Home of the blues & birthplace of rock 'n roll

Memphis Tennessee - Chuck Berry, Johnny Rivers
Help me, information, get in touch with my Marie
She's the only one who'd phone me here from Memphis Tennessee
Her home is on the south side, high up on a ridge
Just a half a mile from the Mississippi Bridge

Billed as 'Home of the blues & birthplace of rock n roll, Memphis seems to have a predominantly African American population and thus the roots of the wonderful music – smooth as silk; rich as velvet. There's not a cafe or juke joint around town where you can't hear the mellow strains of 'The Thrill is Gone', 'Pine Top Boogie' or 'Memphis Blues' and even 'Folsom Prison Blues' the Johnny Cash favourite.

Walking in Memphis - Marc Cohn
Walking in Memphis
Walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale
Walking in Memphis
But do I really feel the way I feel


On Beale Street, the air is filled with music and we found ourselves grooving to the sounds of the live bands that spilled out the doorways of every juke joint. Even in the park, a terrific eight piece band played to just a dozen or so folk - such mournful tunes with such sad lyrics. We had a meal at BB Kings sharing a humungous platter of fried green 'tomaters', an obscene mound of pulled pork topped with a sweet & smoky honey-bourbon bbq sauce, slaw, cornbread and baked beans. Highly calorific, no redeeming health benefits at all, Peta would be ashamed of us, but we closed off our evolved senses and just 'chowed down'. Food is cheap and entertainment is free – for $8 you can have a catfish po'boy or a bbq sandwich with all the fixn's and have live music. Memphis is a cool place.


Martin Luther King was assassinated forty-one years ago on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in downtown Memphis. I remember it so clearly and they've kept the site intact as if that moment were frozen in time. They built the National Civil Rights Museum around the Lorraine Motel.


An old lady, Jacqueline Smith, has camped out across the road under blue plastic tarps for the last twenty-one years sometimes being hoisted out of there but always to return.


“Jacqueline Smith was the last tenant of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. She has devoted most of her life to upholding the principles of Dr. Martin Luther King. Born and raised in Memphis, Jacqueline left home to pursue a career as an opera singer. As the years passed, Jacqueline's personal ambitions changed, her social awareness was heightened to the changing face of the world and on her own doorstep in particular, as to how Dr. King's message had become diluted. Jacqueline offered her services to the Lorraine Motel, helping to keep the dream alive by explaining the teachings of Dr. King and encouraging visitors to study the works of Dr.King.”

She's protesting the handling of the memorial by the Civil Rights Museum and the ongoing gentrification process in Memphis and the lack of support for the poor and homeless in Memphis.


Sun Record Studios, where Elvis, Johnny Cash and many others made their first records, commemorates that time with a museum and studio tour. Then there's the Museum of Rock n Soul and the Stax Museum of American Soul and on and on. The city is the most 'soulful' of all, I'd guess. Funny that just down the road in Nashville, it's all country - a far cry from Memphis' blues.


Graceland - Paul Simon
The Mississippi Delta was shining
Like a National guitar
I am following the river
Down the highway
Through the cradle of the civil war
I'm going to Graceland, Graceland
In Memphis Tennessee
I'm going to Graceland


Graceland on Elvis Presley Boulevard, south of downtown Memphis is in a disparate neighbourhood of 'haves' and 'have nots', from upscale homes to shabby little hovels within a few blocks. Garbage and filth are all around – along the streets and in the parks. The Graceland parking lot charges $10; that's a little rich for our blood. So we drove a couple of blocks further down the boulevard and there was a surfeit of free parking. It seemed as if we were the only ones incensed at the prices because we watched folks drive on in and pay the price. I think these are the same people that complain about not having enough money. Just ask Gerri – I could reorganize just about anyone's finances and allow them to have the lifestyle they dream about.....they just have to give up some of their spendthrift habits.


