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Image of Sun Studio
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Image of Beale Street in Memphis
A trip to Memphis is always a pilgrimage—for Elvis or civil rights or blues and barbecue.
By Elaine X. Grant
The United States has no Mecca, but it does have Graceland. Every year, Elvis faithful flock to his former residence; among famous homes, only the White House gets more visitors.
Graceland is more likely to evoke images of the later, fatter Elvis than the early, trim King, and that’s fine: Graceland’s pilgrims aren’t looking for elegance. They want to see the embodiment of Elvis’ over-the-top life, and, in that way, Graceland delivers.
A common post-Graceland side trip is Sun Studios, where Elvis’ musical career began with, legend has it, a birthday song for his mother. Sun was also the starting place for such musical greats as Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis.
If you’re still in the mood for music history, you’ve got a couple choices for getting your memorabilia fix. Try the Memphis Rock 'N' Soul Museum and the Stax Museum of American Soul Music.
Next to music, there’s no question that Memphis’ biggest tourist draw is ... ducks. Though the Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau doesn’t see fit to tout its avian attraction in its press materials, visitors speak fondly of the duck parade at the historic Peabody Hotel. Each morning, the birds take an escorted elevator ride from their posh rooftop residence to the lobby. They march down a red carpet, quacking contentedly, to the lobby fountain, where they spend hours swimming and preening. Every evening there’s another duck parade as the pooped plodders waddle back to the elevator to return home for bedtime.
A more somber hotel visit awaits those interested in the site where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. He was standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel when he was killed, and the hotel is now the National Civil Rights Museum—the first museum dedicated to documenting the American struggle for civil rights.
African-American history is also rich on Beale Street, which is home to restaurants, shops, nightclubs and events celebrating the blues tradition in modern incarnations of the honky-tonks and pawnshops that used to line the street.
Fans of the Missouri Botanical Garden will want to compare horticultural notes at the Memphis Botanic Garden, which features 96 acres (21 more than MoBot) holding 22 formal gardens.
And then, of course, there’s the barbecue. Not just any barbecue but, specifically, pork barbecue, what Memphis is famous for. The town boasts more than 100 barbecue restaurants, and experts recommend Corky's, Jim Neely's Interstate Barbecue and the Rendezvous. Just don’t tell them you’re from St. Louis.
