We just got back from a trip to Memphis after seeing some historic sights and eating some great and not so great food.
One of the first things we did upon arrival was to go to the National Civil Rights Museum located at the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. The museum was one of the best museum’s I’ve ever been to. They cover the Civil Rights movement as thoroughly as I could imagine. The reason Dr. King was in Memphis was because of a city sanitation worker’s strike.
Memphis seemed like it was a progressive city in the early to mid 20th century because of the equal percentage of black and white population.
We also visited the Burkle Estate, also known as Slave Haven. The Burkle Estate served as a link to the underground railroad where slaves could stay before escaping to the north and Canada.
We went to the Pink Palace Museum which was the home of the creator of the self-service supermarket, Piggly Wiggly. The Pink Palace is now mostly a science museum with a lot of interesting displays about the region such as the New Madrid Earthquake and dinosaurs that were found in the area. They also have a history section that shows life in 19th century Tennessee and the Civil War. They have a tree trunk that has cannonballs embedded in it and you can see how the tree grew around them.
Memphis may be most famous for its music history. Blues was a big part of early Memphis music and was played on Beale street in the early 20th century. The Rock and Soul Museum near the National Civil Rights Museum talks about the history of music in Memphis. They were saying that country music may have its origins in black gospel music. That and the Blues had a great influence on the formation of Rock and Roll which all started in Memphis. Black music wasn’t generally recorded and a Memphian named Sam Phillips, who was a big fan of the Blues, wanted to make sure it was recorded so it didn’t get lost. Phillips started recording just about anything in Memphis and eventually found some of the greatest recording stars of the time such as Howlin’ Wolf, Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and recorded the very first Rock and Roll song named Rocket 88 by Jackie Brenston.
We also went to Elvis’ home, Graceland, whose trophy room contained an impressive amount of gold and platinum records.
I was surprised to learn that Elvis didn’t have Graceland built, but he bought it from someone else.
Memphis was also a huge part of Soul music history with Stax Studios. There’s a museum in Memphis at the Stax location that was one of the more impressive museums in the city. The museum says that the Memphis soul sound was more of a raw sound than the more polished Motown sound.
Memphis is known as the BBQ Pork Capital of the World. We (I) were pretty excited to have some good BBQ and we weren’t disappointed. Next door to the National Civil Rights Museum is Central BBQ. Central BBQ had the best ribs I’ve ever had up until that point.
We couldn’t just stop there though. We found a place that was reputed to be the best. It was really far away, although it was in Memphis, and it’s called Corky’s. Those ribs surpassed Central BBQ for me and I was pretty confident that they would remain number one.
We had a few more meals to go but we didn’t feel like driving all the way to Corky’s so we stopped at a place on Beale Street called Blues City Cafe. I don’t think they were famous for their ribs, but of the three BBQ places we went to, we liked Blued City Cafe the best.
We also found a couple of fried chicken places we had really high hopes for because everyone seemed to rave about them, but we were really disappointed with both.