This film is about the beginning of rock and roll. Without thinking about the term rock and roll, how do you think that kind of music, so popular got started. What was the beginning of it?

Rock and roll and it's beginning, that's what you would like to know my idea about it. Some people say that, ah, rock and roll, that Memphis is where rock and roll first started. Not so. I hate to be picky about this but rock and roll didn't start here, not in my book, and I write a pretty good book. People like Joe Turner, ah, the fellow who plays the guitar and skips across the stage, Chuck Berry and people like Fats Domino, Little Richard, all of these people were doing rock and roll long before Memphis was supposed to be the home of rock and roll and where it was started. That's the way I feel about rock and roll because I used to play Joe Turner, Little Richard and Little Richard was the hottest thing, hottest thing that you ever want to, see he was making movies and everything doing that rock and roll stuff. And then eventually, the same kind of, to show you what I mean, the same kind of piano that Jerry Lee Lewis is playing today, Little Richard was the first to play that. So, which goes to show you, you give claim to something that is not so. It did not start here. It could have started in Kansas City where Joe Turner came from. It could have started where Little Richard came from or where Chuck Berry came from, all of these people were doing it, all of them was doing rock and roll and had been doing it for a long time. But it eventually, as I said in the beginning, when it got to be accepted by whites and they were doing it that's when it became rock and roll. It had a new name because Alan Freed, of years ago, back in New York, I think that name might have come out of his era as a disc jockey and promoter because I know a lot of black artists used to do shows with him, he used to promote them at theaters all across New York, D.C., or Baltimore. He did it all in there. And the name rock and roll, I feel that came out of that time when, when Alan Freed a disc jockey back up in New York City.

Not going back as far as your mother's womb.

A little story about, about me, I'll try to put it in capsule form. On Beal Street years ago was a theater by the name of the Grand. And I was a child of six in elementary school, of course we didn't call it elementary at that time we called it a grade school, grammar school, and I played the part of a frog on this stage. And that was actually as far back as I can remember, that was my beginning. And, ah, then high school, plays and, and, and, and under Nat D. William my history teacher we performed on stage there. I mean real, live, good performances, so good that the youngsters, the children, not even 20 years-old had a show, we had a show so good out of that school that we played the Palace Theater on Beal Street for a week. That's the way shows used to come in because the Palace was the showplace for the South.

You first started out entertaining.

Well I started out as, as a tap dancer and I was a pretty good tap dancer but, ah, that is not all I wanted to be. I, I wanted to be a, a, I wanted to be a great, world's greatest tap dancer, couldn't work it but I did turn out to be one of the world's finest entertainers. Vaudeville at Rabbit Foot, boy that was something: we had the chorus girls, we had the dancers, we had the singers, we had the whole works, we had everything that big time shows had on this, ah, ah, Rabbit Foot Minstrel, that was the name of it. And, and, ah, as a tap dancer I went with a fellow by the name of Johnny Dowdy and the both of us as a team were one of the finest dance teams that Rabbit Foot had every seen. We were good. And that was a potion of Rufus Thomas.

Can you give me an idea of what happened in Memphis musically that makes Memphis such an important place in the history of rhythm and blues and rock and roll?

RF: What makes Memphis so great? Well, after W.C. Handy, see back in the early nineties, in the early 1900s, I mean, Handy did the blues. He was the first one to put it on paper. And he did all this right there on Beal Street. You have cities now who say that we are home of the blues: Chicago, Texas, Mississippi. But the people from Mississippi during that time came to Memphis to do the blues. They'd stop off on Beal Street and come in there and, and Beal Street was the black man's haven. And when he'd come here everything that he thought of that was negative, when he hit Beal Street, man, lit up, lit up like a slot machine or, or a grandpappy on a Saturday night, boy. Everything was fired up. He left all of those things behind him. Beal Street was the place, that's where Handy wrote the blues and Handy passed them on to all of the other blues singers of today. But that was the foundation of the blues, Memphis, Tennessee. And after the blues, you know, blues is, I would think is the foundation of all of it anyway, all the rest of that music: jazz, rock and roll and all the rest of the music you got coming, was built on the blues. If you listen to jazz, listen to what's under it and see what you hear. You can take a piece of the blues and build anything you want right on the top of the blues. But jazz was not there then. Jazz came much later. Jazz is, is an individual thinking that was built on top of the blues. All the artists built on the blues but blues is the mother of all of it.

Okay, Rufus.

This is Rufus Thomas right here at WDIA in Memphis, Tennessee. Hey, pick up, I'm young, I'm loose, I'm full of juice, I got to go so what's the use. We're feeling gay though we ain't' got a dollar, Rufus is here, so hoot and holler and here is B.B. King at 3 o'clock in the morning on WDIA.

Ah ha, she cried as she lays a wooden leg and then she dies. Right now I got to get, I got to go and I got to left, I got to vamoose, in fact I got to disappear from here. That means a high low, jip, jack and again and I'm gone.

Here is Rufus Thomas at WDIA and look out. Here comes Jackie Brinston right here on WDIA with the hottest song in this man's time - "Rocket '88".

