Memphis: Where Elvis Lived, MLK Died, and the Blues Never Left
Memphis is where American music was invented - twice. In the early 1950s, Sam Phillips' Sun Records recorded Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash, creating rock and roll from blues and country. In the 1960s, Stax Records produced Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, and Booker T. & the M.G.'s, creating soul music in a studio on McLemore Avenue. The city that made the music also witnessed the tragedy: Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in 1968, shot while standing on the balcony. Memphis is joy and grief intertwined - the birthplace of the music that made America move and the site where America's prophet of nonviolence was murdered.
Sun and Stax
Sun Records, founded by Sam Phillips in 1950, recorded the singles that changed popular music. Elvis Presley walked in as a shy teenager paying to record a song for his mother; he walked out a year later as the biggest star in America. Phillips' genius was hearing blues influence in white performers and white influence in Black performers - creating something that crossed boundaries. Stax Records, across town, did the opposite: mostly Black artists creating soul music with an integrated house band. The two labels, operating simultaneously, produced music that shaped American culture for decades. The studios survive as museums; the legacy survives in everything that followed.
The Assassination
Martin Luther King Jr. came to Memphis in March 1968 to support striking sanitation workers whose campaign had adopted the slogan 'I Am a Man.' On April 4, he stepped onto the balcony of Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel, and James Earl Ray shot him from a rooming house across the street. King was pronounced dead at St. Joseph's Hospital an hour later. The murder sparked riots nationwide; the civil rights movement lost its most eloquent voice. The Lorraine Motel is now the National Civil Rights Museum, Room 306 preserved exactly as it was. The site commemorates King's work while marking where that work ended.
Beale Street
Beale Street was the main street of Black Memphis in the early 20th century - the clubs where W.C. Handy codified the blues, where B.B. King honed his guitar, where music that emerged from Delta cotton fields found urban expression. The street declined with segregation's end, as Black Memphians gained access to the wider city; by the 1970s, Beale was nearly abandoned. Redevelopment in the 1980s created the entertainment district that exists today: clubs, restaurants, and neon signs selling blues to tourists. The authenticity is complicated - the real Beale Street was organic, this one is curated - but the music remains real, even if the context has changed.
The Barbecue
Memphis barbecue is pork, slow-smoked, served dry-rubbed or wet with sauce. The iconic items are ribs - dry ribs with spice crust, wet ribs with tangy tomato-based sauce - and pulled pork sandwiches, often topped with coleslaw. The debates are serious: Central BBQ versus The Bar-B-Q Shop versus Rendezvous (which serves dry ribs in a basement downtown). The World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest draws 250 teams annually; the judging is rigorous. Memphis barbecue is not Kansas City sweetness or Texas beef - it's pork, smoke, and pride, served with white bread and an argument about who does it best.
Visiting Memphis
Memphis is served by Memphis International Airport. Graceland, Elvis's home, is the second-most-visited house in America after the White House; tours reveal shag carpeting and genuine weirdness. The National Civil Rights Museum occupies the Lorraine Motel, its exhibits powerful and necessary. Sun Studio offers tours of the room where rock and roll was recorded. Beale Street provides live music nightly, much of it excellent, some of it tourist-oriented. The barbecue requires choosing a side - the competition is genuine. Stax Museum on McLemore Avenue celebrates soul music's golden age. The experience confronts visitors with American musical genius and American tragedy, often in the same afternoon.
From the Air
Located at 35.15°N, 90.05°W on the Mississippi River at the Tennessee-Arkansas-Mississippi junction. From altitude, Memphis appears as urban development wrapped around a bend in the river - Mud Island visible as a peninsula in the Mississippi, the downtown skyline rising from the bluffs. The Pyramid arena, now a Bass Pro Shops megastore, is distinctive on the riverfront. What appears from altitude as a mid-sized Southern river city is where rock and roll was invented at Sun Records, where soul music was created at Stax, and where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed while supporting sanitation workers - music and memory intertwined in a city that made America's soundtrack and witnessed its tragedy.