Beale Street
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Beale Street is a street in Memphis, Tennessee and a significant location in African-American history and the history of the blues. Today, the blues clubs and restaurants that line Beale Street are major tourist attractions in Memphis. Festivals and outdoor concerts periodically bring large crowds to the street and its surrounding areas.
Beale Street was created in 1841, to create an alternate road perpendicular to Front Street (then known as Main Street). The original name of the street was Beale Avenue, which was named after a soldier from the Mexican-American War. It primarily housed shops of trade merchants, who traded goods with ships along the Mississippi River. In the 1860s, many black traveling musicians began performing on Beale. The first of these to call Beale Street home were the Young Men's Brass Band, who were formed by Sam Thomas in 1867. In the next 15 years, Beale Street quickly became a black mecca, bringing in African-Americans from throughout the South.
In 1890, Beale Street underwent renovation with the addition of the Grand Opera House, later known as the Orpheum. By 1899, Beale Street caught the eye of Robert Church, the first black millionaire from the south. Soon he paid the city to create Church Park at the corner of 4th and Beale: a recreational and cultural center, where blues musicians could gather. Some of the famous speakers in the Church Park Auditorium were Woodrow Wilson, Booker T. Washington, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In the early 1900s, Beale Street was filled with clubs, restaurants and shops, many of them owned by African-Americans. In 1889 NAACP co-founder Ida B. Wells was a co-owner and editor of a of an anti-segregationist paper called Free Speech based on Beale. Beale Street Baptist Church, Tennessee's oldest surviving African American Church edifice built in 1864, was also important in the early civil rights movement in Memphis.
In 1938 Lewis O. Swingler, editor of the Memphis World Newspaper, a Negro newspaper, in an effort to increase circulation, conceived the idea of a "Mayor of Beale St.", having readers vote for the person of their choice. Matthew Thornton, Sr., well known community leader, active in political, civic and social affairs and one of the charter members of the Memphis Branch of the NAACP, won the contest against nine opponents and received 12,000 of the 33,000 votes cast. Mr. Thornton was the original "Mayor of Beale St." an honorary position that he retained until he passed away in 1963 at the age of 90.
In 1905 Mayor Thornton was looking for a music teacher for his Knights of Pythias Band, and called Tuskeegee Institute to talk to his friend, Booker T. Washington who recommended a trumpet player in Clarksdale, Mississippi named W.C. Handy. Mayor Thornton contacted Mr. Handy and Memphis became the home of the famous musician who created the "Blues on Beale Street" in Pee Wee's. Mayor Thornton and his three sons also played in Handy's band.
In 1909, W.C. Handy wrote "Mr. Crump" as a campaign song for political machine leader E. H. Crump. The song was later renamed "Memphis Blues". Handy also wrote a song called "Beale Street Blues" in 1916 which influenced the change of the street's name from Beale Avenue to Beale Street. From the 1920s to the 1940s, Louis Armstrong, Muddy Waters, Albert King, Memphis Minnie, B.B. King, Rufus Thomas, Rosco Gordon and other blues and jazz legends played on Beale Street and helped develop the style known as Memphis Blues.
In the 1960s, Beale became run down and many stores closed, although on May 23, 1966 the section of the street from Main to 4th was declared a National Historic Landmark [1]. On December 15, 1977, Beale Street was officially declared as the "Home of the Blues" by an act of Congress. Despite this national recognition of its historic significance, it was not until the the 1980s that Beale received attention from local lawmakers which led to an economic revitalization, with many new clubs and attractions opening. The street is now home to a chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. The late 1980's saw the arrival of James Govan, a regular performer at the Rum Boogie Cafe. Since 1994 he has been performing alongside the Boogie Blues Brothers at the cafe.
During the first weekend of May (sometimes including late April), the Beale Street Music Festival brings major music acts from a variety of musical genres to Tom Lee Park at the end of Beale Street on the Mississippi River. The festival is the kickoff event of a month of festivities citywide known as Memphis in May.
[edit] Attractions
- Beale Street Visitors Center (200 Beale)
- Beale Street Corporate Offices (202, 203 Beale)
- Hard Rock Cafe (315 Beale)
- Silky O Sullivan’s (183 Beale)
- Rum Boogie Cafe (182 Beale)
- Alfred's On Beale (197 Beale)
- B. B. Kings Blues Club (143 Beale)
- New Daisy Theater (330 Beale)
- Pat O'Briens (310 Beale)
- Tater Red’s (153 Beale)
- Wet Willies (209 Beale)
- A. Schwab's (163 Beale St)
- Mr. Handy’s Blues Hall
- Beale St. Tap Room (168 Beale)
- People’s Billiard Club (323 Beale)
- Beale Street Tattoo (333 Beale)
- Eel Etc. Fashions (333 Beale)
- Performa Entertainment Real Estate
- The Black Diamond
- The Pig (167 Beale)
- Blues City Cafe & Band Box (138-142 Beale)
- Psychics of Beale Street (154 Beale)
- Club 152 (152 Beale)
- Dyer’s Famous Hamburgers (205 Beale)
- Strange Cargo (172 Beale)
- King’s Palace Cafe (162 Beale)
- Memphis Music (149 Beale)
- Alley Cats (156 Beale)
- Willis Gallery (156 Beale)
- Memphis Rock N Soul Museum (191 Beale)
- Blues Hall Coffee Shop
- Coyote Ugly (326 Beale)
[edit] Trivia
- The body of singer/songwriter Jeff Buckley was found at the foot of Beale Street after he drowned in a nearby tributary.
- Clutch, a rock band from Maryland, has an album titled From Beale Street to Oblivion and a song, The Devil & Me, contains a reference to Beale Street.(It is a cd that every music fan should be required to own/embrace and enjoy)
- The song Walking in Memphis by Mark Cohn contains the line "walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale," in a reference to Beale Street.
