Martin Luther King Jr., Memphis is
on a roll today, thanks to its rich
musical heritage, historical homes and
museums, and an ambitious down-
town redevelopment project, Peabody
Place, that promises eight square
blocks of shops, restaurants and enter-
tainment.
Located just a block from the Beale
Street blues clubs, it's spearheaded by
local real estate magnate Jack Belz,
who recently opened a small museum
showcasing Chinese art from his pri-
vate collection. A 24-screen movie
megaplex and IMAX theater is pro-

placed on the National Register of
Historic Places in 1991. And the tour,
21 years after his death on Aug. 16,
1977, doesn't disappoint.
Audio headsets offer visitors a
poignant, music-laced look at the life
and times of Elvis, who would have
been 64 next Jan. 8. The tour show-
cases everything from the trio of TV
sets on which he watched three foot-
ball games simultaneously, just as he'd
seen President Johnson monitoring
the news, to the former racquetball
court-turned "Hall of Gold" that dra-
matically displays his enormous collec-
tion of gold records and
awards.
,
The "Jungle Room,'
adorned with artificial
plants, monkey statues and
a waterfall, is a conversation
piece. Carpeted on floor
and ceiling with 60s-style,
olive green shag, it's pure
Presley — decorated by
Elvis himself straight from a
store window display that
reminded him of Hawaii.
The arms on the over-sized
furniture are wood-carved
crocodiles.
When Stephen Wachtel, center, isn't boogeying on
Included in Graceland's
Beale Street with the Daddy Mack Blues Band,
the saxophone player heads the reproductive genet- myriad displays of price-
less kitsch and elaborate
ics area at the University of Tennessee-Memphis.
costumes is a key to the
jecred to debut next year, along with a
city and plaque welcoming Elvis to
downtown stadium for the city's new
Pontiac Stadium on New Year's Eve,
AAA baseball ream, the Memphis
1975. And, in the last display case, a
Redbirds. Casinos in nearby Tunica,
Chai pendant suggests, as the tour
Mississippi, and Tom Cruise's wild
notes, that "he was a student of
ride on the monorail to Mud Island in
many different religions."
the 1993 film, The Firm, also raised
Outside, in the Meditation
the city's profile.
Garden, a steady flow of often-
weeping fans streams past Elvis'
ELVIS LIVES
grave, while others send flowers —
real, plastic and silk — on a regular
Memphis styles itself not only as
basis from all over the world. After
the "Hon, of the Blues" — W. C.
paying their respects, many visitors
Handy penned America's first original
musical form on Beale in 1909 — but
dash across Elvis Presley Boulevard to
pen their memories on a stone wall
also as the "Birthplace of Rock n'
already scrawled with such tributes as
Roll," where Elvis Presley, at the ten-
"Once a King, Always the King" and
der age of 19, cut his first record,
"Elvis Forever."
"That's All Right, Mama," in 1954.
Across town on Union Avenue, Sam
Graceland, The King's fascinating,
Phillips' historic Sun Studio is a must-
white-columned mansion, is a verita-
see, with its modest interior virtually
ble Memphis shrine that annually
unchanged from the day 45 years ago
attracts about 700,000 visitors, from
when Elvis first strode through the
faithful fans to the merely curious.
door. Standing on the original beige
Calling itself America's most famous
tile floor, beneath the aging acoustic
home after the White House, it was

ceiling, even the most jaded visitors get
chills up their spine when they touch
the same microphone Elvis touched
and listen to his vintage recordings.
The classics of such other Sun artists as
Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee
Lewis, Roy Orbison, B.B. King,
Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf also
can be heard.
"We're standing on some very
special, precious ground here — the
birthplace of rock n' roll," declares
Karyl Kong, a local deejay and enthu-
siastic tour guide, describing the one-
room, hole-in-the wall studio's 1987
transformation from a scuba gear shop
back into a working, nighttime
recording studio that does double duty
as a major daytime tourist attraction.

In a snappy, 30-minute history, she
tells how Johnny Cash wove a dollar
bill through the strings of his guitar to
produce the train sounds in "I Walk
the Line".
After the tour, nostalgia buffs shop
for music or pull up a chair at the Sun
Studio Cafe and order a greasy cheese-
burger or Elvis' favorite treat, a grilled
peanut butter and banana sandwich
on white bread.

CIVIL WARS, CIVIL RIGHTS
For history of another sort, two
Memphis sites shouldn't be missed:
the Hunt-Phelan Home, one of the
nation's best-preserved antebellum
mansions, where Union Gen. Ulysses
S. Grant planned the Civil War's

By the end of a Graceland tour, you'll be able to wow the folks back home with
such Elvis trivia as:

• His twin brother, Jessie Garon Presley, was stillborn and his tiny graves lies
in the Graceland family plot near their mother, Gladys.
• During his formative years, a rabbi lived upstairs from the Presley household.
• Elvis once ate meat loaf every night for six months.
• Of 14 Graceland horses, his was a handsome Palomino named Rising Sun
• Elvis and his "Memphis Mafia"
circle of cronies staged fireworks
battles in the yard on New Year's
Eve, and he sometimes shot at
TVs for target practice. All
together, there are 14 TVs in the
mansion.
• After his historic Ed Sullivan
appearance, Time magazine
wrote on May 14, 1956: "...his
hips swing sensuously from side
to side and his entire body takes
on a frantic quiver, as if he had
swallowed a jackhammer."
The gravesite of lvis Aaron Presley is • Elvis once gave President Nixon a
located at the musician's former home, gun as an impromptu gift; Nixon, in
"Gracelanc4" in Memphis, Tennessee.
turn, gave Elvis cufflinks and a rare,
spontaneous hug.
• For her second birthday, Elvis bestowed a little mink coat and diamond ring
on daughter Lisa Marie.
• Elvis, who made 31 films as an actor, once said The only thing worse
than watching a bad movie is being in one and fittingly, "I think most
people have a natural instinct to rebel."
• Two girls once tried to mail themselves to him in a box.
• In 1975, a new singing star, Bruce Springstein, jumped over the Graceland
fence and ran up to the house to try to see Elvis one night. Elvis wasn't
home and guards politely escorted Springstein off the property.

— Susan R. Pollack

11/20
1998

Detroit Jewish News

G25