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Justin Timberlake · S1 E1
Born Where Elvis Died
Memphis, 1981 — a city of music and a family obsessed with it
January 31, 1981. A baby is born at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis, the same building where Elvis Presley was pronounced dead three and a half years earlier.
Chris Stapleton and Justin Timberlake performing Tennessee Whiskey live at the 2015 CMA Awards. Two Memphis-rooted musicians trading vocals on a soul classic. This performance broke YouTube records overnight and reminded the world that Timberlake's voice was forged in southern soil.
Ground Zero for American Music
Memphis is not just a city. It is the crossroads where blues, gospel, soul, rock and roll, and country all collided into something the world had never heard. Sun Records, Stax, Hi Records, Beale Street. Every corner hums with musical DNA.
Memphis, Tennessee
The city where Elvis, Johnny Cash, B.B. King, Otis Redding, and Justin Timberlake all found their voices.
TAP TO REVEAL: What happened to the hospital where Justin was born?
Musical DNA from Birth
His mother Lynn loved country music. His father Randy directed the church choir at Shelby Forest Baptist. His stepfather Paul played bass in a band. Music was not a hobby in this family, it was the air they breathed.
(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay
Otis Redding recorded this three days before his death in 1967, right here in Memphis at Stax Records. It became the first posthumous number-one single in US chart history. The same studio, the same streets, the same city that would shape a kid born fourteen years later.
Which legendary record label was headquartered in Memphis?
1984, a car, The Eagles on the radio. A three-year-old in the backseat is not singing the melody, he is singing a harmony no one taught him.
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