 More 2024 Adventures |
Memphis, TN → Little Rock, AR 367.0 mi (590.6 km) |
 Next Day |
Let’s roll, everyone!
I was up and at ’em in the Holiday Inn at Memphis after a quick dip south yesterday to see the brand new Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument! My goal today is to get to Little Rock, Arkansas, but the flight to Memphis via Allegiant was super cheap! It’ll be a little extra driving, but that’s alright. There’s plenty to see here in the Birthplace of Rock ‘n’ Roll!
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For example, Memphis is home to a little place called Graceland! Over half a million visitors each year flock to this house that was built for urologist, Dr. Thomas Moore, and named for his daughter, Grace! Before you go wondering why this urologist would be so popular, the Moore family vacated Graceland in 1957, when it was purchased by none other than Elvis Presley!Lucky for me, this musical monument was just a short stroll from my hotel!
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As you can see, Graceland gets a lot of love from its visitors! The entire stone wall spanning the entrance to Graceland, and the mucked-up historical marker, are covered in signatures and messages from decades of visitors! To my surprise, signing the wall is officially encouraged, and I kicked myself that I didn’t think for a second to bring a marker!
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The only way to get into Graceland was by booking a tour, which started at 9:00 AM for me and involved going to the visitor center/Elvis theme park across the street, getting sorted into a line to see an introductory video, loading onto a shuttle bus, and crossing the street to begin a self-guided audio tour narrated by John Stamos (whose Full House character was named Jesse after Elvis’ twin brother)! On the one hand, this two-story, Neoclassical Revival mansion designed by the firm of Max Furbringer and Merrill Ehrman was, like the Alamo, smaller than I expected, but I got the impression that this petite palace was packed full of stories!
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Elvis and his parents bought the house in 1957 between his filming of Loving You and Jailhouse Rock, and the whole inside changed many times over the next 20 years! At first, his mom, Gladys spearheaded the interior decoration, but this magnificent living room was all Elvis’ idea, from the custom-cut mirrors and white walls to give the illusion of more space to the peacock stained glass panels designed by Laukhuff Stained Glass!
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Also installed in 1974 was the Italian chandelier in the main dining room, where the table is still set with Elvis and Priscilla Presley’s wedding china! This is where the family and any guests would eat around 9:00 or 10:00 at night, for several generations! All that food was prepared in the adjacent kitchen by cooks who specialized in Southern cuisine, including Elvis’ favorite banana pudding! Always up to date on appliances, the kitchen featured an early microwave oven, the house phone, and security cameras for keeping an eye on the Graceland grounds!
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Down a narrow, mirrored staircase, the basement was set aside for fun! In his TV room, Elvis had three separate screens playing at the same time, the wall decorated with a lightning bolt and cloud that symbolized his T.C.B. (“taking care of business in the flash”) philosophy. It was next to his pool room, covered from top to bottom in three hundred fifty yards of colorful printed fabric strips emanating out from the center of the ceiling!
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And then, back up the stairs, there was the famous Jungle Room, added onto the house in the 1960s! Though not called the “Jungle Room” until 1982 when public tours started here, Elvis did up his den to remind him of his time spent in Hawaii, from the grassy green carpet to the tiki-style furniture to the built-in rock waterfall! He loved this room so much that he actually recorded most of his final two albums from inside here: “From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee” (1976) and Moody Blue (1977)!
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The Graceland of today extended well beyond just the mansion! This was a 13.8-acre estate with detached offices and horse stables, a huge trophy room and a racquetball court, not to mention a carport, home to just some of his cars!
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Elvis had a legendary car collection, some of which is housed in the Elvis Presley Car Museum across the street from the Graceland Mansion. Owning well over a hundred cars in his lifetime, he was especially fond of Cadillacs, like the famous 1955 Cadillac Fleetwood 60, which he painted pink to match his original pink Cadillac, which was destroyed in a fire! But he didn’t just have Cadillacs; he collected go karts and dune buggies, motorcycles, and even a super-unique, three-wheeled German microcar called a Messerschmitt KR200! I took a turn about the museum, but with my hotel’s extended checkout time coming up quick, I had to scamper, skipping the plane collection entirely!
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But there was plenty more musical history to explore in Memphis. Even Graceland couldn’t hold all of Elvis’ Memphis influence, and so I set my compass for Sun Studio, where Elvis’ first record, “That’s All Right,” debuted on Daddy-O Dewey Phillips’ “Red, Hot, and Blue” radio show on July 8, 1954!
