NASHVILLE’S MUSIC HIGHWAYS
Nashville itself is Country Music Central, with live music on every street corner, venerable institutions that showcase international stars and a clutch of superb museums and historic recording studios that are open to visitors. At the epicentre are the Lower Broadway honky tonks, the Ryman Auditorium – the so-called Mother Church of country
– the Printers Alley clubs, the outstanding Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, and the smaller Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline museums. All are within walking distance of one another. Two other must visits – 3rd and Lindsley and the Bluebird Café – are just short Uber rides away. In Nashville, everything is easily accessible.
However, if you want to venture beyond Nashville, a clutch of southern music cities are short drives away.
TO MEMPHIS
Memphis is 200 miles by freeway from Nashville
and if Nashville is country, then Memphis is rock’n’roll, gospel and the blues. First off, a visit to Al Green’s Full Gospel
Tabernacle Church on a Sunday morning is essential. It is somewhat touristy these days, but this does not detract from the Reverend Al’s fiery sermons and soulful singing. Beale Street is also touristy, but if you want to hear southern roots music in civilised surroundings, BB King’s Blues Club, Alfred’s On Beale and Jerry Lee Lewis’s Café & Honky Tonk will do it for you.
Two other essential stopovers for music buffs are Sun Studios – where Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and many others cut their early recordings in the 1950s – and Stax, the birthplace of Southern soul music.
And, of course, there is
Graceland, Elvis’s strange mansion, bought in 1957 when he was a 22-year-old rube from Tupelo. Given that it may be moved lock-stock-and-barrel to Japan in the future, a visit is recommended.
TO CLARKSDALE
Clarksdale is just 75 miles south of Memphis on US Route 61, across the border in Mississippi, and this takes you to the birthplace of the blues, where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads. Morgan Freeman’s Ground Zero Blues Club and Red’s Lounge are where you’ll hear the blues, while the Delta Blues Museum is a major attraction. Tennessee Williams, who grew up here, set some of his searing Southern Gothic plays here and the descendants of Brick and Maggie the Cat live on in Clarksdale.
TO MUSCLE SHOALS
This small Alabama town, located on the Tennessee
River just a genteel two-anda-half hour drive south of Nashville, is the Vatican of American rock and soul music. This is where FAME studios, ruled by the great Rick Hall until his death four years ago, produced Arthur Alexander, Percy Sledge, Wilson Picket and Aretha Franklin, and later in the decade where the Muscle Shoals Sound Studios did the same again with the Rolling Stones, Paul Simon and Rod Stewart.
Visit the studios, drink in the atmosphere of Muscle Shoals’ and commune with musical ghosts. Then catch the contemporary musicians at FloBama Downtown. Look out for gigs by gifted locals including the Secret Sisters and Tosha Hill.