Walking In Memphis: Man, It Sounds Good Tonight!
Marc Cohn singing Walking in Memphis is something I always believed in. And any time I hear it I can remember the first time I heard it – it didn’t really fit in with anything else I was listening to, or with much on the radio at the time; used to see it on the video-clip shows, late night music TV. It was strange and wonderful.
There’s a power, a grace and a majesty in that song and I think it comes from walking so close to being hackneyed. But you feel the truth sneaking through between the lines.
Everyone pegs it as an Elvis tribute because he sings about boarding the plane in his blue suede shoes, mentions the King and Graceland too – but it’s more about place than person, and if it’s about any one person at all it’s about Marc Cohn. This was him searching for a song, while searching for himself – or maybe that’s the other way around.
He jumped a plane to Memphis to go and see and hear and feel the music his dad loved. He was also aware that he needed to write a good song. He hadn’t written anything that was up to much and he knew it – he was embarrassed to be on a publishing deal and with nothing to publish that felt right, felt good, felt real. But seeing Al Green in a church in the home of the blues and being invited up to sing with the woman that played the piano at the Hollywood Café every Friday night (Muriel Davis Wilkins) meant something, meant he had a song to sing and a reason to believe and a place to go, as well as somewhere he’d just been.
I love the little hint of gospel, the hint of blues, the trace of soul – it’s a musical autobiography. And it always sat out on its own – a throwback and away from all time. It must have been hard to compete with this song, Marc Cohn wrote a few other gems but nobody seemed to care too much.
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Walking In Memphis is one of those songs…Okay, so it’s not quite Wichita Lineman. But then again, what is. And also, you know what, maybe one day it could be. It’s closer than most. It’s better than when you last heard it. Put on your blue suede shoes and board that plane for another trip.
