Beale Street

Beale Street was created in 1841 by entrepreneur and developer Robertson Topp. In the 1860s, many black traveling musicians began performing on Beale. The first of these to call Beale Street home were the Young Men's Brass Band, who were formed by Sam Thomas in 1867. In the early 1900s, Beale Street was filled with clubs, restaurants and shops, many of them owned by African-Americans. From the 1920s to the 1940s, Louis Armstrong, Muddy Waters, Albert King, Memphis Minnie, B. B. King, Rufus Thomas, Rosco Gordon and other blues and jazz legends played on Beale Street and helped develop the style known as Memphis Blues. As a young man, B.B. King was billed as "the Beale Street Blues Boy". My first time to Beale Street was in February 2010 on a cross country road trip from Virginia to Utah. I was impressed with the culture of the street and the amount of change that it has endured to remain a major cultural center of the state of Tennessee. On the east side of the Mississippi River is a bustling, thriving city of Memphis, and on the west side, is a desolate and empty Arkansas. The contrast was incredible. And without the influence of Beale Street, and it's musical heritage, Memphis very well have been just like it's Arkansan cross-river counterpart. Along with the music that made Beale Street so famous, I had a brush with some other Beale Street performers before I ever got the chance to visit this place. The Beale Street Flippers, a group of 4 street tumblers performed at halftime of a Utah Blaze halftime show. I had the privilege of performing with them. That was the first time I had ever heard of Beale Street.