Memphis Blues and BBQ

by Mike Marino | January 2008

Jukebox blues and BBQ's explode with a rockabilly backbeat on the nighttime neon of Beale Street. Riverboats glide majestically along the Memphis skyline, marking Twain as they cut a path up and down the Mississippi River past the ghosts and history of civil rights and rock n' roll. Memphis, Tennessee, named after the Egyptian City of The Dead, is a myriad of ghosts, music, southern-fried history, entertainment and cuisine. Riverboat and carriage rides, riverfront parks, festivals, Graceland and the famed Sun Studios. It's also home to the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968 and is now home to the Civil Rights Museum. Memphis rocks and Memphis rolls to beat all its own.

Got Elvis? Memphis damn sure does and every year 600,000 of the Elvis faithful hound dog hipsters lock 'n load for the Presley Pilgrimage for the hip-swiveling, lip-sneering experience of Graceland and all things Elvis. Graceland, originally a farm during the Civil War era, was owned by a Memphis newspaper publisher and named after his daughter Grace. The Elvis MansionMemph itself was built in 1939 and was purchased by The King in 1957 for $100,000 from the local YMCA who had just purchased it for $35,000! The King always was generous.

Elvis lived there until his death in 1977 from a drug overdose. It was officially opened to the public in 1982 and declared a National Historic Landmark in 2006. Public tours to feed the frenzy include the mansion where you can bungle through the Jungle Room with its bunker like ambience, the TV room as a tribute to the vast wasteland of the tube and the shooting range, not to be confused with the TV room which has seen its share of gunfire in the past!

The museum houses artifacts including a sparkling array of Las Vegas jumpsuits with liberal doses of Liberace flair and flamboyance and enough gold records to fill Fort Knox to overflowing. The car museum has a cornucopia of pink Cadillacs, miscellaneous other cars and two-wheeled hellion motorcycles. Souvenir shops dot the Kingdom with Elvis this and Elvis that. The upstairs portion of the mansion is as verboten to the public as a controlled substance, for that is where the King overdosed in the bathroom on an "all you can eat" buffet of pharmacological entrees. They hate to remind the public of that. Out of sight, out of mind. The grounds also have two jet airliners, the Hound Dog and the Lisa Marie. Elvis himself is buried on the grounds inside the Meditation Gardens where the King can finally rest in peace in that big Vegas showroom in the sky!

While visiting Graceland there are numerous lodging options, but you may as well go Elvis all the way. The Heartbreak Hotel adjoining Graceland will allow you to sleep in an Elvis appointed room, zebra stripes and all if you wish and no, the desk clerk does not dress in black. Hardy happy campers and RV aficionados can pull up and park it at the Graceland RV Park just behind Heartbreak Hotel.

No trip to Memphis would be complete without a visit to Sun Studios, the Vatican of rock n' roll, where Pope Sam Phillips cranked out a brand new sound;, the "Memphis" sound, an inbred crossbreed of southern blues, folk and country with a dash of gospel. Originally called Memphis Recording Service when Sam opened its doors in downtown in 1950, little did anyone know at the time that this new sound would burn rubber on the pop culture quarter-mile drag strip and go from Bing Crosby to rock 'n roll in just under 10 seconds.

Recording mostly "race" acts at the time, 1951 is considered the dawn of the rock n' roll revolution. That was the year that Sam recorded a group called the Delta Cats that featured a young piano player and DJ from Clarksville, Mississippi, Ike Turner. The song recorded was "Rocket 88" and is considered the granddaddy Caddy of rock 'n roll, giving birth to a new musical genre and opening a Pandora's box of raucous rockabilly with a Memphis backbeat.

Eventually, musical stray cats from across the region made their way to Sun Studios; people like Presley, Perkins, Johnny Cash, Orbison and the killer Jerry Lee Lewis, lighting up the sky with great musical balls of fire! The studio began to outgrow its usefulness in 1958 and couldn't accommodate the vast numbers of musicians who wanted to record there, so by 1960, Sam shut the place down and it wasn't until 1985 that the castle doors reopened for the famed Class of '55 recording session that included Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee. In 1987, Sam had the studios refurbished and reopened it as a tourist attraction and working studio.

Sun Studios can handle individual or group tours and the guides take you back in time aboard a nostalgic magical mystery tour that makes the past come alive. In the recording room is the same microphone that Elvis used to record "That's Alright Mama" in 1954 and makes a great photo op prop for the scrapbook. Artifacts from the early Sun days fill the building and there are Elvis artifacts on display, on loan from the Presley estate. Don't forget to check out the old recording equipment and the "Rocket 88" records in the display case. Hungry? Well, that's alright mama, they have a snack bar and the gift shop has music, videos, shot glasses, t-shirts and sweatshirts all emblazoned with the famous Sun logo. Sun Studios is located at 706 Union Street and can be reached from Graceland aboard a shuttle bus for convenience, although there is plenty of free parking in the area.

