A Southern Music & Ribs Road Trip! (Part I)
Getting from Atlanta to Memphis is a breeze from Atlanta. Head west on I-20, and then in Birmingham get on I-22 towards Memphis. As of 2019, the interstates in Birmingham were a hot mess. They had detours that took you off the interstate and onto surface roads for a few miles, but just plan on things slowing down through there, and hopefully that all gets cleared up in the next few years. For any of you who have never heard of I-22, don't be alarmed, it just opened in 2012. It follows the path of the old US-78. When you get to Memphis, we recommend staying at the Airbnb apartment we rented in the heart of downtown, called Tux Place. Downtown Memphis is undergoing a revitalization similar to other cities in the South. Old industrial warehouses and shops are being turned into new studio apartments. The apartment we stayed in was a five minute walk to Beale Street, and a two minute walk to the Lorraine Motel (the site of Martin Luther King Jr's assassination).
Our first stop on our barbecue tour was Miss Myra's in Birmingham. The ribs and pork were delicious, and the setting was perfect for a small Southern barbecue restaurant, but the banana pudding is what they are known for and it was worth it. This small restaurant is easy to miss, but you will be happy you stopped by. From there we headed to Tupelo, Mississippi. This small Southern town is really charming. They have a fun downtown with plenty of restaurants and shops. Elvis Presley's Birthplace is a few miles from downtown Tupelo, and they have built quite a little museum to him. The home Elvis was born in was no more than 400 square feet, had no electricity, no running water, and only two rooms (one of which was the kitchen). After taking the 45 seconds needed to walk through the home, you can go visit the church he attended as a boy, which they have moved next to the home. They also have an Elvis themed chapel next to that, and an interesting museum about his family life as a boy. You will learn about how his father was sent to prison while Elvis was a boy, how he grew very attached to his mother, and how he grew up listening to blues, country, and gospel music as a boy that he would turn into his own style. The rest of the grounds has some walking trails you can wander around, including a life-sized statue of him as a boy, and a larger than life one of him performing as a man. When you are done go into downtown and find something to eat, if you aren't still full from banana pudding, and then hit the road for Memphis.
Our first full day in Memphis we headed over to Sun Studio, where legends like Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Little Milton, and many others were discovered by Sam Phillips. This tour was amazing! They truly have it down to an art. In their lobby they have a full service coffee shop, full of merchandise for you to buy of course, but the neatest parts were the original pressings of 45rpm singles for sale by many of the legends that recorded there. They even had original Elvis records for sale from the mid-1950's, if you had a few thousand dollars you were willing to let go. Upstairs they have a well-orchestrated tour with memorabilia from all these great artists. They even have the DJ station that played the first Elvis album on local radio. Being a blues lover, I was blown away to see some of the guitars and amps from some of the greatest names in music on display. Once you are done upstairs, they take you down into the studio where you can stand next to the same microphone Elvis sang into over sixty years ago. Some of the ladies in the crowd, including my wife, had to fight the urge to lick it. This is the studio where the legendary Million Dollar Quartet recorded together, unknowingly, in 1956. Another, more modern, bit of music history is this is the same room where U2 recorded their album Rattle & Hum. Apparently the studio had been abandoned for years after Sam Phillips moved to a larger studio he built. U2 wanted to record in this legendary studio, so they were allowed in to record hits like Angel of Harlem, Desire, and When Love Comes to Town. The drum set in the studio is the one they used for the recording. I can't tell you enough how cool this tour was, and we will do it again every time we visit. When we got done we headed over to Central BBQ for some ribs. When we first got to Memphis we were told there are two types of rib lovers. You either like them with wet barbecue sauce on them, or with a dry rub. At Central BBQ I had the wet ribs, and I mean this when I say it, it was mind-blowing! I hate to say this because all of the restaurants we went to were great, but this was my favorite. You have to wait in line, even on a twenty degree day, but once you sit down with your ribs and eat them you will want to go stand in line ten more times.
The next day we headed out to Graceland, the now famous residence of Elvis. If you have never been to Graceland, it's an almost Disney World like experience. They don't actually let you ride up to the house. You park across the street, and they shuttle you over to the home. Don't worry, you can't miss the parking lot, it will have a giant commercial jet, the Lisa Marie, sitting in front of it that was the flying fortress of the King. They have several different tour options. You can do the basic tour which gets you an iPad tour while you walk around the home, or you can get a guided tour by one of the tour guides. I know the guided tours are more expensive, but now that we have done it I would never recommend it any other way. The VIP guided tour got us into rooms that are not available to everyone else, and the passion the guide showed for Elvis and his music was impressive. We even got to hold Elvis' favorite microphone, and hold some of his jewelry. While I love the man's music, his 1970's sense of home decor is a bit shocking. I had heard about the Jungle Room, but it is one of the more tame rooms in the house. There is a billiards room in the basement that was supposed to look like one of the rooms in Versailles that is a color overload. After touring the grounds, which included his unintended gun range, racquetball court, and chapel, you can visit his last resting place between his parents and his grandmother. When you are done don't run off, walk through the enormous museum they have created across the street. There must be several hundred thousand square feet of memorabilia on display including his famous jumpsuits, an entire wing dedicated to his military years, and other memorabilia like a notebook that Elvis used to draw football plays in with his own personal football team he paid for so he could play his favorite sport. For those of you who are fans of the famous '68 Comeback Special, one of the wings of the museum is dedicated to that performance and includes his leather suit and the giant ELVIS sign he stood in front of while he sang "If I Can Dream." When you are done, and if you are not worn out, go over to the house again. You are allowed to go over as many times as you like during the day. If you really want to avoid the crowds, go in the winter. It was twenty degrees the day we went, and the place looked abandoned. The second time through we were literally the only guests in the house. It was like having Graceland for our own for just a few minutes. During the summer months, the line to get on the shuttle over to the home can be more than an hour, but while we were visiting there was no wait anywhere. It allowed us to get through a lot more than on a crowded day. When you are done, go eat at their barbecue restaurant on site, Vernon's Smokehouse. While it won't knock any of the truly great restaurants off your list, it was very good, and they had a sampler plate with five different types of meat that was delicious. You also get to eat while Aloha from Hawaii plays on every TV in the room, which makes any meal better.
We did so much more in Memphis, including taking a walking tour along the Mississippi River, visiting the ridiculously large Bass Pro Shop at the Pyramid, and visiting other museums in town. We also dined at a third Memphis tradition, Corky's. The ribs there too were unbelievable, and I would argue were my second favorite on the trip, but it was the banana pudding they brought you free of charge with your meal that will blow your mind. It alone was worth a second trip to Memphis. There are several other music themed museums there like the Memphis Rock 'n' Soul Museum, the Stax Museum of Soul Music, and Blues Hall of Fame, but those will have to be another post for another time. When you are there, drive over to Arkansas to a town called Marion. While there is nothing more than a monument there today, Marion was the location for one of the most forgotten tragedies in American history. In April, 1865, more than 1,100 Civil War soldiers died while being transported home just weeks after the war ended when their ship, the Sultana exploded. This is the largest maritime disaster in U.S. history, and sadly is unknown by many. The amount of history, music, and barbecue we took in during our five days there boggles the mind, and it makes me want to go back again very soon. On the next post we will cover the return trip, and talk about our visit to the Shiloh National Battlefield, and the legendary FAME and Muscle Shoals Recording studios.
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