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The musical history of Memphis, Tennessee, is akin to what cosmologists refer to as The Big Bang. It was there that an amalgamation of African-American slave chants slowly fermented in a heady brew of jazz, blues, boogie-woogie, folk and gospel…and eventually exploded into rock 'n' roll. At the center of the River City's Big Bang was Beale Street, where musical idioms merged in a cultural collision so powerful, the reverberations are still felt to this day.

The legacy of this city is now reborn on Broadway, pulsing through the veins of Memphis, a musical by Joe DiPietro (I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change) and David Bryan (of Bon Jovi fame).

Set in the 1950s, Memphis depicts both the good and the bad of this storied town, the good being the music — a distinctly American sound that blended "race music" and hillbilly music (later called rhythm & blues and country) — and the bad being the vitriolic racism that came to define the era. This was, after all, the city where the father of the Civil Rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. While Memphis doesn't shy away from the city's troubled past, it is ultimately the music — a soulful, bombastic, bring-down-the-house joyful noise — that defines the show.

Beale Street was Memphis' version of New Orleans' famous Bourbon and Basin Streets — a red-light district where locals went in search of all forms of diversionary activities. In its heyday, this three-block den of iniquity promised a cavalcade of characters, all in want of whatever nightly adventures the gas-lit street might hold. In your inner-ear, imagine the sounds of Beale's exotic rhythms teeming from smoke-filled clubs and you begin to understand the DNA that gave early rock 'n' roll its sense of danger — a feeling that comes to dominate Memphis the musical.

Today, at one end of the famed avenue stands a statue of the Father of the Blues, William Christopher (W.C.) Handy. At the other end stands another statue, almost beckoning Handy to join him in song. The figure is a young man, acoustic guitar in hand, upper lip curled and pompadour slicked back. Hail to the King…Elvis Presley.  Continued...