Memphis

Kim and the King
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The heat has triggered severe weather warnings, it's over 100 again today as we roll up highway 61.  We've been on this road for a couple of days now, everynow and then we turn off and come back so it can be Highway 61 Revisited. (Ask your dad)

Memphis at first sight is a blast.  At home our cities have statues of old geezers, invariably succesful because they didn't have to pay their slave workforce or where born at the right address, here it's Elvis and BB King......cool!

On Beale with Elvis and Pod
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We trundle through the poor outskirts and into down town where we've blagged a central hotel for peanuts (God bless you hotwire.com) After an hour in the pool we catch the trolley bus to Beale Street  OOOOHHHH Wow!!

What Bourbon street is to Jazz, Beale is to blues, only it's truer to itself.  In Bourbon street these days you're as likely to hear a Bon-Jovi cover as a Satchmo, on Beale it's blues, blues and more blues.  From BB Kings club way down the strip from Honky Tonk to bar the place is alive with great music and atmosphere.

Here lies the King
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Like Bourbon street the whole area is now pedestrianised, and the fun spills out into the street.  Bands are set up in alleyways, and in small squares as well as in the restaurants and bars.  the rough and ready stuff featuring old guys on street cornbers is just fantastic.  In a bar we watch a stunning black girl play great guitar and sing like an angel.

In another a Kid plays great guitar, keyboard and has a voice that seems to cross Van Morrison, Prince and Joe Cocker (the little shit) If you ever get tired of the homogenised crap they peddle to us on the X files etc and want some talent, he's here.

Auditions this way
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So far, as far as live music goes this place is it.  You know how good you have to be to play in BBKings houseband? Real real good I can tell you.  Back at our hotel we share a drink with the two black bar staff and two black guests....we don't understand a single word they say but it sounds fantastic, course they think we're Australian.

Our dear pals Pod and Elvis arrive in Memphis around 5PM they text us to say they'e here, we text 'em to say we're still an hour away then belkt to their room with champagne.  Can't tell you how great it is to see someone from home especially Elvis and Pod.  We demolish the Champers then we're off to town.

A small beer
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Sitting in venue after venue all we can do is laugh, not only have we managed to meet up but we're here, in Memphis with all this great music, tomorrow.......... we're goin' to Gracelands Gracelands, Memphis tennessee...

Gracelands is beautiful.  It's compact, human, every room, as if Elvis just got up and went out to make a cup of tea. The wonderful lounge area and the 70s kitchen are so homely, the place has none of the feeling of an "exhibit" The jungle room, the bar with 3 tVs (cos the president used to watch six)all have the sense of the man himself.

Where's the fire??
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Course there are gold records here and platinum, some annexes have been dedicated to momentoes etc (a tv from RCA for 50,000,000 sales!! wow generous as ever guys!!)

Finally Elvis' squash court has floor to ceiling gold and platinum discs and some stage wear on display, a TV runs Aloha from Hawai, a lady next to me stares at the screen and sings along to "I can't stop loving you," with tears rolling down her cheeks.

In the meditation garden are Elvis, his Mum and Dad. Just above is the pool area.  We've seen film of Elvis here, tanned 30 something, fit, playig with kids, teasing the wife, jumping into the water, but here he is laid at our feet, dead at 42.  It's an intensly moving place, beautifully arranged,  grown men and women sob openly at the sight of it.

Boogying beale
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Across the road there's a sublime to ridiculous theme.  We've all seen parking lots with wonderful cars.  Elvis has a converted 80 seat airliner, with solid gold seat belt buckles, gold plated basins and fittings etc and a small private jet. We also have the cars here, a huge collection of motor cycles and so on.

For me I only ever much liked Elvis' early stuff, the films leave me a little cold. Gracelands however, and the insight given to the man, not the hype has been an eye opener, when we go to Tupelo and his birth place we get to understand how it could all have happened what an impact it must havbe made on this young bloke to have achieved so much.

Radar Rowley
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Steve "Radar" Rowley is driving today.  Gracelands is five minutes out of Memphis but Radar needs a sat nav.  He's lost.  We travel the same bit of highway 15 times looking for the exit.  It's like the family in blazing saddles that has to drive round and round to make their own wagon circle to keep out the Indians.

We drive to Tupelo, an hour and a half away, with only a map to guide us we get there, to Sun studios and back to Memphis without incident.

Tupelo is tiny, there's nothing here except the two room "shotgun" shack where Elvis was born. It's still here, in the exact same spot, built by his dad with $130 of materials that he couldn't afford to repay (so he went to prison for forging a cheque) The basics of the place are the same, tiny, no electric or water, just a kitchen a bedroom....from this to a private airliner with solid gold seatbelt buckles, can you imagine?

You're knicked
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We go to Sun studios, just the thrill of a lifetime. There are exhibits here, Ike turners guitars, Elvis gear, Carl Perkins stuff, endless cases full of priceless rock 'n'roll heirlooms.  An amp, the speaker stuffed with newspaper, Ike turner is on the way to the studio with it strapped to the roof of the car, it falls off he "repairs" the damaged speaker by stuffing it with news paper.  At the session it distorts, making a rough harsh sound that cuts through the piano and bass, the song is Rocket 88, they play the track, and that's how rock was invented, right here.

Down to the studio floor, the chequered history of the building and business here have conspired to keep all as original.  The floor walls and ceiling are exactly as they where when Ike turner recorded Rocket 88.  When Elvis came in to record a song for his mum's birthday (a lie) and said "I don't sound like nobody" They even have the original vocal mike which they let you pose with (Please don't kiss, lick or try to remove it y'all)You can sit by the piano in the million dollar quartet photo, Jerry Lee, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Elvis at the piano.

Apparently, cut from the photo, is a stunning Vegas showgirl, Elvis's then squeeze is sitting on the piano, if you can, look at the picture again and see where Jerry lee is concentrating!

There are 3 marks on the floor that as close as sam phillips remembers are where Elvis (back to the control room window because he was embarrassed to have people watch him sing) Scotty and Bill Black stood when he stuck his head round the corner to tell them to quit for the night cos nothing was working.

Elvis started playing "That's Alright" by Arthur Crudup, but it was quicker, had a bluesy/country feel, the vocals a gospel inflection and the kid couldn't stand still while he sang.  "I don't know what that is, but back up and start again"

He took a pressing to the local station and they have the bloody tape here!!  The DJ says "We have a record by a newcomer, Elvus prestly" Whether he was bribed, or drugged he then plays it 17 times.  You, me and everyone we know probably owes their haircut, clothes and record collection to that moment.

Session tapes for "blue suede shoes" get an airing, "great balls of fire" explodes from the speakers as does a take of U2 and BB King.

We go to Soulsville, the Stax recording studios.  Yet another stunning place full of music history.  From Booker T and the MGs instruments to Isaac Hayes Gold Caddillac it's a fantastic place.  (Isaac hayes dies two days later keeping the Sporting Life Curse fully in place) They run tapes of sessions for dock of the bay, the musicians cracking up at their mistakes as they run takes to try and crack the song.

The film of the musicians explaining the real end of the company is very moving.  This great group of black and white players creating this amazing music all comes to an end the night Martin Luther King is killed just blocks away.  The spirit of brotherhood is gone in that instant and it's never the same.

We pass the spot later that day, Limos left as they were at the time, the balcony festooned with wreathes...beautiful.

Saying goodbye to Pod and Elvis is tough, but our livers will thank us. They're off to Florida and we're heading to Oklahoma.  Given "Radars" navigational skills we expect to see them in New York soon......or in Spain!