David Cupples has immortalized Frayser.
His song, “Glory Days of Frayser,” has reached 10,600 views on Facebook since he posted it last October. Cupples also plays it with bands at “Blues Jam” at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays at RockHouse, at 5709 Raleigh-Lagrange Road.
Cupples, 69, who is in City of Memphis IT support for the Memphis Police Department Communications Bureau, plays guitar and Hammond organ and wrote the lyrics on the selection.
He also used AI on the recording, which features “a conglomeration of samples of people’s voices and instruments,” he says.
Cupples admits he’s had to defend his use of AI, but, he says, “A long time ago if I was trying to do what I’m doing now, I’d go in a studio with studio musicians and it would cost thousands of dollars. Now I can just take my lyrics and, using my guitar, my keyboard, my piano, add the riff and the rhythm I want. Put that in the software and generate it. Pick the version I want and move it over to my other recording software. Once I get all that done, I do the video.”
He’s still making the song, Cupples says.
And people are loving it, he says.
Friday nights at Grants parking lot
Hanging with my friends
We all bragged a lot
About cars and girls
And girls and cars
Our latest escapades
Getting up the next day
Working on cars In the shade
Frayser was a special place when he was growing up, says Cupples, who was born in El Paso, Texas, where his dad, who was in the Air Force, was stationed. His family moved to Frayser when Cupples was “a little less than a year old.”
Everything centered around Frayser back then. “Everyone on my street went to Georgian Hills Elementary School and Georgian Hills Middle School,” Cupples says, adding, “Oh, man, there was Northgate (shopping center), of course. We went bowling at Northgate later.”
They also spent a lot of time at Frostop Root Beer on Hwy. 51. And Skateland. “They used to have trampolines and stuff on Northgate. They took them out because someone got hurt.”
Cupples remembers seeing a double feature of John Wayne in El Dorado and a James Bond movie at Frayser Drive-In. He also frequented the Northgate Theater and the 51 Drive-In on Hwy. 51.
Friday and Saturday nights were when the different cliques would hang out and listen to Foghat, The James Gang, and Led Zeppelin on their 8-track tape players.
He first saw his future wife, Renita, in Frayser while he was playing basketball for his church at Georgian Hills Junior High. “I saw her come in the door with two of her friends. She had long, dark, curly hair. And I went, ‘Oh, man.’”
He and Renita will have been married 45 years in June.
Cupples also took his first music lessons in Frayser, with Marjorie Pilant, who taught him piano when he was in third grade. “I took piano for years from her on Warner Drive in Frayser,” he says.
He moved to guitar when he was in fifth or sixth grade. “My grandmother played guitar and my great uncle played guitar.
His great uncle would hook up his Barth six-string electric guitar to a Silver Tone amplifier and let Cupples play it. “The strings on that thing were Black Diamonds. I remember well. They hurt my fingers.”
Cupples, who now owns that guitar, remembers the time when his uncle called his dad about the guitar. “He said, ‘I’ll let you buy my guitar and amplifier for five bucks if you get me out of jail.’ That’s how I wound up with it. Dad gave it to me.”
He began learning how to play chords by reading a Mel Bay guitar book and listening to the radio.
Cupples began jamming with friends when he was in junior high. It was a Chicago-type band with guys that played the trumpet and trombone. “It was mostly instrumental stuff.”
Astrophel, which included David Dutton, Danny Spurlock, and Don Moy, was his first band. The name was “some kind of space term. David Dutton came up with it.” They played ZZ Top and Joe Walsh covers as well as an original, “Lookin’ for a Little.”
Other rock and roll bands followed. Savage included Trey Bruce, who is now a Nashville songwriter. Later there was Master Switch, which Cupples formed. That band included his brother, Mark Cupples, Gary Heath, and Jeb Batten. They also had a female singer for a while. “We played at Raleigh Springs Mall talent contest.”
Wound up in a band with
Some good friends of mine
Played a few places
Had some real good times
In 2009, Cupples joined the Broadmoor Baptist Church worship band. He still performs and writes music for that group, which is now the worship band at Way Point Baptist Church.
Cupples first used AI on his original, “Dispatcher Blues,’’ last October. “I had all these lyrics and stuff I’d been messing with. I thought, ‘What am I going to do with this stuff?’”
He used AI software to add blues guitar and blues singers. “Just totally blues things,” he says, adding, “I was like, ‘Woah.’ I couldn’t believe it.’”
Cupples liked it so much he used the software again on his “Glory Days of Frayser” song. “You tell it you want male singer, female singer, harmony, the instruments you want.’
He made about 10 versions of the song, some of which he’d put on Facebook to get feedback. Then he’d “go back and tweak it,” he says, adding, “It took a little bit of work to get it like I want it.”
Cuppes loves the feedback he gets from the song. Most of the comments are along the line of, “That’s just how I remember growing up” and “All the good times we had.”
He’s currently working on a new song, “Driving Through Frayser,” Cupples says. “I’m going to add some stuff about the places I used to go to. Like Frostop Root Beer, McDonald’s on Thomas Street, and Shoney’s on Frayser Boulevard.”
And Frayser Drive-In, of course. “We stuffed as many people in the trunk of a car to get in free and not have to pay.”
We still sometimes get together
Every once in a while
To talk of the glory days of Frayser
The glory days of Frayser
To hear “Glory Days of Frayser” and other music by Cupples, go to https://www.youtube.com/@davidcupples
