Hard Rock finds home at P. Wee's

" The Hard Rock Cafe, which plans to open this fall, will be the only restaurant in the worldwide chain to feature live music. "

Staff Report

The new Hard Rock Cafe slated for Beale Street will be sitting on hallowed ground.

The site at 317 Beale Street is the longtime home of P. Wee's Saloon. Opened originally in 1884 a few doors down from 317 Beale, P. Wee's was owned and operated by Virgilio Maffei, an Italian immigrant who arrived in Memphis in the mid-1870s. According to Richard Raichelson's Beale Street Talks, A Walking Tour Down the Home of the Blues, Maffei stood only four-and-a-half feet tall, thus the nickname P. Wee.

In the early 1900s, P. Wee's was well-known for its gambling and as a hangout for musicians. A backroom was usually crammed with instruments, Raichelson says, and the saloon had the city's only pay phone, used by band leaders to book dates.

W.C. Handy was a regular, and according to legend, wrote "Mister Crump" while at the saloon. The song later became "Memphis Blues," cited as one of the first blues songs to be published.

The building, which today houses Memphis Sounds, remained named P. Wee's even after Maffei returned to Italy around 1913. The business went to Lorenzo and Angelo Pancini, who Maffei had brought in as partners earlier. The Pancini brothers ran the saloon up to 1920, when it was taken over by Lorenzo's son, Sam. He kept it operating until his death in 1941.

The original structure remained until 1956, according to Raichelson, when it was replaced with a one-story building. That structure was taken down by a wrecking ball in the early 1970s. The current building was put in the early 1980s.

The Hard Rock Cafe, which plans to open this fall, will be the only restaurant in the worldwide chain to feature live music. The 11,000-square-foot space will include a 15-foot replica of a Gibson ES335 guitar, and will seat 250 people. A private room and gift shop also are planned.

The Hard Rock Cafe was founded in London in 1971 by former Memphis Isaac Tigrett, who went to found the House of Blues after selling his stake in Hard Rock. Today, there are Hard Rock Cafe's in more than 30 countries.