Monthly Archive for April, 2004

Well, not quite that far. To help celebrate my 30th birthday, we decided to take a road trip, something I haven’t done for a few years, to the city of Memphis. It’s the home of the blues, Graceland, Beale Street, the Peabody Hotel and ducks, as well as the birth place of rock ‘n’ roll, Sun Studio.

It was a long drive over, but we took turns driving, and it actually didn’t seem to take too long. I do have to say that Tennessee is one loooooong state. If you don’t know where Memphis is located, think of Tennessee as a rectangle and look at the lower left hand corner – that’s where Memphis is, right on the Mississippi River across from Arkansas. After arriving at the hotel, we asked the front desk for a good place to eat, and they recommended a favorite place for locals called the Half Shell, and now we recommend it as well.

Our first stop the next day was Graceland. This was Elvis’ home for twenty years, from 1957 to 1977. I was told that it wasn’t in the best part of town, but it didn’t seem that bad really. The house isn’t as big as you would imagine, given how famous and wealthy he was during his life, but the inside is roomy, and I suppose it was quite the large house back in the day (it was built in the 1930s). To guide you on your tour, you have a set of earphones and some sort of audio player that explains each room as your walk through the house. There are also special sections that are talked about by entering a number into the player. I think it was a great way to run the tour as you aren’t struggling to hear a tour guide, and you can sight-see at your own leisure and are not victim to the pace of a large group. Aside from the mansion, you also get to see some of Elvis’ cars, a museum with lots of memorabilia, and his two airplanes.

Our next stop was Sun Studio. This was the business that started out as Memphis Recording Service, and where many artists got their start in the 1950s : Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, B.B. King, and many others. This studio truly is the birthplace of rock ‘n’ roll. You get to tour the actual studio, which is still functioning today, and listen to the early blues recordings, Elvis’ first recording, Elvis’ second recording which turned him into a star, and what many scholars believe to be the first rock ‘n’ roll song ever called “Rocket 88″ (with a young Ike Turner on piano). They have alot of vintage instruments and equipment there including the actual microphone that Elvis used to make his early music as well as photos of many of the artists that have recorded there, from Elvis to U2. You can even record there yourself for $75/hr. It truly is an amazing journey back in time in music history.

We hung out on Beale Street in the evenings, where many blues musicians got their start and where you can still listen to blues bands “doing their thing” and “making it their own” every night. We also dropped by the Peabody Hotel to witness the world-famous duck march, which has been occuring twice a day, every day, since the 1930s. While the ducks raced down the red carpet in the morning, they were very lackadaisical heading back up to their home on the roof in the afternoon. We also had a chance to hang out on Mud Island where they have an awesome scale model of the entire Mississippi River which was very cool to see.

All in all, we had a very good trip. The drive back seemed to take twice as long as the drive over, but isn’t that always the case? Be sure to check out our photos.