Sun Studios may have been the beat of Memphis, but Stax Recording Studio was its rhythm and blues soul. Stax began its orbit in the music galaxy in 1957 as a small record shop, specializing in soul music inside the majestic Capital Theater in downtown Memphis, In 1959, when they came of age as a full fledged recording studio, the battle lines were drawn and once again it was the battle of the north and south. Out of Detroit, Michigan, people across the nation were dancing in the streets to a Motown beat with the sounds of Hitsville, U.S.A. Now, south of the Mason Dixon line, it was Stax that counter-attacked and led the charge with Soulsville, U.S.A.

Stax piled up an impressive number of stacks of wax for radio platter chatter and its roster of artists was equally impressive. Soul giants such as Isaac Hayes, Otis Redding, "Wicked" Wilson Pickett and Albert King, to name a few, recorded at Stax and one group became indelibly linked to the Stax legacy; Booker T. and the Memphis Group. The name was eventually shortened to Booker T. and the M.G.'s.

Music wasn't all they recorded at Stax. Comedians Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor and the incomparable Moms Mabley turned out an impressive array of vinyl laughs, jokes and bits.

The times were a-changing. The economic boom turned into a bust and the cards were stacked against Stax, forcing the company into bankruptcy in 1976. By 1989, the old building was torn down. In time, a group of investors wanted to rebuild the Stax studio as a museum. A Memphis musical Phoenix rising from the ashes. Although the original building was gone, an exact replica of the original studio was built in 2001 on the original historic site and opened to the public in 2003 as The Stax Museum of American Soul Music.

The Stax Museum houses 17,000 square feet of historic music industry artifacts, interactive exhibits, films, memorabilia and galleries. It is also the only soul music museum in the world, so it's only fitting that it pay homage to Motown Records, Muscle Shoals and other soul labels. Two of the more interesting items on display include Isaac Hayes' 1972 peacock blue Caddy and the original Soul Train dance floor! Classic Stax wax is also available along with soulful souvenirs and gifts in the Satellite Record and Gift Shop. The legacy of Stax is alive and well and the museum is located at its original location at 926 E. McLemore at the corner of College Street.

Bodacious BBQ and down-and-out blues are the entrees of choice to feast on when visiting Beale Street, ground zero in Memphis for shopping, nightlife and down south cuisine to tempt even the northernmost of palates. Today, this nearly 2 mile stretch of concrete that begins at the Mississippi River is one of the most visited streets in America by tourists from around the world. Once as tawdry as San Francisco's Barbary Coast with a plethora of brothels, gambling and its fair share of gunfights, it has been revitalized with shops, restaurants and enough festivals and outdoor concerts to float a riverboat.

Beale Street was first developed in 1841 and by the Civil War was a one-time headquarters for General U.S. Grant way down south in Dixie. After the Civil War ended and into the 1940's, traveling black musicians made their way to the tiny clubs to entertain. and Many planted roots in this cradle of American music as it was being developed. W.C. Handy was asked to move to the area in 1905 to be a music teacher and is responsible for writing "Memphis Blues" and "Beale Street Blues." He taught the greats and there is a wonderful statue to honor the Handy Man. By the 1940's, the Memphis Sound was taking form and shape thanks to performers who played the area such as Louis Armstrong, Muddy Waters and B.B. King.

The Sixties brought change to the country and Beale Street was not immune. It deteriorated rapidly and was soon not a place any God-fearing citizen wanted to venture into without a fully armored tank. By 1977, it was officially named the Home of the Blues by an act of Congress and full-tilt boogie revitalization began in earnest in the 1980's.

Beale Street today rivals the French Quarter in New Orleans for sheer energy and many of the clubs stay open after hours; some until at least 3 a.m. and others until 5 a.m.... just in time for a Memphis sunrise to start the day all over again. The summer season kicks off each year with annual Beale Street Music Festival, occurring the first weekend in May at Tom Lee Park at the end of Beale Street on the mighty Mississippi.

There's much more to do when doing Memphis, including visiting the Civil Rights Museum, the Memphis Zoo, carriage rides through town, guided tours and private tours and if you want to "Huck Finn" it, you can take a leisurely riverboat ride on the Big Muddy. Getting to Memphis by planes, trains and automobiles is easy and you can cheap it on a Greyhound for a truly blues experience! So blues and BBQ's, Memphis rocks and Memphis rolls and no wonder it is considered the birthplace of rock n' roll and the home of the blues!

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