If you have ever visited Memphis, Tennessee, you no doubt have been to Beale Street and took the opportunity to immerse yourself into the musical heritage of Memphis.\u00a0 Memphis is known for early rock and roll, rockabilly, blues, country, and numerous other popular music genres that really came onto the scene in the early 1950s.\u00a0Names like Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and eventually Elvis Presley, all got their start at Sun Records in Memphis.\u00a0 Until these performers came along, the radio stations were playing old country and big band style music (not that there is anything wrong with these types of music,) but there was a new wave of music coming on shore.<\/p>\n
There was a young radio DJ named Dewey Phillips who was spinning records late night on WHBQ Radio in Memphis.\u00a0 He had become familiar with this new style of music called rockabilly and took a bold step one night to play music of a young singer named Elvis Presley.\u00a0 The radio management went ballistic, imagining people would complain.\u00a0What they found out was that people loved this new sound.\u00a0 The radio station became even more popular, as did Dewey Phillips.\u00a0Memphis was literally turned upside down in the 1950s because of this new music that was taking the city and country by storm.<\/p>\n
The story continues as Phillips meets, and falls in love with, a young African American blues singer in Memphis.\u00a0Now you have the influence of blues (can you say B. B. King?) with the rockabilly style of Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Elvis Presley, among others.\u00a0 Add to this the atmosphere of racial tensions in the South — and particularly in Memphis — and you have the making of quite a story.<\/p>\n
This story was taken by David Bryan and Joe DiPietro, who added some wonderful and exciting music to create the Broadway musical Memphis<\/i>.\u00a0The story was so wonderfully told that Memphis became the Tony Award winner for \u201cMusical of the Year\u201d in 2010.\u00a0 My wife and I had the pleasure of seeing it in New York and immediately knew we wanted to bring it to Van Wert for the region to enjoy as much as we did.<\/p>\n
Well, we\u2019ve done it!\u00a0 This Saturday and Sunday, Memphis, the Musical!<\/i> will be set up to perform at the Niswonger for a 7:30 p.m. show on Saturday and a 3 p.m. Sunday matinee.\u00a0 I encourage you to come out and experience the music, the passion, the dancing, the history and entertainment of Memphis this weekend.\u00a0 With two shows, we still have tickets remaining for either one.\u00a0 One show would have already been sold-out, but with two, you can get tickets even at the door.<\/p>\n
The rest of the Niswonger season includes \u201cThe Berenstain Bears in Family Matters\u201d, The Stepcrew, Church Basement Ladies in The Last (Potluck) Supper<\/i>, and The Temptations (sold out).\u00a0 It\u2019s then time to think about summer (dread these late snowstorms).\u00a0 Remember: any non-profit organizations wanting to serve food during the Fountain Park Summer Music Series concerts, must get their names to The Van Wert County Foundation office before April 1.<\/p>\n
FIN\u00c9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you have ever visited Memphis, Tennessee, you no doubt have been to Beale Street and took the opportunity to immerse yourself into the musical heritage of Memphis.\u00a0 Memphis is known for early rock and roll, rockabilly, blues, country, and numerous other popular music genres that really came onto the scene in the early 1950s.\u00a0Names […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 05:24:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}