Here Comes The Sun

After our morning at Graceland, hearing some gospel, and wandering around inside the musical-notes gate, Jen and I were starving. Highway 51, or Elvis Presley Boulevard, at least out that way, is not really set up for hanging out – at least not beyond Graceland. We hadn’t seen any diners or anything on our way in, although maybe if we had driven further down the road we would have found something. It was only 9:30 in the morning and we had already been up for almost 4 hours, and we needed food. We ended up pulling into the tourist center, right at the entrance to the highway exit, and asking the guy inside where we could get some breakfast in that area. He was so great. At first he was telling us about a little pancake house just down the road aways, but then he said, “Actually, I could send you to the Arcade. It’s a Memphis landmark. The oldest restaurant in Memphis. Lots of movies have been filmed there.” We said Yes, we wanted to go there, so he outlined for us where it was on the map, which was so helpful. We had about 5 maps in the car and we would switch from one to the other as needed. He also drew for us how to get from the Arcade to Sun, which was our destination following breakfast.

We drove back into Memphis, found The Arcade, and – to us New Yorkers this was the most amazing part of Memphis – found a parking spot on the street right opposite the joint. This was always the case, the entire time we were there. Easy and free street parking? Where the hell are we again?

The Arcade was packed, it had great atmosphere, awesome Southern accents, and we sat in a booth and chowed down. It was a grey morning, so the streets outside looked beautifully bleak and empty, with the streetcars shuttling by. Such an environment. It was relaxed and steeped in history, you could tell. After that, we still had about an hour before we had to head out to Sun to meet up with Lisa, so we took a long walk down Main Street. We had a blast. We were obsessed with everything we saw. It all seemed new and interesting and fresh. A bike store. A baby clothes store. The signage. The murals. We detoured down to check out Beale Street, which was already hopping. There was some tour going on, a huge crowd of people outside one of the bars. It was only 10:30, 11, but the neons were already ablaze and the air was full of music. An area that never sleeps. You can totally see why Elvis would be obsessed with that street as a high school student. Of course he would be. Life never stops there. It does not sleep. It is itself, at any hour of the day. Authentic.

At the head of Beale Street is a big Elvis statue. It looked really iconic in the grey morning, frozen in time.

We headed back to my car, and then started off for Sun. I was almost more excited for this tour than anything else we ended up doing in Memphis. Yes, I couldn’t wait to see Graceland, and the jumpsuits and the gold records and the planes, but Sun? The thought exhilarated me. Where it all really happened. Where it started. Elvis coming in in the summer of 1953, hungry, brave, ambitious, shy, a whirl of mixed influences and desire. I couldn’t wait to see the spot with my own eyes. We found it with no trouble. Again, I still have very little concept of Memphis, so it felt out of the way to me. It’s on a nothing block, with a big diagonal cross-street, a windy open intersection. There’s a gas station on the island, I think, or maybe just an empty lot. There are a couple of store fronts down the block, but nothing major. Nothing is really around it. It is isolated. It is tiny. Just as small as I pictured it.

It looks exactly like the pictures of it from the 50s, except for the giant guitar and the “Sam Phillips Avenue” sign.

There is the studio itself, to the left, called Memphis Recording Service (neon in the windows, just like in the 50s), and then to the right was a little diner, where Sam and the others would congregate to inhale breakfast and coffee before running next door. That diner is now the lobby of the tour. There were people congregating outside, and you could hear the chatter of conversation inside. Jen and I stood there on the sidewalk, waiting for Lisa. It was 12:30 exactly and we had already texted each other back and forth as we approached. Lisa! I have “known” Lisa since around 2004, through our blogs, and this would be our first time meeting in person. It was nervewracking but also a blast. Lisa had joked on her Twitter feed that she was trying to explain to people “who didn’t understand the Internet” that I was not a serial killer waiting to murder her. We were actually, you know, friends. Suddenly, standing out in front of Sun, I heard someone call my name, looked up, and there was Lisa coming towards me. Yay! In the flesh!! We hugged and in a matter of seconds were totally comfortable with each other. We already know each other.

