“Memphis” blasted rhythm and blues onto the streets of West Palm Beach. The interracial love affair was a reminder of how some laws should never have been written at all. The early 1950’s was a dangerous time in Memphis and other southern USA cities for black people. My boyfriend and I are of the age where we remember the struggles as they were happening. The show focused on the pivotal time when the world began to respond to the beats and movement of black music. This morphed into early Rock ‘n Roll.
Although the songs in Memphis weren’t catchy tunes that I could recall later, they fit well into the show. The performers were outstanding. Their gutsy sounds from the black singers and the one white guy reached the Loge where I sat. They had power in their voices. They had conviction. They were believable.
One of the lines from the show made me giggle: it was where someone said that to listen to good music – good black music – all you had to do was show up in church. It was there and it was for free. It made me laugh because in 1973, I did just that. I joined a Black Baptist Pentecostal church in Jamaica, NY. It had the “Holy Rollers” and about 8 white faces in a mass of maybe 900 black faces. We “whites” were the Jewish and Sicilian Italian kids that loved live rousing gospel music. “Memphis” gave a taste of what we lived through with the choral robe fabrics flowing higher with each key rise. The Pastor Caesar, bless his shining face, roared “This is a SINGING church”… and so they were . Even now, 43 years later, I still blast old gospel music especially when I’m particularly depressed. The music worship is enough to break that darkness spell.
Memphis was loud. For me and my date, it was a blessing because we both are going hard of hearing. Coming out to the inside building leveled parking lot, we got lost. We were the two white old persons slowly moving around the inclines trying to hear where the beep came from. First it was to our left and then our right and then not our right but to our left again. The garage had an echo…we ranged from level to level and back. I knew we were on the 2nd but it didn’t matter to my boyfriend who wasn’t sure I marked the floor correctly. Then I knew what happened: we parked on the corner of the level above us but not quite the 3rd floor. As we started walking (slowly) to that end of the parking lot, another old woman got out of her car being irate. She said to me as if it was my fault, “And what am I supposed to do about this flat tire?” My boyfriend suggested she call AAA. It made sense. But she glared at me saying, “That means I have to wait all night.” I then suggested she go out to see the crossing guard at the exit on the street…which was an old Bronx way of telling her to go play in traffic.
My blog guru suggested something even funnier to me. He said, “You got so lost you found someone else’s problem.”