Stories in the Press: Memphis 1974

1974-01-23, Mid-South Coliseum, Memphis, TN

Today on our Tour ’74, another installment of our frequent and regular series [translation: I did it like twice a year ago] Stories in the Press. That’s the series where, if you’ve forgotten the many [two] past installments, we look back at contemporary newspaper coverage of a given show.

Newspapers.com happens to have good archives of two Memphis papers, the Commercial Appeal and the Press, so there was a lot to check out about today’s one-off at the Mid-South Coliseum. We’ll go in chronological order, from the previews a few months out through the post-game coverage in the days and weeks after.

The first clip I found was this advertisement that ran in the Memphis Commercial Appeal on December 2:

Bill Graham and co. placed similar ads in papers around the country (see other examples on DylanStubs), and I think they are cool as hell. They’re so confident, not trying to hard-sell anyone. Like, it’s Bob Dylan and The Band. What more do you need to know?

The first mention in an actual written article came a couple weeks later. Arts columnist Robert Jennings included this ticket-sales update in his Commercial Appeal arts column on December 14. He reports that ticket sales are brisk but not as brisk as in the north, according to the venue’s general manager who goes by “Bubba” (come on now).

He also notes, which I hadn’t realized, that this is almost a hometown show for Levon Helm! Helm, The Band’s one non-Canadian, hails from an Arkansas town just over an hour away. He apparently brought thirty of his family members out for The Band’s previous Memphis show.