Haunted Memphis, Volume 2 – Ragged But Right!
(Intro)
I often joke about Memphis being the place where people go to sell their soul to the devil in exchange for the power to play a mean blues guitar. But that’s not exactly accurate. The place where you actually need to go to do that is about 100 miles south, in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Memphis is where you go once the deal is made, because the devil makes the deal but Memphis makes you famous!
Since the early 1900s, the city has been a Mecca for aspiring musicians to showcase their talents at clubs and bars on Beale Street in hopes of making it big. And for decades, the go-to place after the gig was a little juke joint called Earnestine and Hazel’s. It’s a place where some of the most famous names in music history grabbed a post-show beer, a hog’s maw dinner and maybe a little something extra upstairs for a few dollars more. It’s also a place that is now very, very haunted.
This is the story of Earnestine and Hazel’s.
As the legend goes, an aspiring musician named Robert Johnson had been busting his tail to make a living playing the blues, but his skills had been described by fellow musicians as “embarrassingly bad”. So, at some point in the 1930s, Robert made a midnight trip to the crossroads of Highway 49 and 61 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, where he met a large, dark figure who took his guitar, tuned it, picked out a few songs and then returned the instrument to Robert, who was then instantly transformed into a master blues guitarist.
Robert Johnson was an interesting character. He was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi in 1911 and died when he was only 27 years old. In his brief life, he was married twice, and was twice a widower. Both Mrs. Johnsons died within a year of marrying Robert, and family members attributed these deaths to Robert using his newfound talent playing of the devil’s blues instead of gospel music. Robert never remarried after the death of his second wife, but he did have countless women who thought he was their boyfriend. He also had at least 8 different last names to ensure that none of the ladies ever got wind of each other. He had a weakness for whiskey and women and in the end, that’s what killed him. Only 3 short years after making his alleged deal with the devil, he was poisoned by a bottle of whiskey that had been spiked by the jealous husband of one of his lady lovers.
Allegedly.
The story of Robert Johnson has been studied and argued by scholars for decades. Whether it’s true or not, one thing is for certain: Memphis isn’t where you sell your soul. It’s where you get famous for playing the soul.
Countless artists have made their names in Memphis. And I’m not just talking about Elvis Presley or even Justin Timberlake. Some of the most well-known blues and soul singers in the world got their start playing in downtown Memphis clubs, most notably, one called Club Paradise. And when one played at Club Paradise, the after party always took place at a juke joint called Ernestine and Hazel’s.
Earnestine & Hazel’s, located at 351 South Main Street, was originally built to be a church in 1906 but what it ended up housing was something far more interesting. From the early 1900s until the late 1950s, the building operated as a drugstore owned by a man named Abe Plough. Abe was a pharmaceutical genius who created one of the first hair straightening products in the world, as well as a suntan lotion he called Coppertone. You may have heard of it. You may also have heard of the pharmaceutical company he eventually ran called Schering-Plough, which made, among other things, Claritin, Vytorin, Suboxone, Nasonex, Levitra, Afrin and dozens of other blockbuster drugs. While Abe was off creating meds and getting rich, a pair of cousins (or some sources say sisters) named Earnestine Mitchell and Hazel Jones were renting the top floor of his drug store to run their hair salon business, and, incidentally, using a ton of his hair straightening product. When Abe became overwhelmed with the demands of his successful business ventures, he gave the building to Ernestine and Hazel. He figured they could replace the pharmacy with a sundry store and make a nice living for themselves. But by now it was almost the 60’s and what everyone was going nuts for, in addition to long, straight hair that was parted in the middle, was rock n’ roll.
Ernestine and Hazel opened a juke joint on the bottom floor of the old pharmacy. Yes, the sign outside read, “Ernestine and Hazel’s Sundry Store”, but there wasn’t any sundrying going on. Food and drink was pretty much all they sold, as well as a good time upstairs. For less than $3, you could get a Hog’s maw, neck bone, fried chicken platter. It you had another 18 cents to waste, you could splurge on the fried fish dinner.
Earnestine’s husband, Sunbeam. Yes, Sunbeam. Sunbeam opened his own business nearby, a place called Club Paradise. Club Paradise hosted soul, rhythm and blues acts such as Bobby Blue Bland, BB King, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Tina Turner, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Issac Hayes, and the list goes on and on. You get the picture. This place was rock and soul heaven. And after each show, Sunbeam moved the party to Earnestine and Hazels for food and drinks and …other types of entertainment. The salon booths upstairs where Earnestine and Hazel had spent many an hour teasing bouffants were converted into 8 separate rooms that one could rent by the hour if they were looking to tease something other than hairs. Earnestine and Hazel allowed local sex workers to peddle their wares to after-show guests and placed benches in the hallway where men could sit and wait their turn. Those benches that are still there to this day.
