Memphis juke joint revival

" I don't care where you're at or where you've been or where you're going, (at Dorothy's) people are treated like they want to be treated. "

By Ross Gohlke

There's no sign on the building. Just "Green's" painted on one window pane and "Dorothy's Lounge" on the other. The street directly in front of it has been torn up for weeks. The city keeps promising to fix it, but apparently they're not overly concerned that the situation obstructs Dorothy Sanders' business - and impedes visitors from all over the world from finding one of Memphis' greatest living landmarks.

The Memphis juke joint known the world-over as Green's, under the new proprietorship of Sanders, has not only reclaimed its legendary status as the best place to hear real blues in the home of the blues, it has also changed names: now it's Dorothy's Lounge. But you can still call it Green's.

Criticized by some as a poor marketing decision, the name change should be a worldwide headline, but there's not that big of a story behind it. Quite simply, Sanders has given the place her personal touch. But more importantly, she has done everything necessary to resurrect Green's from obscurity and an untimely demise. Whatever you call it, it's still the best place to hear non-commercial, down-home blues in Memphis.

After the original founder, Rose Green, who had the place for 20 years, gave it up several years ago, it passed through various hands before Sanders took over last November. In her few months of active duty as head matron and caller-of-all-shots, with little capital and no advertising budget, Sanders has navigated past most of the pitfalls that hinder the success of a modern juke joint. Sanders, who goes by Dot in her daily dealings, has put in a pay phone (still the only phone on the premises), attained a legitimate beer license (they were initially using the previous owners' license, and for weeks had no license at all), staffed the place with responsible, hard-working helpers (some of her nine children and their spouses, not to mention 23 grandchildren, share the task) and most importantly, Sanders has tended to the thing people come here for in the first place - great live music every Saturday night.

This last detail is made easier by the fact that she has spent 42 years married to one of the main reasons Dorothy's has a world-class reputation. Willie Roy Sanders, or Wilroy as everyone calls him, played guitar for the Fieldstones, Green's house band on and off for the last couple of decades. Wilroy "helped get Dot the place," as he puts it, and volunteered to once again provide the music.

As the only original member of the Fieldstones available to play, he had to find a backing band. For a few months the lineup rotated among whatever musicians were available at the time. But the saving grace and backbone of Green's recent success has been the regular appearance of the Daddy Mack Blues Band. Fronted by guitar whiz Mack Orr and filled out by drummer Jerry Parnell and brothers James (guitar) and Harold (bass) Boner, the band has brought a stability that makes Saturday night a can't-miss proposition. Wilroy sings and leads the band through the first set, then Orr takes control of his band for the second set. The third, final and longest set brings Wilroy back to lead a rotating roster of visiting musicians.

David Evans, professor of musicology at the University of Memphis and the only person to produce a full LP of the Fieldstones' music (on the University's High Water label), wrote in the liner notes to the 1983 release Memphis Blues Today that Wilroy "has one of the most powerful voices in the blues today." Fifteen years later, the comment still holds water. Wilroy attacks every song with the same effortless wail. High-pitched, desperate and hardship-weathered, Wilroy's vocals recall the plaintive passion of an earlier, rougher blues.

If Wilroy is implicitly the reason most people come to Green's, Orr is the reason they stay; not just because of his top-notch guitar playing, but because he has the band that holds it all together. The Boner brothers have been playing together since they were kids. When James needed a bass man to fill out his electric band, he put the instrument in seventh-grader Harold's hands. They've been playing together ever since. Orr's trademark involves walking his wireless electric guitar through the long room, sweetly serenading all the ladies who deserve the honor - and a few who don't.

As stable in their performance as Wilroy and the Mac Daddy Blues Band are, the music never gets old. If they play the same blues standards every week, nobody in the crowd can tell because every song sounds new each time. This is due in large part to the steady stream of musicians who sit in on Saturday nights. Sometimes they're professionals with the night off, like Blues Foundation director and Stone Gas Band keyboard player Howard Stovall. Sometimes they're farm league musicians trying to establish a reputation, like Terry Youngblood, a Clarksdale guitar player looking to relocate in Memphis. Sometimes they're visitors just passing through, like the German father who brought his family and wanted so desperately to sing a song that his daughter sheepishly asked the band if he could on his behalf. Of course, they said yes.

Recently, Sonny Curtis, the ex-Cricket, was in town for his daughter's college graduation. After playing an honorary set at a local neighborhood dive, Curtis headed immediately to Dorothy's. Rock star Jeff Buckley, who had been living in Memphis for the past few months before his recent apparent drowning, could often be spotted at Green's on a Saturday night, soaking up the music.

What makes Green's, or any juke joint for that matter, different from the "blues clubs" on Beale Street is the openness, the slack atmosphere that treats neighborhood regulars as evenly as superstars. And though the music certainly takes center stage, it's only one part of the overall juke-joint experience. Drinking quarts of beer or getting setups to go with the whisky you bring; meeting and mixing with the regulars; dancing with strangers; and just having a general good time is the norm at Dorothy's.

Though set in a predominantly black, downtrodden urban neighborhood at 2090 E. Person Ave., Dorothy's Lounge entices more and more whites. What seems like a dangerous environment to the unadventurous and a "good thing gone bad" to blues purists is more perception and less reality on both counts. Only one violent crime haunts the legend of Green's. One night many years ago, a musician dedicated a song to a lovely woman. When he went outside later, the woman's jealous husband allegedly shot the man dead.

Statistically Green's is still as safe, if not safer, than any other night club, thanks in part to the help of Big Eddy, a neighbor who handles security, watching the door and prowling the perimeter at night. As for the purists' warning that a white crowd can spoil a juke joint, it's been known to happen in other cases, but not this one.

The Sanders see it differently. As Wilroy puts, "Ain't no such thing now as a real black place."

Dot is simply thrilled to have the business.

"Who spends the money in the place?" she says. "The white people." And as to the prospect of the Saturday night crowd becoming all white Wilroy adds, "That would be one of the sweetest things in the world." As Dot so ably puts it, "I can deal with everybody. I love people. I'm always giving and helping out. If it becomes [all white] it becomes that. That's where my money comes from. People like to go where they're treated right. And I try to see that everybody's treated right."

So far - and remember, it's still early in Dorothy's revival - everyone seems to feel treated right. The white people don't run the regular clientele off, and the black folks (even the panhandlers that sometimes show up at the door and the old men who ask the young college girls to dance) don't scare visitors away. It's as if the music literally melts racial, cultural and economic differences away when you walk through the door. And even though the differences aren't eliminated, how often do you get the chance to see past them, if even for a few hours?

Traditionally that is the power of the blues, a medium based on common emotions and shared experiences; a human expression that exposes our deepest fears and celebrates the banal details of everyday life; and a sound whose foundation is hardship and whose hope is the ability to struggle through it. How much of the commercial blues we're used to consuming really demonstrates this power? The live music of a Saturday night at Green's consistently does.

And what better invitation does anyone from any background need than these words from Wilroy: "I don't care where you're at or where you've been or where you're going, (at Dorothy's) people are treated like they want to be treated."