The 2009 Folk Alliance Conference starts tomorrow at 11 a.m.  If you’ve never attended the conference, which will be held at the Downtown Marriott Hotel, it’s well worth the $250 per day (or $750 for all 5 days) admission — hundreds of musicians, including John Sebastian, Rodney Crowell, Kathy Mattea, Charlie Louvin, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Albert Lee, Lucy Wainwright Roche, and Peter Holsapple and Chris Stamey, are scheduled to play. 

Go here to read CA writer Bob Mehr’s interview with performer/keynote speaker Roger McGuinn — pictured above with his 1960s-era group the Byrds. And go here to read my interview with 17-year old Pennsylvanian Brittany Ann Tranbaugh, who will be traveling more than 1,000 miles to appear at the event.  

While this is an international conference, with musicians from all over the world networking and performing, there’s plenty of Memphis in the mix, including: 

1. Screenings of the Memphis jug band documentary Chasin’ Gus’ Ghost, slated for tomorrow at 3 p.m. and Thursday at 2 p.m. 

2. An open mic set hosted by the Memphis Songwriters Association.

3. The Kids Show, on Thursday at 11:30 a.m., with Memphis host Darin Hillis and a performance from Valerie June and Jason Freeman.

4. An interview with legendary musician — and former Memphian — Charlie Louvin on Thursday afternoon.   

5. An interview with onetime Elvis sideman, guitarist James Burton, on Friday afternoon. 

Also: panel discussions with the likes of new Memphis Music Commission head Johnnie Walker; Memphis International record label owners David Less and Bob Merlis; producers Jim Dickinson,  Jeff Powell, and Scott Bomar; Oxford attorney Tom Freeland,  and performances from Valencia Robinson, Nancy Apple, Valerie June, Jimmy Davis, Blair Combest, Jed Zimmerman, Deering and Down, Holly Cole, Caleb Sweazy, William Lee Ellis, Cory Branan, Susan Marshall, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Dan Montgomery, Andy Cohen, and more. 

In conjunction with the conference, The Folk Alliance will also present a number of concerts and events that will be open to the public at various venues around town.

The Center for Southern Folklore will host a free performance by Stacey Earle & Mark Stuart with special guests Act of Congress and Deering & Down on Feb. 20. On Feb. 21, the Center will welcome The Ebony Hillbillies along with Valerie June and Andy Cohen. Both shows start at 8 p.m. 

The Hi-Tone Café offers a pair of shows starting with a Feb. 20 bill featuring the Duhks, Hoots and Hellmouth and 2 Mule Plow. The following evening, Small Faces legend Ian McLagan brings his Bump Band in for a concert. The bill will also include a performance by Jack Oblivian & the Tearjerkers. 

On Feb. 21 at 3 p.m., Ardent Studios will host a creativity workshop featuring banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck and drummer Amir “?uestlove” Thompson of hip-hop band The Roots. The event is free. For more information, call 725-0855.

Yesterday afternoon, I hoped the folks on the Goner Records message board were wrong. Unfortunately, it’s true — Lux Interior, frontman for the Cramps, died in a Glendale, CA hospital due to complications from a pre-existing heart condition. He was in his early 60s.

Lux and his romantic/musical partner Poison Ivy (born Kristy Wallace) formed the Cramps in the early 1970s, based on a love of horror films, surf rock, and rockabilly music. According to this timeline, they met Alex Chilton in Sept. 1977, less than a year after they debuted onstage at CBGBs. By Oct., they were walking the streets of Memphis, recording sessions at Ardent and Sam Phillips Recording Studio. The Cramps returned here the next summer, to record their first full-length album, Songs the Lord Taught Us, with Chilton at the helm, and, in ‘84, they teamed up with Jim Dickinson to cut a version of Sonny Burgess’ “Red Headed Woman.” According to my friend Bobby, however, Lux came to Memphis much earlier than that — as U.S. Navy enlistee Erick Lee Purkhiser, he lived and worked on the base in Millington back in the 1960s.

