Isaac Hayes | Ultimate Memphis Rock ''n Roll Tours | proprietor | Beale Street

Willmott currently pursues that job as the proprietor of Ultimate Memphis Rock 'n Roll Tours (www.memphisrocktour.com). While Graceland has become a kitschy self-parody and Beale Street is now little more than a blues theme park, Willmott's tour focuses on the nitty-gritty details of the River City's music history - everything from recording studios and record-pressing plants to gravesites and the record store where a young Elvis Presley furtively watched as customers bought his first records. Memphis's musical stew - a complex mix of influences, shaped and molded by the cotton trade - can be tricky for outsiders to grasp, but Willmott's combination of a researcher's mind and a storyteller's voice helps bring it into sharp historical focus.

The tour operation, which launched in 2004, is the latest in a series of projects that have essentially made Willmott the unofficial trustee of the city's musical heritage. Over the past 17 years, he's opened Memphis's best record store, curated its best music museum, authored a travel guide to the city's music-related sites, founded his own record label and publishing imprint, and directed a documentary film. In a town whose music scene is famous for larger-than-life characters like Elvis, Sam Phillips, and Isaac Hayes, the case can be made that Willmott - an affable, low-key 40-year-old who hasn't been in a band since high school and has never written a song - is the city's most important music figure of the last generation.

"I don't know about that," he says, an unspoken "aw, shucks" hovering over his words. Then he checks his watch, wipes some barbecue sauce off his cheek, and heads out to do another tour.