The Elvis Presley complex is comprised of an Auto Museum, an Aeroplane Museum, a restaurant, and tacky souvenir stores of course – a steady stream of gullible tourists moved from one to the other.. Shuttle buses moved visitors across the road to 'the mansion' if you can call it that. I guess it was in its day but now it's just a large house on acreage. The decor is the epitome of bad taste but then Elvis came from a poor and disadvantaged background lacking in the social graces. I'll let the photos speak for themselves as to the bilious interior design:





I blanched at the prices of admission and chose the cheapest which was just the visit to the 'house' and it was still $25 each. But I felt it was a 'must see'; Fernie would have been quite happy to skip it. Earphones in place, we meandered through the house and grounds listening to anecdotes of elvis' life and a stream of his hits – naturally.


I'd forgotten what a young man he was when he died – just 42 but he was a bloated and drugged up wastrel at the end. I saw him perform in Las Vegas in December, 1976, just 8 months before he died and he was a disgusting and dissipated mess, & abusive to his staff. I had once been one of his biggest fans. At fourteen, I embroidered his name across the seat of my 'pedal pushers' (now known as capris). I'd sit in class writing my name over and over – 'Gerry Presley' - with dreams of marrying him because I was sure if he met me, he'd want me.




I owned all his earliest records, 78's, 45's and 33's (you've gotta be a certain age to understand) and I watched him on the Ed Sullivan show each time he appeared feeling quite faint at the very sight of him. But the love affair was over when I witnessed him forgetting the lyrics to his old standards, obviously drunk or drugged and the abuse he hurled at his employees during his last show at the Las Vegas Hilton.


It was to be our last night in Memphis, so about 6pm, we drove in from our perch in Tunica which is about 30 minutes south, for dinner and blues. We were cruising around looking for parking when a bus with dark windows and an escort of about 6 motorcycle policeman came out from the street ahead of us and turned into our street. We pulled into the right hand lane as it went by wondering what famous or important person was in the bus and I said to Fernie 'why don't you turn right here' – bad choice as it turned out because it was a one way street and we entered it the wrong way. The bus had hidden the 'one way' sign from us. Not that I'm making excuses, because of course we were at fault. There was an old (1990) Volvo at the right hand curb about 200 feet ahead of us as we turned the corner. I immediately yelled 'Fernie, reverse out of here'. We were at a full stop, ready to reverse when the Volvo driver stepped on the gas to the floor and aimed for us....they rammed us head on purposely. I saw the driver looking directly at us. He saw the opportunity to get a new car out of it. I jumped out of the car to survey the damage; his car which was already in rough shape had lost head lights and the hood had sprung. Our car showed amazingly little damage except for the 'plastic' undercarriage which was shattered. But I was hopping mad but we had no witnesses and so what was the point of yelling at them. The passenger was feigning injury, groaning and moaning. A police cruiser stopped and told us to wait because he'd get a traffic cop to come by.


We waited and waited, collecting an array of onlookers interested in the two African American dudes and the old white couple. When all was done, we'd both lost our appetites and desire to listen to some cool music. Instead, we headed for home


The next day we reported the accident to our insurance company.....it's really hard to accept full blame when you know the other party collided with us purposely. We needed to get our car checked out and found an auto repair shop called Christian Brothers...their names weren't Christian but they have christian values. The shop was built right beside the Baptist church and the waiting room and office looked more like a doctor's office than a mechanic's shop. We needed to have an oil change so asked them to do that at the same time. They put the car on a hoist, checked the tow bar and all the electrical and brake connections, and discovered that the air conditioner condenser was broken but everything else mechanical looked ok. They only charged us for the oil change and said 'no charge' for the inspection. We were impressed with their service. They recommended that we take it over to a local body shop as they'd be more able to ascertain if our tow kit was operational. The body shop took us right in and the car was up on the hoist in minutes. They said that the internal tow bar had strenghtened our front end so much that there was not much damage and they figured that the car would tow correctly behind the motorhome. But the final test would be to hook it up and see if it tracked straight. And the cost? “no charge”. Wow! We were extremely relieved the following morning when we hooked up our car and it towed as straight as a die. We weren't too worried about the air conditioning because surely so early in the year it couldn't get hot enough to need it.

