Walking in Memphis

Marc Cohn wrote "Walking in Memphis" after a 1985 trip to Memphis, Tennessee, that he hoped would cure a stubborn case of writer's block. Then a struggling session singer in New York City, he had read that James Taylor overcame a similar block by traveling somewhere he had never been. A friend gave him two pieces of advice: hear the Reverend Al Green preach at the Full Gospel Tabernacle Church on a Sunday morning, and visit the Hollywood Café in Robinsonville, Mississippi, where Muriel Davis Wilkins, a retired schoolteacher in her 60s, played gospel standards on an old upright piano every Friday night. Both visits moved him deeply, and he sang "Amazing Grace" with Wilkins during her breaks.

Back in New York, Cohn began building the melody on his guitar, but the song only started to flow once he switched to the piano. He later described it as the work of "a Jewish gospel-music-lover", and the exchange with Wilkins about whether he was a Christian child that night came straight from their conversations. In 1986 he returned to the Hollywood Café to play the finished song for her. She told him the one that mentioned her was the best he had. Wilkins died in October 1990, just before the song's release.

The song reached number 13 on the US Billboard Hot 100 in 1991 and earned a Song of the Year nomination at the 34th Annual Grammy Awards, where Cohn won Best New Artist. Cher recorded her version in 1995, and Lonestar covered it in 2003.