Tennessee -Memphis (Sep 15-16, 2018)

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Our next stop was Memphis, TN. We couldn’t just pass through like we have in the past so we made a weekend stop. It was fun to see all the sites and hear the music. We thought of Beale Street in Memphis as being something as Broadway with lots of music coming from the bars. Of course all the bars are restaurants but our hands were stamped when we entered the restaurants. Plus we saw them checking ids on others even if they were having lunch.

We have to start with Elvis.

Elvis Mansion Graceland. You can enter this free of charge and head right to the meditation area but you can’t approach the Mansion without paying $58-$170 for a tour. We passed
The entrance to the Meditation Garden where Elvis and his family are buried including his still-born brother.
Elvis’s gravestone

Lisa Marie’s Plane. There are other smaller planes and you get to walk in them if you pay for a tour.

This is his statue which is closer to the Beale area – not near his mansion.
Another view

Beale Street. Beale Street dates back to 1841. It began as a mostly white commercial street with a row of antebellum mansions on the eastern end. The blues came in from the Delta at the turn of the century, causing Beale Street to gravitate towards entertainment. Beale was dubbed Negro Main Street of America in the 1920s, and it was said to eclipse New York City’s Harlem.

A great “commercial” on the side of a building.
B.B. King’s Company Store. Beale Street gave him his big break and a world-renowned name. Decades later he would lend that name back to a struggling city, in an effort to preserve the history of the blues. The King of the Blues was born Riley B. King in 1925, on an Itta Bena, Mississippi, plantation in the heart of the Delta. As a young man, he played for tips on the street corner and had gigs in juke joints, sometimes playing in as many as four towns a night.
There are man guitars on Beale street. Couldn’t resist Johnny Cash. The Guitars usually represent those who made records with Sun Studio
There is a small park on Beale Street and William Christopher Handy statue takes a proud spot.
Mr. Handy
Rufus Thomas – King of Rhythm and Blues
Sun Studio. Sun Studio is known worldwide as “The Birthplace of Rock’n’roll”. It is the discovery location of musical legends and genres of the 50’s from B.B. King and Elvis Presley to Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis; from Blues and Gospel to Country and Rock’n’roll.

We then went to the Lorraine Hotel –

Lorraine Hotel also known as National Civil Rights Museum. The National Civil Rights Museum is a complex of museums and historic buildings in Memphis, Tennessee; its exhibits trace the history of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States from the 17th century to the present. The museum is built around the former Lorraine Motel, which was the site of the assassination of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968.
Martin Luther King, Jr plaque at the assassination spot.
Memory Wreath at the spot of the assassination.
Lorraine Hotel History
Mural across the street from the Lorraine Hotel

Stopped at the Orpheum.

 

One of our last stops was to see a great memorial statue and learn about this story.

Tom Lee, a black roustabout on the Mississippi, became a Memphis hero on May 8, 1925, when he saved the lives of 32 people from a capsized riverboat. On the morning of May 8, 1925, alone in his little motorboat, he was the sole witness when the riverboat M.E. Norman capsized in the Mississippi River on May 8, 1925. He could not swim, but Tom nevertheless piloted his skiff into the wreckage, again and again, to save a total of 32 people. Wow.

 

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