For More Information about the unveiling ceremonies, contact Jimmy Ogle at 901-604-5002

WELCOME TO VIRTUAL JIMMY OGLE, PART 1

So, again many thanks to the staff (Jestein Gibson and Luke Yancey) and volunteers at the
Memphis Pink Palace Museum for their efforts in February and March of 2019.

And, a super special THANK YOU to Willy Bearden for his creativity and production talents for getting the series
on video for free viewing and use to everyone forever, and his perseverance in working with Jimmy Ogle!

Catch more of Jimmy Ogle “walking and talking” about Memphis in 2019 on You Tube (Downtown Memphis Commission),
Newman To Now (Memphis Heritage) and Bicentennial Moments ( WKNO).

2020 Women of Achievement Awards Ceremonyognize and celebrate these women.

From the east - U.S. 70 (Summer Avenue in East Memphis) From the south - U.S. 51 (Bellevue, now Elvis Presley Blvd in South Memphis) From the west - U.S. 61 (Third Street) at Crump Blvd. (U.S. 78) just after crossing over the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge From the north - U.S. 51 (Thomas Street and N. Watkins Street in Frayser)

 

   67 years ago in 1953, Kemmons Wilson opened the third Holiday Inn (in Memphis and the world) on South Third Street. In 1955, inside that Holiday Inn, Sam Phillips, Sun Studio founder, joined with Kemmons Wilson to open and staff the Nation's First "All Girl Radio Station" as WHER - 1,000 Beautiful Watts, with eight women the as first pioneers - Dotty Abbott, Fay Bussel, Dot Fisher, Barbara Gurley, Donna Rae Jackson, Marion Keisker, Becky Phillips, Phyllis Stimbert, and Bobbie Stout as the first set of on-air personalities. At WHER 1430 AM, the Studio was the “Doll Den,” the Control Room was the “Playroom,” and the Manager’s Office was marked “Boss Ma’am.” Becky Phillips said the format was “better music, the kind that lives on through the years to bring back pleasant memories.”

   On that site near the rear of the property was located the Assembly of God Church building that the Presley family attended and where Elvis had sung on stage as a teenager, and it stills stands today as a chapel for Calvary Rescue Mission. How about that?!

   Calvary Rescue Mission was opened in 1967 at 863 Jackson Avenue by Milton Hatcher, and was relocated to several other locations over the next fifty years. On June 19, 2018, a ribbon-cutting ceremony was held for the new facility with at 960 S. Third Street. Calvary Rescue Mission is a non-profit, independent, faith-based shelter for homeless men in Memphis. It serves two meals per day, offers clothes to homeless, has a nightly chapel service and provides counseling, a disciple program and lodging (110 beds) - all in a debt-free building now..

   Just south of the Calvary Rescue Mission is the City of Memphis Traffic Signal Maintenance & Construction Division of Engineering office which happens to occupy a portion of the Holiday Inn building that still remains to this day! Between the two properties is a perfect patch of green grass along the sidewalk – perfect for a historical marker location, too.

   Betty Hatcher and Director Bob Freudiger of Calvary Rescue Mission were very receptive to the proposal of having a historical marker for WHER and Marion Keisker “in their front yard”, and the rest is history, as they say at the Shelby Count Historical Commission. The WHER marker was dedicated on August 9, 2019. Also attending that day were Dave Brown (who worked with Marion Keisker for a while, and Jerry Williams (who worked at this Holiday Inn and whose father built some of the early Holiday Inns in Memphis). The WHER marker is also listed on the Women’s Legacy Trail recently developed by Women Of Achievement in Memphis (www.womenofachievement.org).

   In closing, please think of the year round services offered at the Calvary Rescue Mission at 960 S. Third Street, just two blocks south of Crump Blvd. As mentioned in the monthly newsletter below, the monthly Chicken Luncheon may be the best fried chicken in Memphis. Please drop by the Calvary Rescue Mission the next time that you are in the area. To contribute to Calvary Rescue Mission, contact calvarymission@att.net or call 901-775-2570 (www.calvaryrescuemission.org).

