History Day

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Yesterday I rented a fairly inexpensive car from National/Alamo around 1:45 pm after landing at Memphis Airport, and soon after began my quickie tour of the four tourist attractions. I loathed Graceland, felt awed and saddened by the Lorraine Motel, didn't much care for the Disneyland/Universal City Walk vibe of Beale Street, and loved the little shrine that is Sun Records, the small-scale, modest-vibe recording studio that was begun by the great Sam Phillips in 1950, and is now a down-homey, old-time funky studio and and souvenir shop.

The only image I was able to find in the entire area of Graceland (i.e., on both sides of Elvis Presley Blvd.) that didn't seem garish or tacky.

Graceland, the former home of Elvis Presley and an ongoing shrine to the money that his music and movies continue to earn, is just southwest of Memphis airport and located on an ugly straightaway called Elvis Presley Blvd., littered with tacky blue-collar chain stores and fast-food franchises and unsightly warehouses and car washes. The area is flat and character-less with amber-brown grass and very few trees, except for a relatively small forested area near Graceland.

The area around Graceland was probably wide-open country (or close to it) when Presley first bought the place in early 1957 for $100 grand -- now the Graceland commercial milieu is indistinguishable from the crap and clutter along New Jersey's infamous Route 22. One look and you want to escape. It's the pits.

And economically depressed. I bought a burger at a little joint called Checkers, which is just north of Graceland, and two panhandlers hit me up for money while I was waiting.

The tourist stores pandering to the Presley fans are located across the street from the walled-in main property, which consists of a long upsloping lawn, a modest-sized home with a kind of southern-style neo-colonial design with a brick facade, and a couple of buildings built alongside, including what looks like a barn or a horse stable. It's said to have 23 rooms but it didn't look all that big to me. Presley is buried in the back yard (we've all seen the photos), but I took one look at this parched, depressing, over-hyped sucker attraction and decided not to take the tour.

40 years, 10 months on -- Thursday, 2.5.09, 4:08 pm

Lorraine motel, site of the April 1968 murder of Martin Luther King, located on a somewhat neglected, borderline seedy portion of downtownMemphis -- Thursday, 2.5.09, 4:05 pm

The snaps I took yesterday of the Lorraine Motel, site of the April 4, 1968 murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, speak for themselves. The strongest impression I got was that it's quiet -- dead quiet. The Lorraine stopped being a working motel in '82 and was soon after bought by the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Foundation and eventually became part of a small network of buildings called the National Civil Rights Museum.

It's a queer sensation to suddenly be eyeballing with great concentration a place as famous/infamous as this, and to just...I don't know, just stroll around and take it all in. I was assessing the distance between the motel's upper balcony (where King stood just before being shot) and the rear window of a former down-at-the-heels rooming-house from which James Earl Ray fired . Over and over I've watched black-and-white photos and newsreel film film (and lately, since the 40th anniversary last year, color video) of this sad place, and it's just weird to see it live.

You can take Beale Street, the historic birthplace of the blues, and stuff it. It's strictly a tourist trap with one Disneyworld blues bar, tourist merchandise shop and musician T-shirt or instrument shop after another. Beale Street obviously has a storied reputation; it just as obviously has sold that atmosphere down the river for tourist bucks.

I loved visiting the fabled Sun Studios because it hasn't been expanded or glitzed up. It looks and feels a lot like what I imagine it used to be back in the '50s. I bought an "Elvis at Sun" CD and listened to it twice during the 90-minute drive south to Oxford. "Y'heard the news, thayuhs good rockin' tonight."

I tried to attend the Oxford Film Festival's opening-night attraction, Sunshine Cleaning (Overture, 3.13), but this middle-aged goon hired by the distributor stopped me from entering the theatre because I had my camera slung around my neck. If you don't want cameras in a theatre you set up a table in the lobby asking people to surrender their devices, and then you put each device into a plastic baggie and give the owner a receipt. Not a problem; I've done this dozens of times. But the dickhead at the theatre last night just said "no camera" and "maybe you can get somebody outside to hold it for you." So I walked. I didn't care. It was just Sunshine Cleaning.

I missed Sunshine Cleaning, come to think, when it played at Sundance '08 so last night's episode was in keeping with tradition. I'll presumably see it before next month's opening.

Historic Lafayette courthouse in town square of Oxford, Mississippi -- Thursday, 2.5.09, 9:05 pm

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Posted by Jeffrey Wells on February 6, 2009 at 4:12 AM

comment #1

twicks says ...

For anyone who really loves early rock & roll, there is definitely a powerful, magical vibe inside Sun Studios. I loved how they put X's on the floor of the actual studio, so you can stand exactly where Elvis, Scotty and Bill stood when they recorded.

Posted by twicks at February 6, 2009 6:43 AM

comment #2

Sabina E says ...

