Memphis' skyline as seen from the Mississippi River is a contrast of lush trees and skyscrapers.SPECIAL

Memphis grace

Streets where Elvis started singing, where shots were fired at Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. carry memories that America holds deep within its heart

Web posted August 10, 1997

 If you go
 Elvis' legacy could have been different
 Elvis bombed first time out in Vegas

By Howard Shapiro
The Philadelphia Inquirer

MEMPHIS -- I saw Elvis the other night. He wasn't trying to look like Elvis. He wasn't even trying to ``be'' Elvis. But he was, he was Elvis. He moved smoothly on the narrow dance floor of a club on Beale Street. It was past midnight, and he was dancing on his toes and jolting his hips as the band, the King Beez, glided from the blues into a burning boogie-woogie.

Actually, I saw plenty of Elvises at that place, B.B. King's. (Yes, the blues master shows up several times a year at his club.) I saw about 50 of them on the dance floor. Somebody else might have come along four decades back to start the buzz that turned rock 'n' roll into an international musical style - and, of course, a dancing genre. But it was Elvis who did, and on this night his legacies were smothering the dance floor.

Elvis' profile floats on light poles all over the high-traffic areas here. ``Twenty years,'' the yellow banners say. ``Still rockin'.'' The scads of banners, Elvis wafting in sultry Memphis summer air, are a sweet sight, a mid-size city celebrating itself for a worldwide achievement. They are unnecessary reminders. In this town of constant rhythms and blues - it officially bills itself ``Home of the Blues, Birthplace of Rock 'n' Roll,'' and not a lot of people take exception to the claim - Elvis has done at least as much in 20 years of death as he did in 42 years alive. His Graceland estate swarms with visitors who come from all over the world to get a peek behind the legend. The record studio where he first recorded, dormant for years, rocks again with musicians and tourists. Elvis Aron Presley is a part of the psyche of Memphis in the same way that Benjamin Franklin is indelible on Philadelphia's collective mind. The big difference is that Elvis probably makes Memphis a lot more money.

Each year's ``Tribute Week'' - the days surrounding Aug. 16, the date in 1977 when Elvis was found dead in a bathroom at Graceland - gets busier; this year's 20th anniversary of that day is an amalgam of events through August. But you don't need a 20th anniversary or a special concert or college symposium to be swept into the soul of Memphis. I've just spent three days and three nights in Memphis, and four times during my stay the feeling of being near to a climactic moment in history sent chills through me.

Memphis moves

It's impossible not to move on Beale Street. If you are not moving to the music, if you stay real still, you are simply dead. That's it. I fear they will come and take you away in an instant because everything on Beale Street is done in an instant. Beer? It comes before you in an instant. Side of porky ribs? The No. 1 local food appears from out of any number of roiling Beale Street ovens, in an instant. Rock or jazz or boogie-woogie? Just a few doors down, in an instant. Blues? Faster than an instant! Everywhere.

People always have lived for the moment on the four-block stretch of downtown Memphis that is Beale Street, a slope of concrete that curves dramatically to the right at one point, in a shock of neon and colors and food smells and constant nighttime movement and sound, sound like a big-speaker CD that plays five discs, all at once. Almost 100 years ago, it was perhaps the only place a black person could go downtown on a weekend night for some socializing. Decades before gambling would become the legalized national pastime in America, it was the illegal pastime of Beale Street, and when other cultures began to show up in town a bit later, Beale Street drew them in, with its food and drink and sex and dice - and music.

W.C. Handy was the man who first wrote down, in a Beale Street bar, the tunes that had evolved from the ballads that slaves had sung on hot afternoons in the fields before Reconstruction. Memphis Blues, the first of them to be published, put an official stamp on a new American art form. By the time the young Elvis was visiting Beale Street in the 1950s, soaking in the blues and the boogie-woogie along with the gospel he knew from Sunday mornings, the street had attracted mostly the black community again.

Beale Street is nothing if not egalitarian. At the funky Center for Southern Folklore - exhibits by day, blues by night - the piano player in an eight-member pick-up band was a black man named Mr. Mose, 80 years old, cantankerous, and turning a blues set into boogie-woogie so frantic, it looked as though he would break the keys. At the other end of the scale, the trumpet player was in his low 20s, and white. They were playing to an audience of all ages, black, white and Asian, in a room also full of young Israeli singers and dancers on tour.

