Sax linked to Martin Luther King Jr.'s last words hidden in Memphis closet
She hoists the horn into her lap, eight pounds of aging brass and tender memories.
“This is his saxophone," says Vivian Branch, 81. “This is the one that he had when he was going to play for Dr. King."
The story the petite grandmother tells is part of American lore: Moments before he was fatally shot by a sniper, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shouted joyously from the balcony of the Lorraine Motel where he spotted musician Ben Branch in the courtyard.
“I want you to play 'Precious Lord' for me," says Vivian Branch, reciting what King told her late husband 49 years ago today in Memphis. “Play it real pretty."
King’s last words are legend, but far less is known of the man he spoke with, former Memphian Ben Branch, and his rhapsodic tenor saxophone.
Branch was a big name in the Memphis blues scene in the 1950s and early ‘60s, leading the house band at Club Tropicana and backing B.B. King on his early recordings. After moving to Chicago in 1964, Branch became active in civil rights, leading the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Operation Breadbasket Orchestra that came to Memphis on April 4, 1968, intending to play at a mass rally where King was to speak.
Branch died in 1987 and his legacy — his lilting Henri Selmer Paris sax — seemed to pass on with him. Vivian Branch brought the woodwind with her when she moved back to Memphis after her husband’s death. It bounced around in storage, was nearly lost, then became a museum piece before landing last fall, seemingly forgotten, in Vivian Branch’s Whitehaven closet.
Now, Branch is considering shipping it from Memphis for good, to a place she says will be more appreciative.
“I really would like to give it to the African American Museum (the Smithsonian National Museum of History and Culture) in Washington, D.C.,’’ she said, contending Memphis simply hasn’t done enough to honor her husband.
Branch’s saxophone was on display for 16 years at the Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum in Downtown Memphis, but Vivian Branch says the horn received little attention. She severed a loan arrangement last October and has been mulling what to do with it ever since.
John Doyle, the museum’s executive director, said he’s hopeful Branch might yet reconsider and return the sax for public viewing or at least keep it in Memphis. The instrument was a centerpiece in a gallery at the museum interpreting social change and civil rights.
“Nothing portrays that more strongly than the Ben Branch story,’’ Doyle said.
That story starts in 1928 in Memphis, where he grew up and attended Douglass High School. He learned to play the saxophone and flute there and studied music at Tennessee State University in Nashville before returning to lead the house band at the legendary Currie’s Club Tropicana in North Memphis.
“It was always very crowded," recalls Vivian Branch. “Young people. And the music was great."
Ben Branch and his brother, trumpet player Thomas Branch, backed B.B. King on some of his early big band-influenced blues recordings. Vivian Branch recalls her husband floated freely between jazz, blues, pop and gospel. The couple moved to Chicago in 1964 after a falling out with the proprietors at Club Tropicana. But Branch soon landed on his feet, leading the house band at the Robin’s Nest, a nightclub on Chicago’s South Side, where he met a charismatic young preacher named Jesse Jackson.
“You cannot underestimate his own commitment to the struggle. Ben was keenly aware of the limitations of segregation," Jackson, now 75, said in telephone interview last month.
As the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s point man in Chicago, Jackson headed Operation Breadbasket, an economic empowerment initiative that pushed for better jobs, wages and justice for black workers. At Jackson’s urging, Branch formed a volunteer band that regularly played at Operation Breadbasket’s rallies and marches.
“It was big deal," Jackson said. “See, Ben knew Bobby Bland. He knew B.B. King. He knew all those guys across the years ... Ben was a great musician. But more than that he was a great soul. He cared about our struggle. We became very close."
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One of the band’s fans was King, who heard Branch play a soulful saxophone rendition of an old spiritual "Precious Lord, Take My Hand," the civil rights leader’s favorite song.
“Dr. King had been in Chicago like two weeks before (the assassination) to one of the Saturday morning Breadbasket meetings," Jackson said. “I don’t think he ever heard it played on the saxophone in that way before."
In a 1977 interview, Branch recalled his Chicago performance for King.
“Boy, he had me play that song. I guess I played it about, I don’t know, a good 35 minutes," he said. "Over and over and over and over. Boy, yeah. He had stood up over me. He kept asking me, 'Keep on playing, boy. Play it again, boy.' "
In April 1968, Jackson asked the band to go to Memphis, where the city's sanitation workers strike was in full swing. At the time, King faced great trouble. He'd come to Memphis weeks earlier to rally the city's striking garbage men who lived on poverty wages and worked under oppressive conditions. A week before the assassination, King led a march through Downtown Memphis that erupted in violence when youths in the back of the march began breaking windows. Facing enormous criticism, King returned to Memphis on April 3 determined to lead a peaceful march.
His staff pulled out all the stops. They flew in the Breadbasket Band for a performance scheduled for the evening of April 4. Late that afternoon, just before sunset, Branch stepped into the courtyard of the Lorraine and saw King on the balcony.
"Dr. King came out of his room," Jackson recalls. "He saw Ben. I think Ben spoke to him. He said, 'You should play my favorite song tonight, "Precious Lord." ' "
Branch said in 1977 that King told him to "play it like you never played it before in your life."
"So he kept asking me about playing it. In fact, he was talking to me about what he wanted me to do that night. Play it real pretty and all of that," Branch said.
Seconds later, King was shot.
Pandemonium ensued. As people ducked for cover, photographer Joseph Louw, staying in a room a few doors from King, began taking pictures. The key photo Louw shot, with King's body lying on the balcony, is one of the iconic images of the 20th century. It shows King's top aide, Andrew Young, pointing from the balcony in the direction of the shot, up and across the street toward a rooming house that is off frame. Also on the balcony is Jackson, though his face is obscured.
Though most don't know it, Ben Branch appears to be in the photo — in the courtyard.
“This is him right here. With the hat on,’’ says Vivian Branch, pointing to the slightly fuzzy image of a man in a dark fedora and a fluffy, light-colored turtleneck. Ben Branch appears to wear that very outfit in news coverage footage from that night Author Gerold Frank wrote in 1972 in "An American Death," one of the first major books on the assassination, that Branch ran up on the balcony after King was shot and appears in Louw's photo as the nearly obscured person behind Young.
"Ben didn’t do that," Vivian Branch insists. “If Ben had gone up there he would have told me that. He did not. He said Jesse ran up there."
Vivian Branch spotted another band member, organist David McCollough, wearing sunglasses and standing near her husband. A third member of the band, drummer Harold Varner, may also be in the picture, peering through a window from behind a curtain, though this is less certain. A 1968 Memphis police report says Varner told detectives he was standing there when the shot rang out, though he wrote a month after the assassination he was in a different spot. The image of the man is fuzzy and difficult to make out.
Though the FBI and defense attorneys for confessed assassin James Earl Ray worked to identify the 19 or so people in the picture, it's unclear how many were confirmed. Vince Hughes, who holds one of the largest private document archives on the assassination, said "to the best of my knowledge" several people in the photo remain unidentified.