CLICK HERE
To download or read the January newsletter from the Calvary Rescue Mission

Beale Street has exciting news to share!

Alley Stories & The Last Round-Up

On November 6th, 2018, Jimmy O gave his last of a scheduled series of free public walking tours (November 6th, 1934 Street Tour) in Downtown Memphis that began in 2008 with the 1st Annual Great Union Avenue Manhole Cover & History Tour on May 9, 2008. Individual tours were developed over the years with the framework being about 45-minutes and 4 blocks in length - all on the sidewalk surfaces (handicapped accessible) and FREE! On some weekends, three tours were melded together to make a 3-hour tour.

The 26 custom tours are/were: The Great Union Avenue Manhole Cover & History Tour, Cotton Row, Mississippi - The River, Mississippi River - The Land, River Bluff Walk, The Bridge Walk (Memphis & Arkansas Bridge), Chickasaw Heritage Park to Crump Park; Martyrs Park to Ashburn-Coppock Park to Tom Lee Park, Mississippi Greenbelt Park, Mud Island Walk Bridge, Mud Island River Walk, Cobblestones & Sultana, Beale Street, South Main Street, South Front Street, Civic Center Plaza, The Trolley Loop Tour, Adams Avenue, Jefferson Avenue, Madison Avenue, Monroe Avenue, The Peabody Rooftop 360-Tour, The Moving Appeal (performance), Pinch District, Court Square & Surroundings, and The 10-Hour Tour (the next 10-Hour Tour will be at 10:00 a.m. on 10/10/2020!).

The Beifuss File: Downtown Memphis' alleys — historic, funky and strange

Alleys, in the public imagination, are places of menace and danger, romance and seduction, illicit trade and fugitive art. Yes, that's a pretty broad description for a narrow passageway. But you know what I mean. Alleys seem authentic, outlaw — cool.

A sports bar is in a strip mall. A speakeasy is in an alley.
The upper crust resides on Park Avenue. The working class inhabits Gasoline Alley.

  When Turner Classic Movies decided to dedicate a weekly program to the sinister crime genre known as film noir, what did the cable channel name it? "Noir Alley." Lee Dorsey sang "Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley." "Sneakin' Jane Down the Lane" just wouldn't have had the same disreputable ring. But what was once déclassé is now fashionable. Eager to embrace so-called authenticity, cities now promote their back streets — what Downtown Memphis Commission president Jennifer Oswalt calls the "alternative paths" that branch off familiar corridors. That can be a metaphor, of course. (You've been to the Meditation Garden at Graceland? Next, why not visit Furry Lewis' grave in South Memphis?) But in the case of Downtown Memphis' network of historic alleys, the "alternative paths" are literal.

  Recently, the DMC announced a plan to beautify several of Downtown's alleys, with public art, decoratively repaved surfaces and other improvements. Specifically, the project — dubbed "The Artery: Stereo to Escape" — will focus on the corridors of Stereo Alley, Maggie H. Isabel Street (actually an alley), Rendezvous Alley and General Washburn's Escape Alley, which connect to form the shape of an unused staple that mostly runs parallel to Second Street.
But those pathways are only four of about a dozen alleys that crisscross Downtown Memphis. So The Commercial Appeal (i.e., me and photographer Joe Rondone) decided to take a walking tour of all of them, with official Shelby County historian, sometime Peabody Duckmaster and top alley cat Jimmy Ogle as our knowledgeable and enthusiastic guide.

  Ogle, of course, never met a vintage street sign, cornice or cobblestone he didn't want to, well, ogle. He is to Memphis knowledge what water is to wet: Inseparable. You might ask about alleys, but his answers will cover much more: Manhole covers (Downtown Memphis has 3,000 of them). Elvis (young master Presley lost his job as a movie usher at the old Loew's State Theater on Main Street after getting into a fight in adjacent Barboro Alley).

