IRONICALLY, WILLMOTT wasn't particularly interested in Memphis music until he left for college, where friends turned him on to his hometown's cultural legacy. Still, when he returned to Memphis in the late 1980s, his first entrepreneurial venture was a massage and flotation-tank business called Shangri-La - not exactly the sort of thing from which music history is made.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," he says. "But it wasn't working out, so about 18 months into it, I decided to follow my heart and switch over to selling music." And just like that, in 1990, Shangri-La became Shangri-La Records.

The store soon developed the well-worn ambience of a record collector's hangout, with an emphasis on Memphis music history. As its reputation spread among music cognoscenti nationwide, Willmott noticed a new trend: "People from out of town were coming into the store and saying, 'We've been to Graceland, but there's nothing else to do here.' And we'd say, 'Have you been to Alex Chilton's house? Have you been to this club or this old studio?' And the people would get all excited, so we'd end up drawing maps for them. And eventually we decided to just print a whole guide."

That's how Willmott ended up publishing Kreature Comforts (self-mockingly subtitled "Low-Life Guide to Memphis"), a magazine-style travel guide to the city's coolest and least touristy attractions, most of them music related. Full of helpful, irreverent tips ("Vegetarians, plan ahead! This town's bad for you!"), it's now in its fourth edition, with 15,000 copies in circulation.