“I can make it stick!”

He’d said that louder than he’d intended to, and felt his courage desiccate into nothing as all the eyes in the FBI briefing room focused on him.

“Beg pardon, son?” Said the case lead at the front of the room, visibly displeased at being interrupted, especially by a junior agent.

“I can make it stick, sir. They’re going to slip because of a lack of evidence right?” He started talking faster, getting excited. “But that’s not true. We’ve got recordings of them threatening the banker and recordings of them from the interrogations.”

“So what? ‘Less you got some magic way to prove beyond a doubt that it wasn’t another fella with the same soundin’ voice, we’re just as screwed.”

“I do, actually. We can match voice patterns and intonations from both recordings, show physical evidence that the speaker in both is the same person.”

“You got papers to back you up? Experts to prove this isn’t some crock?”

“Wouldn’t bring it up if I didn’t, sir.”

“Good enough. I’ll see what the DA says. And son, how’d you know about all that sound crap?”

“We’re in Memphis, sir. I grew up in a recording studio.”

Memphis Note
In the 1970s the local FBI branch ran a case against a pair of bank extortionists. They had recordings of the criminals calling in the threats, and had arrested them picking up the payoff money. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough additional evidence to convict. Luckily, because of Memphis’s place in the recording world, they were able to tap local knowledge and develop a technique to match vocal patterns that was admissible in court. This technique is still used in legal cases to this day. This is probably the only occurrence in history of rock and roll actually stopping crime.

Over in the corner, a very excited, rail-thin Englishman fiddled with glowing knobs and buttons on a equipment rack that towered over him.

I watched him absentmindedly, chewing on a toothpick. After a bit, he seemed to forget I was even there, so I cleared my throat. He turned ‘round, and gave me an overly-wide smile that only the most rarified of the white-boy-glam-rocker-coke-fiends are capable of.

“Right, yeah, man.” He brushed a greasy strand of hair back from his face and sat down on the stool beside me. “Can I just say how much of an honor this is? My old man, he was, like, your biggest fan. This project, it’s like a dream come true for me. Bridging the old and the new, you know?”

From somewhere he produced a wrinkled and worn manuscript book. “Right, so I’ve got some words for songs here. Did you want to -”

I stopped him right there. “Son, you don’t write down the blues. You live it. You let it talk through you.”

He blinked at me.

“Right, man, yeah. Just like Jay-Z.”

I blinked back at him.

“What the hell’s a Jay-Z?”

Memphis Note
Brit-rockers U2 came to town in the late 1980s and cut a few tracks with the legendary BB King at the equally legendary Sun Studios as part of their Rattle and Hum recording/documentary project. I can’t help but wonder what would happen if one of today’s talentless pop artists tried to capture lightning twice. I don’t foresee it ending well.

Typhus Boyd scratched the scruff of his neck and squinted at the two record executives.

“Hit it again, Tommie.”

“‘Aight.” Said the engineer and jabbed the play button on the deck.

The room filled with the sound of whiskey soaked vocals, twelve bar guitar and wheezing harmonica. The executives closed their eyes and bobbed their heads in time. Tommie watched the sound board’s lights move up and down, occasionally fiddling with a nob here or there.

After a few minutes, the song ended and the sounds subsided. For the eighth time today, the record executives looked expectantly at him. The female one, Kitty, spoke up first.

“Well? You can’t argue that’s anything but technical perfection.”

Typhus shrugged.

Then the other one, Bradley, piped up.

“All we need is an endorsement from you. Something we can put out as the unvarnished proof that this is the real deal.”

Typhus stood up, looked in at the tangled mess of metal, cable and instrument inside of the recoding booth. He shook his head.

“I’m sorry, sir. I won’t say it. Jus’ ain’t no robot that can play the blues.”

And with that Typhus Boyd, the last of the great Delta bluesmen, walked out.

Memphis Note
The Blues. The Delta Blues. That particular sound that sprung from Memphis and the Delta around us that went on to define the musical tsunami of the 20th century that was Rock & Roll. It all started right here.