TENNESSEE: Beale Street Blues

Few civic reforms has hoary Memphis seen under the rule of the “Red Snapper,” Boss Crump. One was to make all east-west streets avenues. Caught in that genteeling was the street of dance halls, voodoo doctors, fortune tellers and saloons that Blueswriter W. C. Handy made famous in Beale Street Blues. Last week a counter-reform movement gathered such power that Mayor Walter Chandler, longtime Crumpet, had to take notice. Memphis Negroes couldn’t get used to living on Beale Avenue. They wanted to be back on Beale Street, the way the tune says it.