That Memphis-Nashville Thing

As the calendar takes a turn, so do relations between two un-sisterly cities.

by Jackson Baker

t cannot have escaped notice that there is a certain Memphis-vs.-Nashville dialectic in the local – nay, the statewide – scheme of things. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a controversy – political or otherwise – which doesn’t touch on the rivalry between the two places.
The residents of the two cities seem to regard each other with all of the love that Athens once held for Sparta and vice versa. And this mutual lack of admiration is based on no moon wandering out of the Seventh House nor Einsteinian time warp nor anything so exotic or fancy.
It is simple politics based upon fundamental differences and a longstanding competition for power and influence. People who remember the old state license plates, which had numbers corresponding to each of the 95 counties’ ranking by population, recall years of legislative battle between Shelby Countians and Davidson Countians for the honor of beginning their plates with the numeral 1.
Nashvillians’ claim was based on the fact that their county housed the state capital, Memphians’ on the simple arithmetic of population – which, up until a generation or so ago, showed Shelby to contain twice as many folks as little Davidson. After years of trying, Memphis won the battle to be Number One. Then, sometime in the last decade, the rules were changed, eliminating the initial numeral on the plates as an indicator of either population or prominence.
And now, of course, the issue would be moot. The two areas are almost equal in population, and Nashville’s demographics are measurably more upscale. Although there was a fairly recent time when a Dickensian character named Boner ran the city after the manner of his surname, Nashville’s political direction has generally been astute. And it is still the state capital.
Memphis has suffered racial tension, political division, and economic uncertainties. And, of course, it has no NFL team – not even, it would seem from Tennessee Oilers’ owner Bud Adams’ recent pull-the-plug utterances, the one it arranged to borrow from Nashville for two years. The first and mayhap only year, characterized by uneven attendance and an attitude of cut-our-nose-off-to-spite-Nashville’s face on the part of some locals, did nothing to boost the city’s image statewide or nationally.
Memphis is Newark to Nashville’s Manhattan, said a sportswriter for the capital city’s main daily newspaper. We are your Gifted Older Brothers and we feel your pain, said another scribe, a friend of ours who thought he was being helpful.
Though only 225 miles away, Nashville doesn’t even speak the same language. Literally. Memphis is indisputably Southern, while linguists link that Nashville twang northward and eastward to the Cumberland Valley accent group. Nashville may be Music City, but Memphis is the city of origin for more popular music strains. Nashville two-steps, Memphis boogies.
When Memphis and Shelby County were recently convulsed by the annexation/suburban controversy, Nashville – which was the point of origin for the infamous Chapter 98 – was blithely unconcerned. Its pundits seemed to wonder what all the fuss was about, and a Nashville chancellor blew off the first of several legal challenges to the law without even deigning to grace his ruling with an opinion. Never Apologize, Never Explain: the motto of the old British ruling class.
Even the former Memphian who now sat in the governor’s mansion in Nashville found it expedient to look the other way as the legislature did business as usual, playing fast and loose with the way it described its bills and the way it passed them. In the case of Chapter 98, it took a special chancellor in Fayette County to say the emperor had no clothes, and the Tennessee Supreme Court, whose justices reflect something of the state’s diversity, felt compelled to agree.
Well, comes the New Year, and the two cultures of Nashville and Memphis are due to have a bit of a confrontation. As indicated elsewhere in this issue, Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton, the members of his city council, and an augmented lobbying contingent will be on hand in Nashville next month when the General Assembly kicks in. (As deejay “Bad Dog” McCormack recently described a morning setup of the WEGR-FM Wake-Up Crew in Orange Mound, that will be a little like Wolf Man Meets Dracula.)
Part of the aforesaid augmentation in city lobbyists will come from the addition of Harlan Matthews, the former interim U.S. Senator, state treasurer, and general Man-to-See in the administration of former Governor Ned Ray McWherter. A Nashville pro, the same one credited by former Shelby County Mayor Bill Morris with sabotaging his 1994 gubernatorial campaign in the interests of Nashville Mayor Phil Bredesen.
Once upon a time, in Boss E.H. Crump’s era, Memphis could write its own ticket in Nashville. Now it has to stand in line or depend upon scalpers. Such is progress.
Not that Memphians other than current Governor Don Sundquist lack statewide ambition. Tennessee Regulatory Authority member Sara Kyle and State Senator Steve Cohen still get mentioned as short- or long-term gubernatorial prospects. And U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr., that high-powered and somewhat preppy Supernova who is to his father as Vice President Al Gore is to his (i.e., an issuecrat vs. a populist politician), has served notice that he aspires to the Senate.
Well, maybe so. In any case, a new year is upon us, and a new century won’t be far behind. Memphis has its work cut out for it if it wishes to be something other than a provincial poor relation to that would-be-Manhattan on the Cumber-land. n