Walking in Memphis

From Elvis’ favourite deep-fried peanut butter and banana snacks to the equally famous Stax: Graham McKenzie finds the Deep South’s still got soul.

Every so often you have a trip that’s so out of the ordinary and unique, you feel particularly grateful to be involved with the travel industry. Several years ago I wrote a piece entitled ‘Lucky bugger’, after an especially rewarding day on the Coromandel peninsula in New Zealand. Well, this is the sequel ‘Lucky bugger rides again!’

The Deep South of the USA has long held a fascination for me but wasn’t an area I had witnessed at first hand. Just like everybody else I love the music that originates from here, had heard of Graceland, studied an element of the civil rights struggles at school, and watched documentaries on the civil war, but had never visited. Last month I was given the opportunity to do so and I am so glad I did.

My first day in the South started at the Arcade Diner where Elvis used to sneak in the back door, go to his booth and consume deep fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Having tasted one, I can see the attraction. The interesting thing is that there is very little mention of this fact in the eatery and today it is a fine example of a local diner with groups of locals just doing what I suspect they do every day and that’s meet, eat, then put the world to rights.

Post breakfast came a visit to a National Civil Rights Museum where the first thing that strikes you is that it is actually at the Lorraine Motel where civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in April 1968. The room where he was resting, before emerging onto the gallery to be shot, has been preserved as it was that fateful afternoon. The museum lay-out allows you to look through glass directly into it. This fantastic museum charts all the significant events of the American Civil Rights Movement from 1619 to the present. It is, as recent events have shown, a struggle that persists today but the key focus here in Memphis was the ground breaking and truly courageous efforts of the black community in the 1960s. During this period the South suffered from huge discrimination with whites only cafes, buses and schools. The museum chronicles the sit-ins, boycotts and bus activities that helped change society. Across the street the assassination of Dr King is detailed chronologically with just a hint that perhaps the man jailed for the killing, James Earl Ray, arrested at London Heathrow Airport in June 1968, was not acting alone.

Lunch was taken at Central BBQ a local Memphis favourite where the meats are marinated in secret herbs and spices for 24 hrs before being roasted very, very slowly. The result is melt-in-your-mouth food that has that unique and distinctive southern flavour.

The afternoon was for me the extra special bit, as I was given a personal tour of the Stax record museum. Stax, and indeed Memphis itself, was (is) the centre of soul music in the 1960s, with recording artists such as Isaac Hayes, Otis Redding, Judy Clay and William Bell, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas and whole host of others emerging from a local recording studio that was based in one of the poorer parts of Memphis, known as Soulsville. The new Stax, sadly now only a museum, has however carried on involving the community with a music academy next door. It really is tourism in action, as the museum has acted like a growth pole in what is otherwise a rundown neighbourhood with new restaurants, beauty parlours and music related services. I loved it.