Elvis' Graceland

Graceland is a 10-minute drive from downtown Memphis, on Elvis Presley Boulevard, which used to be called South Bellevue but was renamed while he was alive. He bought the mansion, refurbished it and moved in when he was 22, already wildly wealthy and one of the most recognized people in the world - a testament to the still surprising power of television, the new impact of a baby boom that would change the way America was thinking about itself, the universal force of music, the first tiny steps toward a sexual revolution, being in the right place at the right time and his own enormous talent.

That's the Elvis people flock to Graceland to be near, the Elvis who seemed barely out of puberty and whose rebellion did not extend past his performances, who always said ``yes, ma'am'' and ``no, sir,'' and employed perfect Southern grace, and was adorable. Or they come to see the Elvis of the early '70s, the one in the outrageously cool suits and overblown sideburns, who could pick at a guitar all alone on a Las Vegas stage, melting his audience with Unchained Melody and some devotional songs among the others.

The mansion itself is a thoroughly American idea, a poor kid's version of what the other half likes, and made over as much for his mom as anyone. His former wife, Priscilla, later ripped out most of the junky stuff Elvis had put in toward the end of his life, then opened Graceland to the public 15 years ago this summer. But the spirit remains (and so does some of the weird decoration, particularly in the jungle room, with its carpeted ceiling and chairs so big that a window was removed to get one of them in place).

There's also a little movie theater, with a 20-minute film that traces his career. Graceland's slogan is ``Where Your Memories Live Again,'' and the wealth of audiovisual material supplements the displays to add real images to the memories. By the end, you'll be Elvised-out. But you'll have gone back, really. And even if you're too young to have returned, you'll have had your first real visit.

I, for one, had had enough of Elvis and Hound Dog and Love Me Tender and That's All Right after a six-hour stay at Graceland. But driving back downtown along Union Avenue, I couldn't help myself when I passed Sun Studio on the way to my hotel. I parked and went inside. A shy Elvis walked in here with his dime-store guitar one hot Saturday in 1953 to record a song for his mom. Four bucks for two sides in 1953 (today it's $15 at a Sun Studio branch on Beale Street), and Sam Phillips, the owner, used the vanity recording sessions to scout out new talent for his record label. The rest is history. I wanted to see it. The tour is short and interesting, in the little room where Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Charlie Rich, B.B. King, Rufus Thomas, Howlin' Wolf and others sang and played for the world. And Elvis. When the woman leading the tour went to a corner of the room, picked up a '50s-mike on a stand, plunked it in front of me at mouth-level and said matter-of-factly: ``This is Elvis' mike, the mike he used to record everything he did in here,'' that's when the first chill went through me in Memphis.

Memphis' downtown is currently a disappointment. Many downtowns have gone sour; Memphis' downtown is a dump. A huge percentage of it is a ghost town with some sidewalks that are in disrepair, until you get to the center of Main Street, where government buildings, lovely fountains, some large hotels and lots of law- and service-oriented offices sit.

The city shows off both parts of town in a big way and without shame. Four years ago, Main Street - much of which had been closed to autos for some time - was completely torn up and trolley tracks were sunk, with the wiring strung atop beautiful metal green light standards that run through the middle of the 2.5-mile narrow street. New trolleys, made from scratch in different parts of the world, all built with the lovely old mule-drawn designs in mind, were shipped to Memphis. The Main Street Trolley, following the city's major old mule-drawn route, was reborn.

Run by the city's transit authority, it's a deal: a half-buck ride except during lunch hour, when it's a quarter. It draws residents, tourists, downtown workers. It's become an integral part of the city's life, and this summer it opens a new section of track that will loop it a street below, alongside the Mississippi River, doubling its length. People love these new/old trolleys, the talky conductors and the sound of the bells, and it's the trolley they seem to focus on as they ride along block after downtown block of empty glass Memphis storefronts.

