Tuesday 10th September

First stop today was Sun Studio, not far from where our AirBnB apartment is located in the Victorian Village district. We were there waiting for it to open at 10.00am and got the first tour of the day. The studio is set up just as it was in the 1950's when Sam Phillips first started recording local talent, influenced by gospel, blues and a new upbeat type of music they called rockabilly and rock'n'roll. The first big break for Sam came in the form of a young local lad who walked in off the street .. his name was Elvis Presley !

Other big names that got their start in this small recording studio were Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Charlie Rich, B B King and more recently U2, Def Leppard and Chris Isaak. After Sam Phillips sold and built a larger recording studio nearby, a number of different businesses used the premises. When it came back on the market, the studio was set up once again and is still used to record and distribute for artists. Hearing the history of how the studios came into being and grew and promoted artists was very interesting.

From Sun Studios we crossed over to Beale Street and followed it all the way to downtown. Beale Street only gets interesting from Fourth Street to Second Streets. As it was still early in the day, not much was happening, a few shops were open including Lanksky Brothers - Clothiers to the King ! - In other words they sold a lot of clothes to Elvis and a number of other artists.

Right next door to Lanksky's was the Memphis Music Hall of Fame, another museum displaying the heroes of Memphis music with interesting information and artefacts from artists.

Next stop was the Memphis Rock and Soul Museum, which is a sanctioned official Smithsonian museum, one of the few located outside of Washington DC. We spent 2.5 hours here examining many interesting exhibits portraying the story of Memphis music history via a self guided audio tour. Some of the stories were repeats of some we had already heard at Sun or the Hall of Fame,

A quick walk to the waterfront, but once again it was a little underwhelming, and under utilised. We could stand and view Arkansas on the other side.

Then back to Beale St for dinner .. asked Google for "best BBQ joint in Memphis" and it gave us "Blues City Cafe" - so there we went ! We had a half rack of ribs, catfish, spicy gumbo, garlic canjun shrimp and stuffed mushrooms in garlic sauce. Yum Yum yum and just as well we had a walk ahead of us to get back to our apartment .. we needed it !

As we experienced in different locations in New York and DC, Beale Street had become a pedestrian zone in the evening with guys sommersaulting to entertain the on lookers. Tania became part of 5 adults lined up for a very athletic guy to run and flip his body over us all, much to the crowd's delight. As we made our way back, music could be heard from within bars, eateries, courtyards and in open spaces along Beale. The street was starting to come alive with lights and music as the sun was starting to set.