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Sam Phillips opened up this studio on January 3, 1950, hoping to draw in Blues and R&B artists from the surrounding area and in the process. Teaming up with Dewey Phillips (no relation), who had the same musical goals, the duo recorded the first rock ‘n’ roll song, “Rocket 88” by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats! The studio’s Control Room C was extracted from its former location in the Hotel Chisca and reconstructed here in 2014, along with a broken record on the floor. It turns out, Daddy-O Phillips would shatter bad records live on his show, calling them “smash hits!”
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Downstairs in the studio was the recording room, where an absolute who’s-who of musical greats have all set foot at some point! You might recognize B.B. King and Jeannie C. Riley, Roy Orbison and KT Tunstall, Merle Haggard and Big Memphis Ma Rainey, just to name a few! Bands like the Dixie Cups and Howlin’ Wolf all recorded hits here! The instruments surrounding the studio, all casually placed as though ready to be picked up again, are all super important pieces of music history!
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For example, at this very piano, on December 4, 1956, a very remarkable jam session took place! Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Carl Perkins (original writer of Blue Suede Shoes) all of whom were either presently or formerly recorded here at Sun Studios, met up here completely by chance and for different reasons, then sat down to sing some songs they’d all grown up hearing! With all the different copyrights and contracts mixed up in the session, it was risky business pressing “record” on this “Million Dollar Quartet,” but engineer, Jack Clement knew he’d be remiss in letting this historic moment slip by! So today, there are 47 tracks of these music legends singing together!
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When he retired from Sun Studio, Sam Phillips donated a lot of Sun Studios’ equipment to museums, but not this Shure 55 microphone! Folks, this is the exact one used by Elvis Presley to record his first hit, “That’s All Right!” When he retired from Sun Studios, Mr. Phillips didn’t want this microphone put behind glass; he wanted folks to continue using it. Maybe it would spark a new musical sensation! With all the artists still recording at Sun Studio, that wish seems to have come true!
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I left behind these musical landmarks and began my journey west, but first, I had to pay tribute to at least one very sad location. The Lorraine Motel was originally a very positive place, named for the wife of owner, Walter Bailey, and it was listed in the Negro Travelers’ Green Book as a safe place for Black travelers to stay! The guest list at the Lorraine read the likes of Louis Armstrong, Jackie Robinson, and Aretha Franklin, but today, it’s more infamous than famous. Horrifically, this was where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot on April 4, 1968 outside Room 306, ending a revolutionary career but not a legacy! Today, the motel is the historic front of the National Civil Rights Museum, which collects and exhibits artifacts and first-person interviews spanning the whole Civil Rights Movement! To give it justice, I’d have to block off a full day, but I still had to get through the oncoming rain to Little Rock before it got dark.
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I did have time to support a local Black-owned business, though! Butterific Bakery & Cafe had a really scrumptious selection of cookies, mini pies, and other snacks, and the owner, Tamika, really BUTTERED me up with BUTTER puns. She said I BUTTER try some of her delicious cookies, so I ordered a peanut BUTTER and lemon iced sugar cookie. Were they simply BUTTERIFIC? You BUTTER believe it! And it turns out, they ship their cookies too, so I BUTTER watch out, or this beaver’s gonna fill his home with boxes of cookies!
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The sweets gave me just enough energy to power through the driving rain to Little Rock, where I pulled up at Peabody Park, home to the famous Peabody Ducks! Back in 1933, the Peabody Hotel’s owner, Frank Schutt, returned from a hunting trip with buddies and put three English call ducks (which they used as live decoys) into the fountain inside the hotel! They so delighted the guests that in 1940, Edward Pembroke, bellman turned Duckmaster, started escorting these ducks to and from the fountain at 11:00 AM and 5:00 PM daily, heralded by John Philip Sousa marches! This tradition spanned at least fifty years, memorialized by the duck sculptures here in Peabody Park!
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The park was chock full of cool sculptures with splashes of color that reminded me, Firstbud was coming up! I’ll get to that later, but first, I had to appreciate the work of Herb Mignery, the Nebraska sculptor who built most of his career in Western themed bronzes. Here in Peabody Park, though, he let his whimsy take wing with Lord Featherwick, the sophisticated turkey, and Elwood, the sporty weasel!
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But I originally came to Peabody Park as the perfect introduction to Little Rock history, as it’s home to the actual “Little Rock!” To get to it, I had to pass over the Quapaw Line, laid out by treaty on June 24, 1818 between the Arkansas River and the Saline River. The aim, as you might guess, was to “fence in” the Quapaw people between that line and the Mississippi River so white settlers could set up a town. These were the folks that gave Arkansas its name, sort of. They call themselves Ogáxpa, but the Illini, who were in contact with the French first, called them Akansa. The Quapaw Line was only a boundary for 16 years before the US Government forced the Ogáxpa out of their homeland and into Oklahoma.
