What I just learned from the fabulous Temples of Sound:

Willie Dixon's main instrument was acoustic bass. How did I not know this; this, of one of the great songwriters of modern music?

It's been repeated ad infinitum, but if you're not acquainted, and you happen to dig things like the Stones, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Eric Clapton, and just about seemingly any other mega-giant white English rock band, then thank Willie Dixon, because he seems to have written half those bands' catalogues.

Thankfully, not all of those English guys fail to acknowledge the debt, as the second thing I learned today was that the Stones' "(I can't get no) Satisfaction" was an oblique tribute to another forebear of all things rock, and fellow Chess Records labelmate to Dixon: Muddy Waters.

Too, Eric Clapton has always reminded listeners of his debt to the brilliant Buddy Guy, another Chess alumnus.

I'm not old enough to have seen Willie Dixon or Muddy Waters, but I've seen Guy once, and it was one of the most scorchingly intense shows I've ever seen. It was with Junior Wells on harp. The same long-time duo that illuminated the Utah darkness last Monday night. That recording was of only the two of them, with Guy on acoustic guitar. When I saw them circa 89 it was with a full band behind them.

By the way, per the link above, the book is readily available, but I picked up my copy at the nearly brand-new Stax Museum in Memphis. For devotees of great American music, you must visit. It's an absolutely riveting collection of artifacts, instruments, an actual rural Delta church, nearly the entire label's catalogue, a near-perfect reproduction of the original recording studio with original desk, tape machines and other equipment intact, Isaac Haye's gold Cadillac, many stage costumes, and a host of other things. Because of our timing, we only managed about an hour in it, but I could have easily spent a dozen, as, apparently, quite a few other visistors have. Too, several alumni have visited, some reduced to tears at the site of the studio. By the way, if you want to record in the room, it's available for hire, although you must provide your own remote truck as the equipment is off limits.

I wish we'd had a lot more time in Memphis. Something really grabbed me about the place, all the stranger considering we were in and out in about four hours. I'm not sure what did it, but driving around the south and south-western districts of the city excited me. There's a subdued sort of tension on the streets, an energy that feels something akin to a lazy bustle, if that makes any sense. It's not at all the energy of NYC, or the very different kind of energy that inhabits LA. It's a lot quieter and hardly as dynamic as the other two, but for whatever vague reason, I felt it. Maybe it's the history bubbling up through the cracks in the sidewalk. I think you can hear it in a lot of the music. There's a rawness and urgency to it that's leavened with a relaxed sense of melodicism.

I could have it all wrong. Really, except for a brief flash by Graceland to see the gate, and the couple hours at Stax and lingering around it, we saw nothing. No Sun Studio, no National Civil Rights Museum, no Beale Street, no Peabody Hotel, no Gibson Guitar Factory; more importantly than historic sites, no time to absorb the city and be in its day to day respiration; no chance for me to attempt to put a real place to the images of Ike and Boon heading in to Memphis to get more whiskey...not a whole lot of anything to base an opinion on. Nevertheless, something stirs me to return, more so than many cities I've ever fleetingly encountered.

It's proximity to the rough-hewn hills of northern Mississippi compounds the draw. That there's this dense concentration of urban life crowning a densely wooded country steepd in a multifoliate and difficult history; that the roads radiating out from Memphis point to these birthing fields and shacks of the blues and indirectly all modern popular music; a country laden with myth and at once starkly real and plain-spoken...there's a covert magic to it. It's utterly seductive, and I do believe I could spend a long time in that country.