Memphis and Nashville

The second week of our road trip was chock full of adventure, famous landmarks, good music, yummy food and good ol’ southern hospitality. We drove from New Orleans up to Jackson, Memphis and Nashville before a long push home on the last day. I covered Jackson in my last post so I’ve got plenty to write about Memphis and Nashville.

Here's a short video with all the best pics from this stage of the trip so make sure you watch it. 

ROUTE MAP

MEMPHIS

On the way to Memphis we drove through the small city (town?) of Tupelo which is where Elvis was born. We saw the little house and that’s about it. I guess this is their claim to fame because the Presley family moved to Memphis when he was a young boy and Memphis is better known for Elvis.

We arrived into Memphis in the afternoon and first stop was to the famous Peabody Hotel where we watched the ‘march of the Peabody ducks’. How damn cute were these ducks !!! The story goes…The Peabody is a luxury hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. The hotel is known for the "Peabody Ducks" that live on the hotel rooftop and make daily treks to the lobby, a custom dating back to the 1930s. The General Manager of the time, had just returned from a weekend hunting trip in Arkansas. He and his friends found it amusing to leave three of their live English ‘call duck’ decoys in the hotel fountain. The guests loved the idea, and since then, five Mallard ducks (one drake and four hens) have played in the fountain every day.

In 1940, a bellman by the name of Edward Pembroke volunteered to care for the ducks. Pembroke was given the position of "Duckmaster" and served in that position until 1991. As a former circus animal trainer, he taught the ducks to march into the hotel lobby, which started the famous Peabody Duck March. Every day at 11am the Peabody Ducks are escorted from their penthouse home, on the Plantation Roof, to the lobby via elevator. The ducks, accompanied by the duckmaster and proceed across a red carpet to the hotel fountain, made of a solid block of Italian travertine marble. The ducks are then ceremoniously led back to their penthouse at 5pm. You can google this and see many videos of the ducks marching – it’s very cute and apparently their penthouse is $200,000+.

The next day we went early to Graceland and took the tour through Elvis’ mansion and many of his side museums such as his cars and photo gallery. Graceland is definitely a place of worship for any Elvis fan. I’m not a big Elvis fan but the memorabilia and computer guided audio tour was excellent. I learnt a lot about Elvis and never knew how kind, generous and family oriented he was. He was clearly a good looking bloke and a superstar of enormous proportion in the day. Graceland was old given it’s dated in the 70s but he certainly enjoyed the good life. However, it was nice to hear many kind comments around the many tours in Memphis about Elvis’ humbleness and generosity. Having travelled from New Orleans where Jazz was the music flavor and one that the African Americans developed from their strong gospel sounds, it was interesting to learn that Elvis played a big role in bring gospel into ‘white’ peoples music.

 

Memphis was the place of Blues music. I saw a sign somewhere along the way that said ‘if country music had a baby it would be called the blues’. It was Saturday night and we took ourselves to Beale Street where all the Blues music action is. It’s amazing how nighttime and lights can ramp up the atmosphere of any city. There were many bars with live blues music playing and the street is closed to traffic thank god. We went to the very famous and original BB King’s Blues Club and oh my god, that place was rocking. The band was the BB King All Stars and they were bloody fantastic, really loud but fantastic. This place has live entertainment every night of the week – from authentic blues to classic soul and rock and roll – and a menu full of Southern favorites, the club is a popular destination spot on Memphis’ historic Beale Street. The club offers a full menu comprised of a variety of the South’s most delicious comfort foods influenced by flavors from New Orleans all the way to the Mississippi Delta, including authentic Memphis-style barbecue.

We also visited the Rock n Soul museum that was small but quite interesting. I’m a music lover so anything that covers good music is always good for me. There was plenty of Elvis and a good history of how blues music was formed, developed and grown into the good sound it is today.

A somber experience was the visit to the National Civil Rights Museum. The museum traces the history of civil rights in the US from the 17th century to today. It is built around the former Lorraine Motel which is where Martin Luther King (MLK) Jnr was assassinated on 4 April 1968. This was an incredible museum – it was loaded with interesting history but it was deeply saddening to read about the cruelty dealt to the African Americans from slavery through to segregation to their battles today. This is probably the best civil rights museum I’ve seen so far and probably may be because Memphis is fairly central to the civil rights movement. I noticed a few older African American women with tears as they read some of the exhibits. It really was heartbreaking to read but also uplifting to see good people come together to fight for humanity back in the day knowing that they would face beatings and even death to stand up for what was right.

The museum includes the actual hotel and rooms where MLK Jr was assassinated. The rooms are preserved as they were on the day. Terrible, just a terrible loss of a remarkable man – he was only 39. Across the road the museum includes the hostel where the gunman fired his weapon. We viewed that room also and it was full of artifacts on the capture and case against the gunman. It was like the JFK shooting in that it has conspiracy surrounding it. I get goose bumps every time I hear his ‘I have a dream speech’ and the more I learn, the more I understand his purpose behind those great words.

Thanks to wiki, here’s a here’s a short bio. King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president. With the SCLC, King led an unsuccessful 1962 struggle against segregation in Albany, and helped organize the 1963 nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Alabama. King also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington where he delivered his famous “I have a Dream” speech. There, he established his reputation as one of the greatest orators in American history.

On October 14, 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through non-violent resistance. In 1965, he helped to organize the Selma to Montgomery marches and the following year he and SCLC took the movement north to Chicago to work on segregated housing. In the final years of his life, King expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty and the Vietnam War, alienating many of his liberal allies with a 1967 speech titled Beyond Vietnam. In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People’s Campaign when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. His death was followed by riots in many US cities.