A lot of the automobiles down south are a sorry mess –bashed up bodies, oil-burning cars spewing blue smoke, bumpers askew or missing, windshields cracked, side windows missing covered with black plastic sealed with duct tape. And they drive these cars as if there's nobody else on the road at ridiculously high speeds seemingly with little control .



An unusual cemetery in Tunica. A geocache was hidden at the grave of Will Jackson. We felt a little invasive but I think the cache was hidden by a relative.

South of Memphis around Tunica, the area has been developed into a casino center. There are about eight large casinos along the Mississippi River. All of them welcome Rvers, a couple with RV Parks but the rest with 'dry camping' in their huge parking lots. We found it a great place to stay while visiting Memphis as it was only a half hour drive north to be right in the center of town. We stayed at a couple of them...Bally's and Resorts Tunica. We've had the hardest time finding supermarkets in the south. Mostly it's because we don't recognize the names.....no Safeways, Vons, Albertsons but we did find a 'Piggly Wiggly' in Tunica where the friendly cashier said “Y'all come back now, y'hear?”. Now how did they come up with that name for a grocery store?


The Hollywood Cafe was immortalized by Marc Cohn in his hit song 'Walkin in Memphis'.
'Catfish on the table
Muriel plays piano every Friday
At The Hollywood'


John Grisham the author of many legal thrillers regularly hung out there and even mentioned it in his best-seller 'A Time to Kill'. It was obviously a place we had to try. It's located in the country only a few miles from Casino Row. So we had 'catfish on the table' and it was grilled instead of fried and it was sublime. Of course it came with the fix'ns - fried green tomaters, hush puppies, slaw. Fernie treated me on his poker winnings not that there are much of them now because he can't play online in the USA and he thinks the casino limits are too high.



We took the Great River Road lined with plantations south from Tunica, following the Mississippi, passing pecan orchards with carpets of buttercups below then south of Vicksburg verged onto the Natchez Trace Parkway which follows an ancient Indian trail through beautiful virgin forest. I never imagined there could be so many shades of green as we saw in the spring deciduous forests with dogwoods here and there showing a burst of white blossoms. We stopped at a picnic area and the quiet was so complete except for the rustle of the leaves and the unusual bird calls....sort of like jungle sounds.



Vicksburg on the Mississippi was an important and strategic hold of the confederate army in the civil war.


Today, a row of casinos line the river, some of them riverboats. The extremely steep hills down to the river precluded our driving down in Maggie so we stayed at the Walmart instead. Humidity lay like a heavy blanket across the savannah making 78 degrees feel like a hundred. Our bodies were bathed in a patina of perspiration and our clothes were clammy and damp. We were well aware a major storm was coming on Friday night and battened down the hatches before we went to bed. We could hear that seemingly endless rolling of the thunder and saw the bright flashes of sheet lightning but it wasn't close yet. I guess it didn't come to much because Saturday morning dawned bright and clear and the humidity was gone. But we were shocked to hear that Natchez only 60 miles down the road had three tornadoes “turning houses into matchsticks” is what we heard on the news. My worst fear while travelling in the south is tornadoes, so I felt queasy thinking we only missed being in Natchez by one day.


Natchez is such a beautiful old town. C'est magnifique! There are more antebellum mansions than anywhere else in the USA.

Our walking tour zigged and zagged around town and we marvelled at the beauty of the refurbished homes, the lush greenery and the blaze of blossoms. There were a lot of “for sale” signs on the heritage homes. Maybe the sub-prime mortgage problem caused this glut.

It seems that tamales are one of the favoured local delicacies and Fat Mama's Tamale House supposedly have the best.

It sure looked that way by the steady parade of patrons. A dozen tamales for $8 – sounded like a good deal. With a glass of Southern Pecan beer, we dug in – what a disappointment.


