Quotes About Memphis

#1. A friend of mine took me to Memphis advised me that I should get in the musicians' union. He gave me a set of drums and said, Stay on the job, son.

Levon Helm

#2. I'm singing the way that I love to sing, which is like old soul, like old Al Green. I grew up about an hour from Memphis. So all that music that I grew up with - the Stax music and early rhythm 'n' blues - I'm doing that. I'm actually getting out from behind my guitar and I'm singing.

Sheryl Crow

#3. I can only speak for myself, but when I was growing up in Memphis - and having the Martin Luther King holiday and the moment of pause on April 4th - he was just a statue to me. I wanted to make him a little bit more real to me as a human being.

Katori Hall

#4. The support this city and our fans have shown the Grizzlies made my decision to stay in Memphis an easy one. Memphis deserves a championship team, and I am committed to that.

Jerry West

#5. God bless the boys from Memphis, blue suede shoes, and Elvis.

George Jones

#6. I sang in church growing up. Memphis is the blues capital of the world, we like to say.

Justin Timberlake

#7. I picked all the tunes before I went to Memphis, and the band was all set. Willie Mitchell is an arranger like I am, and he let me do what I had to do.

Otis Rush

#8. That was the big thing when I was growing up, singing on the radio. The extent of my dream was to sing on the radio station in Memphis. Even when I got out of the Air Force in 1954, I came right back to Memphis and started knocking on doors at the radio station.

Johnny Cash

#9. I've made it clear for some time if somebody came up with the right offer, I'd consider selling the team. It wasn't a secret in Memphis or, really, around the country.

Michael Heisley

#10. No such thing as a hard woman, Memphis,just soft men. With that, I turned, and the others followed me.

Laurell K. Hamilton

#11. In the days when regional music was very clearly defined and had a clear personality - Memphis, Detroit, Chicago, whatever - Philadelphia had a tradition that was very distinct and unique.

John Oates

#12. When I got outta High School I was driving a truck. I was just a poor boy from Memphis, Memphis.

Elvis Presley

#13. The thing about Memphis is that it's pleasingly off-kilter. It's a great big whack job of a city. The anti-Atlanta. You go there, and you can't believe the things people will say, the way they think, the wobbling orbits of their lives. There's an essential otherness.

Hampton Sides

#14. In 1968, the sanitation workers of Memphis tried to form a union. The city resisted. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to support them. That was where he lost his life.

Robert Reich

#15. I hitchhiked, took trucks 'n' trains - anything that would pick me up. I stopped in Memphis for about six months and they found me and come got me. Stayed about a month an' split again.

John Lee Hooker

#16. Thus the husband is buried at Memphis and the wife in Koptos, yet the Ka of the wife goes to live in her husband's tomb

H. Rider Haggard

#17. I got arrested once on stage in Memphis for looking too much like Liza Minnelli.

David Johansen

#18. I like New Orleans music, I like Memphis music and I like the way that the sound like those places. I like how there are stars and there are people in those cities that are revered in the community.

Joel Plaskett

#19. It was special with me being from Memphis and knowing the history of the venue, knowing all of the artists who performed in the Orpheum before me. Even having the idea to approach it was ambitious on my part, but I thought they would turn me down at first.

Yo Gotti

#20. I have four chickens. I have four laying hens. And I have 50 fruit trees. I make apricot and plum jam every summer. I brought Memphis to Malibu.

Linda Thompson

#21. Dear Trixie,
Will you come to Memphis with me?
A) Yes
B) No
C) I'd go anywhere with you because you fuck like a goddamn fire hose.
D) You're an asshole and I never want to see you again.
Circle ONLY ONE and give it back to me when you're done eating.
Love, J

Tiffanie DeBartolo

#22. Judging from what looks like the popularity of this classic wrestling show is that the people like what they have grown to know and love here in Memphis.

Jerry Lawler

#23. I've got a reason to believe we all be received in Graceland, Graceland, Memphis Tennessee.

Paul Simon

#24. Museums do not share their collections with other museums unless they get something in exchange. The Metropolitan will deal with the Louvre, but will they send their stuff to Memphis? No.

Eli Broad

#25. The city of Memphis has demonstrated that neither character nor standing avails the Negro if he dares to protect himself against the white man or become his rival.

Ida B. Wells

#26. When Lonnie Mack came out with the guitar instrumental "Memphis" I thought, Oh God, finally somebody we guitar players can relate to !

