Click on photo to enlarge.
This is a postcard of the “Auditorium Memphis TN.” It was opened about 1924 and became the site of a lot of 20s and 30s field recordings by record companies traveling through the area– I don’t have at hand the source, but recall that the Memphis Jug Band, the Carter Family, and Jimmie Davis, among many others, recorded at sessions there. It was later known as the Ellis Auditorium and was the site of the big Gospel shows in the 50s that were so important to Elvis Presley’s development, and the WDIA Christmas shows of the same era. It was demolished in the mid-90s– the last concert I saw there was about 1994– and is a sadly missed venue in Memphis, one of many demolished music landmarks in that city. You can see photos of Elvis on stage in the auditorium here. I know a lot of concert recordings made there, including film footage of Hendrix.
Someone on the prewar blues list asked for a photo of it, and I happened to have the postcard, so there you go.
In 1976, when I was 14, I hitched from Tupelo to Memphis to pay $6 to see and hear Bruce Spingsteen and the E street Band play in The Auditorium. Twenty years later, on November 19, 1996, I saw Bruce Springsteen play the last show at The Auditorium, and the third time I had seen him there. The first time I was in a room where Jerry Garcia was playing guitar, it was this room. One of the few time I was fortunate enough to be where Frank Zappa and his band were playing, it was in the Auditorium. I went to hear The J. Geils Band play some of the early 1970s catalog and loved the opening band… U2.
I did see Elvis Presley, but not there, nor did i catch Hendrix or John Phillip Souza, or James Brown there either, though I wish I had.
Thousands have similar stories about this wonderful old venue, and many of them are about great the SOUND the room was blessed with was.
Where Is The Outrage In Memphis? Where Is It In Oxford?
Eight X Twelve #11 November 21, 1996
THE MUSICIAN ONSTAGE wasn’t the only amazing thing I saw at the Bruce Springsteen show in Memphis Tuesday night.
Volunteers were soliciting for signatures on petitions seeking to stop the destruction of The Auditorium, the grand old 1924 building Springsteen was playing, where he had also played in the 1970s.
The stage at The Auditorium has felt the weight of the giants of twentieth-century American music. A short list includes John Phillip Souza, Guy Lombardo, Elvis Presley, Van Cliburn, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Garcia, Todd Rundgren, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Frank Zappa, The Pretenders, Stevie Ray Vaughn and B.B. King.
That says nothing of the operas by companies world-wide, great plays and thespians, graduation ceremonies and other parts of people’s lives that have been a part of North Hall’s history.
The Springsteen show could not have been more of a success. The building sounded great, the seats weren’t torn, the paint was vibrant and everything worked. Even the marquee out front was everything you would want: clean, well lit with all the letters intact and straight. That they read: “Tonight. An evening with Bruce Springsteen.” was a lovely bonus.
And what was amazing about the volunteers seeking petition signatures to stop destruction of this wonderful piece of Memphis history? What was amazing was that they would have to be waging their noble battle with the city of Memphis at all. Tearing down The Auditorium is a terrible mistake.
The Memphis powers-that-be say the building is very fit and sound, but that they want to redesign the Cook Convention Center. They want a smaller, not bigger, hall. So small, that The Auditorium’s gigantic old pipe organ, of which there are just a few in the world, may not fit.
Memphis is making a mistake, not a misjudgment, but a mistake, an idiot’s mistake.
Other cities have thrown away their history. At the turn of the century, Tupelo built a railroad depot whose classic architecture reflected a time when the city was positioning itself to be a beacon of progress in the sea of northeast Mississippi poverty. After about 70 years of that progress, Tupelo demolished that depot and after 20 years of even more progress they’ve got a square tin building of a train depot that looks like it was bought off a Wal-Mart parking lot after three years as a demo. In contrast, Hal & Mal’s, the restaurant/bar/music hall down in Jackson, calls home a 1923 depot that was packed Monday night with living people, enjoying each other, their lives and a Son Volt show, all in a preserved part of Jackson history. The building even sounded good.
It is a shame that here in Oxford, the Bank of Mississippi could not save the Ole Miss Service Station building, that they couldn’t incorporate it into their plans and preserve it as a visual landmark of the town that means so much to the thousands who live here and have lived here. Instead, the bank got stuck with a building that looks like, well, a 1996 bank building, one that would look much more at home in Massachusetts. I’m not surprised they took Mississippi out of their name.
Up on the square, the balconies look great because they represent what has been and is. The Faulkner statue will be positive for the same reason. On the other hand, we have designer sidewalks, old-fashioned street lamps with plastic light covers that bounce around with the wind and there is that touristy Faulkner Alley sign. Meanwhile, just down the street, the Oxford Depot, a part of Oxford and Ole Miss history, is rotting away.
The Auditrorium isn’t rotting away. Tuesday night showed it is full of life as well as history.
The first time I saw Bruce Springsteen there, Gerald Ford was President, a ticket to get in cost six bucks and that night changed forever the way I hear music. I would love to take my children there one day and show it to them, explain that the building was big part of my growing up, that it was the first place I heard Jerry Garcia, Frank Zappa, John McEuen and Bruce Springsteen play.
A sentimentalist like myself would want to save a lot more buildings than can be. But a place like North Hall can be saved and it is a building thousands are sentimental about because it was a part of their life just as it was mine. North Hall is a part of musical history in a historically musical town and the town is tearing it down. That is that and the damned thing stills sounds very, very good.
Tuesday night, Bruce Springsteen showed Memphis that.