The rooms are now color-coded and themed. There’s a red room, a black one, a green one and so on. In one of those rooms is a piano that Ray Charles used to play as he visited with the ladies. It’s also said that he would shoot heroin in one of the bathrooms.
The non-stop party times went on at Ernestine and Hazel’s like this for two decades. There were multiple deaths during this era, 12 in all if legend is to be believed, with a 13th to come much later. Drug overdoses, shootings, suicides and more than a few the result of some brothel action gone bad. A wise man once said, “Never snatch a cigarette out of a stripper’s mouth. It’s serious biz.” Sage advice that one man must not have taken, as it’s said that at least one of the deaths at the club was the result of a man getting too handsy with one of the girls.
There are many hazards of sex work and the ladies who worked upstairs at Earnestine and Hazel’s were not immune to them. Stories abound of these vulnerable ladies committing suicide or being murdered in the private rooms. People have often reported feeling disembodied hand grab their own as they reached the top of the stairs, as though someone is ushering them somewhere, as the sex workers would have done when welcoming their customers into the upstairs sanctum.
Like I said, each room upstairs is painted a different color – red, green, blue, etc. But it’s the black room that seems to get the most paranormal activity. Maybe this is because a sex worker was said to have been stabbed to death there. According to writer Joel Sills, who spent a whole weekend at Earnestine and Hazel’s two years ago and wrote about it on souldout.com , one guest actually left a letter for the bartender explaining that she’d felt herself being stabbed in the shoulder in the room and had felt the sorrow and pain of the woman who’d died there.
Another death that was said to have taken place in the room was the suicide of a sex worker who jumped from the window. The window was then bricked up, and remains bricked, an eerie reminder of the tragedy. The spirit of this woman is said to only appear to men, not women.
Joel also wrote that the radio in the room had a habit of turning itself on and off or lowering and raising the volume depending on who was in the room. He does an excellent job detailing this, so check out his article, the link is in the show notes. It’s fascinating. If the radio wasn’t strange enough, there’s also a painting of a milky-skinned redhead hanging on the wall. The painting itself isn’t the weirdest thing, either. The fact that no one, not even employees who have worked at the bar for decades, can tell you where the painting came from or how it got in the room is pretty dang creepy too. Because of that, no one dares take it down.
Stories of ghost sightings include seeing sex workers in 60s and 70s attire walking up and down the stairs as well as hanging out in the bathrooms.
One story I heard was of a girl who walked into the bathroom and was startled to see two women staring back at her when she opened the door – a brunette and a redhead. She uttered a hasty apology and quickly shut the door to await her turn. And waited. And waited…Finally she rapped her knuckles on the door to remind the ladies that she was still needing the loo but to no avail. In desperation, she opened the door a crack to ask if they were finished but even through the crack she could sense the unearthly silence in the room. When she finally got the nerve to open the door all the way, it was, of course, empty.
Whether it’s one of these spirits or any one of the hell-raising honky tonkers who gave up the ghost under the neon lights at Earnestine and Hazel’s, some sort of something settled down inside the jukebox and became its most famous ghost. This isn’t just any haunted jukebox, though. It’s a nosy, eavesdropping jbox who will listen to your conversation and bust you by suddenly playing a song related to it! So don’t roll up into Earnestine & Hazel’s and start talking about your side piece because the jukebox will likely start playing “Say My Name”! The only thing worse than an eavesdropping jukebox would be one that could read your mind! Imagine tying one on with your significant other and the jukebox suddenly starts blaring a song like, “Don’t Go Away Mad, Just Go Away” or “Jessie’s Girl”. The jukebox’s shenanigans might even be to blame for a murder or two.
Some of the most oft-repeated stories are that time that one woman came in with her girl squad to celebrate getting a divorce and “D.I.V.O.R.C.E” by Tammy Wynette came on. Another time a group of barflies and owner Russell George were talking about exorcisms for some strange reason when “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones came on. Then there was the time the bartender and some regulars were talking about James Brown’s death when “I Feel Good!” came blaring on. And the thing is, most of the time when this happens, no one has put money in the dang thing. It just sits there and suddenly pipes up when the spirit moves it, so to speak. One former employee said that one night after the jukebox kicked on on its own, she went over to check it out. As she was poking around, she felt the unmistakable touch of a hand on her body. An invisible hand.
Notice I said former employee!
