Tennessee whiskey

Jack Daniels was my flavor tonight, at least between some familiar flavors and some I'd not yet tasted. I won't pretend that I'm sober and blabbering on about the contents of today's rather scattered schedule (but I'm still anal about spelling and grammar, so I can't be too bad off!), so you'll just have to grin and bear my ramblings.

I love soul music, but I'll be the first to admit that I don't know too much about it's history. Otis Redding has been one of my favorite musicians since the first time I heard his side of the Monterey Pop Festival LP (with Jimi Hendrix on the the opposite side), but I never did my homework about his humble beginnings or the musicians he surrounded himself with. In fact, I really have no knowledge about the history of soul music. Bill, however, knows a lot about it, and in a lot of ways had been on his way here for most of his life. After many failed attempts to get to Memphis, he finally made it here with his nephew, someone he cultivated an interest in music within. It's probably because of this fact that I just said "Yeah, we can do whatever you want" whenever he asked me if I wanted to do something.

First stop was Beale street, which Bill explained used to be a black neighborhood full of music and culture. Today it's a caricature of itself, full of several shops selling the same "authentic" merchandise, and restaurants selling the same menus - a four block span of safe dumbed down touristy and corporate attempts at authenticity. We continued walking for about a mile until we reached Sun Studios. Bill wasted no time signing us up for the tour and we were soon regaled with a somewhat over the top, but ultimately really informative history lesson on the likes of Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and so many others. It was a really great tour and I'd love to go back and experience it again after some personal research.

After a long walk home, we grabbed the car and headed to Elvis's final resting place, Graceland despite both of us still reeling from yesterday's ridiculous drive. We were too late to get any tours so we took some pictures and headed back.

On the way back to the hotel we took a detour and stopped by Stax Records for some more photos, since they had  also already closed up for the day. Stax records was an important establishment in the early days of soul music, especially for black musicians as the majority of the music industry was dominated by white artists. Stax gave black musicians a face, and eventually a voice as society began to be a little more open minded. I have a lot to research about Stax, but this is what I've gathered in an afternoon. Color me ignorant. We took some pictures and split.

We came back to the hotel and relaxed for a bit, before heading out for some dinner and drinks. Now we're back at the hotel.

It looks like tonight was the last hurrah for this trip. We'll be heading east from here, likely with one night spent in a city or town between here and Richmond, but for all intents and purposes, Memphis was the last place either of us wanted to visit on this trip. It's been an interesting trip, I'd imagine for both of us. It's not easy to jump in a car with a person you've never spent more than a few hours at a time with, but I think we did a pretty good job of having fun with each other, and showing each other new things. I'm glad that I got to know my uncle better, and I'm glad that he got to know me. I may or may not make another post after this, so in case I don't, thank you for reading. I hope it's been as fun to follow us as it's been to write about it.

By the way, more pics are up on the Nipper post as well as the Flickr page (a handful that I didn't use for the blog). Check them out and we hope you enjoy them!