Memphis, Tennessee (song)

"Memphis, Tennessee" is a song by legendary rock & roll singer-songwriter Chuck Berry. It is sometimes shortened to "Memphis".

The song has been covered by many artists, such as George Thorogood, Silicon Teens, Lonnie Mack, Johnny Rivers, The Beatles, The Animals, Paul Anka, Count Basie, The Dave Clark Five, Bo Diddley, Jan and Dean, Tom Jones (singer), Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, Hasil Adkins, Conway Twitty and The Faces.

In the UK, the song charted at # 6 in 1959.

The original recording was multi-tracked, with Berry playing rhythm guitar, bass guitar and pedal steel guitar as well as singing. It is reputed that the drums were played by Berry's secretary.

The song's music is rather restrained, following an old rock & roll style song with a slide guitar. In live versions, Chuck would make the song more exciting by changing his vocal style and adding more dynamics, with longer guitar solos.

The vocals are the dominant feature of the song. The lyrics of the song depict the speaker's conversation on the phone to the 'long distance information.' The lyrics are deceiving and the true role of characters unfold as the story goes on.

As the song starts, the speaker is asking to get in touch with the people who have phoned him. We do not know who they are yet, but his uncle is mentioned. In the next verse he speaks of a girl named 'Marie'. From this point in time she could be in anyway connected to him.

In the third verse he reveals that he was close to this girl, and says that they were pulled apart because "her mom did not agree." From here we are led to believe that the girl was his lover, and her mother didn't agree with the speaker, for any reason. When the speaker moves to the next verse he explains his last time seeing her, as having "hurry home drops on her cheek that trickled from her eye."

He continues by revealing that she is only six years old, and pleas that he get in touch with her. This unfolds the story, as we are now aware that the girl is his daughter, and the mother was in fact his own wife.

In an interesting twist on a song composed around the lyrics of a dominant vocal line, in 1963 guitarist Lonnie Mack recorded a fast-paced, full-length instrumental improvisation inspired by Berry's melody, and named the tune "Memphis". Mack's instrumental skyrocketed to #5 on Billboard's Pop chart and #4 on Billboard's R&B chart. Mack's version was later recognized as the start point of the Blues-Rock guitar genre. (See Lonnie Mack). In 1964 singer Johnny Rivers recorded another version of the tune (which he, following Mack, called "Memphis"), copying Mack's pacing and some of his instrumental improvisations, and reinstating the vocal line from Berry's original. That version hit #2 on Billboard's Pop chart.

After that, Berry's own live performances of the tune resembled the Mack and Rivers versions as much as his own original recording. In the years following, many other artists (see names above) covered the tune, and it became one of Berry's most commercially successful compositions.