An inside look: The new Memphis Listening Lab
John King has rarely ever been at a loss for words. The 77-year-old Memphis music industry veteran spent a career using his gift of gab to pitch, promote and hustle records. But on an early July afternoon, as King made his way through the recently completed Memphis Listening Lab — a music library and archive built around his more than 60,000-piece personal collection — he was, uncharacteristically, speechless.
“I’m flabbergasted to see how well and beautifully they’ve put this all together,” King finally said, shaking his head. “They’ve done a tremendous job.”
Located in the Crosstown Concourse, the Memphis Listening Lab is a nearly 3,000-square-foot audio library. Operating as a nonprofit, the Lab’s contents are built around the collection amassed by King, a co-founder of Ardent Records, a longtime Memphis music promoter, radio historian and ravenous record collector
His gift of 30,000 45 rpm singles, 10,000 LPS, 20,000 CDS and more than 1,000 other pieces of musical ephemera
form the foundation of the lab — which also features an events space, a dedicated listening room and other amenities including a podcast studio/editing room, that are free and open to the public.
The Lab, which opened quietly late last month, will have a tribute ceremony dedicated to King at 1 p.m. Saturday. The Lab is a unique — and perhaps uniquely Memphian — concept.
“It is unique, but it really is for everyone — it doesn’t matter whether you are a casual music fan or a music historian,” said Sherman Wilmott. The founder of Shangri-la Records and one of the key figures behind the development of the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, Wilmott is the president of the Memphis Listening Lab board and helped develop the project.
“If you work in Crosstown and come in to the Listening Lab for your lunch break so you can listen to the Eagles, that’s fine. Or if you’re someone like [noted music historian] Peter Guralnick and want to research the Ardent archives, you’re good, too,” said Wilmott.
“We want to reach those two ends of the spectrum and everyone in between. We're providing the platform, serving whoever wants to use the facility.”
The Listening Lab is part of a group of philosophically linked resources at Crosstown, which includes the year-old free format radio station WYXR and the soon-to-open Southern Grooves recording studio, owned by Grammy-winning engineer/producer Matt Ross-spang.
The Listening Lab — which operates from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday — is being run by longtime University of Memphis special collections librarian Jim Cole, who noted that "without John this place simply couldn't have happened.”
“The reason the Listening Lab exists is because of John's collection. He devoted his life to music and radio in Memphis, and collecting all this incredible material. The Lab is a way that Memphis and Memphians can benefit from what John spent years amassing.”
John King and his growing record collection
Raised in East Memphis, King hit adolescence just as rock and roll was exploding, with the Bluff City serving as the music's ground zero. “At 12 or 13, is when I started collecting records,” said King. “Once I get my teeth my into something I can't let go. So that's how the collection started… and why it just kept growing.”
As much as he loved the music, King loved the medium of radio as well. In 1950s Memphis, radio was a dominant cultural force, with legendary stations like WHBQ and WDIA at their peaks, while DJS like Dewey Phillips were as much stars as the artists they spun. “I really loved radio and that whole world. From the time I was a kid I would subscribe to [music industry trade magazine] Billboard and read it from cover to cover,” said King, who attended Memphis University School.
With record label contacts gleaned from Billboard, King — a naturally enterprising sort — actually started his own radio station, after a fashion. “My friend [and MUS classmate] John Fry I had a phony radio station, WHJR, and we'd send out these requests to the addresses we found in Billboard asking for records,” recalled King. In the early‘60s, King and Fry actually got hooked up with a real station, tiny KCAT in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and worked there for a time.
In 1961 the 15-year-old King, Fry, and another friend (and future Fedex founder) Fred Smith formed Ardent Records — following in the tradition of entrepreneurial Memphis labels like Sun, Hi and Stax. The early acts on Ardent included frat rockers like the Ole Miss Downbeats, and King took the lead in promoting the records.
After “failing out” of MUS, King was sent to a private school in New Jersey. “I loved it, 'cause I would go to Atlantic City on the weekends and these Philly girls would come in town, they were exotic to me,” recalled King. “But what I really loved was radio — especially in those days, where radio really was a regional phenomenon. When I was back east, I'd go and bug all Philadelphia radio people, just tying to learn and be around the business.”
After graduating high school, King eventually joined the Air Force where he managed to get his hands on some equipment — an IBM Selectric and a Gestetner mimeograph machine — and began writing and publishing his own radio tip sheet, where he would pick the next hit records for program directors. “I managed to not make money at it, but I enjoyed doing it,” said King.
Moving back to Memphis, King continued running his tip sheet, working out of the Ardent Studios location on National where his old school pal John Fry had built a renowned recording facility. The studio eventually moved to its current location on Madison in Midtown, where King also became part owner of the neighboring Trader Dick's bar, a well-known watering hole for musicians during the era.
