5 Elvis places to visit (not including Graceland)
Graceland? Yes, you’ve heard of it, maybe even been there.
Sun Studio? The same.
Anyway, with all this social distancing in effect and all this coronavirus in the air, you’re not too anxious to get out of the car and take a tour of enclosed spaces, anyway. You’re thinking this might be the year to pay homage to Elvis Week with your own little drive-by tour of what might be called secondary Elvis locations: places that are significant but are not really tourist attractions.
Where to go? Here are some suggestions: five Memphis places the Man Who Would Be King played, studied and lived in his years of pre- and incipient stardom.
1. Between the Downtown convention center and Danny Thomas Boulevard, the Lauderdale Courts apartment complex is where Elvis read comic books, struggled with homework and dreamed of being a star. Elvis and his parents, Gladys and Vernon Presley, moved to the Courts about a year after arriving in Memphis; they remained there from September 1949 to January 1953 in what would be the family’s longest stint in a pre-graceland location. Unfortunately, due to the coronavirus pandemic, Apartment 328 is no longer open to the public (so you won’t get to visit Elvis’ old bedroom, where the wall has been patterned with red lipstick imprints, left by demonstrative fans). So you’ll have to be content with basking in the general atmosphere of the once Elvis-frequented location.
2. Another significant Presley shrine now bears the rather fancy title of “Humes Preparatory Academy Middle School.” At 659 N. Manassas, the place was less confusingly known as Humes High School when the senior billed in the program as “Elvis Prestly,” a “guitarist,” performed on April 9, 1953, during the school’s annual talent show. The auditorium is still used for school assemblies and shows, or at least it is when schools are in session.
3. Another milestone Presley performance space is the Levitt Shell in Overton Park, still known by its logical original name of “Overton Park Shell” when Elvis performed there on July 30, 1954, in what was essentially the hometown hero’s Memphis public debut, 20 days after WHBQ radio deejay Dewey Phillips ignited the big bang of rock ‘n’ roll by broadcasting Elvis’ debut Sun single, “That’s All Right”/”blue Moon of Kentucky.” Elvis was the opening act for this 8 p.m. “Hillbilly Hoedown” headlined by Slim Whitman; tickets were $1 each, available in advance at the Main Street Walgreens. Elvis also played the Shell on Aug. 5, 1955, drawing what the Memphis
Press-scimitar newspaper described as “an overflow audience” of some 4,000 people for a “Country Music Jamboree” that included Webb Pierce, Sonny James, Johnny Cash and Wanda Jackson.
4. In East Memphis, 10 miles and a world away from the Lauderdale Courts, is the Presley ranch home at 1034 Audubon Drive, which the 21-year-old Elvis
bought on March 12, 1956, for $29,500.
Gladys, Vernon and Elvis occupied the house for 13 months, during which time Elvis — more popular than ever, thanks to “Heartbreak Hotel” — added a pool and pool house but also discovered that an expanse of suburban lawn was not an adequate enough security barrier to discourage surprise visits from fans of the world’s most popular singer. As a result, Elvis’ next home purchase was more private and palatial: the Whitehaven estate known as Graceland.
The Audubon Drive home is now owned by the Mike Curb Family Foundation and operated as an extension of the Curb Institute for Music at Rhodes College.
5. Unveiled during Elvis Week in 2014, the American Studios Shelby County Historical Marker at 827 Thomas, near a Family Dollar store, marks the location of one of the most significant locations in Elvis’ career: the former site of the late Chips Moman’s American Sound Studio, where in 1969 Elvis — backed by the house band, the so-called “Memphis Boys” — cut “Suspicious Minds,” “Kentucky Rain,” “In the Ghetto” and other tracks that rank among the greatest recordings of Elvis’ career.