis!) some is pretty good. We strolled
into the Blues Hall and fell over Delta
Highway, a local four piece outfit.
Well, not quite local as outstanding vocalist and
harmonica player Brandon Santini moved to Memphis
a few years ago along with guitarist Justin Sulek,
with music on their mind. They rocked a small house,
made up largely of beer-slugging conventioneers,
with well chosen standards like Sonny Boy Williamson’s
‘Eyesight to the blind’ (did I mention
that we went to see Sonny Boy too, whom we found,
characteristically, with a bottle of gin by his
side?) and some impressive and intelligent Santini
compositions (I liked ‘Done told you once’,
‘All the water in the ocean’ and ‘Cold
as ice’). Sadly (from what I could tell) we
didn’t get their regular rhythm section so
whilst Santini and Sulek impressed the performance
as a whole was a little lame, and even with the
regular guys in place their new CD Westbound Blues
plods along a bit. But Santini is the real article
and if you’re a blues fan the CD is well worth
the $15 it cost me in the tips bucket. |
| So
on what was supposed to be the last night of this
extended review tour of the Delta (thanks Serge,
could we go Club Class next time?) – it turned
out that it wasn’t, but that’s another
story – we headed to the premier Beale Street
venue, BB King’s Blues Club for fried pickles,
Memphis wings, slabs of BB-Q ribs, Delta fried shrimp
and grilled Cajun catfish – mmmm, that’s
nice. What’s nicer is the effortlessly accomplished
B.B. King All-Star Orchestra, led (I think) by trumpeter
Curtis Pulliam, who are backing Beale Street’s
own Preston
Shannon, a guitarist cut in a mould
somewhere between B.B. King and Albert King, with
a strong Stax-style singing voice. He’s recorded
four albums of which the latest, Be with Me Tonight,
has just been released. He’s playing to a
mixed crowd of locals and tourists, and appropriately
it’s a crowd-pleasing Friday night rhythm
and blues set, with his band punching a heavyweight
rhythm. He starts with Steve Cropper and Eddie Floyd’s
‘634-5789’ and runs through tunes like
the Rolling Stones ‘Miss you’, ‘Never
make your move too soon’, a bluesy medley
of Wild Cherry’s ‘Play that funky music’
and the Commodore’s ‘Brick House’
(did I tell you this was a dancing club?), Santana’s
‘Like the ocean under the moon’, ‘Soul
Man’ and ‘Purple Rain’, interspersed
with some classic Memphis style guitar blues –
and if he was spare with his playing (preferring
to sing and play up to the audience) when he did
go for big solos he certainly didn’t disappoint
us – here’s a man who knows his way
through a Gibson. Why at one point he even tried
to eat it! And like almost everyone else he was
perfectly charming to talk to between sets and happily
signed all the CDs I could buy (“To Kate,
welcome to Memphis”). |
|
B.B.
King All-Star Orchestra |
|
Yes it’s a soulful place right enough. And
you don’t have to scratch too hard to find
the blues too. It’s an easy going place, well
worth a few days of anyone’s time. Every one’s
pretty friendly, it’s not too hot; why, we
even had ducks strolling through our hotel foyer.
About the only thing we didn’t like were the
tamales,
which somehow didn’t quite match up to the
ones we ate in Clarksdale, they were red hot. Why
I’m sure even the King himself might have
liked one, spread with peanut butter and dipped
in jelly. Mmmmmm. - Nick Morgan (photographs
by Kate) |
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the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
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