Richard Betts

#27. The beginning of the shows are different. One time we'll say 'Hello, Denver'. Another time we'll say 'Hello, Memphis'. It's always different.

Lance Bass

#28. I find it deeply upsetting when I see justice not being served. How do we as human beings deal with the unknown? The West Memphis Three trial is a joke on so many different levels.

Atom Egoyan

#29. I'm completely absorbed by Peter Guralnick's definitive, two-part biography of Elvis Presley: 'Last Train To Memphis' and 'Careless Love.' Meticulously researched, this is a compelling mix of history, myth-busting, and, of course, some timeless music.

Mark Billingham

#30. I spent a few years here in Memphis, in the late '70s and early '80s, where I was studying a lot of country blues players and their styles. So it seems like every record I'll do, I will appropriate these blues styles that I remember.

Alex Chilton

#31. Walking in Memphis, I was walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale. Walking in Memphis, but do I really feel the way I feel?

Marc Cohn

#32. It's funny, when you're a child you think time will never go by, but when you hit about twenty, time passes like you're on the fast train to Memphis. I guess life just slips up on everybody. It sure did on me.

Fannie Flagg

#33. I get called 'Memphis Eve,' but my first name is Eve. I know Memphis is in there somewhere, but on my passport I'm 'Eve Sunny Day Hewson.'

Eve Hewson

#34. Growing up in Memphis, I have always admired St. Jude's for the magnificent work they do.

Ginnifer Goodwin

#35. After college, I went to Alley Theatre in Houston to work in their apprentice actor program. I thought I was gonna get discovered. It didn't happen. I moved back to Germantown, Tennessee, outside of Memphis, and taught at my old high school.

Chris Parnell

#36. I have opinions about the differences between Memphis barbecue and Texas barbecue. Put me in the kitchen and you'll see how Southern I can be.

Chris Hardwick

#37. I don't know enough about hip-hop, though I've heard some great hip-hop. I just did a thing with Qwest Love - we did a performance together in Memphis at the Folk Alliance Festival, and we had a great jam and a conversation.

Bela Fleck

#38. I often thought that if I had been working with Mark James at American Studios, I would have had a pop hit before I ever moved out of Memphis. But that didn't happen.

Ronnie Milsap

#39. I taught myself off records, Memphis Slim, them old piano players, then added to it. Yeah, hard and loud, beat it to pieces.

Pinetop Perkins

#40. I love Memphis. They've been good to me, the town and everything else. And quite frankly, I love the NBA and love being involved in it.

Michael Heisley

#41. The Labor Department's Hall of Honor recognizes men and women - like Cesar Chavez, Helen Keller and the Workers of the Memphis Sanitation Strike - who have made invaluable contributions to the welfare of American workers.

Thomas Perez

#42. I think it is good for people who are incarcerated or who are bound up one way or the other-people like Lily Kimball and all the prostitues of Memphis. This gal, she needs some wings, and a good song can make that happen.

Ketch Secor

#43. My dad was a congressman, and he taught me at a very early age, 'They voted for me, they view me as theirs, and I am.' Our family's phone in Memphis was always listed. It rang all day and all night.

Harold Ford Jr.

#44. Memphis are a big part of who I am, but it's still just a part

Matty Mullins

#45. The man on the radio says Elvis Presley's died. We drove to Memphis, the sky was hard and black.

Bruce Springsteen

#46. Throughout the '50s, tons of unknown locals came through Sun to record their demos. Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis all made their first recordings at the former Memphis Recording Service.

Shawn Amos

#47. All the really great records or people who made them somehow came from Memphis or Louisiana or somewhere along the Mississippi River ... And singers like Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters gave me the feeling that they were right there, standing by the river.

John Fogerty

#48. Mississippi begins in the lobby of a Memphis, Tennessee, hotel and extends south to the Gulf of Mexico.

William Faulkner

#49. I love Memphis, I guess you could say, in the way that you love a brother even if he does sometimes puzzle and sadden and frustrate you. Say what you want about it, it's an authentic place. I was born and raised in Memphis, and no matter where I go, Memphis belongs to me, and I to it.

Hampton Sides

#50. I have a tattoo that I got in Memphis, and another I got in Dayton.

Colin Donnell

#51. From Natchez to Mobile, from Memphis to St. Joe, wherever the four winds blowI been in some big towns an' heard me some big talk, but there is one thing I knowA woman's a two-face, a worrisome thing who'll leave ya to sing the blues in the night.

