Memphis in the Meantime

Click to Go to Photos of Memphis

 Monday morning, March 27, we arrived in Memphis, Tennessee about 6:30 a.m. Click to hear John Hiatt's Memphis in the Meantime The weather was gray and threatening rain as we woke up and got ready to have breakfast and depart the American Queen. Transferring off was uneventful and easy.  We were one of the last ones off as we had no plane to catch or tour to do as many other people did.  We caught a cab from the terminal to our hotel, a Holiday Inn, which was not far from Beale Street and right across the street from the Peabody Hotel. It was still fairly early in the day, but a room was ready for us, so we got our gear stowed and went across the street to the Peabody to see the “Parade of Ducks”, a twice daily event that has been a tradition since the early 1930’s.  Promptly at 11:00 a.m. the ducks come down from their rooftop “home” on an elevator and at the lobby they make a mad dash to the tune of recorded Sousa March’s for the fountain in the center of the lobby. They looked contented swimming around and did not seem to mind the large crowd that had gathered to observe them. Click to see the parade of the ducks The ducks remain there until they reverse the process at 5 p.m.  The Peabody is a grand old hotel with all the old money amenities, but the ducks are definitely unique.  The “Duckmaster” (Who is also the senior Bell Captain) provides the assembled crowd who jam the place with a build-up narrative for some 15 or 20 minutes. To hear him tell it, it all started with a wealthy man who had come into Memphis and was doing some duck hunting out of town.  Back in those days, live decoys were allowed and after the man’s day of hunting was complete, he brought the decoy ducks back to the hotel and put them in the fountain.  After they had been there a few days, an animal trainer who was in town with a circus offered to train the ducks to parade and within a week or so they began to perform what is now a twice a day, 365 day a year event.  Suzy and I were able to get a place up on the mezzanine overlooking the fountain and approach area and got some good photos and a little video.  While we were waiting, Suzy told me her parents spent one night of their honeymoon in the Peabody Hotel in late December 1937 as they traveled from their wedding in St. Louis to their first duty station together at Fort Benning, Georgia.

After the duck parade, we did some walking around to get our bearings and ended up going to the main office for the tourist bureau in town and got some good maps and guidance from the manager there.  We wanted to ride the famous electric trolley cars in Memphis like we had in New Orleans, but they were all out of service for maintenance of the fleet, so we rode the replacement buses that traveled the same routes instead.  That gave us a feel for where things were and what we could walk to and what would require some sort of a ride. We got off at near our hotel and had lunch at a small combination deli and convenience store that made great soup, salads and sandwiches.  It was a hidden gem and one of the best inexpensive lunches we had the whole trip.  We went back to our room and rested a bit after unpacking what we needed for the time we were going to be in Memphis and waited out some thunderstorm watches that had come in over our phones.  Although the wind blew a gale, it never did rain, so we headed back out about 5 p.m. and walked to Beale Street.  We went past the arena where the Memphis Grizzlies NBA team plays basketball and also had recently hosted an NCAA regional final series.  We also saw the baseball stadium where the AAA affiliate of the St. Louis cardinals play ball.  Both are new stadiums and very well done.  We saw the modest home of W. C. Handy, the Memphis musician who was known as the “Father of the Blues” as he was the first African-American to write down the music that was being played and sung locally and publish it for popular distribution. Beale Street in the early part of the 20^th century was a neighborhood of African-American owned business establishments, banks social clubs and was really its own little city with neighborhoods around it.  It always was a place that had clubs and places to hear live music, but it was not until the 60’s and integration that the character of the place changed and became more of a general entertainment area for the city and its music. The club area now is only about 3 blocks long on both sides of the street, so we could see what we wanted in fairly short order.  We did go into a music and souvenir store and dropped some dollars on music CD’s, t-shirts and post cards.  I had made a reservation at B.B. King’s Blues Club, but we had time to take our purchases back to the hotel and get back in time for our reservation.  The joint was jumping when we got there, but we had a table, fairly close to the side of the main stage. We ordered some Bar- B-Que and listened to 3 young men in pork pie hats wail away on some of the tunes from the early Sun era. As the night went on they moved ahead into the 70’s and 80’s even doing a little Z.Z. Top at the end of their set. Click to hear a little of the music After dinner we headed out to see what other places had for music, but since it was Monday night, just after the NCAA playoff weekend there. Some places were actually closed and others had music we were not terribly interested in.  We decided to call it a night by about 9:30 and headed back to our hotel and to bed.

