Memphis | Aretha Franklin | Sherman Willmott | Detroit

is a former travel columnist for Money magazine, where his "Lost in America" column ran from 1998 through 2004.

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Shangri-La, Stax, and Sherman

Or, how a mild-mannered guy who has never written a song became the most important music figure in Memphis. By Paul Lukas

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"THIS IS THE HOUSE where Aretha Franklin was born," says Sherman Willmott, pulling his crowded tour van to the curb in front of a nondescript shotgun shack on the south side of Memphis.

The reaction is immediate, as several people in the van ask the same thing you're probably thinking right now: Isn't Aretha from Detroit?

"Well, Detroit's where she grew up," says Willmott. "But she was born in Memphis and spent her first two years in this house while her daddy preached at a local church."

Willmott has a seemingly endless store of these small but telling revelations about his hometown. "That's what's so great about Memphis," he later tells me, as we share a platter of ribs at his favorite barbecue shack, the Cozy Corner. "You're constantly going, 'Oh, I didn't know that.' People don't know Otis Redding recorded here. They don't know Aretha was born here. It's my job to tell them."