Detours | There's more to Memphis than Graceland
MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- If there is anything left to be unearthed on Planet Elvis, it can be found on the Ultimate Memphis Rock 'n' Roll Tour. Elvis can be an ordeal for longtime Memphians, much as "Sweet Home Chicago" is a drain on veteran Chicagoans. But the rock 'n' roll tour delivers fresh insight by introducing edgy Memphis culture into the King's court.
A week's worth of Elvis activities will be held Saturday-Aug. 19 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Presley's death as well as the 50th anniversary of his Graceland estate. This year's Elvis Week is anticipated to be the biggest ever in terms of attendance. More than 50,000 music fans are expected to descend on the Southern town.
Elvis Presley Enterprises has rolled out a new exhibit featuring 56 of the King's jumpsuits as well as the new Elvis After Dark museum. Both exhibits are in the plaza across the street from Graceland. Open until 8 p.m., Elvis After Dark features recent acquisitions such as the RCA television set the King shot out with a pistol while watching Robert Goulet. At least Presley isn't around for Taylor Hicks.
IF YOU GO
Ultimate Memphis Rock n' Roll Tour: The three-hour trip includes a choice of one stop at either Sun Records, Stax Museum, Graceland, Gibson's Guitar Factory or the Memphis Rock 'n' Soul Museum. Prices are $150 for two people, the Graceland side visit is $180. Call (901) 359-3102 or visit www.memphisrocktour.com.
Wilmott operates his Ultimate Memphis Rock 'n' Roll Tour from a silver 11-passenger Chevy van with music and photographs synched up with tour stops.
Wilmott meets the challenge of finding out-of-the-way Elvis connections such as the Assembly of God Church, 1084 E. McLemore, near the birthplace of Aretha Franklin (406 Lucy). The church is where a 19-year-old Presley heard the white gospel of the Blackwood Brothers. The King then walked one block south to the Rev. Herbert Brewster's East Trigg Avenue Baptist Church, 1189 Trigg Ave., to hear black gospel. Brewster wrote "Move On Up A Little Higher," recorded by Mahalia Jackson in 1948. Sam Cooke and Jackson were guest singers at the church.
Unique to Memphis, these black and white churches were 300 yards apart.
And Elvis really never left these buildings.
Wilmott's three-hour tour also covers glorious obscurities such as the Taco Bell at 1447 Union, which was the site of the Taliesyn Ballroom and one of the Sex Pistols final American gigs during their 1978 tour. Wilmott's tour is different than Tad Pierson's American Dream Safari (www.AmericanDreamSafari.com), where tourists tool around Memphis and the Delta in a 1955 Cadillac. Pierson's trip is about the experience, stopping off at juke joints and plantations. Wilmott gets deeper into music history.
For my recent tour, Wilmott customized it with Elvis stops. He said 90 percent of his clients request Elvis sites. "People enjoy the tour," said Wilmott, who has lived in Memphis since 1974. "But I don't think they have any idea of the breadth of Memphis music history. They know of Elvis, they know the blues, but they don't necessarily know the gospel or the depth of soul music beyond Stax."
Presley's early years
Wilmott spins by the refurbished 1935 public housing project Lauderdale Courts where the Presley family lived when they arrived in Memphis from Tupelo. (You can stay in Elvis' bedroom. Visit my Scratch Crib blog: blogs.suntimes.com/hoekstra, for a recap of my night in Elvis' crib.) Reservations are not accepted Aug. 14-19 -- Elvis Week -- when Apartment 328 is open for tours.
The tour also checks out Humes High School, where Presley attended, and the site of Crown Electric (now an Exxon gas station at Poplar and Danny Thomas Boulevard), the last place Presley worked as a delivery man before becoming the King. Poplar Tunes is still across the street at 309 Poplar (901-525-6348). The mom and pop record store was established in 1945 and Presley often popped in to cash his Crown Electric checks. You can still buy a record at Poplar. The tour includes the sites of all three studios Elvis recorded in Memphis: Sun Records, American Studios and Stax.
Wilmott, 43, is the former owner of Shangri-la Records, 1916 Madison Ave. (901-274-1916), one of my favorite independent record stores in America. Stop by for a burger and a beer across the street at Huey's, 1927 Madison Ave. (901-726-4372). Wilmott still owns the Shangri-la imprint, an umbrella for his tour, books and independent CD releases.
The tour is a spin off Shangri-la's popular Kreature Comforts: Low-Life Guide to Memphis that highlights Bluff City landmarks like the Mason Temple (930 Mason St.) where Dr. Martin Luther King gave his "Mountaintop" speech on April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated, and the site of the Chisca Hotel (272 S. Main), the home of WHBQ-AM and manic DJ Dewey Phillips, who in 1954 played "That's All Right, Mama," the first Elvis record. The empty building still stands. It is owned by the Church of God and Christ.
The tour takes in the vintage Sam Phillips Recording Service, 639 Madison. Wilmott looked at the art deco studio and said, "This is one of the few recording studios you will see here that was built as a studio. Memphis people are poor, thrifty and creative. Most of the studios are reusages of older buildings. Sun was an old car parts store. Stax and Hi [Records] were neighborhood movie theaters. But Sam had some money. This was state of the art." Elvis gave Sam his earliest RCA gold records and they are on display in the musician's lounge.
Music's the draw
Visitors can step outside of Wilmott's van and catch some fresh air at the Overton Park Band Shell in Overton Park in Midtown. The band shell was built in 1935 as a WPA project. Wilmott looked at the bandshell set off in a grove and said, "Right after recording for Sun in July, 1954 Elvis opened for Slim Whitman here." The shell has been closed for two and a half years, but a Memphis nonprofit is slated to reopen the shell next spring.
"Music is the big draw here," Wilmott said. "But it is tied in with the cotton, the culture and the food, of course." Kreature Comforts has a couple of pages of restaurant recommendations ranging from Ellen's Soul Food, 601 S. Parkway E., to Dyer's, 205 Beale, that feature burgers fried in grease that hasn't been changed since 1928.
My only beef with the tour were the empty spaces I saw. I suppose it is a philosophical question if that's a problem of the tour or an issue with the city of Memphis, but even ghost sites give tourists an idea how cultures collide in Memphis neighborhoods.
"Physically, the coolest thing on the tour is still the Overton shell," Wilmott said. "Symbolically, the most important thing is Lauderdale Courts. There's a boy from the projects who made it. And the most interesting thing is the black and white music Elvis was absorbing from the churches. Its an incredible story. And people want to get to know a little more of Elvis. They all want a piece of him."
Share this post:
