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" Howlin' Wolf is on the wall in black and white, circa '68, sandwiched between two slender college girls glowing with the privilege of sitting on his larger-than-life lap. "
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By Ross Gohlke
There's an old building Downtown you should know about. It used to be a whorehouse with a bar downstairs. Gambling, carousing, drinking, kissing. That was after it was a drug store in the '30s and '40s. Now it's just a little gem of a beer joint. Earnestine and Hazel bought the place in the late '50s and made it into a hotel for traveling passengers (the regal, abandoned train station is across the street), but it was a favored spot among rowdy musicians and bluesmen. Famous people stayed the night. Elvis, for instance. In the '60s it was a hangout for Steve Cropper and Otis Redding and the Stax musicians. Howlin' Wolf is on the wall in black and white, circa '68, sandwiched between two slender college girls glowing with the privilege of sitting on his larger-than-life lap. What stories would the walls whisper about Wolf visiting Earnestine & Hazel's, as he inevitably did? Ike and Tina Turner, Rufus Thomas and Solomon Burke are among the others who grace the wall closest to the dance floor. But those are the faces from the past. These days Earnestine & Hazel's has a new set of faces. It's no secret that Downtown Memphis is on the rise again. From film crews and construction workers to Autozone's new riverside headquarters and the soon-to-be Peabody Place, the area along Main Street's trolley line is sometimes almost bustling. Earnestine & Hazel's sits at the end of the southern line at the corner of Main and Calhoun, across the street from the Arcade Restaurant and Wolf's Corner. When the neighborhood which fostered this intersection through Memphis' days as a rail hub withered and retreated, it left a trail of rotting buildings and abandoned warehouses behind. At night the intersection of Main and Calhoun looks like an electric oasis with all the neon. Earnestine & Hazel's draws a diverse crowd, partly because it's not a neighborhood bar. But the influx of newly settled Downtown residents along the river and down Main and Front might make it one. Getting there from Beale Street is as easy as catching a trolley in front of the Orpheum. Or if the weather's nice, you could walk the several blocks down Main. Walking into the bar, the first thing you'll notice is the hand-scrawled sign on the door - "No dope smokin', No cursin', No freeloadin'." It's a rough reproduction of a sign that hung on the door years ago. Right inside the door sits the jukebox, possibly the best in the city if you like Memphis music from the past. It has both Sun and Stax box set CDs, Booker T. & the MG's, Al Green, Albert King... you get the picture. The dance floor is just an area in front of the jukebox without tables and chairs. Big cracks criss-cross the worn tiles. The tabletops are covered with yellowed magazine ads from the '50s, and in nice weather, several of them are moved out on the front sidewalk. There's a pool table; a TV; a couch at the back; a long bar that was original ly a soda fountain in the building's "sundry store" days. Sporadically there's live jazz and other music at Earnestine & Hazel's. Call first (523-9754). A couple of rooms upstairs, open to patrons with a real sense of adventure, harbor ghosts from the building's days as a house of ill repute. Listen closely and you might hear the blues, sitting there in a broken chair in the midst of chipped, electric blue walls. This was the wonderful and terrible den of iniquity for so many musicians and passers-by in decades past. Even today Earnestine & Hazel's can't escape that past, those faces. It's not an upscale Beale Street dive. It's a tiny window into a bygone age. If you're going there when it's cold, take a warm jacket. NOTE: Both upstairs and downstairs of Earnestine & Hazel's are available for private parties. Call Russell George at 523-9754 for more information.
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