Johnny Mercer

#52. Most guys my age have girlfriends and drinking buddies on their speed dial. Me, I have the Memphis CDC.

Mira Grant

#53. Memphis is in a very lucky position on the map. Everything just gravitated to Memphis for years.

Steve Cropper

#54. Memphis was almost like going to California. Beale Street was the black man's street.

Muddy Waters

#55. The first time I saw my wife, Marjorie, I was doing stand-up in Memphis, and she was sitting in the front row. Afterward, I walked up and said, 'Ma'am, I'm going to marry you one day.' And 15 years later, I did.

Steve Harvey

#56. Man, that record came out and was real big in Memphis. They started playing it, and it got real big. Don't know why-the lyrics had no meaning.

Elvis Presley

#57. Seeing the road show of 'A Chorus Line' in 1977 at the Orpheum Theater in downtown Memphis was a life-changing event for me: there were gay people, on the stage, and they all lived in New York.

Ira Sachs

#58. Growing up in Memphis and listening to all kinds of music and dreaming ... So that was one of the first times I wrote a complete song and set it to music and the whole bit. From then on, I was busy with it.

William Bell

#59. When working abroad you work pretty hard, but with time off, this is the greatest job in the world. You drive. You explore Memphis, or wherever you've landed, or go and see Dr John, or the Californian landscape. And, yes, I've had a few good meals.

Toby Jones

#60. It's been a pleasure to bring my talents to south beach now on to Memphis.

Paul Pierce

#61. Memphis is the place where rock was born and Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed. It's full of contradictions, abject poverty, and riches that only music can provide.

Shawn Amos

#62. I used to play - when I first started trying to be professional, I disk jockey from 1949 to 1955 in Memphis, Tennessee, and I was quite popular there as a disk jockey.

B.B. King

#63. Hey, I said we don't carry weapons, I didn't say we couldn't defend ourselves." Captain Stanley Memphis, head of alien team disguised as pint-sized critters on a quest to learn if humans are savage bastards or a benevolent tribe.

Delilah Jean Williams

#64. The many sounds of Memphis shaped my early musical career and continue to be an inspiration to this day.

Justin Timberlake

#65. Memphis," I said softly and he opened his eyes to look at me. "You're safe," I whispered. Tears

Sloane Kennedy

#66. I bought my first electric guitar when I moved to Memphis; a Gibson with a DeArmond pickup which I used with a small Gibson amplifier.

B.B. King

#67. But it never touched me. Not until Memphis.

Mira Grant

#68. ELVIS PRESLEY was bigger than life. His success was documented and laid out for him. He came to the first show I had in Memphis, and it was very nice. He sort of treated me like an equal, because we were both fresh in the business. We got to be great friends and kindred souls.

Roy Orbison

#69. I tried to balance the sufferings of the miserable victim against the moral degradation of Memphis, and the truth flashed over me that in large measure the race question involves the saving of black America's body and white America's soul.

Philip Dray

#70. For me, Memphis has always been a city that holds a great deal of meaning and also leads me to a lot of thinking. Besides Sun Studio, which helped put rock n' roll on the map all over the world, the legendary Stax Studio also called Memphis home.

Henry Rollins

#71. He calls us to run hard after Him, His commands, and His glory. The decision to be in God's will is not the choice between Memphis or Fargo or engineering or art; it's the daily decision we face to seek God's kingdom or ours, submit to His lordship or not, live according to His rules or our own.

Kevin DeYoung

#72. My parents were working in a hospital in Memphis. But I didn't live there for any length of time that I remember. The first thing I remember is the town in Mississippi that I live in now, Charleston.

Morgan Freeman

#73. Because I was single, there was a chance I was a homosexual. Because I went to Syracuse, wherever that was, then I was probably a Communist. Or worse, a Liberal. Because I was from Memphis, I was a subversive intent on embarrassing Ford County.

John Grisham

#74. When I went to Memphis and Mississippi and Nashville, I learnt the blues is a whole way of life. I don't really have the blues, but I can appreciate the honesty and the simplicity of it.

Gin Wigmore

#75. Most studios in Memphis had a house set of drums; the drummers just brought their own sticks.

Steve Cropper

#76. I accepted an offer to do a concert for the reopening of the Mall of Memphis.

Johnny Rivers

#77. I have some that I have become a well-known-even infamous-client of, mostly in Memphis. But a great deal of that is legend and doesn't have anything to do with truth.