To those who pontificate anxiously that the Internet keeps us separate and isolated from one another: You literally do not know what you are talking about. This PSA has been brought to you by Sheil-babe.

I was so touched that she had driven all that way. She had had a bit of traffic on 40 (and Jen and I felt like we were old Route 40 pros by that point. After all we had spent nearly a day on the damn thing, taking us from Virginia to Arkansas.) It was like we were old dear friends who hadn’t seen each other in a long time, and I suppose, to some degree, that is true!

Then it was time for Sun! We walked into the entrance through what used to be the diner, and is now the lobby of the museum. It’s a great space, filled to the gills with memorabilia, black and white tiles on the floor and a couple of old-school booths with people waiting. If you didn’t know what it was, it would feel like a biker bar, or a tattoo parlor. It had that gritty rockabilly feel. The girls running the cash registers were hip cool biker girls, tattoos on their arms, friendly, dark lipstick, pale skin. There was a tour starting in 5 minutes so we bought tickets for it. Jen and I used our Memphis Passport thing that Keenan had given to us at the Stax Museum. We waited for the tour in the back area, which was crowded with old posters from that time of all the Sun musicians’ group tours. So much to look at. 45s on the wall. THE 45s. I had no idea what to expect. I knew we would be seeing the studio, but didn’t know much about the museum.

My friend Matt Blankman said to me that going to Sun was the best part of his trip to Memphis and that it made him “proud to be an American”. After my experience, I totally feel the same way. It is a place of inspiration, yes, but also aspiration. A place where un-promoted singers could make a play for the brass ring. That was why it was there. Sam Phillips was dedicated to getting these unrecorded artists heard. He LOVED his culture, in all of its mess and racist history: Part of his mission was to correct all that. To provide a venue where black artists could get their stuff down, where they could then be heard and celebrated, as they should be. And, according to the legend, he was looking for that crossover artist. He didn’t know what he was looking for. He describes talking with Scotty Moore, before Elvis came along, and they would sit at the diner next door, talking about the sound they were searching for, but in general, their vibe was, “What is it? What is it??” On July 5, 1954, they found it. Walking into that place where it all went down was a real thrill.

There were about 25 people on our tour. Our tour guide, Jason, was terrific. We did have a panicked moment early on when Lisa, who had just bought her ticket, lost it somewhere in her purse. The tour was starting up the stairs, and Lisa was like, “WHERE IS MY TICKET. OMG. IT WAS JUST HERE.” The girl at the counter back there was like, “Oh, it’s okay, go on in.” But Lisa and I both acted like we were in Stalinist Russia and were about to be deported to Siberia for not having the proper papers. Up the narrow staircase we went, following the others. Upstairs there is a small one-room museum. Glass cases lining one wall, with the history of Sun behind it.

On the opposite wall was another display case devoted entirely to Elvis. There was his little guitar in a hip guitar case with a cow-hide interior. And there was the jacket he wore on his very first television appearance, on the Dorsey Brothers stage show.

I LOVE seeing the actual clothes. Graceland was overwhelming with his actual clothes, clothes I know well, clothes I have seen a million times. I love seeing it. Again, there’s the tactile pleasure (although you can’t touch them) of seeing actual objects, jackets that draped over his shoulders, his collars, his pants, his shoes. It makes it even more real. His status is such that he begins to seem unreal, even to those like myself who have made it our business to get to know the guy, as much as we can. But to see objects – his guitar, and what that guitar meant to him, all the broken strings, all that stuff – was awesome.