As Ardent — both the studio and its affiliated label — grew into the early 1970s thanks to a partnership with Stax Records, King became the company's head of marketing and PR. Most famously, King came up with the brainstorm to hold the first (and only) Rock Writer's Convention in 1973. A now infamous multi-day gathering of rock writers from across the country, the conference would help define the career of critically beloved Memphis pop band Big Star, who reformed to play the event to much acclaim.
Even after Stax folded in 1976, and Ardent shifted back into the studio business, King would continue to work in radio promotion and, of course, he kept collecting records. “I was a member of NARAS, and as a member they would send out these monthly reports, where you could check off which albums you wanted,” King said. “That's how I continued to collect without going broke.”
By the early 2000s, King decided to use that collection to indulge his lifelong passion for broadcasting in a more modern way, launching an internet radio station called Tiger Radio, and producing his own original radio shows in tribute to the DJS he'd listened to growing up.
A 'treasure trove' in search of a home
About three years ago, King — by then retired and dealing with some heath issues — began to think about doing something with his record collection, which he was housing in a rented office space on Poplar.
“I mean, dealing with tens of thousands of records is a lot of stuff, and I didn't want to burden my family with it,” he said. King's was a collection looking for a home, but what it ultimately found was a bigger purpose.
In early 2019, Sherman Wilmott was tasked by a group of anonymous Memphis philanthropists and organizers with Crosstown Arts to find a way to turn King's massive private collection into a public amenity inside Crosstown Concourse. The idea of a listening library, or listening lab, was born.
“It came together quickly, as it tied in with the launch of the radio station [WXYR]. Obviously, radio was the other great passion of John's,” said Wilmott. “So the timing of and the synergy was really good.”
Formed as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the Memphis Listening Lab is run by a ninemember board that includes Wilmott, Ross-spang, Tonya Dyson, executive director of the Memphis Slim House, musician/music educator Kortland Whalum, Catrina Traylor of Memphis Record Pressing, producer Jeff Powell, musician Lawrence Matthews, businessman Ryan Schell and Jim Thompson of Memphis audio company Egglestonworks, who would outfit the Lab with its equipment. In April 2019, King's collection was moved into a storage facility in Crosstown as construction began on transforming the second story space — the site of the kitchen of the old Sears building — into a well-appointed archive and library.
Jim Cole, the former U of M librarian and rock and roll enthusiast, was tapped to organize King's material and serve as head archivist. For Cole, the expanse of the collection was immediately apparent.
“John's got a really varied collection. A lot of people, they are narrowly focused on what they collect. But John had a pretty wide range of interests," said Cole. "There's lots of Memphis stuff, lots of oddball indie label things. But it goes even deeper into the radio history of the region, he has recordings and books of ‘60s radio air checks. It's a real treasure trove.”
“He has such a deep catalog of weird, eclectic stuff: spoken word, comedy and TV and radio advertising,” said Wilmott. “He was a trader and someone in the business, so he got a lot of weird promos. For example, one of the coolest parts of the collection are all these 45s that have ads for old B-movies. He's got reel to reel recordings, just boxes of incredible stuff. There's tremendous quantity, but it's quality too.. it's the best collection I've ever seen.”
Patrons of the Memphis Listening Lab will be able to check out records and play audio at ten listening stations that are set up around the space. There is a more formal, larger listening room (which will have programmed music). The main library room — which features a DJ station, using a pair of King's old turntables — will also serve as a flex space that's equipped to host events, including record release parties, book signings and educational seminars. The public will also have access to the Lab's recording facility, which includes a dedicated podcast studio and audio/video editing suite.
Jim Thompson of Egglestonworks supervised the tech aspects of the space and designed the Lab's main audio system, a variation on the one the company built for the Central Station Hotel. “The listening experience puts the whole library onto steroids,” said Wilmott. “What Jim and Egglestonworks brought is next level and just adds to the experience in the lab.”
Along with all the records and CDS, there is also a library of King's music books, while the walls are adorned with classic Bluff City music images by photographer Pat Rainer, creating a truly immersive Memphis music experience.
Wilmott noted that while the lab was established with private funds, “as we go forward we will become self-sustaining, and will have different revenue streams, whether that is driven by memberships, events or private rentals,” he said. “The main thing is we're starting out with no debt, and we're not a business that has to break even by a certain point. We're a public service. And we feel confident when people see what we have it will be extremely well supported.”
As King made his way around the room, marveling at how his records have found such luxurious new accommodations, it was clear the Memphis Listening Lab has far exceeded what he could've hoped as a home for his collection.
“That's why I'm so happy; I almost can't believe it,” said King. “I am so blessed that they were able to do this. They keep saying how lucky they are to have all my stuff, but I think I'm lucky as hell too.”