William Eggleston

#78. Memphis and I both looked at Olaf, as if he'd spoken in tongues. I think neither of us had expected anything useful from the corpse fondling. Damn.

Laurell K. Hamilton

#79. I remember one night in Memphis, I'd come out of a blackout, and I didn't know where I was. I'm feeling through the darkness - I was asleep in the middle of a freeway. I went up to this car in the darkness, and it was a cop car.

Ozzy Osbourne

#80. My own experience with trains dates to long-ago childhood trips with my family in Mississippi to see my grandmother off at the station in Jackson, bound for Memphis.

Alan Huffman

#81. All inquiry into antiquity, all curiosity respecting the Pyramids, the excavated cities, Stonehenge, the Ohio Circles, Mexico, Memphis,
is the desire to do away this wild, savage, and preposterous There and Then, and introduce in its place the Here and Now.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#82. I've always been in love with that Delta-flavored music ... the music that came from Mississippi and Memphis and, especially, New Orleans. When I was 14, I was in a wanna-be New Orleans band in Toronto.

Robbie Robertson

#83. I used to listen to the radio, and when I was about 18 years old, B.B. King was a disc jockey and he had a radio program, 15 minutes a day, over in West Memphis, Arkansas, and he would play the blues.

Koko Taylor

#84. I'd been to Memphis before, but we stayed out of Memphis early on in the late 70s for obvious reasons. People were very sensitive about Elvis Presley, and my stage name obviously would be provocative to some people in that area at that time.

Elvis Costello

#85. I love the South. Although I grew up primarily in Memphis, my family moved around a ton when I was a kid. I guess I never stayed in one place long enough to pick up the accent, but I definitely identify as a Southerner.

Chris Hardwick

#86. Big train from Memphis, now it's gone gone gone, gone gone gone. Like no one before, he let out a roar, and I just had to tag along.

John Fogerty

#87. Anytime I was in Memphis with my dad and at the house, I was happy. That was, like, a given. It was what I lived for. And I still feel the same excitement and warmth.

Lisa Marie Presley

#88. What would we say if the Chinese sent a gunboat with their marines up the Mississippi River claiming they were protecting their laundries in Memphis?

Will Rogers

#89. Many cities make music, but no city breathes music quite like Memphis. The songs and sounds that come from here are uniquely American.

Shawn Amos

#90. No, I always hated modeling. I developed an early hatred of modeling just from having to do it; having won Miss Teenage Memphis, I had to model, and I hated it. It bored me.

Cybill Shepherd

#91. The Faces do not, as some have recently alleged, play badly. They are more than competent, especially at creating a mid-Sixties Rolling Stones-styled groove, as their excellent version of 'Memphis' proves.

Jon Landau

#92. I majored in Southern history in college, and much of my early work at my first job - as a staff writer at 'Memphis' magazine - focused on race relations.

Hampton Sides

#93. 'Hurt Village' is based on a real housing project in Memphis, about three minutes away from the Lorraine Hotel where Dr. King was assassinated, so in my work I'm focusing on a very specific area in Memphis. I see 'Hurt Village' as a natural extension of 'The Mountaintop.'

Katori Hall

#94. Memphis can be thought of connected as much to Mississippi and Arkansas as it is to Tennessee, if not more so. William Faulkner once observed that Mississippi extends from a Memphis hotel room to the Gulf of Mexico.

Tav Falco

#95. When he's healthy, Zach Randolph for the Memphis Grizzlies has always been somebody that has always been very tough to play against.

Kevin Love

#96. I met the Colonel when Elvis was recording some song I'd written for one of his movies. Elvis was just having fun with the gang and all the Memphis boys and Colonel Parker was sitting over here in like a theater seat.

Mac Davis

#97. When I came out of the military, I had a club in Memphis and I started using the The Bar Kays as my club band. They were still only in the middle school - but I'd take them on the road with me on the weekends, sometimes.

William Bell

#98. Besides, even at night, Memphis is going to be hotter than a billy goat's ass in a pepper patch.

Annie England Noblin

#99. I used to be sick of the backroads of Minnesota. I had to drive 30 miles to get home every day, take the schoolbus for two hours. But to drive through America and see the backroads, from Nashville to Memphis, Lovick to New Mexico, was incredible. It was probably the greatest trip of my life.

Garrett Hedlund

#100. Memphis - it's just a bird. Birds fly around, brother. It's what they do. It's not following you, and it's not a sign. Unless you really did give it candy and flowers, in which case you are one strange brother.

Libba Bray