Memphis

Day33

Today we travelled north through Jackson to the “Home of the Blues”- Memphis.  Our first stop was at the tourist information centre where they have a full size statue of Elvis and an ëgg”donated by Russia to recognize Memphis as the home of rock & roll.

We then drove past Beale St and the Gibson Guitar factory to the Lorraine Hotel where Martin Luthar King was assassinated on April 4^th 1968.  They have kept it as a type of museum and still have a wreath at the door of room 306 and the 2 cars that were in the car park ready to take him to dinner on that night.  It appears it is another conspiracy theory and that he was shot by a local policeman.

From there we went to Sun Studio where Sam Phillips started the Memphis recording service in 1950 to record the sounds of Beale Street Blues.  It started the careers of the people like Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis.  The studio still had all the original equipment and all the memorabilia from the success of people whose careers were launched here.  Ian stood where Elvis recorded his first song using the same microphone for a photo.

We booked into the hotel and returned to Beale Street for the atmosphere and dinner where we sang along with a really good blues singer.