Jason then took over. Like I said, he was terrific. He obviously is passionate about the subject, and was so enthusiastic about giving us the context of Sun. Context is so important. Every generation thinks they have invented everything. They don’t realize they have built upon what came before. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. You cannot be so in love with the past that you don’t try to grab for the brass ring yourself. The past is great, we build upon it. But with someone like Elvis, or Sam Phillips, it may seem quaint now – like it was a simpler time, or easier, or some such retrospective nonsense. But it was a revolution, what went on in that studio. And sure you can just accept that on the face of it, but it’s also important to realize WHY. To understand the fertile ground from which it sprung. To see it in the context of the surrounding world, not just of Memphis, but of that time in American history. The tour really encompassed all of that. It was excellent. There were many there who were obviously Elvis hard-cores, who were nodding and saying, “That’s right” to everything Jason said. There were some clearly bored children, who were nevertheless well-behaved. One little girl had a little toy in her pocket that made a duck squawk and she kept pressing the button, so suddenly in the middle of some moving story about Johnny Cash or something, we would hear QUACK QUACK QUACK. The poor mother was losing her mind, hissing under her breath, “Put that away.” I kept glancing over at Jen and Lisa when another round of Quacks would erupt, and we were all in tears of laughter.

Another great thing about the tour was that they played us a lot of music. Jason had a remote, and so he would tell us about such-and-such a group that Sam was promoting and recording, and then we could hear them. It was a great addition to the tour. You could actually hear the development and flourishing of this new sound through all of these disparate artists. Hearing the music is key. Otherwise it all becomes scholarly and remote, as opposed to history that still lives. There was the busted amplifier that made the famous distorted sound of Rocket 88, generally considered to be the first rock and roll song. People pay big money to get that sound of distortion. But those guys just had a busted amplifier, and, so the story goes, continued forward anyway, giving that single its distinctive raw sound.

Jason showed us the recording equipment Sam Phillips had at the Memphis Recording Service (not known as Sun yet), which was state-of-the-art at the time.

We learned the history of Sun, its earliest days, and the recording service Sam set up, to pay the bills, basically. To fund his underlying dream, which was to record these black artists who had never been heard by a wider audience before. Some great stories, and great music played. Howlin’ Wolf, the Prisonaires (who were all convicts, and taken to the studio in shackles in order to record), and Carl Perkins, whom Sam really thought would be the big breakout star. Of course he was, in many ways. But Elvis was coming, and he dominated so thoroughly that Sun will always be associated solely with him. However, there was so much else going on there, and that is very important, because it does explain many of Phillips’ decisions (including selling Elvis’ contract to RCA for $30,000). Jason: “To our eyes, that may seem like the worst deal ever made in music history – but that deal saved Sun Studio which was going bankrupt at the time.” Phillips didn’t want to just devote himself to promoting only one artist. He had a lot else going on. The tour was great in explaining Sam, and his mission in life.

In that room, these people came to life. I could feel them still there. You could feel the passion, the drive, the singleminded sense of purpose that took place in that building. A building where all was possible.

Then we got to Elvis.

Jason took us through the whole thing, well-known to fans, but new to a lot of people. Elvis graduated high school. That summer, he walked into the Memphis Recording Service, and talked to Marion Keisker in the front office, saying, “I don’t sing like nobody.” He made two songs that day, “My Happiness” and “That’s Where Your Heartaches Begin”. Jason played us a little of both of those sings, with Elvis’ young voice quavering earnestly through the speakers. It is hard to believe that that boy would record “That’s All Right” only a year later. Jason explained why Sam wasn’t initially interested in the boy. These were pop songs, and Sam didn’t want to record pop songs. He was up to something else. That was why he was so shocked, a year later, on July 5, 1954, when Elvis started “fooling around” playing an old Arthur Crudup song called “That’s All Right”. From what he knew of the boy, from what he heard, he was amazed that Elvis even knew that song. And so it all began. But initially, Sam didn’t care for what Elvis did. He stuck in Marion’s mind though. He stuck in her mind because he kept stopping by, yes, but also she felt there was something there. He might be good for ballads. So a year later, when Sam needed someone to come record a song, she thought of the young pimply lad who kept hanging around her office, too shy to speak to her, but still … not leaving.

