Walking in Memphis

Took it easy this morning getting going. Spent a bunch of time in the swimming pool, because the boy loves to swim. He also likes to collect those smashed penny things. I of course almost never have change in my pockets now in this world of credit and debit cards so when I saw a penny lodged in the dirt near the camp site I dug it out, cleaned it up and brought it back over to the penny crusher outside of the Graceland gift shop. After the nice relaxing morning and the cheep souvenir :), we headed downtown to see what all the fuss about Beale Street was.

 First thing we had to do was stop in for a bowl of local gumbo because gumbo. The place was a night spot with a cool looking stage so we got a cool picture on the stage.









There were a bunch of gold records on the wall so when we spotted this one we had to snap a picture because we'd found the third king. Mr. BB King that is.

Jasper like Mr. Charles quite a bit so we got one of his favorites in there too.

Then we hit the street. We walked a bit, listened to the band that was playing in the WC Handy square and took a couple of pictures of the golden notes we liked. We got Elvis and the Blues Brothers, but there were plenty of others.

Then it was off to the Gibson Guitar Factory tour (no pictures are allowed there) which was kind of meh and we both agreed that we could have skipped that one. So we hit the Memphis Rock n Soul Museum which was really cool. 

 This museum gave a really broad detailed history of the music world associated with Memphis area. The Robert Johnson picture wasn't the first stuff, just the first picture we took. They started the history with sharecroppers listening to the Opry and playing on their front porches when their work was done.

 It was a self guided tour so we listened to all of the exhibits and snapped a couple of pictures. There is the piano Ike Turner learned to play on, a STAX exhibit with Isac Hayes and Booker T and the MG's and Sam the Sham's stage outfit. It was both Woolly and Bully. Jasper was especially impressed with the Sam and Dave music. He recognized it from the Blues Brothers movie (Soul Man) and the story about how 'Hold on, I'm comin' was conceived was interesting. Apparently one of them was using the rest room while they were trying to get some production done and the other was impatient so he shouted "Hold on, I'm coming" and the rest, as they say, is history.

Next, it was off to get some dinner. I asked at the Rock and Soul Museum and then also asked one of the horse carriage drivers where to get real BBQ and they both told me to go to the same place so we made the 6 block walk to Central BBQ and we were not disappointed at all. In fact it turned out to be the best food we had on the whole trip. Next time I'm in Memphis I will definitely stop in there again. Great BBQ and really friendly staff.

On the way back to the car we walked past WLOK Radio, which we had learned about at the Rock n Soul Museum. These Historic Site plaques are all over down there so we got a picture of that one. WLOK was a power house radio station in the area and was one of, if not THE first station with African American DJ's and Engineers and it became the first African American owned station in Memphis in 1977. It's still in operation, and you can check out their history page if you want to know more.