DECEMBER 2017 VIRGIN AUSTRALIA 087Our time in the studio is followed by a visit to the Country
Music Hall of Fame and Museum with songwriter Richard
Leigh, the man behind several number-one hits, including
Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue for Crystal Gayle. He’s extremely
entertaining and is a suitably musical warm-up for the museum,
which exhibits about 10 per cent of its two-million-item
collection across three floors. On display during our visit are
Dolly Parton’s stage costumes, Webb Pierce’s customised
Pontiac Bonneville (complete with pearl-handled revolvers for
door handles) and an exhibition showcasing Johnny Cash
and Bob Dylan’s 1969 Nashville collaboration.
The birthplace of rock’n’roll can be found 340 kilometres
south-west of here, in Memphis, Tennessee. It was at the
city’s Sun Studio that Elvis made his first recording in 1953.
A year later, he was invited back to audition for record
producer Sam Phillips, and, after That’s All Right debuted on
the radio, music was never the same again.
There have been volumes written about Elvis, so spending
time with one of his oldest friends — and someone who truly
knew him — is a treat. When 12-year-old Elvis met fellow
student George Klein at Humes High School, neither of them
could have imagined that, seven decades later, 600,000 people
would visit Elvis’s home each year, and that an 82-year-old
Klein (or GK, as Elvis called him) would give private tours of
Graceland and its grounds. Clad in a velour Adidas tracksuit
and shell-toe sneakers, Klein talks warmly and frankly about
his friendship with Elvis and life at Graceland, remarking that
the downstairs den — complete with three televisions, a built-
in bar and a mirrored ceiling — saw its fair share of parties. Our
time with Klein concludes with dinner in the car museum
on the property; we are free to wander among Elvis’s
prized vehicles before dining on Southern favourites.
There is, however, more to Memphis than just music. This is
the city where Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968 as
he stood outside room 306 at the Lorraine Motel. The building is
now the National Civil Rights Museum, tracing the earliest days
of the US slave trade and the unrest of the 1950s and ’60s through
to the present day. It’s educational and intensely moving.
Around the corner from the museum is Central BBQ, one
of the city’s best barbecue joints. Expect slow-cooked meats,
smoked wings, sweet barbecue sauce, coleslaw and more
— this is comfort food at its finest. Each Southern state has
its own particular barbecue style, and
competition between them is fierce.
THE FRENCH CONNECTION
One of the tour highlights is an overnight
stay at Monmouth Historic Inn and
Gardens in Natchez, Mississippi, a city
founded by the French in 1716. The inn
ofers 30 elegantly decorated guestrooms
across the main antebellum-era home
and seven outbuildings. Roosevelt — the
bartender here for the past 28 years —
mixes mint juleps before our evening
meal, which is served by candlelight
in the dining room.CLOCKWISE
FROM TOP
Roosevelt, at
Monmouth Historic
Inn; Graceland;
the National Civil
Rights Museum;
a traditional ice-
cream parlour.
OPPOSITE PAGE,
CLOCKWISE
FROM TOP Busking
in Nashville; RCA
Studio B; Robert’s
We s te r n Wo r l d ; th e
Country Music Hall
of Fame. OPENER,
FROM LEFT Sun
Studio; Nashville.