I'd never had tamales before, and they were dry from the cornmeal and blah in the filling. Fernie agreed, so we sure didn't finish them. The beer was excellent though.


There are as many Baptist churches in the south as there are McDonalds or Sonic Burgers which proliferate down here. There are so many churches that they have a yellow diamond shaped highway sign that instead of announcing a traffic light or a curve, it advises “CHURCH” and you can see them every few hundred feet through the small villages. 'God at Work' a huge sign in front of one church. The church of choice is Baptist until you get into Louisiana where the French Acadians (Cajuns) reside and then the Catholic churches start to take the lead. While strolling around the Port Gibson saturday market and fair, a group of cherub-faced women greeted us familiarly from their booth “Where y'all from?”. They were mesmerized by our tales of life on the road and one of the angelic trio whipped a hot pink bracelet around my wrist while another thrust a silver crucifix into my palm. “These will keep you safe in your travels”. They were ambassadors from the Baptist church. “Now, if y'all are still in town tomorra, we'd be happy to welcome you to our service”. The following day in Natchez, a couple of Baptist ladies chased us along the riverwalk and gave us a couple of chilled bottles of spring water. I think if I lived in the south, I'd be persuaded to join the Baptist church just for their joie de vivre, in spite of my leaning towards the Buddhist philosophy. But I imagine it would be a prerequisite to believe in their teachings, so I wouldn't pass muster. They're lovely people and great ambassadors for Christianity. Oh, I took a close look later at the hot pink bracelet and it proclaimed in large bold letters “Jesus loves you!”.



The top of the spire on a Port Gibson cathedral.


This bunch of aging bikers from all corners of the country asked us to take photos of them.

Just outside the little town of Woodville, Mississippi, Rosemont Plantation built in 1810, is the family and boyhood home of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America 1861-1865.

The vast grounds are still intact but the house is not open for viewing every day as we found out when we drove down with Maggie and discovered there was no place large enough for us to turn around. We travelled further on down the road until we found a DOT yard with a large turnaround for their highway trucks and drove on in. It was Sunday morning and there was hardly any traffic on the road, so imagine our surprise when in the middle of the turnaround was an old car, motor shut off but the driver, an African American woman with an Aunt Jemima scarf on her head slumped behind the wheel. I got out to ask her to move over, when another beatup vehicle screamed to a stop right across the road in front of her car now totally blocking our exit. A good-looking black man ran out and over to the woman's car checking her rear tire.
“Hey Momma, what y'all doin' out here?” he said to the woman. She perked up at the sight of him.
“Flat tire?” I called out.
“I think she'll make it ok” he replied.
They both smiled and waved at me as they zoomed away in a shower of dust.


'Welcome to Louisiana' announced the sign and Maggie lurched as we hit a bump in the highway. The smooth roads of Mississippi had changed to the rough ones of Louisiana. Perhaps all the highway funds have gone to post-Katrina reclamation and the rest of the roads in the state have been neglected. The land was also swampier as we headed towards the coast. Grand Bayou, Petit Bayou, and all sorts of other bayous were now the norm. Beautiful white water birds flew up from the bayous as we swirled down the road, the swamp waters lapping at the edge of the road. Another rain storm and the roads would be impassable. A couple of fellas had fishing lines in the water from the road – what on earth would they catch? an alligator? The paths to the homes in this area were bridges across the swamp.
What we thought were sawmills because of the huge piles of sawdust turned out to be sugar refineries, the waste product just like piles of sawdust. I wonder what they do with it.


Baton Rouge, the Louisiana state capitol would surely be worth a visit but as we approached it with the miles and miles of oil refineries and other industry, we wondered if we should just pass it on by. But we pulled in at the Walmart across the river in Port Allen and spent the rest of the day touring and geocaching around town. It has an attractive city core with a lovely riverwalk and the capitol building is the tallest in the USA. It doesn't have the usual dome, instead a skinny tower something like the Empire State Building.

Next stop.......New Orleans!