Tuesday, March 28 arrived along with a full blown cold for Suzy.  She tried to get going, but was not at all well and ended up going back to bed for the morning.  We had planned to see Sun Studios and Graceland that day, but changed plans to do it the next day when hopefully she would be better.  I decided to walk over to the Gibson guitar factory and had a great tour of the place, first group of the day, and got to see the whole operation, which is very interesting. Unfortunately, no photos are allowed on the factory floor, so I was unable to take pictures, but to see the way the guitars are made--mostly with hand work with some machine assistance—was not to be missed.  The Memphis factory makes hollow body electrics and is the only one of the three Gibson factories to do public tours.  They make hard body electric guitars in Nashville, Tennessee and acoustic guitars in Bozeman, Montana.  One of the coolest things is that all the guitars are hand painted, mostly by one man (who does use a spray gun, but no templates, so each is a bit different).  The factory finishes about 60 guitars a day and the build process takes about 6 weeks for each one.  After the factory floor tour, we headed into their showroom where you can play any of their models that are for sale as well as buy them if you are so inclined or just purchase some guitar paraphernalia.

From there I crossed the street and went to the Museum of Rock and Soul, which is affiliated with the Smithsonian Museums in DC.  I could have spent hours in there as not only did they have displays and memorabilia, but every era had its own jukebox with music from that era. The tour was done over MP3 headphones so you went at your own pace and had narrative as well as the music.  It was totally awesome!  By the time I finished that museum experience, it was getting time to head back and see how Suzy was doing.  I got there about 2 p.m. and she was feeling well enough to go see the Rock and Soul museum on her own.  She did that and I called up an Uber ride and went to the Stax museum, which is where the soul music of the 60’s and early 70’s was recorded by people like Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes and many others.  The studio had originally been a movie theater and was purchased on a shoestring by the people who founded Stax in order to have the big auditorium sound for recording and lots of space for their gear. The museum is well done, has a good introductory movie and lots of memorabilia. They have TV screens of performances recorded, so there is less music available to listen to as you go through, but plenty to experience from that era.  Their studio bands were mixed black and white musicians, which was not done much in pre-integration days, but did a lot to get people listening to the music itself over who was playing it.  The Memphis Horns and the Mar-Keys both came out of the recording studio bands to perform with headliners like Otis Redding.  Unfortunately, over half of the Mar-Keys died in the plane crash that killed Otis Redding as his big hit “Dock of the Bay” was being released. They had Booker T’s Hammond organ which he used to record “Green Onions” and other instrumental hits with the group “Booker T and the MG’s”. They have Isaac Hayes’ gold plated Cadillac on display.  Stax went through a period of musical transition after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in Memphis and a lot of the “Soul Sound” transitioned into protest, take a stand type music and artists who were making a statement for social change.  Eventually Stax ran into financial difficulties and was unable to compete with the big labels. Stax and Volt records, a subsidiary, eventually got bought out and most of the big names went with other major labels.  The museum is in an economically disadvantaged part of the city, but is well taken care of, has lots of onsite security and a secure parking lot.  It closes at 5 p.m. and it is not a place I would want to be driving around after dark, so get there during the heart of the day by cab or Uber.

Suzy and I reconnected at the hotel about 4 p.m.  We had decided to have an early dinner of ribs at the famous “Rendezvous” restaurant, a Memphis institution of good ribs done Memphis pit Bar-B-Que, dry rub style.  You can put sauce on them at the table, but I ate mine dry and enjoyed them, but Suzy had to have some “wet” on hers.  They don’t take reservations, but they open for dinner at 4:30 and we were there at 4:45, since it was just down the alley (yes an alley entrance!) about 500 feet from our hotel’s front door.  As John Hiatt sang, “We got good and greasy”, but unlike the song we did not “go back home and put the cow horns back on the Cadillac and change the message on the code-a-phone”.  We did head back to the hotel, choosing not to go down to Beale Street so we could rest up for the major sightseeing effort the next day.

