New home at Ribatou
We still didn’t make BB King’s bar but ended up in an ‘Irish’bar with an indoor & an outdoor space both of which had live music. In the end we stayed there to eat as well. The bikers were certainly in town & the bikes were beautiful. We were talking to one guy who had just arrived from Texas. There was a great atmosphere in town although we could have done with a few more degrees.
One for the Harley Davidson fans (& Honda)
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As we’ve come South, it’s got warmer and today I decided to stop wearing shoes & socks, & go for fitflops & linen trousers. And the heavens opened. It sure knows how to rain here, and as the Gracelands visit is housed in 5 separate buildings, & his own graveyard ( yes, really! ), it did put a dampener on the morning’s events. To be fair, I like a lot of Elvis’s music, but this was just a bit too tacky for me. It’s all about the money.
And it probably has a finite life now in that we were the youngest people there. You should have seen the rush by the men for the restroom. It’s not often the queue for the gents is longer than for the ladies. As the 60’s generation dies out, it’s hard to see much of the nostalgia tourism continuing.
The Stax visit was more enjoyable, and informative. When the label started, there was no colour walked through the doors, just musicians. And what musicians, many of them living within walking distance. They couldn’t eat or drink in the same places in Memphis because of segregation, but at Stax they were all the same colour. The only place that they could mix was at the Lorraine Motel, which was black owned. And ironically, which was the site of Dr Martin Luther King’s murder, which changed the whole mood in Stax and which was one of the catalysts for its demise. A white owned and run record label, with a black roster of artists, and with studio musicians from all races.
Things that we Europeans on the whole don’t even think about.
One little erratum. Elvis was never one of their artists. He was at Sun records, where we’re going tomorrow.
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.