Many of us (most of us) when confronted with a situation where 1. the stakes are high, and 2. we have no idea what the hell we are doing – we retreat to regroup, get ourselves together, maybe learn a bit more so we won’t make a total fool of ourselves. Elvis did not do that. He kept putting himself in the way of his own destiny. Before he was ready for it. Before he even knew what he wanted. There was no way he could have predicted what would end up happening for him in his career, although he probably dreamt something along those lines: being a big giant well-beloved entertainer. He couldnt have known how far he would pass his own dreams, however. At least not in those days in 1953, 1954, when he was pestering Marion Keisker by “stopping by to say Hi”, and then having nothing to say.

That is bold. It is the meaning of courage. Knowing what I do of him, he was probably twisted up like a pretzel in awkwardness, but despite that: he did not flee. He did not wait. He knew he needed to be there. That was where he needed to hang out. So he meandered about, driving Marion crazy with his aimlessness and his jiggling leg, overwhelming her with his politeness, and yet not being a pest. He just had to be in their crosshairs. He knew that.

Smart boy.

He did everything right. He knew the gig from the get-go. This was his chance. He wasn’t going to move to Nashville, or New York, or some such pipe dream trip. His future was right here in Memphis. And now was the time. No waiting. No percolating necessary. He was already ready. Just needed the right set-up.

Jason took us through all of this, and played those first two songs from July 5: That’s All Right and Blue Moon of Kentucky. The energy in those songs, the roughness, the space between the notes: these are live takes, no tweaking. You can hear that. It is what those three guys created in that singular moment in time.

Then it was time to go back down the stairs and into the actual studio.

The tour was not at all rushed. It was leisurely. Jason was available to us for questions, and he also gave us all the time we needed to look around at our own pace.

Entering the studio was a trip. My breath caught in my throat.

Here it is. Here it is.

Everything was authentic. The crappy tiled floor was the same floor that was there in the 50s. The makeshift soundproofing on the ceiling and walls was the same. It’s a raw space. There’s only one thing to do in such a space: work. It’s not a hangout place, it’s not plush, there is nothing else that is going to go on in that space but work. You can FEEL it. The walls are lined with pictures of all of the artists who recorded there, from the past to now. Lisa took a picture of Bono recording in Sun. There were a lot of such photos. But big pictures of Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash, and all the others. One giant picture of the Million Dollar Quartet. Along one wall was lined battered standup pianos. The control room, where Sam would sit, was in the back with a glass window. At the front of the room were instruments, a drum set, microphones, and lots of guitars which musicians still use when they come there to record.

After a time of milling around, inspecting everything and yeah, I was in tears, so what? what do you want to make of it? – the tour commenced again. Jason was so excited to show us the studio. His enthusiasm was infectious.

So much has happened there and – like Shakespeare overshadowing the other contemporary playwrights of his day, successful though they were – Elvis has a tendency to dominate. His influence was just too great. It is impossible to get him out of the way. But Sun was not an Elvis Promotional Vehicle. He was only one of their artists. And being in that studio, with all of those pictures, you really got the sense of the vibrancy of the place, how much was going on. We listened to a lot of music again, not just Elvis, and hearing those Sun recordings – played IN Sun – was a massive honor. To stand in the spot where those guys all stood, singing the song we were listening to at that moment … total trip.