Wednesday, March 29 it was up, breakfast and a short Uber ride over to Sun Records, about a mile away from the hotel.  We were there near the front of the line to get in before 10 a.m. and get tickets for the first tour of the day which started at 10:30.  The place did not disappoint. We had time to peruse the stuff for sale in the outer part and right on time our enthusiastic young tour guide took us up and into the part of the building that is the museum. At various displays he would stop and play examples of music recorded by the artists we were looking at. One of the first true "Rock and Roll songs was recorded at Sun in 1951 by Robert Brenston with Ike Turner on guitar. It was called "Rocket 88". Click here to hear Rocket 88  Sam Phillips founded Memphis Recording Service as a way to supplement his regular job income.  He would record weddings, recitals and other events using primitive portable record recording equipment or very primitive tape and wire recorders, and then cut the recordings and press copies for the customers.  It was not too long into that when he decided to start recording some of the local talent around the Memphis music scene, to include a lot of the black musicians from Beale Street.  He had a female assistant who acted as secretary, girl Friday and assistant recording engineer when he was out. She was the first one to record Elvis, singing a ballad, which Sam Phillips hated and did not release.  Sam was into R&B, Rockabilly and the Blues. If it didn’t “jump” he did not like it.  His assistant kept pestering him to give Elvis another shot and so eventually Sam had a couple of his house musicians, back up Elvis for a session. Once again, it was love songs and Sam was not buying, He told them to take a break and was going to send Elvis packing when Elvis started noodling and singing “That’s All Right Baby”. Click to hear Thats Alright (Mama) Sam was in the control room with the sound on, heard it and said “That’s it!”  The musicians learned the song in a couple of tries and Sam recorded it on acetate, ran over to the local radio station that had a wild man disc jockey, barged in and had him play the record and it immediately got the station’s switchboard lit up for requests to play it again and again. As they say, the rest is history.  The story of the “Million Dollar Quartet” is fascinating as well and is a case in point of how Sam played loose with copyright laws and was always getting sued.  In December 1956, Carl Perkins was doing some recordings for Sun trying to recapture his “Blue Suede Shoes” hit magic.  Jerry lee Lewis was playing piano for the studio at the time and also had done some recordings for Sun.  Johnny Cash had stopped by to say hello and Merry Christmas, so Sam called Elvis, who by this time had signed with RCA records and was no longer a Sun asset and asked him to come by and say hello.  The four artists started talking and jamming, so Sam stuck a microphone in the middle of the floor, hit record and captured some 4 hours of tape of a wide variety of playing, talking and generally fooling around musically.  He released some of it as “The Million Dollar Quartet” and over the years, most of it has been put out, but no telling what the legal ramifications were. The iconic photo taken by a Memphis newspaperman who was an invited guest shows the four guys and, as our guide told us, many people mistake Carl Perkins for Bruce Springsteen, as the resemblance is uncanny in the picture, but of course Bruce was just a small child in 1956.  When we got to the recording studio itself, it was surprisingly small, but did have a high ceiling with old acoustical tile.  It still has the tape marks on the floor where Elvis stood, another mark for the string bass player and another for the other musician.   The microphone Elvis used is still there and I was able to get a photo of me using it.  The room is chock full of musical instruments and the studio is still used to record in the evenings.  A number of big names have recorded there, U2 for one.  You can record your stuff, but Sun records has been history for many years, so you will have to “sell” your tapes to another label or do it yourself, which people are doing more of with streaming audio and social media. With the tour over, we headed back out and discovered that the shuttle bus that normally goes out to Graceland from Sun was down for repairs, so we did another Uber and headed off to Graceland, which is out on the edge of the city.

