The bankers wanted Charlie Vergos to move the restaurant out east.

Of course they did. It was 1968. Martin Luther King Jr. had just been assassinated. The city was in crisis. Who would want to go Downtown to eat ribs?

Oh, and Charlie’s landlords — who owned the building in the alley where he served those ribs from his basement restaurant— said they had other plans for the building, so the Rendezvous would have to move out.

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“He was going to move to Beale Street,” said John Vergos, Charlie’s son. “He bought the building where Silky (O’Sullivan’s) is now. He had it arranged with Poplar Tunes, the record store. The Rendezvous was going to be in the basement, and Poplar Tunes was going to go in the first floor.

“He bought the building, had it all arranged, but with the assassination of Martin Luther King, none of the banks would lend him money to go to Beale Street. They’d lend him money to go out east, but he didn’t want to go. He pretty much said, ‘I’m out of here. I’ve had a good run. I’ll find something else to do.’”

That’s when Charlie’s bank found another place in another basement in another alley, just a block or so to the east of the original restaurant.

So the Rendezvous stayed Downtown. And it turns out plenty of people would head Downtown when given a good reason.

There may be a lesson there for Memphians at the current moment. There is a celebration, too.

Because the Rendezvous is 75! Have a cheese and sausage plate! Have some barbecue nachos! Have a big ol’ rack of ribs!

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But which day is the exact day? When should our ribiversary commence?

“We don’t know,” said Anna Vergos, John’s daughter who helps run the restaurant.

“If we had known we were going to last this long, we’d have kept better records,” John Vergos said.

Maybe y’all already know the history. Or maybe a refresher would help.

In 1948, Charlie Vergos was running a restaurant called Wimpy’s with his brother-in-law. That wasn’t entirely smooth. So Charlie said he’d open a place of his own in the basement called the Rendezvous.

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“It was just a tavern for the longest,” John Vergos said. “It was dark. It was cool. It was in an alley. All the Downtown merchants used it as a place to get away. He served ham and cheese sandwiches, appetizer plates. He fiddled with raw oysters. He had pickled sausage, whatever he could do with just an oven. And then, when he discovered the coal chute — that would have been the ‘50s — he realized he could grill.

“He started trying different items. He tried lamb and chicken. Then a cousin of ours brought these ribs over because they were scrap commodities. Nobody was really cooking ribs at the time. He said, ‘Why don’t you try to do something with these?’ They were 10 cents a pound.”

Charlie cooked the ribs Greek-style at first. But a trip to New Orleans in 1955 persuaded him to add some zip.

“He got into chile powder, cayenne pepper,” John Vergos said. “He took the Greek and the New Orleans and just threw it together. He added paprika to give it a barbecue taste, and that’s where it started.”

The next thing you know, Mick Jagger showed up.

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OK, that’s not exactly how it worked.

“Success didn’t just happen,” John Vergos said. “We were pretty poor. We lived in a one-bedroom duplex. My brother Nick and I shared the hide-a-bed in the living room until I was about 11.”

But Kemmons Wilson — the founder of Holiday Inn — loved the place. That gave it a boost.

“He would start bringing all these franchisees, his lenders,” John Vergos said. “And the Downtown merchants came, too. By the early ‘60s to the mid ‘60s, it got to be busy.”

Then came the crisis of 1968. Downtown hollowed out. Even The Peabody closed.

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“In the 1970s, we used to say that if you were Downtown in Memphis at night, you were either lost or looking for the Rendezvous,” Vergos said. “But we always did business. My dad’s theory was that if you have a really good product, people will find you. People will come Downtown if you give them a reason to come Downtown.”

Then Mick Jagger really did show up. And Elvis and Al Green, many times. And former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, who both came to the restaurant (Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama had the food sent to them).

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and William, Prince of Wales, had a party at the Rendezvous. Vergos reopened the place late one night so John F. Kennedy Jr. — who had eaten there earlier — could duck back in to use the bathroom.

“We don’t publicize celebrities, and we don’t take their pictures,” Vergos said. “They are our guests. And you know what? You see these politicians or actors, and you wonder what they must be like. In person, nearly all of them are super nice. Clarence Thomas was here. Bill O’Reilly and Ed Meese. In the 2000 presidential election, Tennessee was a critical state. We had Rob Reiner, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Martin Sheen and Alfre Woodard in here. It turned into campaign central for them.”

At some point, the Rendezvous became iconic. That’s a wonderful thing, of course. But it comes with certain downsides.

“I hate being called a tourist trap,” Vergos said.

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It’s a particularly lazy designation in this instance. Because the Rendezvous is — maybe above all else — an entirely authentic place.

It was opened in a basement because that’s what was available. Charlie Vergos served ribs because they were cheap.

The people who work at the Rendezvous have been there for decades, even though legendary servers Robert Newman and Percy Norris are now gone.

“It’s a continuation of everything that Charlie started,” Anna Vergos said. “The guys that were here forever taught the next generation. Robert Cox, the kitchen manager, was here with Bobby Ellis (the longtime kitchen manager) so Bobby taught him everything he knew. We all know what we’re supposed to do, how it is supposed to feel, what the atmosphere is supposed to be. We just incrementally tweak it over time.”

The Rendezvous didn’t add barbecue nachos to the menu until after serving them at AutoZone Park for several years. It added brisket (which is fabulous) to the menu 15 years ago.

“Anna’s vegetarian,” John Vergos said. “We’ve added vegetarian red beans and rice. We’ve added a Greek salad, too.”

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One change the Vergos family has never embraced: opening a second (or third or fourth) Rendezvous somewhere else.

“We had opportunities,” John Vergos said. “We’re just not a franchise place. My dad’s theory — and our theory, too — is we make a really nice living out of this place. I guess we could have opened a bunch of them. I don’t know that our lives would be that much different, maybe more headaches?”

“It’s hard to replicate,” Anna Vergos said. “The Rendezvous is the ambience and the people. Everyone who has been here so long.”

To which John Vergos added, by way of a conclusion: “What would you do, put it in a mall someplace with fake stuff?”

The Rendezvous is not about fake stuff. It is about doing your best with what you have. It is about deciding to stay in Downtown Memphis when everyone else is fleeing. It is about employees who stick around for 30 or 40 years.

“Restaurant News declared us as one of 50 American icons, along with places like Joe’s Stone Crab and Commander’s Palace,” John Vergos said. “That’s company I’m proud to keep.

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“Memphis is a barbecue-specific city. Nobody says they are going out to get barbecue. They say they’re going to get ribs at the Rendezvous or a barbecue-bologna sandwich at Payne’s. I never tell people that we have the best ribs. I always say, ‘If you want to find a place that is special to eat one night in Memphis, I think you should come to the Rendezvous because it’s the whole experience.’”

So will there be a 100-year anniversary? How about 150 years or beyond?

“It’s our intention to have it go another generation,” John Vergos said. “I guess I could retire, but there’s a sense of pride in what we do. We have 75 employees here. We just rebuilt the pits, rebuilt the stairs so there’s steel underneath. I think we’ve put the building in condition to last for another 75 years. And the people are in place.”

Like her father, Anna Vergos grew up working at the Rendezvous. Also like her father, she returned to the restaurant after going to law school.

“I worked in politics and law,” she said. “Nobody is happy, everyone is angry every day. The restaurant business is tough, don’t get me wrong. But everybody here is really happy. The Rendezvous is just a nice place to be.”