I will say this too: I loved the people on our tour with us. They were all great people, focused, respectful, but also enthusiastic, bopping around to whatever music was played. No drips. No badly behaved teens, no eye-rolling or snickering. Jen, Lisa, and I became a wee bit obsessed with a group of six boys who were there. 18, 19 years old. Each one of them was a gorgeous little thing. Their outfits were carefully chosen (they were clearly dudes: clothes were important to them, not a shlub among them), tight Tshirts, and jeans, and windbreakers. And each of them had short hair with a little tiny flare-up at their foreheads. They looked vaguely rockabilly, and yet clearly more cleancut than that. I talked to some of them afterwards, but during the tour, I just found myself wondering, “Hm. These boys are adorable. Wonder what their story is.” They were agog, drinking in the whole thing, and murmuring to each other, pointing out something on the walls. Clearly fans. Big fans. Of the whole thing. We had seen so many 60 something people at Graceland that morning (we were the youngest people at the gospel concert by about 25 years), and Jen had said to me, “That is clearly his demographic – those who knew him coming up. It’ll be interesting to see what happens as time moves on and those people start dying out.” Jen and I were both taken with the group of young boys who were drinking in the atmosphere at Sun, and nodding at things that Jason said (they obviously already knew much of the history), and I whispered to Jen, “The future is looking bright. Boys like this will carry on the legacy.”

I talked to a couple of them afterwards. Just went up to them and said, “Who are you guys? I am in love with all of you.”

They were so sweet. They were all students at SAGU (Southwestern Assemblies of God University) in Texas, and had taken a road trip to come see Sun. One of them showed me his SAGU T-shirt and said, “Jerry Lee Lewis was thrown out for making the kind of music we love.” One chimed in, “We’re making music now that would have gotten us kicked out in 1956.” One of them said, “We’re a boy band.” They overwhelmed me with information. They were gregarious, friendly, funny, confident, and sweet. They obviously were having the time of their lives. They kept pulling each other aside to look at a picture, or to inspect the guitars. One said to me, “You can be a Christian and still love rock and roll.” I am glad he feels that way. That culture war is still being fought. That is obvious because he felt the need to say it to me. So boys like these are still brave pioneers. Stay strong, boys. I wanted to hug them all, with their Tshirts and little pompadours. They were so much a part of our tour. They seemed to all accept that they were awesome, and that everyone was aware of them. They were a GROUP, a cohesive group, and stars in their own minds. That might sound obnoxious but it was not at all. They were great, confident, young, and taking up space in their own energy and love. Old people can be contemptuous of the enthusiasm of young people. They want the youngsters to know they didn’t invent the wheel, we already were there, we were there when. But that attitude is a huge mistake. Because it is the “young people” who will carry on the legacy. As far as they are concerned, they ARE the first people to discover Elvis Presley. Good for them. Here’s hoping that young people still keep having such revelations. More on them later.

Jason played us many of the singles that came out of Sun at that time. He told us about the “million dollar quartet” and played us a snippet of the famous “Don’t Be Cruel” clip, where Elvis does an imitation of Jackie Wilson (something he would take on in his own singing of the song) – whom he had seen do the song in Vegas – and preferred Wilson’s version to his own. It was incredible to hear Elvis’ voice come out of those speakers (“I was under the table, boy!” “He sang the hell outta that song!”), right where that night took place. Eerie.

Jason did a whole section on “That’s All Right”, and how that whole night had gone down.

Seeing the “That’s All Right” record on the wall gives one a quiet awe-filled feeling. There it is.

Most excitingly, there are X’s on the tile floor showing where each member that night stood, Scotty, Bill and Elvis. I was right where Elvis stood. I don’t know, man, I realize I am a nerd, but it gave me goosebumps to see that X. The Christian rockabilly boy band all pointed and whispered at each other. “There it is. Wow. Oh my God. I have to stand there.” (etc.)

The tour ended with Jason taking out a big stand-up mike, with the big broadcaster microphone, the kind Elvis would roll around with and drag after him onstage, and said, “Because Sun is still a working studio, and because we do tours every day but at night this place is still filled with musicians making music, we want to encourage you to take this mike and … express yourself. I’ll just leave it over here. No pressure. But have at it!”

He placed the mike right beside the huge picture of Elvis singing into an identical mike. For a while, the crowd remained shy. Nobody wanted to make the first move.

