Beale Street is one of the most storied streets in African-American history and folklore, but its sibling across the river, West Memphis’s Eighth Street has been largely forgotten. The old song said “If Beale Street Could Talk,” but South Eighth maintains its many secrets in stark silence, its rich blues history forgotten.
It is hard to determine exactly, but it almost seems as if early West Memphis was a sundown town, a community in which Black people were not desired as residents, and not welcome. The existence of an all-Black community called Edmondson to the west would seem to further this, as does an article during the 1930s that suggested that almost all West Memphis residents were “Ango-Saxon.” That changed during the economic boom fueled by World War II, and the first discussions of Blacks partying in a string of cafes and jukes on South Eighth appeared in the Commercial Appeal in 1942.
Vice crackdowns in Memphis, including on Beale Street, led gamblers, musicians and numbers runners to move their activities across the bridge into Arkansas, and South Eighth Street is largely where they went. Here was the Streamline Cafe, mentioned by Sonny Boy Williamson II in a song lyric, and the Little Brown Jug, the Be-Bop Hall owned by Andrew Stratton Bass, the unofficial mayor of Eighth Street, and Lewis Jones’s Jones Hotel. Musicians like Sonny Boy Williamson II, Willie Love, B. B. King, Howlin’ Wolf, Junior Parker, Coy “Hot Shot” Love, Willie Nix and James Cotton frequented the area. White kids could go hear the best Memphis-area Black musicians nearby at roadhouses like the Plantation Inn, and the musicians also frequented a posh gambling casino known as the Blackfish Lake Club some fifteen miles to the west toward Forrest City.
And if Memphis was known for WDIA, the first all-Black radio station in America, West Memphis had KWEM, which, if not all-Black, still allowed blues musicians fifteen and thirty minute segments on the air. It was at this West Memphis station that a young Jim Dickinson saw and heard Howlin’ Wolf playing in the studio while on a visit with his father.
But by the early 1970s, Eighth Street had fallen on hard times. The Federal conviction of Andrew Bass for crossing state lines in a gambling operation put an end to gambling on the street, and integration had destroyed the reason for the Black hotels and rooming houses in the area. Without gambling, the clubs did not generate enough money to stay open, and much of the street ended up belonging to a homeless mission nearby on Broadway.
However, for the last few years, West Memphis has been on an upswing. The city has a new dynamic mayor, Marco McClendon, and much of the city’s renaissance is tied to its blues culture and legacy. And the opening of CJ’s Blues Club and Sports Bar at 113 South Eighth Street is the beginning of what is hoped will be a renaissance for this legendary Black business district. Its owner can point across the street to the barber shop where he shined shoes as a kid, and can name every old juke and where it was located. Historically, the building where he is open was the Lucille Perry Cafe.
CJ’s is not a big place, but it has plenty of good food, a big-screen TV behind the bar for ball games, and a stage for live music. On opening night, October 4, the band was Memphis bluesman Big Don Valentine and his All-Stars, and a crowd of more than a hundred attended. It was a great beginning for the street’s next story.