Song of the King (from The King And I)

Today was a tale of two kings.

We began the day with a trip to Graceland, home of Elvis Presley… the King of Rock ‘n Roll. The Graceland visit starts with an audio tour of the mansion and continues with self-guided tours of Elvis’ Automobile Museum and his custom jets, along with exhibits of Elvis’ many stage costumes and an exhibit focusing on his time in the Army. The tour of course includes numerous audio and video recordings of Elvis performances, and also many photographs. Although we are not huge Elvis fans, the visit was interesting and we both enjoyed it.

From the King of Rock ‘n Roll to Martin Luther King… Our next stop was the National Civil Rights Museum, located on the site of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, where Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in April 1968. The museum chronicles key activities of the American civil rights movement through a wide variety of exhibits.  The museum also includes a separate location across the street from the hotel, in the boarding house where James Earl Ray allegedly fired the shot that killed Dr. King. A special exhibit focuses on the investigation into King’s murder and discusses the various conspiracy theories and the doubts raised over whether Ray was the actual assassin and, if so, whether or not he worked alone.

After finishing our tour of the civil rights museum, we headed back downtown and walked over to the Peabody Hotel to see the famous “marching ducks“. Each morning at 11:00am, five ducks head down the elevator and march along a red carpet over to the fountain in the center of the Peabody Hotel lobby. They spend the day in the fountain and then, at 5:00pm, the “duckmaster” leads the five ducks back from the fountain to the elevator, where they head back up to their “duck palace” on the hotel roof.  Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Well, we had to see it to believe it, so along with a hundred or so other people, we crowded into the lobby and waited for the spectacle to begin. They make quite a show out of it… obviously a great marketing gimmick for the hotel, as it brings several hundred extra people into the hotel each day, with many of them buying drinks at the bar or spending money in one (or more) of the hotel’s various gift shops.

After the ducks completed their march, Caren and I moved on to Peabody Place, a nearby downtown shopping area that we had read about. We were surprised (and disappointed) to find that many of the stores (as well as the indoor mini-golf course and the 22-screen Muvico theater) in the mall had gone out of business and were closed up. From what we’ve seen over the past two days, it looks like downtown Memphis is in pretty poor economic shape right now.  With the exception of the main strip of Beale Street, where the restaurants, bars and gift stores seem to be thriving (or at least attracting crowds of people), the other streets we’ve walked through are almost deserted, with many businesses closed and gated.

Coming up tomorrow… a bus tour of Memphis, which includes a visit to Sun Studios… a tour of the Gibson guitar factory… and a visit to the Memphis Rock ‘n Soul Museum.

Stay tuned,

Stu