Sanctuary cities an issue in sheriff race
Candidates stake out positions on immigration
The three candidates for Shelby County sheriff said that they would continue working with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on a limited basis if elected.
That means sheriff ’s deputies would continue asking for a country of origin and citizenship status after an arrest and notifying ICE to check whether federal agents want to question or detain unauthorized immigrants, said Floyd Bonner, a Democratic candidate and current chief deputy of the Shelby County Sheriff ’s Office (SCSO).
However, Bonner and his rival for the Democratic nomination, Bennie Cobb, a retired captain of the SCSO, both say they plan to continue a policy of not aiding ICE in actions to pick up unauthorized immigrants not convicted of other crimes. Republican candidate Dale Lane, director of the county’s Office of Preparedness, said the same.
The winners of the May 1 primaries will face off against each other in the Aug. 2 general election, which will also decide the next mayor, among a host of other top positions.
Federal agents have cracked down on unauthorized immigrants across the country under President Donald Trump,
purchased the sax for $200 in a Beale Street pawn shop.
Unlike Willie Nelson, who calls the wounded-looking acoustic guitar he has played since 1969 “Trigger,” or B.B. King, who named a succession of Gibson electric guitars “Lucille,” Newman — who also accompanied Frank Sinatra, the Temptations and Stephen Stills — never sentimentalized his saxophone with a nickname.
But he has carried the heavy, curved instrument around the world, on stage and into the storied studios of Muscle Shoals, Miami, New York and most notably Memphis, where Newman’s expressive, sonorous tone was a signature of the Stax/Satellite sound and the foundation for one of the label’s first successes, the instrumental “Last Night,” by the Mar-Keys, which reached No. 3 on the Billboard pop chart in 1961.
“People can’t believe I’ve only had one horn, and I’ve been playing it since 1949,” said Newman, whose relative vigor and dapper appearance — trademark lady-killer mustache, salt-and-pepper hair — belie his calendar age of 86.
Asked why he never bought a second instrument or replaced his sax with a newer model, Newman’s reply is as direct as his playing: “I didn’t need but one horn.”
That horn — not quite a rival in size for the 50-inch, 24-pound barracuda mounted on the wall in Newman’s basement, a souvenir of a deep-sea fishing trip during a 1969 break in recording at Miami’s Criteria Studios — hasn’t seen much action lately. For the past few years, it mostly has resided in a leather bag, its disattached mouthpiece nestled inside a white tube sock.
Sax returns to Stax for 15th anniversary
But Thursday, the horn begins a new mission, as a centerpiece artifact at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music at 926 E. McLemore, the address where Newman and his colleagues in the Memphis Horns, Booker T. & the MG’s and the Mar-Keys recorded so much classic rhythm-and-blues and soul music in the 1960s and ‘70s.
After much cajoling from museum operations director Lisa Allen and encouragement from his children, Newman on Thursday officially is donating his sax to Stax. The ceremony will be part of an event that celebrates the 15th anniversary of the Stax Museum, which opened May 3, 2003.
Jim Stewart, who in 1957 co-founded what would become the world-famous Stax studio and record label with his late sister, Estelle Axton, said he is proud of the museum that now stands on the site of the original studio.
But he said he is especially proud of the work of the Soulsville Foundation, which operates the Stax Music Academy for youth and the Soulsville Charter School on the museum campus.
“They’ve done a great job with the kids,” said Stewart, 87, who lives in Bartlett. “That’s very important to me. It’s a nice legacy.”
100-year-old sound
Thursday’s event is more than a celebration of the museum, however. The gathering also is being touted as a 100th birthday party for Newman’s sax, which was manufactured in 1918, according to research based on its serial number.
“It is amazing,” affirmed longtime Hi Rhythm Section drummer Howard Grimes, 76, who played as a young teenager alongside budding keyboardist Isaac Hayes in the house band Newman led at the old Plantation Inn in West Memphis. “I’ve known no musician to have an instrument he played as long as Floyd.”
Grimes and the rest of The Bo-Keys — the soul revival band led by bassist Scott Bomar — will perform during the Stax party. Among the classic numbers they’ll revive are “Frog Stomp” and “Sassy,” the two sides of the 1964 Stax single that is the one release credited to Newman as a solo artist.
“He’s a real pearl, man,” said Grimes, who played on the original recordings of “Frog Stomp” and “Sassy.” “Looking at him play, it looks like he doesn’t put much wind in his blowing, but no other baritone player in the world could copy that sound.”
Noting that Newman was about a decade older than most of the Stax musicians, Grimes added: “Floyd always was not only my mentor and my teacher, he was like my dad to me.”
Bomar describes Newman as “definitely the bridge between the ‘50s R&B world and the ‘60s soul world.” Stax Museum executive director Jeff Kollath concurs, identifying Newman as “the thread that ties Memphis music together, in a lot of ways.”
Said Newman: “I played on every artist that ever came out of Stax. And I played on maybe half of the artists on Atlantic.”