  Although most people now experience alleys as pedestrian shortcuts, historically they were a necessity, Ogle said. They provided crucial access to buildings for firefighters and other services, including power and telephone companies. In what is now called Jack Tucker Alley, for example, the sloping cobblestoned surface is interrupted at intervals by deep chutes (now covered with metal grills) that originally were coal chutes, so coal could be dropped down into a building's basement.

When the city was first laid out in 1819, it basically stretched from where the Pyramid is now located to Union Avenue. Consequently, most purposeful Downtown alleys are north of Union, and pretty much end by Court Square.
Here's a rundown of our tour:

• We met Ogle — toting a heavy tin sign embossed with the legend "November 6th, 1934" — at one of the oldest original alleys, now known as Jack Tucker Alley, which stretches down toward the Mississippi from 77 S. Front. The alleyway is named in honor of the late architect (he died in 2009) now known as "The Father of Downtown Living," for working to bring residents back to the historic city center at a time when more people were incarcerated in the Downtown jail than were renting Downtown apartments. According to Ogle, this alley is paved with cobblestones handmade from "nine different kinds of igneous rock."

• Next, we ambled across Front to Barboro Alley, paved with machine-cut cobblestones of decorative concrete known as "bomanite." One of the longest (it connects Wagner Place and Second Street) and liveliest alleys (it has hosted Goner Records concerts), Barboro is home to the neo-speakeasy, Belle Tavern, and the walls of some of its building serve as open air gallery space for impressive murals by such artists as Marcellous Lovelace (whose painting includes a portrait of genius music producer Willie Mitchell) and the team of Birdcap and Ninjacat (who specialize in the expressively cartoonish). Ogle says that, at one point, a stretch of Barbaro near Second was known as "Dead Man's Alley" because it housed two funeral homes. Those were the days!

• Running south from Barbaro to form the bottom half of a T is a small alley known as Center Lane, which reappears north of Union. But Center Lane is just a rumor of a thoroughfare compared to its parallel neighbor, November 6th, 1934 Street, an alley that runs from Beale to just past Jefferson in a frequently interrupted dotted-line pattern with 26 turns. Described by Ogle as "the spine of Downtown," the alley once was home to what Ogle calls the "house of commercial affection" (i.e. brothel) that was run by the "Heroic Hooker," Annie Cook, who lost her life in 1878 caring for the sick during the Yellow Fever epidemic. But what especially interests Ogle is the fact that the alley is named for an event that hasn't exactly imprinted itself into the city's collective memory: Nov. 6, 1934, marks the day that Memphis voted to join the TVA power grid. It's this quirkiness that appeals to Ogle, who thinks "November 6th, 1934" might be America's coolest street name and the only street in the country named after a full date: "There's no 'July 4th, 1776' alley in Philadelphia. There's no 'July 11th, 1969' alley anywhere." For this reason, Ogle is irked that street signs now read simply "November 6th," without the year; that's why he carried his vintage street sign with the complete name, which he held aloft near various street corners with the promise of what ought to be.

• Walking north across Union one comes to Charlie Vergos Rendezvous Alley, named, of course, for the late restaurateur and his famous barbecue restaurant. Crossing the Vergos street like a discarded rib bone is one of Memphis' more interesting paths, General Washburn's Escape Alley, which gives Ogle a chance to put on a one-man show as he re-enacts the comical tale of Union General Cadwallader C. Washburn. Washburn reportedly hightailed it down the alley in his nightshirt when he received word that Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest had recaptured Memphis and was marching his way.

• Head back north on Charlie Vergos alley and it becomes Maggie H. Isabel Street, an alley-by-any-other-name that has received a DMC-coordinated makeover with the addition of decorative lights overhead and newly stamped cobblestone patterns on the asphalt underfoot. Maggie H. Isabel runs alongside Madison Avenue Park, the relatively new "pocket park" occupying a small lot where the alley meets Madison Avenue. A particularly intriguing element of this design is the Tops Gallery space embedded beneath the park, which is higher than the alley for much of its length, thanks to the slope of the street, which rises to meet Madison. A complement to the traditional indoors Tops Gallery at 400 S. Front, the space is essentially a large trapezoidal "vatrine" (glass showcase) for art, like a highfalutin window display in a commercial shop. Curated by Tops owner Matt Ducklo, the gallery currently houses a selection of "totemic modernist forms" by the man who may be Memphis' most significant sculptor, John McIntire. Many days, a homeless drifter slumps near the glass, adding an unplanned performance element to the show.