It so happened our Uber driver had worked as a Graceland tour guide in the very early days of it being open to the public. He had not been out since all the newly built up areas across the highway from the home had been opened.  He said when he started, Elvis’s Mother and Priscilla were still living there. The upper floors of the house were and still are not open to the public and are the family living quarters. Before the tours started for the day, our driver would be there to start work and have morning coffee in the kitchen with the ladies in their robes and have a good chat before things ramped up.  Those days are a far cry from what the place has become. You arrive and park or get let off in a huge parking and staging area.  You go into a large building and que up for tickets. Depending on how much you want to see, you pay your fee and get tickets with a QR code on them that get scanned everywhere you go.  After that you que up for one of two theaters that show a movie about Elvis, then you head out the back of the building and que up for a shuttle bus that takes you across the road and over into the grounds of Graceland proper. You are provided with an I-Pad, earphones and a carrying strap which gives the narration of the tour and allows you to view rooms from a 360 degree perspective as well as go deeper into information if you wish.  When we arrived, I was a bit surprised as I was expecting a bigger mansion style home, not that it is not large, just that it is not massive like the plantation homes we had been touring.  We were let in by groups of about 10-12 people and were able to tour at our own pace.  By this point Suzy was getting weary and feeling the effects of the sun and heat outside, so she skipped a few parts of the tour and rested on a bench outside in the back yard area. The main floor is open to the public has been left as it was when Elvis died, so some of the things that were modern looking then are quaint now, especially the electronics and kitchen appliances.  The family still does use the home occasionally for things like Thanksgiving dinner and other special times.  The finished basement has a game room and a TV room with narrow staircases up and down to each which allows tourists to move through in one direction. The outside rear of the grounds has room for horses, and there are some there for the family to ride if they wish. There are some outbuildings that were used as an office for Elvis’s Dad and a separate building that has a racquetball court and lounge area, to include a piano, which was a favorite spot for Elvis to burn off some energy. The pool area is not large, but nicely put together and fronts the memorial garden that contains the graves of Elvis, his parents and grandmother. Although Elvis was originally buried in a regular cemetery in Memphis, the place became overwhelmed with fans and tourists and the city gave permission for the graves to be moved to the grounds of Graceland where access is controlled. One fact I did not know is that Elvis was actually a twin. His mother did not know she was carrying two babies and the first born twin was a stillbirth, but Elvis was born shortly thereafter to the families great surprise. There is a small memorial stone for that infant along with the other graves.  Once through all the outer parts of the home and grounds, we queued up for the return bus trip across the highway to the major complex that has greatly expanded the Graceland experience, much of which just opened this spring.

We had purchased a ticket that gave us access to most of the rest of the complex and after taking a break at a malt shop/diner for a drink, we made our way through various exhibit halls that contained Elvis’s car collection, motorcycle and other vehicles that were his “toys”.  There was an exhibition of his period of Army military service in an Armored Division in Germany (as an aside, early in my time in the Army I served in an Armored Cavalry Unit where one of our senior NCO’s had been a Sergeant in charge of Elvis’s platoon in Germany.  He always had good things to say about Elvis and apparently he tried to do his service without making waves.  There were exhibits of musical influences on Elvis such as Gospel and Country Music and people Elvis influenced musically. There was an area that contained a lot of his fan memorabilia and archived documents, which are available for research.  Of course there were plenty of places to part with your money for food, drink or souvenirs.  They do have a couple of movie theaters that run Elvis’s films, but we did not stop there as by this time, Suzy really needed to get back and have a rest.  We exited the complex and caught a cab dropping off some other visitors and went directly to our hotel. Suzy was dehydrated, so I walked over to a convenience store down the block from the hotel and picked up a bag of salty chips and a Gatorade drink for her to get replenished.

After resting up, we went to the Flying Fish for dinner, where I got their version of the fried oyster po-boy which turned out to be the best one I had all trip. They were playing good recorded blues music and it was not so crowded we could not enjoy our meal, all in all a good dinner experience.  As Suzy was not 100%, we did not try and return to Beale Street, just went back to the hotel, packed up for the return flight home the next day and called it a night.

Thursday March 30 was a potentially stormy weather day, but the thunderstorms that had caused so many tornados in Texas the day before threatened Memphis but did not materialize.  We got a late checkout and when it was time to go, we took an Uber to the airport and relaxed there while awaiting our flight home.  The bad weather in the area did not affect us at all and our direct flight back to Reagan National in DC arrived a few minutes earlier than projected.  Our friend, Ted Bull, picked us up and dropped us off at home as he had had some business in the District that day and stuck around for us. (Thanks Ted!) Since we were 3 in the car we used the HOV lanes and got home relatively quickly.  Things were in good shape at the house and we were able to unpack, have a light meal and get to bed at a decent hour.  We enjoyed our trip and were very glad to have had the Road Scholar experience, but were also glad to have added on the time in Memphis for ourselves.  I think we were there at a great time as the weather was good, the crowds were way down and we got to do almost everything we wanted to do.  It turned out that Suzy had more than a cold and needed some antibiotics after seeing her physician, but is pretty much over her cough now and the very next day after arriving home was granted release from her walking boot by our podiatrist and able to return to wearing regular shoes and resume a walking exercise program at her own pace.  I think Memphis is a great place to visit, lots to do and see.  Our one regret was we did not visit the Civil Rights museum that has been built at the site of the King assassination, but I do recommend it.  Click to Hear the Song "Walking in Memphis"