Yesterday was a cruising day with little to report so I spent the idle time putting out the Vicksburg report. Today we’re touring Memphis, the final stop on the trip.
The trip from Vicksburg to Memphis took all day. It wasn’t until after 10 that the Jazz arrived here. I was surprised that we saw virtually no towns, factories, or even riverside cottages all day. Our guide this morning told us we’d passed through delta country – low lying ground. What little human activity we saw consisted of farmland only a few feet above the river’s current height. I can imagine those fields would frequently flood, depositing, I assume, beneficial silt when the waters recede.
Memphis is located on the southernmost of four “Chickasaw Bluffs,” high ground 50 to 200 feet above the Mississippi. The Chickasaw Indians were the dominant tribe in this area before Europeans arrived. The high ground provided good defense and protection from flooding. Memphis is sometimes called the Bluff City.
This morning we took a city tour by bus, guided by a nice local lady with a perfect Southern drawl and excellent knowledge of the city, both past and present. The first stop was the Loraine Motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated by James Earl Jones in April of 1968. There is a co-located Civil Rights Museum that we did not tour but might tomorrow. The motel is in a nondescript area off Main Street and not far from Beale Street. It’s a sobering reminder of the 1960s when JFK, RFK, MLK and others were assassinated, changing the course of U.S. history so dramatically.
We stopped at Sun Studios where Elvis and other well-known Blues and Rock and Roll performers recorded. We stopped at the Peabody Hotel where Mallard ducks march down from the roof to swim in the lobby fountain every day. We drove by a number of antebellum homes and stopped at a huge pyramid-shaped structure that at one time was home to the Memphis Whatchamacallits basketball team. Today it’s a Bass Pro Shops store that sports the tallest freestanding elevator in the U.S.: Memphis’s answer to LL Bean.
This afternoon we toured two music museums. First up: the Rock n Soul Museum. Now I think of the Smithsonian as focusing on high-brow subjects, or at least higher-brow subjects than Rock-n-Roll. But the Rock n Soul Museum was established under the auspices of the Smithsonian. And after doing the tour, it’s clear that Memphis in mid-twentieth-century was a truly important place and time that shaped American culture far from the jukebox.
The Rock n Soul Museum provided us with portable listening devices. Each display had a number that when entered would provide a narrative of what we were seeing. We could also play songs representative of songs found in jukeboxes during each era.
When I, and maybe most people, think of music and Memphis I think of Elvis. He was of course featured in the museum but not to the exclusion of many other pioneers in the field of popular music, both performers and recording studios and music promoters. Elvis is said to be the first true rockabilly, soon to become rock and roll, performer. Rock n roll had its roots in African American spiritual and field songs sung by slaves, which formed the basis for blues and gospel songs. That source material transformed and developed into rock and roll and jazz.
The thing I learned from today’s visit is that Elvis, in addition to being the first RnR singer, brought what was essentially a Black music genre to White America. After Elvis, most of the rock and roll groups and record labels in Memphis were racially integrated. White and Black musicians focused on creating the music rather than worrying about race. In that respect Elvis can be thought of as a vanguard in the Civil Rights movement.
The Memphis Music Hall of Fame was more of the same. Memorabilia from Memphis greats.
Someone was quoted in a museum today saying, “Rock and roll would never have succeeded if it hadn’t been abhorred by parents. It became the perfect vehicle for kids to express their rebellion. All those questionable lyrics and shacking hips.”
So, while I may never be a dyed-in-the-wool Elvis fan, I certainly have a better appreciation for the contribution soul, blues, jazz and rock n roll made to American culture.
This is or last night on the river. Tomorrow at 8:30 AM we’ll be unceremoniously kicked out into the cold, cruel world to fend for ourselves. The shuttle bus will drop us off at Graceland Hotel where we’re staying for two nights. Sunday we’ll be back in Memphis to eat ribs, do the Civil Rights Museum and eat more ribs. Then on Monday we’ll do Graceland and we’ll fly home on Tuesday.
