Sunday, as the rest of the world turned in for the night, worn from Super Bowl festivities, one smoky little bar well off the beaten path had just turned the lights down low and the music up. It was 10:00 p.m. and the party had just begun.
Soon, the small dance floor was full. It was crowded, nearly impossible to find a seat. Red lights silhouetted the band, whose music had just started to swell and throb. Through the cigarette smoke haze belted a gravely, pained voice. The guitar was a lilting seduction. The beat was simple. This was the blues. Real, unadulterated and most importantly, unexploited.
Tucked away in the heart of one Memphis’s oldest neighborhoods is Wild Bill’s, 1580 Vollintine, a place where raucous, racy blues rage up until the wee hours of the night.
In the 12 years since it opened, Wild Bill’s has built quite a reputation for being one of the last standing authentic blues bars in Memphis.
“It’s not a tourist haunt, even though it’s becoming more and more well known. You’ll get a real blues experience there you wouldn’t find on Beale Street,” said Dr. David Evans, professor of music at The University of Memphis. Evans teaches blues history every spring semester.
Wild Bill’s has live music Wednesday through Sunday, mostly provided by the house band, Hollywood All Stars. The All Stars have been playing traditional blues together for nearly 50 years now.
“They’re good veteran performers,” said Evans. “That level of experience you won’t find anywhere else in Memphis, except for maybe one other band.”
Award winning Memphis bluesman Levester “Big Lucky” Carter also makes frequent appearances. And on any given night there is no telling just who else might stop by.
“Sometimes we get as many as 20 musicians in here playing,” said Horace Brooks, second cousin to Willie “Wild Bill” Story, owner of Wild Bill’s.
This mix of fine musicians has paid off well for Wild Bill’s. The ramshackle juke-joint, no bigger than most people’s living rooms, pulls in a full crowd nearly every night. The clientele is mostly a faithful following of locals, although thanks to Tad Pierson and his American Dream Safari tour of Memphis, tourists occasionally find their way there too.
“We have people come here from all over the world,” said Gail Story, Wild Bill’s daughter, who works in the kitchen. “It’s an authentic, small place where people are close together, and that’s really why people come here.”
And go there they do. Wild Bill’s walls are covered in thank-you notes from people who genuinely loved their pilgrimage to his establishment. Some aren’t even written in English. One note in particular stands out. It’s from Howard Stovall, executive director of the Blues Foundation. His letter, written in 1999, read: “Yoyo Ma can’t wait to again perform in Memphis so he can come back to Wild Bill’s. Once you get Yoyo off the stage and get his tux off, he is subject to knocking off a good amount of scotch and cutting loose. At least he did the night we showed up in tuxedos at your club.”
A picture of Wild Bill with Yoyo Ma accompanied the note to prove that the world-renowned virtuoso cellist had indeed been there.
How is that Wild Bill’s has retained such impeccable authenticity? Because Wild Bill, 82, is the real deal himself. He has been in the blues business since the early 1950s. Wild Bill’s is the third blues club he’s owned.
He’s personally seen the Memphis music industry evolve into what it is today. He said he can remember going to see B.B. King down on Stateline Road in Mississippi for a quarter.
“I didn’t think he’d amount to much,” said Wild Bill, who was decked out sharp in a full-piece, rose-red suit. “He sure did get such a poor start. Now he’s got all the money.”
He said the real difference in today’s blues music is the audience.
“Used to nobody liked the blues. Now everybody does, even white folks.”
And for that reason, he said, blues music isn’t going anywhere.
“Blues ain’t lost, it’s here to stay. B.B. may get all the money, but they’s young folk comin’ up that’s better.”
Coincidentally, running his bar isn’t the only business Wild Bill attends to. His day job, the one he’s kept for the past half a century, is driving one of the five cabs he owns. Though Wild Bill said he’s getting a little tired of driving, there’s an element to the job he still enjoys.
“Keeps me in touch with the public,” he said.
Wild Bill does love entertaining people. He admitted he knows just about everyone that comes in his bar by face. And, Gail said, he’s still prone to dance, even at his age.
“He moves around better than me,” she laughed.
When asked how Wild Bill got in the business of bringing people the blues Gail said, “He likes it all, the music, the people, the wild, the crowd.”
Wild Bill had a simpler answer. “I loved the blues. I knew I had to get me some of it.”
