We got up reasonably early this morning as we had a bus coming for us to transport us to Graceland. After a hasty breakfast (still awful coffee) off we went. Our driver was very entertaining & gave us a bit of a guided tour en route. On arrival we had to redeem our voucher for tickets & then be transported across the road into the grounds & up to the house itself. We were equipped with a tablet & headphones whilst waiting for the shuttle bus but by this time it had started to rain, seriously rain. We were under cover most of the time & were serenaded by non stop Elvis music. The staff were pretty cheerful considering they must spend their day ushering/guiding thousands of tourists through the place. We had to have our photo taken—–for security they said—but guess what, on leaving the tour we had the opportunity to buy our photo as a momento!!!!
The house itself is not that big & is, of course, a time warp. Shag pile carpet in the walls no less & some very doubtful tastes elsewhere. After the house there is loads of memorabilia to see, clothes he wore, record sleeves, gold & platinum discs etc etc. There is another area with more personal stuff & it is obvious that they have lots of things in storage too. At this point we were ushered into a cinema & subject to about 15 mins of Elvis performing at various venues. We also saw his car collection but by the time we got to the section Elvis in Hawaii I had had enough. There is only so much that a Cliff fan can take. Thankfully by this time the rain had stopped & it was time to take our transport back. It seems that he did do good deeds throughout his life but his legacy is enormous. You have to wonder how many more years they can go on milking it. His daughter is a very wealthy woman.
Instead of coming straight back downtown, we got dropped off at the Stax studio museum. This was a very interesting tour, highlighting the birth & subsequent demise of Stax records. Stax was the home to some very famous names, Elvis, B B King, Aretha Franklin, Booker T & Otis Reading to name but a few. It really was a initially a studio that discovered local names & was completely non- segregated, very unusual for it’s time. We whiled away a couple of hours there & then came back downtown in a taxi via local roads & housing areas. Downtown Memphis is a strange place. Beale St at night is its hub but during the day everything is quiet & again like Louisville there are redevelopment prospects abounding. Tonight is bikers night & already this afternoon they had started to arrive. Seeing as we didn’t make B B King’s bar last night, we’ll probably aim for there tonight.