Rufus is right here WDIA, look out friend, ha, ha one of the boys just hit this man's town and one of the hottest records that's we got on going on for the day, boy from Tupelo, Mississippi. Yes, you guessed it. It's Elvis Presley with "Good Rockin’ Tonight".

After the songs you recorded and sung in the early sixties, tell me briefly how your recording career got going.

RF: Oh, ah, I think maybe two or three years that I might have recorded for Sun because some of the stuff that I recorded for Sun was leased to Chess Records in Chicago. So you still have combination of methods in Chicago there. And then, ah, two or three records and then after that since I, I was 53 when "Bear Cat" was recorded, after that, then there was nothing after we all got discarded from the studio, all black artists was discarded from Sam Phillips' studio and then the white artists came in. But during that time, that lull in between there I was working with various bands; Al Jackson, Sr., who is the father of Al Jackson, Jr., who was the drummer for Booker T. and the MGs. Then I worked with a group, ah, Bill Ford. Then in the meantime since I had recorded "Bear Cat" I got me a little group together and called it Rufus Thomas and the Bear Cats. And we played all down in Mississippi, over in Arkansas and in parts of Tennessee, within the tri-state area. And in the meantime I was holding down a job in a textile mill 'cause, called Memphis, no, it was, ehh, my mind ain't going to well right now but I…

Start off by saying, several years after ...

Several years after I finished, ah, at Sun Records… there was a great big lull in between there and then, as fate would have it, Stax was there. A fellow by the name of, ah, of Robert Tally told us about the studio and Carl and I went down, walked in off the street, right in. And I had written this song "'Cause I Love You" and that was the beginning of Stax Records. We were the first one that made money for Stax as I was the first that made monies for Sun Records. And we, we did a song called "'Cause I Love You". And then after "'Cause I love You" then Carla, no, no, I came with "The Dog" and then Carla came with "Gee Whiz" then from "Gee Whiz" came "Walking the Dog" and then "Push and Pull" where all, probably not in this order but as we go up to the "Funky Chicken" then you know about it now. The rest is history.

Stax was responsible for revitalizing the music industry in Memphis. Can you talk about that?

Stax was really the, the, the, if, if there, a catalyst for funk and I was beginning of what we call funk music. That was me. And I was funky to 19 yards of chitlins with onions and sardines on the side with pickle. Now that's funky. And came, I forgot the real funky one I did was "Breakdown" - shak on kong ton - that, that, I mean heavy gut bucket bottom, that's what made that funk, that heavy bass and, and the big foot on the drum, that's what made that funk. So I was beginning of Stax. And then we ought, the rest came along later, much later then Carla, then after that came William Bell and a few, then she and Otis came together with, with the, ah, she was the Memphis queen and, and Otis was the king, king and queen. They made an album by that name. And, ah, Otis and Carla was just tremendous together especially when they did that song "Tramp". That was a big one for it. And Stax was the foundation of other kinds of music 'cause Memphis was noted for the blues but then came that other stuff, that other music that other places didn't have like us, Memphis. You knew that Memphis sound the minute you heard it. If you go to Nashville, you got the country sound. You go to Motown you had the Motown sound. But the minute you heard that Memphis sound from Stax you knew it, you just automatically knew that that was Stax and Stax was solid in Memphis and I just hated it had to fall apart.

You mentioned Motown, how would you characterize the difference between Motown and Stax?

Oh, in every sense of the word, Motown, ah, ah… the Detroit sound and Stax was, was different. You, okay, here's how I would, I would, ah, ah, put it in words, Motown was like a Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, [sings], no bottom, no big bottom and that's the way they were. Good of course, good, very good, there's nothing you could say against what they did, what the Temptations did, what the Four Tops did, what Diana Ross and the Supremes did. All of them top records across the world but they were [sings] but the minute you cross the Mason and Dixon Line and get down here in Memphis, altogether different. [sings]. See, see the difference. [sings]. That is the difference. Funk versus smoothness, both were good, you couldn't take anything from either one.

Let's talk about Booker T. and the MGs, that kind of racially mixed group, you wouldn't have found around Memphis in the early fifties, right?

No, you wouldn't have, but it wasn't that, let me see, you couldn't have found a mixed group like that but it wasn't that whites and blacks didn't, musicians, musicians always came together. There was none of that crap, that the heads of the city set for you to go by, that blacks don't go here and whites don't go there and all that stuff. White folk been coming to Beal Street ever since it was Beal Street. If you let the people alone, if you had let them alone even at that time, there wouldn't have been no problem. They're the ones that just did not want it to happen, the so-called city fathers and sort of thing. But white musicians and entertainers got together at any given moment, they loved it, they, ah, the whites would go to the black clubs where they had jam sessions and play and only the white, the blacks did not go to the whites but the whites were always coming down, be., you know why the came because they had something to learn. On their side of the track it was just something that was more or less stationary but when it came on the other side of the track, they had something to learn. And they learned and as time went by you'll find out that they learned and they learned well.