The biggest city in Tennessee is the main centre for entertainment, commerce and culture in the state. Around this big-hearted city you’ll find plenty of old southern charm mixed with gleaming modern prosperity, epitomised by the quaint old river paddle-steamers chugging past the shiny steel of the futuristic Pyramid shopping mall.
I’m going to Graceland
Of course, the world-famous former home of rock and roll singer Elvis Presley is the number one attraction in Memphis. On the surface it’s just a two-storey colonial-style mansion but the legend of Elvis has helped make it the second most visited house in the US after the President’s White House. Inside, you’ll find it’s like a museum of Elvis’s life, with rooms full of his extraordinary outfits, and the famous ‘Jungle Room’ hide-away in the basement. Elvis died at the house and you can visit his grave in the gardens.
Memphis Music
You can find the real soul of Memphis on the renowned Beale Street, which has been celebrated in songs like Cab Calloway’s ‘Beale Street Mama’ and Marc Cohn’s ‘Walking in Memphis’. It’s a two-mile street through the heart of downtown Memphis and a great place to find the best of the bars and clubs featuring live jazz, blues, rock and soul music. You may stumble upon one of the frequent music festivals here, but if not, there are always live performances happening somewhere along Beale Street.
Just round the corner you can visit the legendary Sun Studios. It seems a humble place now but Sam Phillips’ recording studio was the launch pad for many musical careers, like Elvis, BB King and Howlin’ Wolf. A short drive to the east, you’ll find another piece of popular music history: the Stax Recording Studio. Inside, you’ll see that the home of many of America’s soul records has now become an entertaining museum telling the story of artists like Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett.
The Rights Sight
To the south of downtown, you can take a tour of the National Civil Rights Museum, housed in the Lorraine Motel - the site of the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. You can also see the building where King’s killer, James Earl Ray, fired from and even the spot where he later confessed.
