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" Famed studio has a new vision: it begins at the end of Beale "
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By Ross Gohlke
Today's Beale Street is a curious union of heavy promotion and utter obscurity. As the heart and soul of Memphis' tourist industry, the street that originally gave blues music enough room to breathe gets a lot of attention, from visitors and locals alike. Yet while many of the clubs on Beale advertise heavily and organize events to keep their names on the tips of tongues, other establishments go relatively unnoticed. Until recently, John Montague's Beale Street Blues Museum, located in the old Daisy Theater at the east end of the street, was one such place. Hosting an extensive collection of early blues artifacts, including "the largest collection of W. C. Handy memorabilia in the world," the museum sat unassumingly at the dead end of Beale. No one seemed to miss it, or even notice it was gone, when Montague recently decided to move his blues collection to his other museum, the Memphis Music Hall of Fame on Second across from the Peabody. Without much fanfare or publicity, Sun Studio began leasing the vintage Daisy Theater from Montague, with plans to create Sun's own journey through the annals of popular music. In the middle of August the Sun Studio Gallery opened for business. At the entrance to the Gallery is a stack of TVs with hidden speakers providing a multimedia welcome, featuring film clips and music from prominent Sun recorders like U2 and Elvis. Inside is a gift shop and a small recording area where visitors can cut karaoke tracks - custom records - of their favorite songs. Through a set of double doors is the Gallery, still under construction. Free guided tours of the exhibit area are conducted daily from noon to 8 p.m. The tour guide will tell you the next tour starts in ten minutes. If you don't feel like waiting but want to see the exhibit, ask if you can take the tour right away. The completed part of the Gallery tells the story of popular music, starting with American slaves, tracing the development of their field hollers over time into the blues, finally culminating in Elvis, rock 'n' roll and, of course, Sun Studio. "Here we take the story up to Elvis, then send people over to Sun Studio on Union," explained Carolyn Yancy-Gunn, a local actress who works at both Sun locations conducting tours. But the story won't end there. Only one-sixth of the Gallery is presently finished. So what can visitors expect from the completed exhibit? The whole story of Sun's influence, according to Thomas Kreason, a memorabilia expert who was brought in to set up the Gallery and help stock it. "We're going beyond Sun through to the present-day Sun," Kreason said. Kreason got his start in the memorabilia business decorating Hard Rock Cafes. As a result of connections he made through that stint, Kreason migrated from decorating to buying and selling top-dollar memorabilia. Both kinds of expertise are being fully utilized at the Sun Studio Gallery, a project which amounts to more than another job for Kreason. "I was introduced to Mark [Bell, Sun's general manager] in May when I was passing through Memphis with a friend. Later on, Mark called me and said, 'Man, I need your help,'" Kreason recalled. So he came back to Memphis to learn a little bit more about the project and decided he liked what he saw. "We're still dotting I's and crossing T's, but the intention is that I'll be part of the picture," Kreason said. "[Sun Studio] is a real company. The people are real. Mark is sincere about what he's doing." Obviously, Sun Studio owner Jim Shore, Bell and Kreason are convinced they are creating something unique. According to Kreason, they are "real sincere about what we're doing. We want to put up stuff that people will be impressed by, not what they can see down the street. We're trying to make our displays a lot more viewer-friendly. People are versed on reading. You have to make it flow like they're reading the story." In the Gallery, the only kind of reading visitors can do is visual. There is no accompanying text, so the viewer is dependent on the tour guide for the full story. But the tour is not meant to be historical. "The Gallery is not a museum. Particular items will be purchasable," Kreason said. The plan seems to be to acquire some very exciting and prominent pieces of memorabilia, which any visitor will have the chance to buy. Which items they are trying to acquire was not disclosed. "We want to give people the chance to buy some of this stuff, and have it be backed by Sun Studio's reputation," Kreason said. But their vision extends beyond the selling of memorabilia. They want to reinvigorate the less-traveled end of Beale Street. During a recent show at the New Daisy Theater right across the street, Sun's new label, 706 Records, had one of its current recording artists play in front of the Gallery. "The people waiting to get in to see Kenny Wayne Shepherd were eating [Sonny Moorman and the Dogs] up," Bell recalled. All told it is a fairly ambitious project going in many different directions. Bell knows what he's up against, and he remains incredulous to outside criticism, which at the moment is only imaginary. "The purists are going to say that what we're doing is a bastardization. But what we're doing here is going to be really special," Bell concluded. Time will tell whether the Gallery is the kind of place that will contribute to Memphis' and Downtown's revitalization; whether a public collectors' showcase will prove profitable; whether leveraging Sun Studio's reputation outside the tiny building on Union is progress; or whether one more "great idea" will join the trash heap of discarded efforts to capitalize on the Memphis magic.
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