I never travel far,
without a little Big Star.

– The Replacements
“Alex Chilton”

Before going to see Sun Records, before Graceland, before the Blues Hall of Fame and the Memphis Soul Museum I have to take care of Big Star.

Memphis’s Big Star are usually at the top of the list of “Great Bands That Never Made It” and I love them, I won’t talk about the music itself much here, you’ve heard it all from me before, repeatedly.

The Memphis sites of Big Star!

In 1971 four friends who hung out at a local Memphis recording studio stumbled into a recording contract.

This is that recording studio. I popped inside, told the guy working there that I was a Big Star fan, he smiled and said look around, take pictures.

This is that studio.

Once the recordings were underway the guys realized they needed a name, they walked down the street to the ice cream stand they used to hang out at between studio time and tried to decide between naming themselves after the ice cream stand, and be known as “Sweden Kream” or…

This is the Sweden Kream today.

The band’s other singer, Chris Bell died in a car crash in 1978 (age 27 of course), after leaving the band due to mental health issues he worked at his family’s restaurant, Mortimer’s. I stopped in today for a burger and beer, the bartender figured out why I was there within two minutes, he said I look like all the other Big Star hunters.

This is Mortimer’s Restaurant.

The only surviving bandmember is Jody the drummer, he actually works at Ardent Studios but I didn’t have the guts to ask if he was around today.

Packed up and on the road out of Branson by 7:03am, I can make up the 3 minutes easy.

First planned stop was the Big Craig Trail, supposedly a gorgeous mountainside 4 mile trail in the Ozarks, unfortunately the road to get there was way beyond what I was willing to put supervan through, sad to pass on this one as I could really use the exercise.

Next planned stop was at what is purported to be the oldest business in Arkansas, a general store deep in the middle of the Ozark National Forest, unfortunately I ran into the same problem as the hiking, both roads I attempted to take to get to the General Store were way too rough and in both cases I had to slowly back out to the main road.

Strike two.

Next planned stop was for lunch at a much recommended BBQ place in the town of Ozark… yup, it’s closed… it’s sunday so EVERYTHING in Arkansas is closed.

Strike Three.

Grabbed lunch at a Waffle House which turned out to be a lot of fun, a girl of roughly 10 sitting next to me at the counter very shyly offered that she liked my glasses, I thanked her and noticed hers were almost exactly the same, we had a great lunch together.

At one point the waitress put Hank Williams on the jukebox, the trucker sitting on my other side started bitching, saying they should play some “real country”, I held my tongue and my buddy super quietly whispered “I like this song”.

After lunch I took a 3 hour backroad blast across the state to find the boyhood farmhouse of Johnny Cash, anyone who knows me knows my love for Johnny.

I sat in front of his house and listened to a select playlist for about an hour.

When you book the earliest scenic railroad trip of the day you get half a train to yourself.

The train was great, but more quaint-great than great-great, still cool.

Followed this with a trip to the Ralph Foster Museum of the Ozarks mainly to see this….!

Yes, that is the original Beverly Hillbillies truck, on the show they originally came from Branson before moving out west.

Next up… the National BB Gun Museum!

“You’ll shoot your eye out!”

And the World’s Largest Toy Museum!

Toys display plus selected bible verse.

Large toy display plus bible.

Tin trucks plus bible.

And in the back of the Toy Museum… a church!

Strength tester, as usual I pegged it!

And the Fishing Museum!

The day was capped perfectly by snagging a ticket to the Sight & Sound Theatre‘s (Branson’s answer to Cirque du Soleil) production of MOSES… three hours of a twilight zone worthy multimedia live theatre retelling of the biblical Moses story that was…. interesting….

Slept at the truck stop again last night, had planned to get on the road by 7:30, pulled away around 9:30, oh well.

First stop, the ghost town of Picher, Oklahoma.

Wanna know who ELSE is from Tulsa?

Woody freaking Guthrie.

This is Cain’s Ballroom, a pilgrimage site for sure for this trip. A century old dancehall in Tulsa that is often listed amoung the great places to see live music in North America.

Cain’s is most famous for two things. Firstly it was one of the very few places the Sex Pistols played in America.

And secondly it was the home of Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys, they broadcast their weekly show from Cain’s for 20 years before moving to Texas. 

Bob Wills was the forerunner of a lot of the style of Texas swing music that I like and an amazing songwriter.

His best tune:

I bought a ticket not caring who was playing, the band I saw, Split Lip Rayfield, were superb, banjo, mandolin and the gas tank from a 1981 LeCar bass.

Kansas style bluegrass that every single person around me knew the lyrics to every song of.

More Tulsa stuff? OK!

SE Hinton, author of Tex, Rumblefish and The Outsiders is a lifelong Tulsa resident, she wrote The Outsiders when she was 15/16 and got it published when she was 17.

Her conditions for signing included that a film be made, shot only in Tulsa and that if the film did well another film be made for her next book (at the time unwritten) also be made, utilizing a major director (Francis Ford Coppola eventually directed her second book, Rumblefish).

– George Strait

Slept in another Walmart parking lot last night, in a massive 8 hour thunderstorm, luckily I listened to the advice of my ever so smart friend Alec and picked up a better blanket, made all the difference.

Had to wait an hour for fog to clear before I could drive, went off the highway along the oldest part of Route 66 and pulled off randomly in a small, small, small town to see about breakfast.

Found Josephine’s, a tiny diner in the tiny town and met these two ladies, extremely friendly, extremely curious, by a landslide the nicest people I have met so far. Every place so far brings the cheque with the meal, I love this, no need to call them back again and wait for the bill.

AND

They would like me and all my friends to watch for a new Children of the Corn movie coming to Netflix, which used the cafe as a set and one of the ladies 6 year old sons got to murder a guy!

– Dusty Springfield

Got to Tulsa early in the day and stopped in at the highly recommended art gallery…

The building and the ground were staggeringly gorgeous but the art was not really anything special for the most part.

– Neil Young

I notice old mansion after mansion after mansion while driving around, turns out there was once oil money here and almost the entire city was built in a 20 year period from 1905 to 1925, I headed downtown and nearly every single building downtown is gorgeous Art Deco, there is even a Tulsa Art Deco museum. Was not expecting that at all.

– Emmylou Harris

– Merle Haggard

– Waylon Jennings

Grabbed a hot dog for supper, they call them Coney Islands here, same as in Detroit, weird.

– The Byrds

Found this today, perfect…….

– Don Williams

I’m tired now and not sure where I am sleeping yet so I am off to find a welcoming Walmart.

– Rufus Wainwright

There’s a handful of states that have a city that is their music city, the place where their music scene happened or happens. Seattle for Washington, Nashville & Memphis for Tennessee, New Orleans for Lousiana, etc, for Oklahoma that city is Tulsa.

The “Tulsa sound” is the sort of thing you get in a crossroads city, the local folk & country music got blending with jazz and soul beats, rock guitar and lots of blues.

Tulsa is not a big place at all, probably 350,000 but the number of acts from here and the influence is so vast and so cool. The music scene here generated Leon Russell, Cargoe, The Tractors, David Gates, The Gap Band, a bunch of Tulsa players ended up going to Los Angeles and forming the Wrecking Crew, the house band for all the Phil Spector recordings…honestly about a dozen more bands that I like but most importantly of all, the king of the Tulsa sound… JJ Cale.

There are few better things in life than introducing a friend to the Flaming Lips. Certainly the biggest thing to come out of Oklahoma City and totally homers too, they still live here, in a very modest part of town and are extremely active in the local arts scene.