With the Beale Street neighborhood being torn down in the name of urban renewal, most of the city’s major artists living elsewhere, and Chicago firmly established as the center of the blues, Memphis was hardly the blues capital it had been only a decade earlier. However, it was the heart of soul music, home throughout the decade to many of the genre’s most prolific and important musicians, producers, and labels.

Second only to Motown in national prominence during the heyday of 1960s soul, the Stax/Volt studio and label family had its beginnings as the Satellite label in the late 1950s. Rufus Thomas, no longer singing in a blues style, brought this fledgling Memphis label its first major hit, “Cause I Love You,” a duet with his daughter Carla.

By the mid-1960s, Stax was producing a stunning run of hits for artists such as Otis Redding and Sam and Dave, the vast majority of which featured backing from the Stax house band, Booker T. and the MGs, and the Memphis Horns. That unit backed Albert King, a Mississippi-born bluesman who had gained success in St. Louis, on a series of singles during 1966 and 1967. The results were a unique fusion of Memphis soul and stinging electric blues, bringing King extensive crossover success with the rock audience and an enduring place as one of the most revered guitarists among players of pure blues, as well as those seeking to meld blues and rock, including Eric Clapton (who, while in Cream, was prone to copying King’s solos note for note), Jimi Hendrix, and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

The blend of soul and blues was also highly influential among blues musicians, offering a new direction that many began to explore, including former Sun artist Little Milton, who recorded for Stax in the early 1970s and continues to be play and record “soul blues.”

Indeed, it is the soul blues approach that dominates Memphis today, as befitting the slow rebirth of the Beale Street district as a major tourist destination. Like the jug bands of nearly a century ago, the musicians playing the bars and clubs of the area are frequently playing to draw and keep a paying crowd. In the Memphis tradition established decades ago by B.B. King and his fellow Beale Streeters, the smoother, electric sound and line-up holds sway, and the Beale Street bands are as likely to draw their set from the blues and R&B as they are from soul and even hip-hop.

Purveyors of the older sounds remain, however, including acoustic guitarist Robert “Wolfman” Belfour, and recent Memphis transplant Alvin Youngblood Hart, who grafts old traditions on new forms. Visiting musicians from around the world also explore and sustain the Memphis blues tradition at annual events such as the BluesFirst Convention and International Blues Challenge (January's “Blues Event of the Month"), the W.C. Handy Awards weekend, held in May, and the Memphis Music and Heritage Festival, held each August.

Songs

Albert King: “Crosscut Saw”
Recorded November, 1966, Stax Studio, Memphis.
Backed by the incomparable Booker T & the MGs, and the Memphis Horns, King’s playing and singing remain firmly rooted in the blues, with the song itself loosely derived from a country blues standard.

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Will Roy Sanders: “Green’s Lounge Shuffle”
Recorded live 1997, Memphis.
With his band the Fieldstones, Will Roy Sanders played weekly sets at Green’s Lounge, a Memphis bar. Green’s Lounge has since burned down, but the raw, loose style played by Sanders and the Fieldstones is common throughout the weekend juke joints of the Delta.

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