I've always wanted to go to Memphis so bad... do you remember the Jim Jarmusch movie, "MYSTERY TRAIN"? about two Japanese rockabilly tourists who pay a visit to Memphis because they are obsessed with Elvis and early rock'n'roll music... ever since, it's been my goal to try to visit Memphis.

great photos, by the way, as usual.

Posted by Sabina E at February 6, 2009 7:19 AM

comment #3

Sabina E says ...

sorry to hear that you missed "Sunshine Cleaning," I'm curious to hear what you'd think of the movie.

Posted by Sabina E at February 6, 2009 7:21 AM

comment #4

btwnproductions says ...

The National Civil Rights Museum is one of the finest in the country. Worth a day in itself--and I must say the Graceland tour, minus the tourisrt bric-a-brac, is also worth taking.

Posted by btwnproductions at February 6, 2009 7:31 AM

comment #5

LeroyBrown says ...

It's not necessarily fair to draw conclusions about Graceland from the admittedly depressing surroundings. Once you get inside, it's definitely not a sucker attraction, as you describe it. At least not if you're at all interested in how Elvis lived and worked. One of those outbuildings contains a studio, for example. And there's a first-rate museum filled with memorabilia, home movies, early and late Elvis duds, cars, you name it. You're right about the house--it doesn't seem that big, more like a glorified suburban split level. That's one of the things I found fascinating: the comparatively modest scale and sense of wealth, outfitted with touches of hallucinogenic decor. In other words, whatever tackiness is on display is all thanks to Elvis himself, and not to the parasites.

In total agreement with you about Sun Records and the Lorraine Motel. The Civil Rights Museum is great, too.

Posted by LeroyBrown at February 6, 2009 7:40 AM

comment #6

Tom Brazelton says ...

I went to Memphis in 2004 and loved it. Yeah, Beale St. and Graceland are tourist traps, but that's part of the fun. I kind of forgot about how economically depressed the area around Graceland is. But now that you mention it, the depression is palpable.

Did you go inside The Lorraine Motel or did you just stand outside and take pictures? For someone my age who didn't live during the Civil Rights era, the context it provides is overwhelming. Interestingly enough, I noticed there were not a lot of white people taking the tour and it kind of made me feel like I was trespassing on hallowed ground.

The way the tour concludes is devistating. You stand in the hallway outside of Dr. King's room. You see it arranged in the way it was on the day he died. There is a large, plate glass window facing the street and across the way you see people milling about in the building from which James Earl Ray took his shot and it makes you feel like you're in his sights. Then you go across the street and look around inside the boarding house before looking back at the people who are now inside the motel. It makes you feel like the assassin himself and it is shameful, devistatingly silent commentary. A real kick in the head emotionally. Not a lot of muesums can do that.

Posted by Tom Brazelton at February 6, 2009 8:15 AM

comment #7

Chris Willman says ...

You gotta go IN these places! The Graceland tour is very good, but the Civil Rights Museum is a must. No one should go to Memphis without doing that. Also, the Stax Records tour is fantastic. The real studio was unfortunately torn down in some misguided urban redevelopment, but they saw the error of their ways and recreated it almost exactly in rebuilding it as a museum. Well worth a couple of hours of your time. Also, grab a meal at the Arcade Cafe, about a half-mile down the main drag from Beale Street. Elvis used to eat there and many films have done shooting there, including "Mystery Train" and "Elizabethtown." Nice neon, too.

Posted by Chris Willman at February 6, 2009 8:27 AM

comment #8

Jeffrey Wells says ...

Anyplace Elvis ate, I won't touch it. What does the Arcade serve, banana and peanut butter sandwiches? I'll get Stax Records the next time.

Posted by Jeffrey Wells at February 6, 2009 9:45 AM

comment #9

arturobandini2 says ...

Old Furry sings the blues, redux.

I visited Graceland (zzzzzzzzz) a few years before Elvis died. I've always wondered if they added his "death throne" to the tour, complete with recreated skid marks.

Didn't Jeff Buckley drown in Memphis? Surely there's a tourist stop for that, too.

Posted by arturobandini2 at February 6, 2009 10:02 AM

comment #10

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Posted by robbiefantastic at February 6, 2009 10:14 AM

comment #11

Kristopher Tapley says ...

Beale St. is indeed one of the worst eyesores to ever grace the south.

Posted by Kristopher Tapley at February 6, 2009 11:45 AM

comment #12

shanana says ...

Sun Studios was truly amazing in its time:

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Sam Perkins
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They all recorded their best shit there, and what's amazing is how well it stands up, the production is perfect, timeless. Proof that sometimes less is more.

Posted by shanana at February 6, 2009 11:52 AM

comment #13

bfm says ...

Didn't Johnny Cash record there also? Or did he do his Sun Records recordings elsewhere?

Posted by bfm at February 6, 2009 1:06 PM

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shanana says ...

oooh, I can't believe I forgot Ike Turner. I don't know what the hell with sam perkins. I'm not really interested in johnny Cash.

Posted by shanana at February 6, 2009 5:15 PM

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