But surprise surprise, the Christian boys from Texas were the first to take the plunge. They were so sweet and funny that we all took pictures of them around the mike. One of them said, “Watch. This is me hitting a high note” and he made a grimacing face. Everyone was laughing and snapping pictures of them, and I could tell – I could just tell – that the boys were living in the dream of their own minds. That was what so special about them. They would all lean into the mike for a pose, each one pretending to sing. They all had cameras, and had fobbed them off on the rest of us to take pictures, and for some reason their energy was so positive that everyone was eager to help them out. “Let me take a picture of you!” “Sure, I’ll take your camera!”

Aren’t they awesome?

I won’t forget Sun. But I also won’t forget those boys.

Jen and I both took turns at the mike. Here’s Jen, doing a duet with Elvis.

Then we all filed out into the front office. The tour was over. But it was the front office I was most interested in, because it’s more prosaic, more immediate. There was the front door to the street, where Elvis would “pop in”, peeking his head in the door shyly to say hi to Marion. The music is all well and good. But I can listen to the music any time I want. It launches me into daydreams. Those Sun recordings still crackle. You can feel that room. But the front office? It’s a specific place, an important place, and the best part about it is that it is so damn ordinary. I mean, you would rarely see such a front office today – maybe for a used car lot, or maybe a free clinic. It was bare bones. A desk, a little fan, a typewriter, some plants, and a window leading into the studio. No chairs for people to sit in (although there may have been chairs back in the day). A bare space. Green walls. With a soda machine, old-school, against one wall. Nothing under glass. You could have sat at the desk if you wanted to, touched the typewriter.

The best part about it was its ordinariness.

That is its strength.

You don’t need plush palatial surroundings to make great art. Marion Keisker sat here all day and RAN that damn place.

We talked to Jason for a while. Lisa and Jason got into a conversation about movies filmed in the Arkansas area. (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Lisa is a walking IMDB.) I asked Jason questions about his job. We talked a little bit about Wanda Jackson. The tour had a very casual feel to it. Nothing rushed. We had time. I went back into the studio to do one more sweep.

A place where something very important happened.

But all of those instruments were still there, waiting for the musicians to come in that night.

The place is still alive.

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19 Responses to Here Comes The Sun

  1. Matt Blankman says:

    YES! So nice to read about this stuff written by someone who really gets it. Thanks for the shout-out, too.

  2. sheila says:

    Matt – I thought about you while I was there. It was awe-inspiring. I love how unassuming it is. You don’t need much to make great music. Powerful potent spot!!

  3. Lisa says:

    I want to adopt Black Cardigan Boy. He was PRECIOUS.

    What a fun, fun day.

  4. sheila says:

    Precious is definitely the word for all of those boys. So sweet and open and funny!

  5. David says:

    ** spelling mistake **

    Really loving your Memphis posts — remind me to tell you about getting drunk at the Peabody.

    I think anyone with any sense of appreciation for music becomes enveloped by all there is in Memphis — anyone – don’t tell me these guys aren’t having the time of their lives:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa0WNP3Zwwo

  6. Nondisposable Johnny says:

    Wow. It’s great to see how far they’ve taken it….I gotta tell my Sun story:

    In 1988 I was visiting relatives in Memphis and happened to be doing what I do in every town I visit, which is scouting for used record shops. Anyway, I’m very absorbed in my street map, basically just marking and ticking off in my mind which street I need to turn down to get to the next destination and suddenly I realize I’m on “Union Avenue.” And I thought…

    I wonder if anything’s left at 706?

    So I start slowing down, looking for street numbers and literally I find I’m in the right block and a second later there it is….

    Now remember this is 1988. I had no idea if the building was active, abandoned, about to be torn down or what. So I parked and walked up to the door, turned the knob, felt a little nervous when it actually opened. Then I walked inside and found myself alone in Valhalla with a friendly, slightly nervous young guy who asked if he could help me.

    Turned out he was “the tour guide”–they had just re-opened it to the public about six months earlier. I was the day’s only visitor thus far (and nobody came in during the hour or so I stayed)

    And except for having the original recording stuff in place and a dozen or so black and white 8 by 10s on the wall, there was nothing except history and atmosphere and me discovering I knew more about the place than the kid giving the “tour.”

