View Single Post
  #223  
Old Posted May 11, 2010, 4:05 PM
Johnny Ryall Johnny Ryall is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Posts: 1,967
Rum Boogie At Heart of Beale’s Growth, Future
BILL DRIES | The Daily News

Photo: Lance Murphey

The oldest bar and restaurant on Beale Street marks its 25th anniversary in June with more of the same – live music. The stage at Rum Boogie Café has featured live music seven nights a week since it opened on the northwestern corner of Third and Beale streets in 1985. Preston Lamm, the president of River City Management, a restaurant business that began with Rum Boogie, said live music and one-of-a-kind businesses are the key to Beale Street’s future. “I think as long as we keep it local – not that there’s anything wrong with franchises,” Lamm told The Daily News when asked the key to the district’s future. “That’s what the tourists really want to see. They’re not interested in going to a restaurant they can go to anywhere in the United States.”

Twenty-five years after Rum Boogie’s opening, Beale Street is in a sort of limbo, between its first quarter of a century as a modern entertainment district and whatever comes next. All three of the entities involved in the operation and ownership of the district agree a change is needed for the district to grow. But they disagree on the terms of making the transition from the past 25 years to the present. A three-way legal battle between the city of Memphis, which owns the property; Performa Entertainment, which develops and runs the district; and Beale Street Development Corp., the middleman, is pending in Chancery Court with a tentative trial date of June 8. Attorney John Ryder remains as the court-appointed receiver for the district. Performa just paid to have a new roof put on the Old Daisy theater and three new clubs have opened on the eastern end of the district, which stops at Fourth Street. The new club openings came with a new campaign by Performa to aggressively promote that end of the district.

In the last 25 years, the eastern end has been more difficult than other parts of the district to attract and keep anchor tenants. The eastern side of Fourth, which is outside the district, has always been a thorn in Beale Street developer John Elkington’s side. The Plush Club on the northeastern corner has specifically been cited by Elkington as the source of some problems in keeping tenants in the block from Hernando to Fourth. The club was the scene of a bar brawl Sunday morning in which four Memphis police officers were injured. Police said up to 100 people poured from the club and were involved in the pre-dawn melee. Some of the turmoil is a constant in the entertainment business. So are unlikely transitions.

Lamm went from certified public accountant to bar owner in 1985. He described the entertainment district as “dead in the water” two years after its 1983 opening. The nation was in a recession, so money was tight for new businesses or old businesses that needed a cash infusion. Lamm was watching the district’s tide of red ink on paper as the CPA for what was then Elkington-Keltner, the developers of Beale Street. Lamm was about to get an even closer view when John Elkington heeded the advice of Ben Woodson, one of the founders of Overton Square. Woodson had told Elkington that in order to make Beale Street a success, he and the firm would have to go from managing the three-block collection of businesses to actually getting into the restaurant business. Elkington and Lamm got $175,000 from a group of private investors in California who initially weren’t interested in the restaurant business. They recruited a manager from Overton Square who moved out of town after a year. Another manager followed. “He immediately, two weeks into the job, decided he was a born-again Christian, which was fine,” Elkington said. “But he decided he was against drinking.” That’s when Lamm began running Rum Boogie. “If it hadn’t been for the Rum Boogie, we never would have survived,” Elkington said.

Lamm said he has never regretted the career change. He is proudest of the gold lettering on a window that has survived over the last 25 years that bills the club’s live music as “A Memphis Music Tradition.” After noting that the original window has survived all this time, Lamm knocked on wood and urged others in the room to knock on wood as well. ”Nobody was doing that in 1985,” Lamm said later of the decision to have a live stage every night of the week. “Every musician had to have a job because they could only be a musician on Friday and Saturday. We gave them full-time employment. … They were willing to help us build this.”
Reply With Quote