City’s tale of two kings
MEMPHIS, the biggest city in Tennessee, epitomises the old and new South of the United States. Once a major slave trading centre, in the 1960s it was the focus of civil rights action. Dr Martin Luther King was assassinated there, and the national civil rights museum in the city is his memorial.
It has always been a major musical centre for blues, country, jazz and of course rock and roll. The king of rock and roll, Elvis Presley, started there and he wasn’t the only one.
Memphis’s Sun Studios recorded Elvis but can also count Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins among its stars. Later Stax Records, a label devoted entirely to recording black musicians, had Otis Redding, the Bar Kays and Booker T and the MGs creating a soul sound.
On or near Beale St, there’s the Gibson Guitar factory, which supplied so many legendary performers, and you can delve back in time at the excellent Museum of Rock and Soul, the Memphis Music Hall of Fame and the Memphis Blues Museum.
In the early 20th century Memphis was a major jumping off point for African Americans going north from Tennessee and Mississippi, which created a vibrant music scene.
Segregation of the races was the official policy of all the southern states from the 1880s through to the 1960s.
Beale St was the centre of the black community. Today it is party central every night with bars, music and tourists filling the street. During the day shop for nostalgia goods and memorabilia and drop into A Schwab, a general store dating back to the 1870s.
Pretend it’s still the ’50s because around the corner is Lansky Bros, where Elvis hired a tuxedo to go to his high school grad ball at the Peabody Hotel in 1951. The Peabody still holds its twice daily parade of the ducks, who live in the penthouse and come down in the elevator each morning to spend their day in a carved stone pond in the foyer and return by elevator each night. It’s a ritual that attracts hundreds of gawping spectators.
Graceland, Elvis’s home, is still the biggest single attraction in Memphis and after a multi-million dollar revamp is a much improved experience. The house where he and his family lived is preserved as it was, but across the street (where the tours begin) the displays are much bigger and better than previously.
There’s a new focus on Elvis the cultural icon and on his significance in the history of popular entertainment. It’s worth remembering that he sold more than a billion records, an achievement still unmatched, starred in 34 movies and launched live satellite TV shows.
Memphis is also a story of a city pulling itself back up. Urban renewal projects are reinvigorating the city downtown and bringing back young people and those who fled to the suburbs from the urban decay and crime rife in the inner city in the 1970s and ’80s.
Let’s not forget the food. Southern cooking, whether it’s barbecue, fried chicken or the more sophisticated modern trends, is flourishing and is a major drawcard.
And there’s the river: the Mississippi passes through town. Towns like Memphis abound up and down the river, because in days gone by that was how people and goods moved from place to place. New Orleans to the south was the major international port. Goods went up the river to Baton Rouge, Natchez, and Memphis, and on to Vicksburg and St Louis right up to Chicago.
And then there’s the social history. This is the place where Dr Martin Luther King Jnr was shot and killed on April 3, 1968.
He was staying at the Lorraine Motel, away from the downtown, because in 1968 Memphis was still a racially segregated city.
The motel has been transformed into the National Civil Rights Museum, a deeply moving record of slavery and the civil rights movement. The last scene looks into Dr King’s bedroom, bed clothes neatly folded back, coffee cup on the nightstand. Just after 6pm he stepped on to the balcony and was shot from across the street. He died an hour later.