When I was a kid, my sister had a crush on Elvis Presley, and I guess I did too. Not that I talked about it. Still, we grew up watching his movies, listening to his music. At some point, our parents took us to Graceland. I can still remember the mansion–the long couch in the living room, the entertainment room downstairs, the pool table, even the airplane with the bed where he slept. As we got older, both my sister and I turned our attention to other things, but it’s weird how those childhood fondnesses hang on. Now when I hear Elvis’s music, especially if I’m dancing to it, there’s part of me that comes alive and feels like a kid again.
As I mentioned yesterday, I’m in Memphis this week as part of a media tour. This morning, Graceland was our first stop. Y’all, it’s grown in the last thirty years–not Graceland itself, but Elvis Presley Enterprises. They’ve built a new hotel and expanded the museum to a building across the street. Well, it’s a complex, basically–two hundred thousand square feet of The King–records, awards, souvenirs, and jumpsuit after jumpsuit.
So. Many. Rhinestones.
After seeing the museum, we toured Graceland proper, and whereas it was “smaller” than I remembered as a child, it was almost exactly the same. (Some items have been moved across the street.) It was so surreal–I’d have a picture in my head, then I’d walk around a corner, and there it would be, the Jungle Room, the racquetball court. For me, it was all phenomenal. The digital tour (we were each given tablets with pictures and audio) was hosted by John Stamos, and I learned that Elvis bought Graceland as a twenty-two year-old. Can you imagine? His parents and other family members lived there with him, since he’d grown up poor and always promised them a better home, a better life.
Fun fact–John Stamos’s character, Uncle Jesse, on Full House, was named as a tribute to Elvis’s twin brother (Jesse), who died at birth.
During the tour, our guide said that Elvis had quite the temper. One day he got made at the news, so he pulled out a gun and shot the television. It’s now on display in the museum. (Think about having one of your worst moments immortalized for all the world to see.) Something else I found interesting was that Elvis was always surrounded by his best friends, often referred to as The Memphis Mafia. Our guide said if Elvis bought one car, he bought thirteen; if he bought one motorcycle, he bought thirteen–all for him and his friends.
After the tour we had lunch at Vernon’s, a barbecue restaurant named after Elvis’s dad (Vernon). We had some extra time after lunch, so I toured Elvis’s planes. The big one, The Lisa Marie, is the one with the bed. And whereas I remembered the bed and the gold sink in the bathroom, I’d forgotten about the meeting room, the television set, and the Gatorade bottle at the bar. I mean, surely I must have seen them before. It’s funny how your mind does that–hangs on to one memory and lets go of another.
When we left Graceland, we went immediately to Sun Records, the recording studio where Elvis got his start when he was still a teenager. Our guide there, Tiffany (she was over-the-top amazing), referred to the recording studio itself as “hollowed ground,” this little room filled with old guitars and an upright piano, home to Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash, to name a few. Y’all, I’m not ashamed to say that I teared up more than once today, both at Graceland and at Sun. By the world’s standards, Elvis came from nowhere, he was no one. But he had a nice face, a ton of talent, and maybe more determination. One day he was basically living in a run-down shack, the next, Graceland.
I can’t tell you how inspiring this is. Talk about turning your life around.
Here’s a video of Tiffany telling the story of how Elvis was “discovered” by Sam Phillips, the owner of Sun. (Elvis had been jamming at Sun for a while and finally hit upon a sound and song that Sam liked and approved of.) The next thing the world knew, Elvis was on the radio singing, “That’s Alright, Mama.” As Tiffany says, “The rest is history.”
Soul–that untouchable thing that always insists on rising.
When we left Sun, we went to Stax Museum. Stax was another Memphis recording company, the one that brought us such artists as Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Isaac Hayes, and Booker T. and the MG’s. There, because of the type of music they were producing, there was a big emphasis on “soul,” that quality in music born out of slavery and the blues, out of pain and hardship. Soul–that untouchable thing that always insists on rising. And what a beautiful thing, to take any kind of pain or negative life experience and turn it into something creative with depth and grit, something beautiful that brings joy to others. Here we are decades later, and millions, including me, are still smiling.
Our last “tour stop” today was Royal Studios, which I had never heard of and was completely off the beaten path. Y’all, it was in the hood. I guess it used to be a silent movie theater–the floor steadily slopes from the front to the back–but it just looked like an old beat-up building. At least on the outside. But on the inside–y’all, Royal Studios was home to Al Green. He recorded all his albums there. Over the years, Royal Studios has recorded and produced AC/DC (Back in Black album), Keith Richards, Ann Peebles, Melissa Ethridge, and–recently–Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars. That’s right, Royal Studios produced “Uptown Funk.” The studio was started by Willie Mitchell, and his son, Boo, gave us the tour today. He said, “It was four in the morning, and they were still writing the song. We’d run out of booze, so I broke open an old bottle, a special edition, that belonged to my father when he was alive. (Willie Mitchell was a famous singer and producer in his own right.) I said, ‘Sorry, Pops.’ I brought the bottle back to where we were recording, and Bruno said, ‘Boo Mitchell–fill my cup, put some liquor in it.’ An hour later, those words were in the song.”
Is that cool or what?
(That’s a picture of me and Boo at the top of the blog. Boo’s father, Willie, is pictured behind us.)
No one is immune from life’s challenges.
The last thing our group did today was eat dinner (and a lot of it) at The Gray Canary. The staff was kind enough to charge my phone while we were eating, so I didn’t take any pictures until dessert. But y’all, it was the perfect evening, a chance to sit down, unwind, let it all soak in (the food and the entire day). I’m still over-the-moon. Mostly I’ve been thinking about Elvis. The tour guide didn’t say it specifically, but I got the sense that he was lonely, the way he always surrounded himself with so many people. I guess no one is immune from life’s challenges and emotions. Elvis apparently did a lot of spiritual reading, trying to make sense of why he, a boy from Tupelo, Mississippi, would be given so much fame and fortune. And who knows why things happen as they do? But I think it’s beautiful and oh-so-inspiring whenever any soul, despite its challenges and perhaps because of them, grits through the creation process, rises, and lifts others up along the way.
Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)
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There is a force, a momentum that dances with all of us, sometimes lifting us up in the air, sometimes bringing us back down in a great mystery of starts and stops.
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