Blues for Rudy: Beale Street gives its noteworthy mayor a musical sendoff

Blues for Rudy: Beale Street gives its noteworthy mayor a musical sendoff
June 9, 2011
by Richard Morgan
The Commercial Appeal

It is not ordinary for funerals to include standing ovations. But Rudy Williams was not an ordinary man.

"God filled that man up so much that he overflowed," said family friend Melvin Robinson in one of the many eulogies given at Williams' funeral Wednesday. "And in the course of his life he emptied it out into the world until he was spent and he passed."

Unscheduled, Mayor A C Wharton arrived, too. Talking about how he has been mayor of both Shelby County and the city of Memphis, Wharton added, "it was always my understanding that whenever my feet touched Beale Street, that I was under a different jurisdiction."

To wide, loud applause, Wharton said, "Rudy has gone from playing out front of our King's Palace CafÃ© to playing inside of the King's palace."

Williams, 70, who spent 50 years performing as a Downtown blues fixture known as "The Mayor of Beale Street," was found dead of natural causes in a wooded area near his Whitehaven home after being missing for a week.

Services for Williams this week were the stuff of endings. But music -- and the musician -- reverberates, echoes and lingers.

"His rhythm will forever be with us," D'Army Bailey, the local lawyer and civil rights hero, said at Williams' funeral.

There is no cure for death, but there are cures for grief. Williams had a saying about that: "Only two people can make you feel better, physicians and musicians."

This week, at Williams' wake, funeral, memorial procession and burial, there was always music. Besides a quick prayer, words were not spoken at his two-hour wake until 54 minutes in. Just music.

In the 1950s, Williams won the Palace Theater's Amateur Hour with his rendition of Perez Prado's "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White." The win garnered him enough attention to be asked to play "Memphis Blues" at the unveiling of a W.C. Handy statue on Beale in 1960, the year Williams graduated from Booker T. Washington High.

Then, as many men before him had done, including Handy himself, he left Memphis. He moved to Oklahoma to attend college and then California for Army duty.

He returned to Memphis as a factory worker for Firestone, but moonlighted at Blues Alley on Front Street, where he joined a band. When Firestone closed, he became a full-time musician.

Almost every day since Beale Street revitalized on October 8, 1983 -- 10,106 days in all -- Williams was there, tooting his trumpet, serenading passers-by in a kind of musical ministry. Whereas some performers dress merely to the nines, his outfits went all the way to eleven: tuxedoes, pinstripe vests, bowler hats.

"This is the way it should be done, man," said Williams' contemporary Herman Green, 81, who played on Beale from 1945 to 1950 and then ever since his return to Memphis in 1974. "You want to be remembered by what you do best, making people happy, expressing yourself. It's love. Our music is our way of loving," Green said at Williams' wake.

In the 1970s, Philip Joyner Jr., then a teenager, was riding the bus back home after seeing Dizzy Gillespie perform on Beale Street. He noticed another man on the bus, Williams, who often traveled with his trumpet without a case.

The two struck up a conversation and Williams "kind of adopted me and a few other guys to hang out and talk music," said Joyner. The two became so close that Joyner's children called Williams "Uncle Rudy" and Joyner's son, Andrew, who is now on the cusp of his 17th birthday, got his first-ever pocket trumpet as a gift when he was 5, from Williams.

Joyner grew up to become a self-described "itinerant orchestra director" at various Memphis city schools, in grades ranging from fourth to eighth. He also performs at various venues, including piano at The Peabody.

Beale Street's funeral processions were always led by Williams. But on Wednesday, the march went on without him because it was for him. Joyner led, wearing Williams' trademark black bowler hat, on loan from his widow, Marva, at her request.

A half-step behind Joyner was Green, both with horns blaring, dancing more than marching. Third in the massive procession was Ayler Edmaiston, 8, sporting a blonde Mohawk and Elvis-styled sunglasses as he tapped his tambourine.

Ayler was, by an unofficial survey, the youngest person in the procession to have been inspired by Williams. "It's cool," he said, "to reward someone for doing something good." Asked how long he has been playing the tambourine, the boy smiled: "Today!"