In 1954, John Cash, Marshall Grant, and Luther Perkins stepped into the Galloway Methodist Church on the corner of Cooper and Walker streets in Memphis, Tennessee, to play their first performance together for a women’s church function.
And the rest, they say, is rock and roll history.
Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two would go on to take the world by storm, but it all began here.
Memphis is full of such stories and locations like the old Galloway Church (now Cooper-Walker Place) and the neighborhoods which contain them. These neighborhoods are crucial – yet unrecognized – pieces of the Memphis music narrative, because in Memphis, every neighborhood has a hero.
Legacy Memphis aims to address this by working with neighborhoods to celebrate their own unique pieces of the story, beginning with the Johnny Cash Statue and Historic Marker in the historic Cooper-Young community.
With your donation, you will help Legacy Memphis and Cooper-Walker Place in supporting this project and bringing Johnny Cash back to Memphis!
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To celebrate, enhance, and educate our neighborhoods about Memphis heroes. We will involve artists, landscapers, and architects to create sculpture gardens based on Memphis music history for locals and tourists.
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We have already secured the rights from all necessary estates. Once the total project amount of $110,335 is raised, Sculptor Bill Beckwith will sculpt, cast, and mount a 7-foot tall bronze of Johnny Cash taken from a photograph made by Leigh Wiener in 1962. Local historian Jimmy Ogle will create and install the Historic Marker describing Cash’s first performance at the Church. Before the statue is mounted, the plaza will be landscaped and prepared at the corner of the Church property at 1015 Walker.
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Raise money to create a Johnny Cash Statue and Historic Marker, unveil the Historic Marker on May 1st, 2016 (the 60th anniversary of the release of the Sun Records single “I Walk The Line”), and announce the completion of the fundraiser, and pay Bill Beckwith to create the sculpture which should take one year. Meanwhile we landscape the area for which the statue will be mounted once completed.
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Legacy Memphis proposes to establish a series of statues throughout the City of Memphis honoring our musical and artistic legacy. These statues will invite visitors into historic neighborhoods and park vicinities near historic recording studios such as Sun, Stax, Ardent, and Royal. Legacy Memphis would utilize planning and design that would show city pride, gain national attention, seize economic opportunities, and present more reasons for people to visit Memphis. People will want to live in a city that honors it’s own rich musical and artistic legacy.
Once the total project amount of $110,335 is raised, Sculptor Bill Beckwith will sculpt, cast, and mount a 7-foot tall bronze of Johnny Cash taken from a photograph made by Leigh Wiener in 1962. First, local historian Jimmy Ogle will install the Historic Marker describing Cash’s first performance at the Church. Before the statue is mounted, the plaza will be landscaped and prepared at the corner of the Church property at 1015 Walker. We have secured the rights from all necessary estates.
Raise money to create a Johnny Cash Statue and Historic Marker, unveil the Historic Marker on May 1st, 2016 (the 60th anniversary of the release of the Sun Records single “I Walk The Line”), and announce the completion of the fundraiser, and pay Bill Beckwith to create the sculpture which should take one year. Meanwhile we landscape the area for which the statue will be mounted, once completed.