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All of this change kicked off at this little rock, sighted by French explorer, Bernard de la Harpe, in 1722 as he was paddling up the Arkansas River from the mouth of the Mississippi. The rock became the main landmark for knowing where the river could easily be crossed, and so the town of Little Rock rose up around it, becoming the territorial capital in 1821 and the state capital in 1836!
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As you might guess, because Little Rock is the capital of Arkansas, I just had to pay a visit to my 47th state capitol building! This neo-classical capitol was a collaboration between architects, George Mann and Cass Gilbert (whose work you’d have seen at the Minnesota State Capitol) and went up between 1899 and 1915 at twice the budget and spanning two general contractors, four Capitol Commissions, and six governors!
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The most remarkable feature of Arkansas’ capitol building is its set of six, 10-foot tall, 4-inch thick, bronze doors, supplied by Tiffany & Co. in 1910! Because bronze develops a patina over time, these doors have to be polished by hand, top to bottom, every week! Today, these doors are just ornamental thanks to security overhauls in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks back in 2001.
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Like Peabody Park, the capitol grounds are full of monuments, including two that are on the National Register of Historic Places and much less whimsical than either Elwood or Lord Featherwick. The Arkansas capitol building was built on land formerly occupied by a prison, which held many prisoners of (Civil) war! So in one corner of the grounds stands the Confederate Soldiers Monument, designed by Alsatian sculptor, Frederick Ruckstuhl, and dedicated on June 3, 1905, the birthday of Jefferson Davis. This is the focal point of the state’s annual Confederate Memorial Day the last Monday of May. In another corner stands the Monument to Confederate Women, designed by Swiss sculptor, J. Otto Schweizer, and dedicated on May 1, 1913. Of his may Civil War memorials, this one is the only Confederate one and the only one dedicated to women.
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On the north side of the capitol grounds was a much more recent sculpture, and one even more significant to my visit to Little Rock. Testament: The Little Rock Nine Monument by John and Kathy Deering honors the first Black students to be integrated into Little Rock Central High School back in 1957! This one has only been here since August 30, 2005!
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So naturally, my final stop on this trip was Little Rock Central High School, home to the Tigers since 1927 and a National Historic Site! Though the visitor center was long closed by the time I pulled up, it was still a good time to wander the grounds while this active school wasn’t full of students running to and from class!
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I was not prepared for how gargantuan “the Most Beautiful High School in America” really was! Four stories of Gothic Revival shapes and sculptures, it took five separate architects to design! Over 1,800 students were enrolled here in 1957, all of them white, as had been the Jim Crow norm for the school’s first thirty years, but then everything changed when the Brown v. Board of Education ruling on May 17, 1954 struck down the concept of “separate but equal” in public schools!
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Arkansas resisted the ruling for three whole years; Governor Faubus even had the Arkansas National Guard block Central High’s first Black students from entering class! He was, of course, directly overruled by President Eisenhower, who federalized the National Guard on September 24, 1957 and directly ordered 1,000 federal troops to protect the “Little Rock Nine” as they made their way to class. Those nine students are now commemorated by a circle of benches on the school grounds: Elizabeth Eckford, Terrence Roberts, Ernest Green, Jefferson Thomas, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Minnijean Brown, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed, and Melba Pattillo Beals!
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Just getting into this school was tough enough, but the challenges didn’t stop there. When they were able to attend class, all nine students faced harassment and bullying by other students! Governor Faubus, still resisting integration, ordered all public schools in Little Rock to close then tried to lease the buildings to private schools, which weren’t subject to the same federal rules! The schools remained closed for a whole year, the “Lost Year,” and hate crimes rose around the city as folks blamed the students for closing the schools! Only four of the original Nine returned to Central High School, again under police protection, and only Ernest Green, who was a senior at entrance, graduated normally. The rest either left for other schools or completed their Central High education remotely by correspondence. Widespread resistance to Brown continued until the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Educational Opportunity Act in 1965!
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So the sun set on a day exploring both rock ‘n’ roll and rocking enrollment! It was time time to rest up and reflect on the major historical sites I’d seen, while planning for a new day of adventure. Tomorrow, I’ll be exploring one of America’s smallest and most unusual national parks and celebrating Firstbud, so stay tuned!
Rock on!
More 2024 Adventures |
Memphis, TN → Little Rock, AR 367.0 mi (590.6 km)* *Includes 213 miles getting to and from Emmett Till and Mamie Mobley-Till National Monument |
Next Day |