15 May 2022

The Who Hits Back! Tour: FedExForum, Memphis, TN, May 13, 2022

May 13 and we’re in Memphis. Memphis, Tennessee! But not only is it Memphis, Tennessee, we’re playing tonight on Beale Street at the FedExForum. We’ve got a statue of WC Handy just across the street in Handy Park and up on Beale at Main Street we’ve got one of Elvis. As Muddy Waters so rightly sang . . . “The blues had a baby and they named the baby Rock’n’Roll!”

The official slogan of the city of Memphis is “Memphis, home of the blues, birthplace of rock’n’roll“.

And it was here on 3 January 1950 that Sam Phillips opened the doors of Sun Studio, known back then as Sun Recording Service at 706 Union Aveue, and the following year Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats cut ‘Rocket- 88’, acknowledged as the very first rock’n’roll record.