In the late 80s, Earnestine and Hazel decided to finally slow their roll and retire to Florida, or wherever the heck they wanted. They’d earned it. In 1992, they sold the bar and a fella by the name of Russell George was brought in to manage it. Russell was locally famous for his sweet dance moves and his love of the blues. He was sort of like a Sunbeam 2.0, if you will. Russell had big plans for Earnestine and Hazel’s. It was he who converted the upstairs brothel into an 8-seat bar and recruited a gentleman named Nate Barnes, also known as Mr. Nate, to tend it.
Russell also came up with a genius idea that put Earnestine and Hazel’s on the culinary map. He did away with the hog maw and neck bone dinners in favor for a one-time menu – a flat-top grilled beef patty topped with cheese, sauteed onions, pickles, mustard and a secret “soul sauce”, all served on a toasted bun. This slice of heaven is served with a side of Zappos potato chips. This simple, yet absolutely perfect concoction is known as the Soul Burger.
The Soul Burger is still so popular today that around 300 of the suckers fly off the grill and land in someone’s belly every single night. 300! That’s a lot o’ grease. My mouth is watering just thinking about what your clothes would smell like after a night standing at that grill. The grease burns would be so worth it.
Sadly, Russell George, the creator of the Soul Burger, became the 13th person to pass on behind the walls of Earnestine and Hazel’s. Unbeknownst to many folks, Russell had been quietly battling cancer. On Sunday night, September 9, 2013, Russell closed and locked up the beloved bar that had been his second home for two decades. Then he went and had a seat in his office to rest his bones. His body was found the next day when workers arrived to open the bar. Russell George died at the too-young age of 62 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Earnestine and Hazel’s has seen some legendarily good times and some incredibly dark ones as well. In addition to winning multiple awards for the Soul Burger and for best dive bar, it’s also, for obvious reasons, a favorite spot for paranormal investigators. Local ghost tours pass through there on the regular, as well as professional paranormal society groups. There have been a few reports of an apparition of a man carrying a white pillar candle inside the bar. One visiting group of paranormal investigators claim to have seen this man on the street outside of the bar at closing time. While the image of this is spooky AF and one of my biggest fears is a ghost attaching itself to me and following me home, I’d think there would be pics floating around if paranormal investigators saw it but alas, though I scoured the interwebs, I came up empty handed. Give me a holler if you’ve seen it!
In 2019, a grim discovery was made inside the bar that really solidified the stories about murder and deaths that happened on the property. The new owners of Earnestine and Hazel’s were tasked with making some necessary repairs to keep the bar up to safety code. As contractors took down a wall next to those famous stairs where people claim to have been touched by phantom hands, a pile of bones that were hidden behind the plaster fell out. Action News 5 out of Memphis reported on the discovery and interviewed one of the contractors, Chris Tigner, who said that when they realized what had fallen out of the wall, the crew was so shaken they all fled from the building and had to take a breather outside to gather themselves before they dared go back in. Broski was shook. Inside the wall, Tigner also found a drawer in a hidden compartment. Inside this drawer was a 1940s hub cap, an empty bag of peanuts and an empty liquor bottle. The bones were sent off for forensic analysis and although they didn’t turn out to be a pile of leftover neck bones that Earnestine and Hazel couldn’t sell for supper, they were not human, either. The bones belonged to a cow. Now, why would someone plaster up cow bones inside a wall, much less a drawer full of seemingly random junk?
I have a guess.
Liquor and nuts are offerings that are commonly used during voodoo rituals to invoke Papa Legba or Baron Samedi. Papa Legba is the gatekeeper of the spirit world, and Baron Samedi the gatekeeper of the underworld. In order for them to help you, you must submit a formal request along with an offering, such as rum, whiskey, or roasted peanuts. And once Papa Legba is appeased, he will grant you access to other voodoo spirits, one of which is known to have an affinity for raw beef. One can conjure both Papa Legba and Baron Samedi at a crossroads and after the ritual you need to bury the ritual items at a crossroads. And wouldn’t you know it, Earnestine and Hazel’s sits smack at the corner of a crossroads.
So, if someone did a voodoo ritual inside of Earnestine and Hazel’s, they would not be able to bury the ritual items beneath the asphalt on the street but plastering it up inside a wall would suffice.
And one more thing. The first thing that you need in order to summon Papa Legba is to light a white pillar candle. So maybe those paranormal investigators did see something after all.
Now, I’m not saying anyone did voodoo in the building, but if they did, it would be on brand, no? Since the day Earnestine and Hazel opened their juke joint, it’s been anything goes, so long as there’s “no dope smoken, no cursin, no free loden”.