This was a big museum with an enormous amount to read and see. I would dearly love to go back and spend more time there. I recommend you visit this museum, as it’s important to understand the danger we face by not treating people equally.

NASHVILLE

I was quite excited to visit Nashville which is the capital of Tennessee, home to Vanderbilt University and the land of honky tonks. My mum raised me on a variety of music flavors and country music was a big part of that education. Famous names like Charley Pride, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, Glen Campbell…among many many more. We started our visit with a hop on/off bus tour and did the full loop to get our bearings. It’s a beautiful city and had a nice feel to it. They have their own football and ice hockey team so things are good. There are legendary country music venues including the Grand Ole Opry House, home of the famous “Grand Ole Opry” stage and radio show.

We put in a full day starting with the Country Music Hall of Fame which was pretty impressive – I thought of mum a lot and know how much she would have loved to have seen this. There were lots of memorabilia and people I’ve never heard of so the world of country music if much bigger than my small childhood education gave me. It went from the early days through to the current stars of today. Nice to see Keith Urban in there but didn’t notice any other Australian singers. Every display cabinet had a pair of cowboy boots, a guitar and maybe a hat. The clothes were amazing, full of sparkles and dangly bits that would be great for any mardi gras in Sydney.

We then toured the historic RCA Studio B which was once the recording home of popular music titans such as Elvis Presley, Chet Atkins, Eddy Arnold, and the Everly Brothers. From the website….Built by Dan Maddox in 1957, RCA Studio B first became known as one of the cradles of the “Nashville Sound” in the 1960s. A sophisticated style characterized by background vocals and strings, the Nashville Sound both revived the popularity of country music and helped establish Nashville as an international recording center. For many years, Country Music Hall of Fame inductee Chet Atkins managed RCA’s Nashville operation and produced hundreds of hits in Studio B. Studio B has also been home to numerous innovations in recording practices, including the development of the “Nashville number system,” a musician’s shorthand for notating a song’s chord structure, which facilitates the creation of individual parts while retaining the integrity of the song. We sat at the piano where many stars have played for their hit songs. I enjoyed the tour but have to say the Motown museum in Detroit was much better.

Another icon in Nashville is the historic Ryman Auditorium. This was formerly the home of the Grand Ole Opry House (1943 to 1974) an is/was a 2362 seat live performance venue.

Since debuting in 1925, a local country music program known as the Grand Ole Opry had become a Nashville institution. Though not originally a stage show, the Opry began to attract listeners from around the area who would come to the WSM studio to see it live. When crowds got too large for the studio, WSM moved the show to various auditoriums around the city that could accommodate the following. However, the Opry was asked to other venues due to its sometimes-uncivilized crowds, which often resulted in upholstery damage. With its wooden pews and central location, Lulu Naff and the other Ryman leaders thought the auditorium would be a perfect venue for such an audience, and began renting the venue to WSM for its shows. The Grand Ole Opry was first broadcast from the Ryman on June 5, 1943, and originated there every week for nearly 31 years thereafter. Every show sold out, and hundreds were often turned away. Reading about Lulu Naff and how she took a huge chance to start managing the Ryman was amazing – she is a celebrated legend.

During its tenure at Ryman Auditorium, the Opry hosted the biggest country music stars of the day, and the show became known around the world. The entire show was broadcast clear channel station WSM, where it could be heard in 30 states across the eastern part of the nation. Portions of the show were also broadcast on network radio and television to a wider audience. Melding its then-current usage with the building's origins as a house of worship, the Ryman earned the nickname "The Mother Church of Country Music", which it still holds to this day. The Grand Ole Opry is now at another venue and we did not get a chance to check it out. The Ryman was a beautiful place – they say the acoustics are excellent and many singers preferred to sing here for that reason and because of the history and atmosphere. We got a photo on stage but I realize this will be the closest I will ever get to performing at the Ryman. Apparently they do some filming here for the TV show Nashville.

THIS has got to be a highlight – there is a building that they call the ‘Batman’ building. One look at it will tell you why. How cool is that !!

I desperately wanted to go boot-scooting (or line dancing) but Deb and our friend were not having any part of it. So we walked the streets and looked at the hat and boot shops – I wanted a cowboy hat. It just seemed the thing to buy! After a few shops, and very little encouragement all three of us ended up with a pair of cowboy boots each. And after all that, I didn’t get my cowboy hat. I will wait for Texas next year and get one there. So with our new cowboy boots, I still couldn’t convince them to go boot scooting. Bloody sheilas.

We made a last minute decision to go to the ice hockey as the Nashville Predators were playing the Texas Stars. This was the first ever hockey game for our friend and the game was awesome. It was full of action and the crowd was rowdy with some very colorful chants. Nashville has a lot to see and do. We didn’t get to see the Johnny Cash museum or the musicians hall of fame but we managed to see some of the best things and experience the friendly hospitality on offer.


ROADTRIP

We covered a fair bit of ground on this road trip and drove mostly on the interstate highways. There were so many trucks that it was like the slow (right) lane was only for trucks. We experienced some of the road stops with there own special personalities serving us. The southern accents were very strong and I thought they were quite friendly and warm. We were all exhausted after going flat strap for 12 days and with lots of driving in between. Overall we enjoyed the trip, the southern states and the food and people that we experienced along the way. Na be shaw y’all come bak now !!