Day 41: Memphis
Day 2
This was to
be the day for us to go to Graceland. Being such, our tour guide Peter, who we
now anticipate will choose his dress to suit the theme of the day, was our
resident ‘Elvis’.
The
Gracelands part of the day didn’t start until around 11am. Prior to that, we
had what we have become quite used to when we roll into a particular city – a
guide by a local who obviously knows the city more intimately than our general
tour guide does. This time, for our
local tour of Memphis, it was a tour with a difference.
Onto our
coach came a young woman accompanied by a guy and by her various musical
paraphernalia – guitar, amplifier etc.
We sat, rather impatiently in my case, while she took a good ten minutes
or so to get herself organised. I started thinking ‘boy this had better be
worth the wait’. I was not disappointed.
The young
woman with a name something like Chakira entertained us as we drove around
Memphis. Usually the local guide will
give our coach driver instructions as to when and where to turn but this time
that was the role of the guy who got onto the bus with Chakira. This left her free to do nothing but talk and
sing to us – and to get us singing along too from time to time.
She was
fantastic! She has a great knowledge of
the history of Memphis, both musically and socially and as we went around she
had a song appropriate to each setting.
I guess it was an hour or so, but the time just flew by. I learned so much and of course was
scribbling down stuff as fast as she was telling it to us. She also had a great voice, a great
personality and a great stage presence.
Image quality pathetic but hey – what more can
you expect on a moving bus!
We went
past Elvis’ high school, Humes Middle, and
she told us about him as a school boy and the very first way he started on the
road to a singing career. (Written up in
detail in yesterday’s blog.)
We passed
what was once the home of Johnny Cash
and the
motel where Martin Luther King was gunned down on the balcony while preparing
to go to dinner.
The
wreath on the railings marks the spot where Martin Luther King was standing
We learned
that MLK had come to Memphis to support the garbage workers who were on strike
– the Sanitation Workers Strike of 1968.
A couple of months prior, two garbage collectors had been crushed to
death by a truck while on the job. After
twelve days of no response from the city council, their 1300 black colleagues
went on strike, demanding recognition of their union, better safety standards
and better wages. (The garbage workers were so poorly paid that
many of them had to rely on welfare benefits.) Over the next few weeks
community members including local ministers and college students joined them in
daily non-violent protest marches. Many
of them were arrested and of course the situation escalated: riots, looting, tear
gas – the works. By April the situation
had become dire and MLK went to Memphis to address the strikers and their
supporters. He was there, not to stir
them up, but to urge them to maintain their rage, but to keep it peaceful and
within the confines of the law. He told the crowd:
“We’ve got
to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more
tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We’ve got to see it through”
and
prophetically,
“Like anybody, I would like to live a long
life--longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now… I've seen
the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight
that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.”
The
following day while MLK was preparing to go to dinner, James Earl Ray
positioned himself in an upstairs window of a building across the road, aimed
at MLK when he left his room to walk onto the balcony and fired the fatal shot.
Four days
later, on April 8th, 42,000 people staged a silent march through Memphis ending
at the Town Hall and demanding that the sanitation workers’ demands be met. Having now become somewhat familiar with Memphis,
that it is not a huge city and Beale St is very much its cultural hub, I can clearly
picture this event in my mind.
It took
another eight days before the town council finally conceded to the workers’
demands.
Here are a
few more things that we saw on our singing tour through Memphis:
Steam boat ‘American Queen’ on the Mississippi
River at Memphis
Unusual double arch bridge over the Mississippi
at Memphis
9203
Yes I kid you not – Nashville has The Parthenon
and Memphis has a pyramid!
Actually,
the pyramid in Memphis kind of makes sense.
In fact that there is a city here called Memphis makes sense because the
city is in a triangular delta (in fact a delta is a triangle) and of
course, like the delta of the Nile, home to the original city of Memphis, the
Mississippi delta is a very fertile flood plain.
