| Want to get your musical start in Memphis? You should probably learn how to read music first. Once you've mastered that, you can pick up an instrument and learn to play the guitar or drums. Whatever you choose, a musical education is always a positive thing. |
Daily Breeze, Jan. 2004
♫
Mempis is king of the road trips
for fans of early rock 'n' roll
STORY AND PHOTOS BY COREY LEVITAN
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame needs to relocate immediately. Piece by piece, it should be dismantled and shipped out of Cleveland, Ohio. One visit to Memphis, Tennessee is all that's required to discover the true home of rock 'n' roll.
The famous Mississippi Delta city is where rock was born during a brilliant flash in 1954. For nearly a year, a 19-year-old truck driver had harangued Sam Phillips, proprietor of the Memphis Recording Studio and owner of a fledgling label called Sun Records, for an audition.
Elvis Presley finally got his shot but nearly blew it. For a whole night, he crooned country ballads that failed to showcase his originality. Phillips, bored, politely suggested a break, which he had no intention of returning from. With the pressure off, Presley began strumming a 1946 blues song by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup for the backup musicians. It was a lark, something he did at home for friends. And it was like nothing anyone had ever heard.
Presley's over-the-top performance combined country picking, gospel belting and stripper dance moves. Astounded, Phillips recorded "That's All Right" and signed Presley on the spot.
Sun Studios still exists, and musicians still record under the peeling white ceiling last painted in 1952. (Sessions cost only $75 per hour, including a staff engineer.) More amazingly, during the day, fans also get to stand inside the studio during guided tours.
Some musicologists claim "That's All Right" was not the first rock song, only the first to enter the public consciousness. They point to Jackie Brenston's "Rocket 88" instead, an obscure jump blues recorded in 1951 with distorted guitar (a happy accident, since the guitar amp was broken and couldn't be replaced in time for the session).
Even if that's true, it doesn't remove Sun from the center of the rock universe. "Rocket 88" was recorded by Phillips in this room, too, as were subsequent rock staples "Great Balls of Fire" and "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On" by Jerry Lee Lewis, "Blue Suede Shoes" by Carl Perkins and "Ooby Dooby" by Roy Orbison. And country legend Johnny Cash recorded "I Walk the Line" and "Folsom Prison Blues" here, too.
The small brick building on 706 Union Ave. stood vacant in the '70s and '80s, after Phillips -- who died last year -- sold the label for $1 million in 1969. But in 1987, it was restored and reopened. Since then, U2, Tom Petty and Paul Simon have recorded at Sun and Bob Dylan legendarily strolled in once, just to kiss the floor and leave.
"You can kiss the floor if you want, too," our tour guide said. "You can even kiss Elvis' microphone if you want.
"But I'd be careful because this is the sixth tour today."
Less than 20 blocks from Sun is the famous strip which once gave Phillips and
Presley their blues fixes. Many of the same music clubs still stand, although
under different names. Just walking along Beale Street beckons rock songs about
the town to mind -- Chuck Berry's "Memphis, Tennessee," Mott the Hoople's "All
the Way to Memphis," the Stray Cats' "18 Miles From Memphis," Marc Cohn's "Walking
in Memphis." (Can you name a single rock song about Cleveland -- other than the
theme song to "The Drew Carey Show"?)
All Memphians will insist that you see something they call the march of the ducks, which goes down daily at 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. at the posh Peabody Hotel. It's a silly ritual in which trained quackers waddle out of a fountain, then along a red carpet and into an elevator, which they take to their "duck palace" on the roof.
Rock fans should indeed check out the Peabody, but they should waddle instead toward a human named Bernard Lansky. The multimillionaire owner of Lansky Clothier sells his own wares 7 days a week and sometimes minds the cash register. The 76-year-old was the personal tailor to Elvis throughout his career, from gold lame to karate suits, and he's got many stories to tell. (Unfortunately for this article, they're off the record. And you didn't hear it here, but his uncle was infamous Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky.)
Although Elvis is still everywhere in Memphis, there is, of course, one place his spirit is concentrated. It's hard to miss Graceland. There aren't many other houses with two airplanes parked across the street.
Elvis' former pad is the second most visited private residence in the U.S. -- after the White House. More than 600,000 people (half the greater Memphis population) pay $27 each to see it every year. Built on 500 acres in 1939 by Dr. Thomas Moore (who named it after his aunt, Grace Toof), the former farmhouse was purchased by Presley in 1957 for the then-astronomical sum of $100,000.
Tours begin in the living room off the entryway, where Elvis would keep his guests waiting on a 15-foot white sofa for his grand entrances. (Like nearly everything in the house, the sofa was custom-made.)
Visitors then snake through the music room, where Elvis jammed with members of his Memphis mafia coterie; the Jungle Room den, where little Lisa Marie enjoyed napping with her stuffed bear; and the kitchen, where countless late-night peanut butter and banana sandwiches were fried up.
The TV room features three color 20" televisions installed after Elvis heard that President Johnson watched all three network news broadcasts simultaneously. And the trophy room, home of Elvis' awards and gun collection, now spills over into the racquetball building, whose towering wall houses hundreds of his posthumous gold and platinum records.
The tour also incorporates a museum of Elvis' cars, including the most famous pink Cadillac in the world, and a walk through his two airplanes. The bigger is a former 96-passenger commercial jet renamed the Lisa Marie, which Elvis purchased in 1975 for $250,000, then spent three times that amount customizing. His "flying Graceland" includes two gold-plated bathroom sinks.
Presley's outlandishly gaudy taste is undeniable and will not disappoint kitsch enthusiasts. But it's tempered by the guilty knowledge that Graceland was a deceased man's private retreat; one that, let's face it, he probably didn't want 12 million camera-wielding tourists gawking at since 1982. (Elvis only allowed Graceland's interior to be publicly photographed once while he was alive, by a Memphis newspaper reporter, which kind of makes you wonder.)
And Elvis never asked to be buried in his own backyard. (His world-famous grave and those of close family members is in the meditation garden behind the swimming pool.) That was his father's idea, after alleged grave-robbers threatened to snatch the body from a nearby mausoleum.
Although the notions of respect for the dead and Graceland seem mutually exclusive, at least the house's second floor remains off limits to the public. That's the location of the bathroom where the King died of drug-induced heart failure on August 16, 1977.
Up until 1993, the floor was occupied by Elvis' Aunt Delta, the last original Graceland tenant. Some fans hoped that after her death, the tour might expand upstairs, but it didn't.
After leaving Elvis' building, music fans can also check out Soulsville, a museum honoring Stax Records. This Memphis label brought Otis Redding, Wilson Picket and Sam & Dave to national R&B attention, yet never received the R-E-S-P-E-C-T afforded Motown.
And Elvis isn't the only King to haunt Memphis. The National Civil Rights Museum is situated alongside the former motel where Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Moving, modern exhibits on the history of the Civil Rights movement climax in the view from the balcony where Dr. King last stood.