If anyone knows whether the legendary stories that make up the colorful history of Earnestine and Hazel’s are true or not, it would be Mr. Nate, who is still tending that 8-seat upstairs bar nearly 30 years after Russell George sweet talked him into the job. But so far, he’s had little to say.
In an article published on Vice.com in 2017, former bartender Karen Brownlee details her experience working at Earnestine and Hazel’s for more than a decade. Like Mr. Nate, Karen was also recruited by Russell George. The two met when she was working at the butcher shop where he regularly bought the ground beef to make Soul Burgers. The two became friends and the rest is history.
Karen herself contributed to a lot of the lore that is the Earnestine and Hazel’s legend. She was present for and can vouch for the validity of many of the famous stories about the haunted juke box, the redhead in the black room, and much more. And in some cases, she’s the only one who can verify a paranormal story because she’s the only one who experienced it. In the Vice article, Karen claims to have heard the upstairs piano that Ray Charles was so fond of, playing by itself when the bar was empty. She’s also heard people talking upstairs when, again, she was the only one in the bar.
The voices heard upstairs might have been attributed to, say, Karen actually hearing people on the street outside talking and mistakenly thinking the sound was coming from above her. Voices carry, as they say. But one of the men on the cleaning crew heard them too. Typically, the cleanup crews come in early, before the bar opens and sometimes before any staff is there at all, so they’re alone while they work. This particular gentlemen said that when he was alone in the building, he heard the same voices coming from upstairs that Karen had heard. And it sounds like he heard them on a pretty regular basis. He said that when he walked up the stairs and entered one of the 8 rooms to clean, he’d often hear someone say, “Here he is again!”
I’ve worked in plenty of dive bars, ones that were haunted by no more than the ghosts of bad decisions, but these stories gave me chill bumps. It’s hard to explain, but being in a quiet, dark bar in the middle of the day when you’re all alone is unnatural. If you don’t believe me, go into a bar that opens early and be the first one on a stool. Chances are the bartender will sling you a beer and then leave you alone while they prep the bar and such. Without the noise and distraction of crowds of drunk people, I guarantee you’ll see and hear things that you’d never notice otherwise. In those quiet moments when you’re all by yourself, you’ll feel like the lone survivor of a party in which everyone but you ended up at the ER.
Karen also says that most of the photos taken inside the bar have orbs in them, and some even show faces outlined in the walls. She also recounts a story about how money for deposit would regularly go missing, only to turn up beneath a couch in the pool room. One might think that this could be attributed to a thieving employee who cleaned out the kitty and then was hit with a case of the guilties and returned it, but then…why would they do it more than once? Karen says that one of the missing money bags had been found under the couch four or five years after it went missing. If an employee had stolen it, they’d have had ample time to return to the scene of the crime and retrieve the loot, right? Unless the thief had no use for the money and was just pulling a prank, as we all know spirits like to do!
Karen also tells a personal story about the loss of her son and the phantom visitor who entered the bar to give her comfort. That one is quite personal, though, so I don’t feel right sharing it on this podcase. If you want to read about it, check out the link to my sources in the show notes. She recounts the story in more than one of those articles.
Although Karen no longer works at the bar, the last time I checked, Mr. Nate still does and you can visit him at the upstairs lounge. A new business group recently purchased the building, but they made a promise not to change anything, and so far they’ve kept that promise. The brothel rooms are still open, as is Ray Charles’ heroin bathroom. The ghosts of the past still roam freely in the juke joint, undisturbed by time and progress. For more than 60 years, Earnestine and Hazel’s has remained, for better or worse, Ragged but Right!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson
https://memphisrap.com/news/memphis-bar-owner-russell-george-found-dead-of-suicide-in-earnestine-hazels/
https://www.thrillist.com/eat/memphis/earnestine-and-hazels-memphis-burger-dive-bar
https://houseofgeekery.com/2020/12/24/creepy-mysteries-ghosts-of-earnestine-and-hazels/
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https://www.southernspiritguide.org/the-haunted-jukebox-and-associates-earnestine-and-hazels-memphis/
http://souledoutblog.com/a-weekend-in-americas-most-haunted-bar/
https://www.actionnews5.com/2019/07/18/bones-found-wall-earnestine-hazels/
https://www.canalefuneraldirectors.com/obituaries/Russell-George-33378/
https://www.bizjournals.com/memphis/blog/morning_call/2013/09/ernestine-and-hazels-owner-found-dead.html
https://ilovememphisblog.com/earnestineandhazels