Memphis Calling

credit: Justin Fox Burks

A fecund river town carved, per man’s intent, from the natural disorder of kudzu growth, loamy clay, and swampy terrain, Memphis was built by cotton money, shaped by the serpentine curves of the mighty Mississippi, and named for an exotic Egyptian locale.  “I love this flat and fertile land that water made, this punch bowl nature dug, the river as its spade,” local poet Neely Grant II opined in the 1950s. Since then, the city’s geography has subtly changed due to erosion, several gleaming additions to the downtown skyline, and a gradual population shift to the suburbs, located due east of the river.

Nonetheless, still today locals credit the alluvial soil for luring would-be musicians, businessmen, gamblers, and politicians who, for the last two hundred years, have traveled up the Mississippi River’s natural highway, or traversed it, to seek fame and fortune in Memphis. A popular plantation dictum proclaims, “Plant a dime on the banks of the Mississippi, and by sundown, you’ll have a silver tree.” Judging by the lush azalea bushes, the wispy crape myrtle trees, and the thick magnolia veils that shade nearly every square inch of land, we’ve taken that promise to heart — and more.

Memphis is claimed by Tennessee, although culturally and financially, the city — the largest town north of New Orleans, 395 miles south — serves as the unofficial capital of Mississippi. Originally settled by the Chickasaw Indians, it was visited by Hernando de Soto in 1540. Its official charter was drawn up by John Overton, James Winchester, and Andrew Jackson in 1826, although, less than five decades later, a trifecta of yellow fever outbreaks nearly decimated the city. Under Confederate and, then, Union rule, Memphis, a hodgepodge of neoclassical mansions and tiny shotgun shacks, thrived during the Civil War era to emerge in the twentieth century as one of the strongholds of the New South.

Clarence Saunders came to Memphis in 1916 to open Piggly Wiggly, the world’s first self-service grocery store, and when entrepreneur Kemmons Wilson conceived of a hotel chain called Holiday Inn, he opened the first one right here on Summer Avenue. Fortune’s Jungle Garden, the country’s first drive-in restaurant — diners would ride up in horse-drawn carriages — was invented here, as was FedEx, which has successfully untangled Memphis’ sprawling crosshatch of rail, water, and roadways to bolster the city’s economy.

Memphis is also hailed as the home of the blues and the birthplace of rock ’n’ roll. In the early 1900s, composer W.C. Handy came to Memphis from Alabama, by way of Clarksdale, Mississippi, to transform rural country blues into a boisterous, big-city trend; he was followed by Delta bluesmen B.B. King and Howlin’ Wolf. In the fifties iconoclasts Ike Turner and Elvis Presley fused modern blues with a country sound to form their respective hits “Rocket 88” and “That’s Alright, Mama,” which were immediately classified as rock music. Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis quickly took the trend to new heights. In the civil rights era and beyond, soul music was the name of the game, as Otis Redding lent his gritty, gutbucket voice to the Memphis groove, and Al Green’s earthy falsetto invigorated the pop charts.

If the city itself serves as a mecca for these far-flung dreamers and schemers, for the past one hundred and forty years Union Avenue’s thirteen-story Peabody Hotel, originally located a block northwest of its current location, has existed as both sanctum and shelter. As the late historian David L. Cohn noted in 1935, “The Mississippi Delta begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel, [which] is the Paris Ritz, the Cairo Shepherd’s, the London Savoy of this section. If you stand near its fountain in the middle of the lobby, ultimately you will see everybody who is anybody in the Delta.”

Since its opening in 1869, the Peabody has served as the epicenter for Memphis’ social set, who quickly determined that the milieu was perfect for coming-out parties and Cotton Carnival balls. In the twenties, its rooms functioned as makeshift recording studios for talent scouts who recorded blues singers such as Tommy Johnson, Frank Stokes, and Furry Lewis. Twenty years later, Sun Records’ founder Sam Phillips honed his craft via live broadcasts from the Skyway’s rooftop dance floor. And, since the early thirties, the Peabody has hosted a flock of live ducks that swim in the hotel fountain.

General manager Frank Schutt began the tradition in 1932, after a weekend hunting trip in Arkansas and a flask of whisky prompted him to put his live decoys in the water. For the next fifty or so years, hotel bellman Edward Pembroke, a former circus trainer, would serve as the hotel’s Duckmaster, launching the famous Peabody Duck March down the elevator into the Italian marble fountain located in the middle of the ground floor lobby. The original fowl were English call ducks; today, they’re North American mallards bred at a local farm and eventually released to the wild.

“I take care of everything to do with the ducks, from cleaning up the Royal Duck Palace to making sure they’re properly fed and taken care of, and providing a little protection — we try to keep kids out of the fountain,” explains Jason Sensat, only the fourth Duckmaster in the Peabody’s storied history. “I’d been at the hotel for about four years when they came to me and asked if I could handle five ducks. I’ve got a five-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son, so I thought I could do it just fine!”

“In high school, we held our prom at the Peabody, but I never dreamed of working here,” says Sensat, surveying the hotel’s grandiose lobby, where, if you loll long enough, you’ll spy rock stars Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, former president Bill Clinton, or actors like Samuel L. Jackson or Elijah Wood.

“My job is absolutely fantastic. I love seeing the excitement on people’s faces, whether it’s the kids who are seeing the ducks for the first time, or the older folks returning after thirty or forty years. I’m a nostalgic fellow, so for me it’s all about the tradition and history,” he maintains. “It’s also been great to see how the city is growing. Look at how downtown has changed over the past ten years. This is my city, so I take a little pride in that.”