Rhythm in the air

Yesterday morning, after sleeping nine hours, I begrudgingly got out of bed and then immediately perked up, knowing I would be arriving in Murfreesboro, TN to visit a friend from the University of Rochester. While fueling up at breakfast before heading on the road, my favorite AR memory occurred: the highlight of Arkansas was listening to a little kid at the hotel eating his breakfast and talking about "a donkey landed on its ass!" He was promptly shushed by his mother, but both of us were grinning ear to ear.

Neon sign in the museum

There's been a great natural progression in my Southern travels with two major themes reoccurring: a history of prejudice and the evolution of music. En route to Murfreesboro, I stopped at the Rock n Soul Museum where I learned about the evolution of gospel music and work songs to soul and rock and roll. The exhibits detailed the cooperation of black and white musicians, emphasizing their shared rural, sharecropping background, forming the cultural basis for such wonderful music, and the emergence of a generation yearning for music that differed from their parents'. The most impressive aspect of the museum itself was the audio tour with awesome sound clips from the all black radio station, WDIA, the all female station, WHER, and, of course, the tunes themselves (check out the links to selections from songs played at the museum listed below).


Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to visit the National Civil Rights Museum, constructed around the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. I will certainly try to visit that museum if I'm ever back in Memphis, but I felt that I got a holistic vision of Memphis, its history, and a view of the racial tension that occurred there through the Rock n Soul Museum.

The worst part about my drive to Murfreesboro was a sudden wall of rain I encountered 40 miles from Nashville. It was the hardest rain I've ever driven through and the most stressful part of driving thus far. I pulled off the highway at the next available exit, but, let me tell you, that was a tense two miles from when the rain started. Thank God for hazard lights, adrenaline, and a Shell gas station. Oh yeah.... it doesn't help that every ten miles, the state of Tennessee likes to remind you of how many people have been killed in roadside fatalities (542 yesterday; 544 as of today, in case you were wondering).


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Listen along:
Soul Man - Sam and Dave
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised - Gil Scot Heron
Much Later - Ike Turner
Precious Lord, Take My Hand - Ben Branch and the Operation Breadbasket Orchestra and Choir
That's Alright Mama - Elvis
And for the rain... Wind and Rain - Crooked Still