Although Newman is not a Bo-Key per se, Bomar recruited the sax master to play on the group’s 2011 album, “Got to Get Back!“Said Bomar: “I remember hearing him play in the studio for the first time, I was like ‘Oh my God’ — it was the most signature sound on the baritone saxophone, just this very recognizable tone. I said, ‘I’ve heard that sound a million times, it never gets old.’”
Now, Newman is content to let his saxophone function as a piece of history. He doesn’t mind being essentially retired from music.
“I’m enjoying Floyd Newman,” he said.
The music master at home
With or without his horn, Newman is active. He and his wife go to the movies every Friday night (they recently saw “Traffik,” starring Dorothy Newman’s niece, Paula Patton), and they eat frequently at the Pancho’s restaurant in West Memphis, a habit Newman developed during his Plantation Inn days.
Newman also walks three days a week inside nearby Southland Mall, usually for 30 minutes at a stretch, but in fact “according to whatever Arthur — Arthur-itis — tells me to do. Arthur is in charge.”
His “hangout,” as he calls it, is the large basement of the Lakeview Gardens home he and Dorothy have shared for 50 years, where his widescreen television remains tuned to the Music Choice “Jazz” channel.
“Jazz was a challenge,” Newman said, naming John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and Charlie Parker as his favorite sax players and Memphis-born jazz saxophonist George Coleman as his best friend. “Playing rock and roll and blues was no challenge.” (Nevertheless, his favorite headliners to work with, he said, were “B.B., Otis, Isaac and Stephen” Stills.)
From the street, the Newman home appears to be a typical suburban-style brick ranch house, but it’s built on a hill so that the basement — essentially a hidden first floor — opens onto a large backyard with a swimming pool, installed in 1982, largely for the benefit of the couple’s four children.
The basement is decorated with photographs and memorabilia from Newman’s music career (one photo shows Newman wearing an explosive halo of afro plus a Robert Crumb “Keep on Truckin’” T-shirt), while the spotless upstairs is neatly preserved in what
A musical upbringing
Born and raised in the neighborhood near Stax that is now identified as “Soulsville,” Newman — Floyd Sidney Newman III, to give him his fancy full name — had musical parents: His father, Floyd Newman Jr., who earned a living as a Pullman porter, played saxophone and violin, while his mother, Lillian Hill Newman, was a pianist.
Consequently, young Floyd III played piano all through school, switching to saxophone full time only after his 1949 graduation from Booker T. Washington High School, when his dad took him to Beale and let him pick a baritone sax from one of the street’s pawn shops.
Attending classes at what was then known as Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical & Normal College in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Newman studied to be a dentist. “I didn’t want to be a musician,” he said. “I wanted to be ‘Dr. Floyd Newman.’” But he couldn’t pass chemistry and other demanding courses because he didn’t get back to campus until the wee hours, returning to school from his musical gigs just in time for the classes that failed to keep him awake.
His college education was interrupted further when he was drafted into the Army, where he honed his chops alongside great players from all over the country in the military band at Fort Benning, Georgia.
The incentive to pass the Army’s regular musicianship tests was even greater than the lures that attracted players to civilian gigs. Said Newman: “If you didn’t pass the tests, you were sent straight to Korea with a rifle. But anyway, Floyd Newman passed all the tests.”
By that time, Newman already had been a member of B.B. King’s first touring band, the massive B.B. King Review that soon after would add Memphis tenor saxophonist George Coleman, who later became a noted jazz player in New York.
Before Stax, Newman toured relentlessly and recorded with Sam Cooke, Jerry Butler and others; at Stax, his contributions were instrumental in more ways than one.
For example, Newman introduced his Plantation Inn bandmate Isaac Hayes to Stax, connecting the company to the artist who would be one of its true superstars. And it is Newman’s vocal interjection “Ooooh... last night!” along with his sax that makes that 1961 MarKeys single so memorable. “That’s referring to having a party last night, or whatever,” Newman explained. “Could have been sexual...”
Newman also was an original member of the so-called Memphis Horns (a name coined by Atlantic Records honcho Jerry Wexler), an outfit that was always in demand. “We used the horn section like other companies used background vocals,” Jim Stewart said. “It wasn’t designed that way, it just sort of happened.”
In 1971, Newman joined Stephen Stills for an extravagant international tour with crowds in the thousands. But weary of the demands on his time as well as of the frequent racism he had encountered over the years (Muscle Shoals, he said, was “so racist they wouldn’t even sell gas to a black person”), he tired of travel, opting instead for a steady job as a band director and guidance counselor in Memphis City Schools, at Oakhaven, Humes and Northside. (Meanwhile, his wife, Dorothy, was a math teacher.)
Even so, Newman’s hours were hardly normal: On weekends, he continued to record and gig. But unlike some of his peers, he held onto his money, even on tour. If Newman makes no claims for himself as a stellar musician, he acknowledges he’s different from many of his peers in another way.
“I never drank and never smoked,” he said. “So I only had to spend my money on food. No drinking, no smoking and no drugs. For a professional musician, that’s a rare breed.”