In five years, the view from the trolley should be different. You can see the rehabilitation of beautiful old factory buildings near the Peabody Hotel, and there's more to come. The city's residential downtown population has risen in the past few years, from about 1,200 to more than 4,000. For now, the most compelling ride on the Main Street Trolley is at sunset, when tourists are eating and the trolleys are virtually empty and so is Main Street - where ``are'' the 610,300 people who live in this city?, you think - and the sun brings a gold hue to the yellowish bricks and turns the tracks to dark silver. If you stand up on the trolley and look straight down the street, it's one of the most old-fashioned and utterly lonely sights you'll see.

If you really want to take a trip down Lonely Street to Heartbreak Hotel, hop onto the Main Street Trolley and take it to the southern tip of its run. I did, then turned a corner and in 30 seconds was facing an image that is engraved into the photo album of 20th-century America. I was looking at the Lorraine Motel, at those rows of balconies that come out of the rooms, at the second-floor row where, in 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lay dying while his aides, helpless and horrified, bent around him. That was my second Memphis chill, and my third came about two hours later, after I had gone through the motel, now the National Civil Rights Museum.

The museum is masterfully laid out, and a bit of work if you take the time to read the voluminous narratives with the exhibits, which begin with a sterling, short film about civil rights. Displays examine the evolution of civil rights legislation from the country's founding. The displays beginning in the 1950s really come alive: ``Brown v. Board of Education.'' Rosa Parks at the front of the bus. Freedom rides on interstate buses. Southern lunch counter sit-ins. The newspaper pictures and TV footage, even if you saw them in the original era, are shocking.

At one point, visitors walk into a 1955 bus, with the original signs on it, then sit down. From a mannequin bus driver comes the order ``Move to the rear!'' - and if you sit still, the order becomes louder, more threatening, then totally intimidating. Two black men in their 60s entered the bus with me; they told me later they were native Southerners. When the mannequin driver began to holler, they had looked at each other and nodded their heads ``yes'' - two men for whom the commands had been real.

At the opposite end of Main Street, the trolley will drop you at the Pyramid, 32 stories of stainless steel, blinding in the Memphis sunshine. It's the city's sports arena and exhibition hall. The city government, through an agency called Wonders, has made a ton of money by bringing people from all over the South to major exhibits it puts together. Strange idea - not just the city's ``supporting'' arts institutions, but the city government's being a major arts institution.

Through September, Memphis has 250 objects pulled up from the Titanic and is displaying them exquisitely, with a fascinating audio tour narrated by actor Malcolm McDowell.

Oh, did I tell you I saw Elvis the other morning? She wasn't trying to look like Elvis. She wasn't even trying to be Elvis. But she was, she was Elvis. She was at the car rental return at Memphis International Airport, and as I pulled up in my rental car, she sang to herself in the most unabashed way. She delighted in being able to produce my receipt from a little portable gizmo she pulled from her pocket, a performance she'd probably given hundreds of times. I thought she was great, and as I took the bus to the terminal, I watched her begin to do it all over again. Someday, I think, she might run the place.

IF YOU GO:

STAYING THERE: You can stay around Graceland, but that won't give you a taste of Memphis. Stay downtown, which puts you close to the sites and a short ride from the museums and the zoo. The Memphis Visitors Information Center can provide a list of hostelries; call (901) 543-5333.

ELVIS EVENTS: Events through August include parties and concerts. A booklet listing them all, Elvis Week, 1997, is available from Graceland, 3734 Elvis Presley Blvd., Memphis, Tenn. 38166, or by calling (800) 238-2000.

EXTRA TIME?: Visit Mud Island, in the Mississippi River, reached by monorail from downtown. It has a museum, a five-block-long flowing replica of the river, World War II's Memphis Belle bomber, and a large pool. (800) 507-6507.

INSIDER INFO: You'll find some beautiful Southern mansions and graceful homes in two adjacent historical neighborhoods, Annesdale and Central Gardens, just southeast of downtown Memphis. Good for gaping. ... Iced tea is the city's unofficial drink, fresh-brewed even in the littlest bars. ... Don't leave without having eaten a specialty - fried dill pickles. The deep-green dills are batter-dipped, sliced in rounds or quartered, then deep-fried until piping hot inside. T.J. Mulligan's, at the north end of the Main Street Trolley, sets out a great dish of them.