So having
said goodbye to Chakira, we then went to Gracelands. We were not at all pleased with the very long
wait that we had to get on a shuttle bus to be ferried literally across the
road from the information centre to the mansion. We think it is a deliberate
tactic to just drip-feed people into the house in order to not overcrowd it at
any particular part of the day. This
would make sense, because although Gracelands is called a mansion, it is really
quite small and not at all spacious.
Once over
there, we had to line up yet again to get into the house. Again it is the drip-feed principle: they
only let about ten people through the front door at a time. We were very grateful that this was quite a
cool day. How crowds that come in the
heat of August cope with the heat is quite unbelievable.
The house
was built in 1939 and was purchased by Elvis at the age of 23. He was already able to pay cash for it out of
royalties from his records! He lived at the time with his parents and his
grandmother. The family had been living
in a very humble home in Memphis but they came to need more privacy and so
moved a few miles out of Memphis to ‘Graceland’.
It was a
great pleasure for Elvis to be able to buy this home for his parents to live
in. In their first home in Tupelo, Mississippi where Elvis was born, they were
dirt poor and they moved in to Memphis so that both parents could find
work. Being a child of poor parents,
Elvis was constantly dressed in denims in his childhood. Once he had money, he vowed never to wear
denim again.
Humble beginnings: scale model of the house
in Tupelo, Mississippi in which Elvis was born.
He was the surprise second of twins.
His brother was stillborn. The
family moved from here when Elvis was 13 years old.
Gladys and Vernon Presley with young Elvis
We found
the house to be amazing! Much of it is just as it was when Elvis lived there. I
will let the photos tell the story. Only the lower level is open to the public,
with Elvis’ area of the house being kept private.
The entry featured leadlight that Elvis had
commissioned for the house.
The bedroom of Elvis’ parents, Gladys and
Vernon. Elvis adored his mother and had
a close working relationship with his father.
The dining room, with the table set with wedding gifts to Elvis and
Priscilla. Lisa Maree often dines here
with her family when visiting Memphis.
The basement, where Elvis had every square inch covered with fabric to
make a cosy, if rather claustrophobic, pool room.
9277 That
amazing ceiling!
9267
The TV room
9259 The
kitchen – just as it was the day he died
1970 photo with Priscilla and Lisa Maree. Elvis would have been 35 years old. Hard to reconcile that he went from this to
how he was when he died just seven years later.
A
room he called ‘the jungle’. Green
shagpile carpet on both floor and ceiling!
9321
Elvis had the house redecorated quite a few times. This is a rendered sketch of an Interior
Decorator’s proposal for his conference room.
Whether or not this room was ever built is unclear to me. Maybe it is upstairs in the area blocked off
from the public.
Furniture from his ‘red’ period
9295 The
office used by his father, Vernon, in administering Elvis’ fan male etc.
9329 The
split-level racquetball building that Elvis had built for himself and his friends to
hang out and exercise.
From the upper level of the racquetball building, they could watch a
game of racquetball in safety, through the glass wall. It was here that Elvis spent his last
morning, August 16th 1977, relaxing with friends. Not feeling very well, he went to lie down in
his upstairs bedroom within the main house and it was there that he suffered
his fatal heart attack.
9361 The
larger of Elvis’ three planes. Only two
are here at Gracelands but a third has recently been located in a derelict
condition.
9363
Gold leafed basin in the two bathrooms of the plane
The smaller plane was used for local flights
Inside the smaller of his two aeroplanes
The
quiet garden where Elvis is now buried, together with his parents and his
grandmother, Minnie Mae, who outlived Elvis by three years. There is a plaque here also to honour his
stillborn twin brother. Elvis had this
space built as a place in which to go for quiet meditation.
The religious epitaph in the garden, overlooking the graves is
absolutely appropriate for the very religious family and for a man who never
strayed too far from his Christian upbringing.
RIP Elvis Aaron Presley, January 8th 1935 - August 16th 1977
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