We’re back from our Memphis road trip and now that I’m sitting still in one place, I’m overwhelmed by everything I saw and felt along the way.
Over the course of ten days, we drove 2,600 plus miles, crossed 10 state lines, and looked back at the roots of American music (gospel, country, blues, soul, rock, rockabilly) in the south.
There were barbecue stops at Tony Gore’s Smoky Mountain BBQ & Grill (Sevierville), Jack’s Bar-B-Que (Nashville), and Blues City Cafe. David sampled plates of ribs while I ate all the sides (coleslaw, iceberg salads, french fries and cornbread).
We walked around Nashville and Memphis during 100 plus degree days that were hot enough to melt a plastic bottle in the car. We stood outside the Lorraine Hotel (now part of the National Civil Rights Museum) where Martin Luther King, Jr was shot on April 4, 1968. That place tore me apart.
It seems impossible to explain why in a sentence or two, but I’ll try. It tore me apart to stand below Room 306 where King spoke to the crowd minutes before the gun was fired and as I looked up at the balcony, I felt the sorrow and injustice over his untimely death and of the civil unrest that brought him to address the sanitation strike in Memphis that day.
I photographed everything I could and couldn’t see. Lines of history. Social and economic unrest. Songs that stitched people back together. A dozen rolls of black & white and color film, two videos, twenty instant photographs, plus a hundred some digital photos were shot. The film was dropped off last Saturday in Memphis to be processed so fingers crossed the film arrives soon.
The photographs I didn’t take are the ones that stay with me. The sixty year old woman hunched over a garbage can furiously unwrapping a hamburger from the local corner joint in the hot hot heat of Memphis. A group of guys sat on a curb outside an employment office smoking cigarettes and throwing empty shot bottles in the gutter. The woman with the gash on her right cheek covered in taffy pink blush who was kicked out of the fast food restaurant for spitting on the floor a number of times. After leaving the city, I hoped that I could tell the whole story, inside and out, or as much truth as I could gather as an outsider.
Inside the Ryman Auditorium (where Bill Monroe, Hank Williams, and Patsy Cline among others helped shape country and bluegrass music and where the Grand Ole Opry was held from 1943-1974), Sun Studio (aka “The Birthplace of Rock ‘N’ Roll), the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum (history of how music pioneers overcame socioeconomic obstacles), the Stax Museum of American Soul Music (tells the story of Stax Records and that of American soul music), and Elvis’ Graceland (for total Elvis immersion), we traced the history of the Southern Delta through the echo of cotton fields where African American slaves sang rhythmic “field hollers” and white sharecroppers sang melodic Celtic folk tunes all the way to the present.
Here’s a little video I shot at Sun Studio, the same place where Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis (called the Million Dollar Quartet) started out. Once when Bob Dylan visited the Studio, he kissed the “x” marked on the floor where Elvis recorded his first hit. I didn’t kiss the floor or the mike that Elvis used, although I secretly wanted to.
I’ll share more stories and photos as they come.
It’s good to be back, I missed y’all.
Thanks for sharing! A wonderful and interesting trip.
Cheers,
Rosa
Rosa, It was a much needed adventure, now we’re left to adjust to life off the road.
You are the 2nd person that I know within the past month that has visited Memphis and got so much out of it. I need to add this spot to my must-see travel list! Thanks for sharing.
Megan, I really loved Memphis and have also added it to my travel list of places to return. There is so much history to uncover there.
Over the years, I have done quite a bit of traveling, but never took a close look at Memphis. Thanks for sharing your thoghts and photos.
Ida, Thanks for your comment and for stopping by. It’s a sweet place, that Memphis.
Welcome home and thank you for sharing these photos Nikki. You have such a great eye…but I loved reading your words, as well.
Thanks for your sweet comment Winnie, it means a lot!
Memphis has long been on my list of places to go. looks like fun!
Karen, It’s the kind of a place you need to experience at least once…
Wow. What a trip. I have family in Tennessee and somehow I’ve never been to Memphis.
Welcome home.
Merry Jennifer, That it was! Hope you get to Memphis soon, so worth the effort.
I fell hard for Memphis this past April. An unexpected thrill. The town is like a jeweled cockroach-dazzling and indestructible, a study in contrast and woefully misunderstood and under appreciated. So glad you found its charms as well and are shouting about them loud.