    So at one point after we’ve gotten to know each other I start pointing at the pictures on the wall: Hey that’s Howlin’ Wolf. There’s Junior Parker. Charlie Rich. Whoever. Kid nods along, very impressed. Ike Turner I say and he says “Yeah, I think you’re right.”

    And of course there are several pix of Elvis…and in one of them he’s standing beside this really cute girl who looks awfully familiar. I keep looking at it, wondering if maybe I’ve seen her in a family yearbook hanging out with my sister or my nieces…I mean, damn she looks familiar….And man is she cute….And its obviously a local picture because all the pictures are basically candids of some sort, most evidently taken in the studio itself.

    So finally I can’t take it any more and I say to the kid:

    “I have to admit there’s one person on this wall I can’t identify.”

    His eyes get pretty big–like he thinks I’m about to issue some sort of real challenge and there’s no possible way he’s going to be up to it.

    Then I point to the girl in the picture.

    “Uh,” he says. “That’s Natalie Wood.”

    It was pretty obvious he thought I was just trying to make him feel like he knew something I didn’t. No amount of blushing and stammering on my part could convince him I really hadn’t recognized her.

    Anyway, the main reason I’m really glad Sheila put up this wonderful piece is that I now feel like it’s finally safe for me to go back.

    Sheila, if I haven’t said it before I say it now: You’re making this world a better place for Elvis fans!

  7. sheila says:

    NJ – wow!! Yes, it is so well organized now – I liked it a lot, I felt the spirit of the old place there, but it was very well organized.

    Your story of the days before it was so is fascinating to me.

    It was certainly one of the highlights of my trip.

    I still have to write about Graceland!

    • Nondisposable Johnny says:

      Believe me, I’m happy to see that it’s thriving, because there was certainly no guarantee of long-standing interest in those days….But I’ll always treasure the experience of seeing it “back when” too. As you’ve noted on some of your travels, there’s nothing quite like the unexpected–it really felt like a stolen moment. (Also great to see that Memphis has embraced so much more than Graceland….The idea that Stax and Sun would both be the site of great museums was VERY far-fetched twenty years ago)

  8. Cullen says:

    I love all the touristy things in Memphis. I have not been disappointed by one, but the Sun experience is a completely different order of magnitude. It’s religious. Spiritual. Whenever people I know plan a trip here and ask me where to go, most are surprised when I tell them the thing they MUST see is Sun rather than Graceland.

  9. sheila says:

    If you have only a day in Memphis, you should definitely run right to Sun. We loved Stax, too.

  10. Dwight says:

    Sheila, I completely missed your trip to Memphis. I know this is after the fact but did you make it to “Graceland Too” in Holly Springs, Mississippi? Obviously not on the same level as the original destination but still a lot of fun.

  11. sheila says:

    Dwight – no, we did not make it there. Wanted to! Or to Tupelo. I also wished we could have gone to Dollywood on our way down, we drove right by it. Hopefully I’ll be back down that way soon for a longer period of time. We sure did pack in a lot!

  12. Dwight says:

    Yep, you did. Just wanted to mention it since it isn’t on the A-list of sites, but I’m sure you would enjoy it. I’m impressed with what you did get to!

  13. sheila says:

    I can’t believe we were only there for three full days. Maybe it’s because we drove down – which was basically a two day drive – so we really got a sense of TRAVEL, and time spent away from home. But Memphis proper was only three days. It was such a good time. I miss it.

  14. sheila says:

    I’d like to hang out in Mississippi, in general. It’s a state I’ve never been to.

  15. bethann says:

    Easy and free street parking? You are kidding right????????? Is this some sort of indulgence for you? I might ask….pay to park??? NEVAH!!!

  16. sheila says:

    You’d have a very rough time living in New York City then. Easy and free street parking is virtually unheard of.

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