Still’s Reviews > Beale Street Dynasty: Sex, Song, and the Struggle for the Soul of Memphis > Status Update

Had to take a break from the despair I find all but inescapable in this disheartening history of the Bluff Town, founded on booze, Blues, dope, and high-stepping backsliding heifers & the not-so-square johns who enabled if not empowered them.

It’s the 20’s & old Boss Crump has seized more power than he’d ever imagined. He’s buffalloed the whites into thinking he’s anti-vice. He’s the Baron of Bullshit.

Exhausting account of Memphis’ shady origins. Great anecdotal color by the author as he relates the growing pains of Memphis as she moves from a an 1860’s Mississippi river port to a growing metropolis by 1915.
All thanks to booze, dope, wild wild women, and barrelhousing.

I have found Real Horror tales imbedded in the history of the United States. Especially during the era between the end of the war against slavery and the Gilded Age in America.

There were some genuine heroes -brave men and women- of various races who valiantly fought injustice and inhumanity and I’m proud to read that many resided in the city of my birth - Memphis.