|
Week of August 28, 2002 |
|
Sheraton Casino/Tunica
|
TUNICA, Miss., -- Hang out in the casino
town of Tunica long enough and you'll eventually start jonesing
for Beale Street. Somebody will mention it, and 45 minutes later
you'll be pulling into downtown Memphis, cruising the bars and
blues joints, trying to figure out what's cool and what's not.
People either love Beale Street or hate it. Some say it's a
Disneyesque inauthentic tourist trap (correct). Others say it's
one of the last places in America where you can hear old-style
Mississippi Delta blues (also correct). Others say it's just a
great place to party (always correct).
At any rate, if you're a first-timer, you'll undoubtedly be
drawn to B.B. King's Club, where you sit at rickety tables and
wander across beer-slick floors while the B.B. King All-Star
Orchestra funks out. There's a great local singer named Larry
Springfield, with dreads and attitude, who sometimes fronts the
band, and they tend to keep it safe--Lionel Richie, Marvin Gaye,
Stevie Wonder, and the inevitable request for "Brick House" by
the Commodores.
But the real show on Beale Street--you should be writing
this stuff down--is a couple of blocks east at a bar where
there's usually standing room only and the main attraction is
always James Govan and His Boogie Blues Band. I don't know how to
describe James Govan exactly, except to say he's got a face
that's got so much experience on it that it looks like nine miles
of road construction in a Louisiana swamp, and his voice has a
quart of whiskey in the back of his throat. He is, of course,
amazing.
But there's a point at which Beale Street, even on a good
night, starts to cloy, and if you still have your boogie shoes
on--quick! who recorded "Boogie Shoes"? that's right, K.C. and the Sunshine Band--one thing you can do is head back down Highway 61 to
the Sheraton Casino, which is laid out like a neon Tudor castle--
well, they call it Tudor, but the Tudor lord who lived in it must
have been gay--and hang out at the River Stage Lounge right on
the edge of the gaming floor.
Tunica is not a serious lounge kind of city, but this place
is the exception. They have party bands, blues bands, Top 40
bands, reggae bands, pretty much every kind of band you've never
heard of, and in that great tradition established by the original
lounge act--Louis Prima and Keely Smith--they don't stop playing
until the sun comes up.
And really, if the truth be known, they're just taking a
break when the sun comes up. You have to wait a few hours,
because who can handle "Play That Funky Music, White Boy" when
you're popping Advil at the breakfast buffet? (Name that artist,
White Boy! That's right, Wild Cherry!) But along about 11 they'll
crank up again and you can get your lounge buzz going even while
sitting at the blackjack tables, which are arranged conveniently
close to the stage.
Last time I was there, the band was "18 Carat" out of
Mobile, Alabama, fronted by a lean cool soul mama named Amanda
Jackson. "I Wanna Rock with You." "Get Down on It." "Soul
Heaven." "In the Mood." "You Got It Bad." "Voulez Vous Couchez
Avec Moi, C'est Soir." You get the idea. Perfectly flawless cover
band, just the kind of thing you need to pump some life into the
day.
There's a reason for the Sheraton's new 24-hour-a-day
entertainment policy, and it's that the Sheraton is about the most ignored casino in Tunica. Of the ten casinos in town, it has
a profile that ranks 11th. They do all kinds of promotions--right
now it's "All Slots! All Loose! All the Time!"--which isn't even
strictly true, because they have 43 table games as well. But
their problem is that the Sheraton sits on a little three-casino
cul-de-sac with two of the biggest players in town. Jack Binion's
slick Horseshoe Casino--where the high rollers go--is right next
door, and the 31-story Gold Strike--tallest building in
Mississippi--is on the other side of the Horseshoe. The little
turreted Tudor castle has some scale problems.
It's a shame, too, because this place is a steal for the
tourist who knows what he's doing. It was apparently built by
Caesars. I don't know exactly what kind of property-swapping went
on, but it's an all-suite hotel that has 134 rooms designed exactly
like the old Caesars, with Jacuzzis in every one and all
the gold fixtures and faux-Roman touches. But nobody really knows
this, so the rooms frequently go for 29 bucks a night or less.
There's also a spa on the property called the Roman Touch.
(Aha! Conclusive evidence that it was a Caesars.) It's become a
hobby of mine to seek out exotic whip-me, hurt-me things that
casino spas dream up to abuse the bodies of gamblers. The only
ones that sounded interesting here were the Four-Layer Facial
(wouldn't that result in exposed cheekbones?), the European
Seaweed Facial (seaweed has always struck me as icky), the
Seaweed Body Mask (for people with eyeballs in their belly
buttons), and the Honey Body Polish (honey, almonds and
buttermilk smeared all over you like you're a cafeteria
sandwich).
The truth is, the Sheraton relies almost entirely on
overflow from the Horseshoe and the Gold Strike. The gaming floor
is just 33,000 square feet, second smallest in the market and
just 20 percent of the space in its sister property, the Grand.
In other words, it's a cozy place whose motto should be "Thank
God for the Isle of Capri." (The Isle of Capri is even tinier,
and in a constant struggle to stay in business, thereby saving
the Sheraton from being 10th in a 10-casino market.)
It wasn't always like this. At one time they were trying to
book some big-name acts into their 400-seat showroom, but they
long ago gave that up as the Horseshoe captured the market with
A-list performers the Sheraton can't really afford. Instead they
have novelty acts like Pudgy, a sort of one-woman musical comedy
show performed by a woman who, as her name implies, is on the
zaftig side, but she dresses up that flesh in rhinestones the
size of nickels on her black matador's vest, and beefs up her
show with "special guest female impersonators" Phyl Craig and
Brad Fennel. (Can anyone say "camp"?)
It's too early to say whether the all-out slots-party
strategy is working. A new general manager and new director of
marketing arrived earlier this year from Station Casinos in Las
Vegas, indicating that the future of the Sheraton is firmly
directed at locals. And I actually like that idea, because it
means nobody will be booking the cool rooms.
There's nothing really distinctive about the Sheraton--well,
other than the fake English turrets on a turquoise roof. They've
got the usual steakhouse, the usual stained-glass atrium, the
usual red and gold leaves on the carpet. They have zero convention space, which to me is a major plus, because I don't
like name-tag people.
Unfortunately, the numbers don't look good, though. The
Sheraton opened in the middle of the 1994 boom--eight casinos
opened that year--and its first full year in business was great:
$111 million in revenues, even before the hotel was built. It's
been downhill since then: 93.3 in 1996, 82.1 in 1997, a slight
rise to 91.0 in 1998 caused by the new hotel, 81 in 1999, and a
measly $71 million in the year 2000.
Since the Sheraton is owned by the huge gaming conglomerate
Park Place Entertainment, they may be happy to use it simply as a
satellite to their prestige property, the Grand. But it would
seem like they need to do more, something fairly dramatic. You
know what they need to do? They need to hire James Govan and His
Boogie Blues Band. Because, after you've been to Beale Street,
Pudgy is just not gonna cut it.
*
© Copyright 2002 United Press International and Joe Bob Briggs
|