There’s a lot going on at Earnestine & Hazel’s, the home of the “Soul Burger.” And that includes those departed souls in the nightspot at 531 South Main Street.
The building housing E&H was built in 1906. During its lifetime, it was a church, a brothel, and a pharmacy. Then Earnestine Mitchell and Hazel Jones opened the original E&H there, which has occasionally hosted bands over the years.
Nowadays the bar is holding outdoor concerts through October 19th in the patio area at 529 South Main Street, adjacent to E&H. “We just call it ‘529’,” says operations manager Miles Epley. “Some people call it ‘The Patio.’ Sixty-two people can sit over there. And it’s like a sound room, man. The acoustics are just incredible.”
The patio doesn’t belong to E&H. “We rent it periodically from the owner of the lot.”
Epley and general manager Antonio “Tony” Jones want to concentrate on music more at E&H. “It’s always been pretty well known for the Soul Burger.” But, Epley says, “We want music to be the star. If you listen to music, you’re going to get hungry and drink.”
“I feel it’s giving the people in the neighborhood and tourists somewhere to go,” Jones says. “Especially outside of Beale Street. Something else to do during the week as far as live music. Instead of just going to a bar where people are just sitting there talking to the bartender, they can come in and listen to good music. There’s good vibes.”
They also recently instituted “Mundane Mondays” at E&H. “The consumer product of Monday night football is not what it used to be. It’s caused businesses to pivot, adjust, and adapt.” Drink specials, football trivia, “a full karaoke band,” and other attractions are now featured on Mondays at E&H.
One thing that will remain the same at E&H are the ghost stories. “Different things happened that there’s really no explanation for,” Epley says. “One of the main ones is hearing what I consider little kids’ feet tapping around upstairs. It could be your mind playing tricks on you, but if you’re sober, it’s a lot harder to argue.”
E&H also has an old jukebox that randomly plays records. “We’ve got ghost DJs and we don’t know what we’re going to get,” Epley says, adding, “But they’ve got good taste. I’ll give them that.”
The ghostly selections include recordings by B.B. King and Aretha Franklin. “Stuff that has Memphis ties.”
E&H, apparently, also has at least one full-fledged ghost. One of their “weekend regulars” showed Epley a photo someone took upstairs. It shows “this apparition peeping around the corner.” The apparition appears to be a young woman around 16 or 18 years old. “When you blow it up, she’s completely translucent. You can see right through her.”
Her hair is “long, brown, straight, and a little disheveled, from what I remember. She didn’t look like she belonged in this time frame at all.”
The story goes that when E&H was a brothel, there was “one girl who refused to do her job, if you will, about that age — 17 to 18,” Epley says. “And she just starved herself to death.”
But ghosts, haunted jukeboxes, and tapping feet aside, E&H is “the safest haunted spot in this part of America.”
The metaphysical isn’t all that’s going on at E&H. They’ve also done physical work on the place, Epley says. “We tried to keep it as authentic as possible. Our deal is giving it a subtle makeover a little bit, but also keeping the authenticity.”
They painted the front of the building about three and a half months ago. “It was blue in the front with just that rust that happens over the years. It’s now a regal blue,” Epley says. “Not ‘Tiger blue.’ But we kept it somewhere around ‘Memphis blue.’”
As for the food, the E&H menu is going to stay the same, Epley says. “Right now it’s not broken, so we’re not going to fix it.”
Soul singer Izzy Moore and Arthur Cole of WSY Films are currently working on a documentary about E&H.
Nate Barnes, aka “Mr. Nate,” who held court for years behind the upstairs bar, is one of the subjects. “He had to retire late last year,” says Epley. “He had a knee problem and couldn’t get up the stairs.”