Okay, enough background info — the way the Cramps made me feel when I was a bored-out-of-my-skull kid looking for, as Lux put it, “some new kind of kick,” and I dropped the needle on one of their records, was nearly indescribable. Fortunately, I got to see the Cramps perform live several times, most notably at the New Daisy in the early ’90s. I also got to meet Lux and Ivy in person, when they came into Shangri-la Records that day. The store was packed with Cramps fans in town for the concert, but Lux and Ivy graciously signed autographs as they made their way through the bins, picking up a few hundred dollars worth of records. Of course, I totally geeked out when the CD player stopped, and inadvertently played a Cramps tribute disc that just happened to be laying on the top of the stack…

Back on the Goner Board, Cheater Slicks guitarist Tom Shannon said it best: “Back in the early 80’s when there wasn’t much rock n roll, those records (Gravest Hits, Songs the Lord Taught Us, Psychedelic Jungle, Peppermint Lounge, Date with Elvis) were beacons to a hidden future. I tried to analyse them: what were the secret codes? What did Lux Mean? What am I supposed to know? It was strange how much that band affected me. I would have fought someone to the death if they had badmouthed the Cramps. I certainly could not respect someone’s taste if they did not worship the Cramps. They were the glue that bound us together. The truest element. The electricity.”

The good folks at the Memphis Music Foundation are hosting a free workshop tomorrow (Saturday, Jan. 10) at 1PM. It’s happening at the Musicians Resource Center, which is located downtown, at 431 S. Main, Suite #201. Lawyer/MouseRocket bassist Hemant Gupta and Ardent Studios’ own Elizabeth Montgomery are gonna be on hand to discuss music publishing, licensing, and copyrighting — if you’re an up-and-coming songwriter, producer, or artist, you can learn a lot from these folks. Seating is limited, so if you want to attend, email info@memphismeansmusic.com.

In honor of Sam Phillips’ 82nd birthday:

Samuel Cornelius Phillips was born in Florence, Alabama on Jan. 5, 1923. On January 3, 1950, Phillips opened the “Memphis Recording Service” at 706 Union Avenue. The rest is history…

I say yes — and ac- cording to this article by CA report- er Michael Lollar, so does Liz Scott, a resident of Florence, AL, Phillips’ hometown.

Reports Lollar: Scott wrote a petition that has more than 10,000 names on it, which she will present to the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee of the U.S. Postal Service, which sorts through more than 50,000 requests a year for commemorative stamps honoring people and events in U.S. history. The committee recommends only about 25 subjects a year to the U.S. Postmaster General, according to its Web site.

In recent years, Sun Records artists Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and Elvis Presley have all been honored with official USPS stamps.

Lollar reports that even U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) is also behind the push for a Phillips stamp:

“I am a Sam Phillips guy,” says Cohen, who included Phillips as a music legend honored by Tennessee at rest stops along Interstate 40. He also led an unsuccessful effort to rename a portion of Marshall Avenue in Downtown Memphis as “Sam Phillips Place.”

Cohen wrote this week to Postmaster General John E. Potter, formally asking for a Phillips stamp and citing Phillips’ pivotal role in the careers of Elvis, B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf, Rufus Thomas, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Go here to cast your vote on a Sam Phillips stamp.

I was at Poppa Willie Mitchell’s studio, Royal, earlier this week, when he showed me a copy of the Wall Street Journal, dated Nov. 18. Inside: this wonderfully-written story about the legacy of Memphis soul singer O.V. Wright, penned by Jesse Drucker.

Wrote Drucker: The end came too early for Overton Vertis Wright. It was in the back of an ambulance en route to a Birmingham, Ala., hospital after he suffered his third heart attack on Nov. 16, 1980. He was 41 years old. His life had been marked by multiple marriages, a heroin addiction he couldn’t shake, and a stint in jail for drug possession. But he had also become one of the most moving soul singers in an era filled with stiff competition. He was O.V. Wright.

Many soul singers of that period could sing sad lyrics, but the grief was often feigned. Not Wright. His hurt was real. The titles of some of the songs he recorded provide a clue: “Drowning on Dry Land,” “I’d Rather Be Blind, Crippled and Crazy,” “You’re Gonna Make Me Cry,” and Wright’s masterpiece, an unhappy tribute to the instruments of his addiction: “A Nickel and a Nail.”

The article was timed with last month’s celebration of all things Wright, organized by music bloggers Red Kelly and Preston Lauterbach and including a concert at Ground Zero, a meeting with Wright’s former producers, and the unveiling of a tombstone on his previously unmarked grave.

Go here for the rest of the story. And go here to learn more about O.V. Wright.

Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis formed the impromptu “Million Dollar Quartet.”

Earlier this week, I interviewed rock historian Colin Escott (author of Good Rockin’ Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock & Roll, he recently co-wrote a musical called “Million Dollar Quartet,” based on the event he describes as “the catechism on where rock and roll really came from”) and Nashville-based songwriter and producer “Cowboy” Jack Clement, who was actually the engineer at Sun Studio on that fateful day.