• Just North of Madison Park off Maggie H. Isabel is Stereo Alley, marked at its entrance on Second by an impressive overhead "Stereo Alley" metal sign, plus the call letters of station KLYX, which once broadcast from headquarters in an alley building (hence the "Stereo" name). The significant Memphis alleys more or less culminate with Park Lane (previously known as Whiskey Alley for its prevalence of bars), and Floyd Alley, which as an unusual claim to fame: You can still see, on a South-facing wall of the Metro 67 apartment building that flanks the alley near Front, the window through which Tom Cruise threw a chair and leaped to freedom while eluding his pursuers in director Sydney Pollack's "The Firm." The 1993 made-in-Memphis film was a John Grisham adaptation. Actually, "It wasn't Tom Cruise, it was Tom Cruise's stunt double," revealed Ogle, shattering the illusions of those "Mission: Impossible" fans who expect the star to hang off jet airplanes and scale sheer cliffs.
Oswalt said the DMC's alley beautification plans are focusing on some of the busiest throughways first. "We believe the investment in these spaces, in these alleys and underpasses and pathways, will return greatly as we connect all of Downtown and the riverfront," she said.
As for Ogle, “I would like to see us put these signs back on there," he said, again brandishing his "November 6th, 1934" sign, with the determination of a true believer.

Remember Libertyland by John Stevenson

Seven years ago while I giving a presentation at The University Of Memphis, I met a student. John Stevenson, that had an interest in Roller Coasters and Libertyland. Well, he decided to publish a book about Libertyland's history. Arcadia Publishing has published the book, Remember Libertyland, through its Images of Modern America series. Remember Libertyland is now in three Memphis book stores:

Novel, 387 Perkins Extd.
Burke's Bookstore, 936 South Cooper
The Book Juggler, 548 South Main

While sitting in as guest host on the Earle Farrell 4 Memphis radio show (KWAM AM990) on October 2, I was also able interview John about his experiences with roller coasters (I believe that he said that he has rode 173 coasters in America) and writing his first book. John will be in Memphis last this Autumn for book signings, so stay tuned (RememberLibertyland.com). Congratulations to John...

Web Site Tops 100,000 Hits!

  On July 20, 2017, the jimmyogle.com web site received its 100,000 visit. At 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 19, I visited the site and the number was 99,997. At 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, July 20, I visited the site at the count was 100,002. When giving the public tour of the Judge D'Army Bailey Courthouse at 12:00 non on Thursday, July 20, I was talking about that milestone and one of the couples on the tour chirped up with the remark that they had been on the web site several times overnight. The couple is Paul & Joanne Jeckln from Brisbane, Australia visiting Memphis and looking for something to do - and they found the Courthouse Tour!

  One of the last stops on the tour is in the Law Library and one of my favorite things to do is visit the landing the has bound monthly volumes of The Commercial Appeal from the years 1966-1971. Of course, we turned to a page in the Sports section and see the headline of "Little Owl Tames A Spartan" from the 54-43 victory of MUS over White Station (12/20/69) in Spartan Palace - Jimmy O scored 21 points!

  Paul picked out the July, 1969 volume and turned to the July 20 page where there was a large photo of man landing on the moon. His memory was that he was 14 years old that day in Australia and it was July 21 in that hemisphere at that time. The students were "turned out" of school to watch the moon landing. What a small world.

  Thank you to all of the people from all over the world (see below for the 2017 stats) that have visited jimmyogle.com, and great BIG THANK YOU to Martin Norris for making it happen!!