There was a concert of local Memphis rap and R & B in Handy Park last night, and even though I felt $10 was a little too much to pay given the lack of familiar names on the bill, there was some talent represented. Beale Street, of course, was extremely crowded because of the holiday weekend.
More scenes from the Law and Order weekend, July 2, 2011
Kicking it with old friends and making new ones at the July Law and Order event. Presided over by a gavel-wielding “judge” to maintain order, provocative questions are asked as “ice-breakers” to enable people to know about others and themselves. It sounds serious, but it’s really fun.
Johnny G’s Creole Kitchen is a new restaurant on Beale that opened this spring. I haven’t tried it yet, although my best friend Tune says it’s good. They certainly have a cool sign!
Back in the summer of 1991, when I was hanging out with a lot of fellow UT-Martin students who lived at Gainsville just outside of Mason, a local festival gave me the excuse to be down on the Lower End taking pictures. I had almost forgotten that I had them. I even got a picture of the legendary Club Tay-May, which burned to the ground not long after.
UPDATED: Tay-May was the big club in Mason, and had existed in several different locations, the last one being the one pictured here. Since it could hold hundreds, it routinely featured artists like Johnnie Taylor and Little Milton, and was rumored to be the place where Rufus Thomas invented the Funky Chicken! I will always be sad that I never went inside it.
Mason, Tennessee, Front Street, The Lower End, Summer 1991.
This was the summer that I was spending a lot of time in and around Mason and Gainesville, Tennessee. I had gotten some black and white film, and was having fun with my camera, and I was always fascinated by the “cafes” in Mason, as juke joints were called in those days. Of course, I had no idea back then that most of these buildings would be torn down and destroyed, so the pictures are maybe a little more important now than I had imagined.