Clement, now 77, told me, “Jerry Lee’s first record was getting airplay, but he hadn’t gone on the road yet. The reason Johnny Cash was there was that Carl had invited him. Of course, Elvis just dropped by.”

“Sam had been running the board, and I was in the control room as an assistant,” Clement says. “Carl cut a hit record that day – ‘Matchbox.’ The session was about over when Elvis came in. I was sitting at the board turning a couple of knobs, and when I heard the guys talking and joking, I stood up and thought, I would be remiss if I didn’t record this. I went into the studio and moved a couple of mics around, and when the tape ran out I put on another one.”

According to Clement, Presley was still a frequent visitor to Sun, even though Phillips had sold his contract to RCA.

“Although he was a big star by then, when he came around us, he was just good ol’ Elvis,” says Clement. “It was a buddy thing, a nice little gathering. Nobody was trying to hog the show – they were passing the guitar around and telling stories.”

“We must’ve recorded them for an hour-and-a-half, but I don’t know if Sam ever listened to it. None of us thought too much about it at the time – when I left Sun [in 1959], it was just sitting on a cabinet.”

Go here for the rest of the story.

King Curtis, Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Clarence Carter, Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke, Otis Redding, Travis Wammack, Don Covay, George Jones, Jerry Lee Lewis, Arthur Conley, Joe Tex, and Bobbie Gentry all recorded at FAME. So did Liza Minelli, the Backstreet Boys, Donny Osmond, Billy Ocean, Wet Willie and Lobo.

Founded by Rick Hall, Billy Sherrill and Tom Stafford in Florence, Alabama, in the late 1950s, the studio was first located above the City Drug Store in Florence, AL. In ‘63, after buying out Sherrill and Stafford, Hall recorded Jimmy Hughes’ “Steal Away,” in one take. The song proved to be the first hit cut at the studio’s second — and current — location at 603 East Avalon in Muscle Shoals.

According to Hall, with an idea from then 15-year-old friend and legendary songwriter Dan Penn, “we pressed up some 45 RPM records, borrowed a Ford Fairlane station wagon, bought two cases of vodka, and hit the road on a holy mission to transform ‘Steal Away’ into a hit record.” Hall and Penn traveled to radio stations across the southeast, including Memphis, Tupelo, Little Rock, New Orleans, and Mobile, leaving a copy of ‘Steal Away” and a bottle of vodka at every stop. “Miraculously, that’s all it took,” says Hall. “Each and every one of them played the new Jimmy Hughes record.”

Last month, Hall relaunched the FAME label — mothballed in ‘76 — with, aptly enough, The Best of Jimmy Hughes.

And this month, Band of Horses cut at FAME, following in the footsteps of the Drive-By Truckers, who cut their 2007 Grammy-nominated album The Scene of the Crime there last year.

Said BOH frontman Ben Bridwell: “Muscle Shoals and FAME in particular was an incredible experience for us. We really were blown away by all the great records that came out there. Everybody seems to have a story to tell about the rich musical history of the area and everybody seems to be a part of it to this day. There really has to be something in the water, or aligned in the stars to breed that many talented players and writers.”

Interested in recording at FAME? Go here for a complete list of studio equipment.

Go here for a great blog entry about FAME, Florence AL, and the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio (R.I.P.).

Anyone seen the trailer yet for Cadillac Records, the Chess label biopic? I saw Beyonce as Etta James on Oprah last week; she looks a lot better than the goofballs portraying the Rolling Stones. Jeffrey Wright plays Muddy Waters, Mos Def portrays Chuck Berry, and Eamonn Walker plays Howlin’ Wolf. With Eric Bogosian as Alan Freed and Adrien Brody as Leonard Chess. The movie opens Dec. 5. Should be interesting…

And for more on Beyonce’s star turn, check out this piece by Alan Light in the New York Times.

Writes Light: It’s startling to see Ms. Knowles — one of the few pop stars left with a wholesome, good-girl image — swaggering and swearing through her performance. But her mother, Tina, who vets all the scripts that are submitted to her, flagged this one as a keeper, noting that the hard-living, emotionally scarred Ms. James could be the role of a lifetime.

In an interview on the top floor of a hotel on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Ms. Knowles said that when she read the script: “I said, ‘I have to do this movie,’ but I was terrified. Was I really ready?”

There was certainly no guarantee that a woman who appeared on the cover of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue could be convincing as the heroin-addicted daughter of a prostitute, whose powerhouse sound conveyed a lifetime of heartbreak and defiance in songs like “At Last” and “Tell Mama,” incorporating a blues attitude into a wide range of pop genres.