Praise GOD and some record companies ...

Sunday - the day to praise the lord. That's the reason why we put on our best clothes and we are almost looking serious, isn't it (OK, I hear some voices crying that a shave would make sense ... but girls: WE are on holidays, isn't it?). 

And what did we do first? We went to church - to be precisely to the Full Gospel Tabernacle Chruch where Bishop Al Green was celebrating one of his routine services .... simply breathtaking. When you come from a roman-catholic experience such a gospel service is somehow strange, interesting and most of all entertaining. I never heard in a church people so often crying Amen and applauding to the music, the words of the bishop. It was more a party for God and Jesus where everyone was dancing (they have also employed staff with fans and tissues to cool down the exhausted dancing -mainly- women) and in the middle a very charismatic Al Green who is pushing his crowd forward. If you remember the church scene of the Blues Brothers film - with  James Brown as priest - reality is somehow similar :-)

The most interesting thing on this 'show' is Al Green. I do not know if you remember that name but Al was in the 70's one of the best selling soul singers in the world (I read somewhere that he is still the 10th best musician in the USA (his hit everyone knows is 'Let's stay together'). In 1976 he decided to run a church and this is now for more than 30 years his profession. Beside that he still releases CDs and performs on stages. But today the church was his stage! The foto in the middle shows Al Green - unfortunately the quality is not that good (to shoot photos in a church is not really allowed ... but I didn't want to hide this photo).

After these two hours of Gospel music experience my heart burns for Soul. You know that soul is a further developed mixture of Country & Gospel and here in Memphis we have THE record label who is - beside Motown - the company who developed most of the Soul stars in the world: STAX records. A well organized and informative small museum with a fine shop - at least I found a missing Isaac Hayes CD there.

The next step was another record company which is the most important label for Rock&Roll music: SUN records. Not only Elvis Presley was discovered there - by the owner of the company, the famous Sam Phillips - when he recorded on his own cost a single for his mother, but also hit sellers of the late 50's and 60's like Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, BB King, Johnny Cash and Rufus Thomas produced there their first hits. Nowadays the premises are more museum but from time to time also actual stars are still producing songs in this studio, e.g. U2 and Paul McCartney.

The last stop of today completed the roundtrip in musical history and summarized. The Museum of Rock & Soul (!) showed additional film material and memorabilia of this period of time where R&R made his first steps and prepared the ground for today's music industry!

Now I am sitting at the computer with an overflow of information, impressions and I am tired of too much music today ... on Beale Street I had my dinner and listened shortly to some bands (inside the clubs, outside in the park) - business as usual there: a lot of people, a lot of beer and a lot of Blues.