Over the years, I have seen several high-profile comedians in concert. The first of these was Steve Martin. Steve came to my attention with his appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and Saturday Night Live in the mid-1970’s. I memorized his comedy routines from his first album Let’s Get Small and would share them with my friends who were also Steve Martin fans. I was happy when I heard the news of a concert appearance on April 7, 1978 in Memphis at the Ellis Auditorium North Hall.
In March of 1985, my wife and I had an opportunity to see Eddie Murphy in concert at the Orpheum Theater in Memphis. Most of the material he was performing at this show would end up in the concert film Raw. One difference in the material that I noticed had to do with discussion of marriage. At the concert, he talked about the fact that he was about to get married. In the film, he talked about all of the reasons he didn’t get married. Other than that, the shows were about the same. One of the more memorable moments from the show happened before Eddie Murphy made it to the stage. That moment happened during the opening act.
In 1985, I saw a guitarist named Stanley Jordan on the Tonight Show. I was amazed at his technique and the sounds he was able to get out of the guitar. He used a finger tapping technique similar to what you’ve seen Eddie Van Halen do up on the fretboard of the guitar. But he would play a melody, a bass line, and chords all at the same time. Most bands would have as many as three musicians creating these sounds that he was doing by himself on a guitar. I was an instant fan and I soon picked up his first album, Magic Touch. While there were various genres of music on this album, Stanley Jordan was generally considered a jazz musician.
It’s not that often that you get to be at a noteworthy rock and roll performance. I’ve had the opportunity to see a couple of musicians in concert as they were preparing to record live albums. I saw Jimmy Buffett in Memphis on August 1, 1978. This was exactly a week before he started recording concerts that became the double live album You Had To Be There. I also got to see Bob Dylan on November 10, 1994 in Jackson, Tennessee which was exactly a week before he started filming the concerts that became the MTV Unplugged show and album. While I didn’t get to see the shows that were the ones that became part of these historic recordings, I did get a chance to see these artists while they were prepping for these important shows. I felt they would be prepping to be at the top of their game during these shows and I was fortunate to see them at those special times.
I got married in 1985. My wife still had to complete her senior year of college. She was studying communications at the University of Tennessee at Martin. We lived there while she was finishing up school and would occasionally participate in the school activities like the Cheap Trick/John Waite concert. I was not a big fan of Cheap Trick, but I appreciated Rick Nielsen guitar playing and thought they would put on a good show. John Waite had a hit at that time with the song Missing You. I didn’t care for the song and considered John Waite to be a one-hit wonder. Cheap Trick was in a lull in their career. Because Waite had the big hit at the time, he was the headliner with Cheap Trick being the opening act. We decided that we would go to the show and leave after Cheap Trick was done. This turned out to be the wrong thing to do.
In fall of 1981, rock group Hall and Oates released their Private Eyes album. I was not a fan of this band. They weren’t bad, but their sound was a little too pop for my tastes at the time. Their music got a lot of play at the college parties that I attended, and we watched a lot of MTV at the time. Their videos were in heavy rotation on that channel. Because of all this, I got to hear a lot of their music. They did a tour supporting this album in September with a stop in Memphis. FM 100 was the radio station sponsoring the show and they were selling tickets for a dollar. I had been dating my now wife Andrea for almost a year at the time. Her mother enjoyed going to concerts and bought tickets for the three of us to go see the show.