Elvis, Tina and Garth...a perfect vacation

Nashville, Memphis, Elvis and Garth

On the final day we got Garth Brooks, live in concert, for free.

Now, to any country music fan, there may not be a better ending to a week in Nashville and Memphis then seeing Garth live for free. Except, perhaps, that he came with guests. More on that later.

Nashville has never really been on my “must-visit” list but a couple of months back, while trying to decide how to use a $685 credit I had with Air Canada, I gave my wife Lynne three choices…make a decision right now: London, Eng., Boston or Nashville. The first two places she had mentioned wanting to visit. Nashville I just threw out there and, surprise, surprise, she said Nashville.

Turned out to be a great choice.

Mention Nashville and the mind instantly thinks country music and bars. Mention Memphis and Beale Street, Blues and Elvis come to mind.

Being a life-long, huge Elvis fan, any Nashville trip had to include Memphis so that was our plan. Arriving in Nashville about noon, we immediately headed downtown, not sure where, but walked right into the Ryman Auditorium. Best known as the “Mother Church of Country Music” for hosting the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 to 1974, the auditorium began life in 1892 as the Union Gospel Tabernacle, financed by businessman Thomas Ryman who had it built for tent revivalist Samuel Porter Jones.

It was Lula C. Nass, a widow and mother, who booked events into the Ryman, who invited the Grand Ole Opry, then a local country music radio program that had been kicked out of various venues because of its sometimes uncivilized crowds, to the Ryman in 1943. It remained there until spring 1974 when it moved to newly-developed Opryland USA.

The Ryman sat mostly empty for more than 20 years, had to fight off attempts to demolish it and finally re-opened in 1994. It underwent major renovations in 2012 and 2015 and today hosts weekly live shows and was a major element in the revitalization of downtown Nashville.

The tour, which includes a film entitled The Soul of Nashville, is well worth the visit.

We spent the rest of the day wandering around downtown, visited the famous Tootsies bar and walked down Lower Broadway, about a six-block area of bars full of live country music. Didn’t, however, see anyone I recognized and didn’t really hear any great music.

Our walk took us down to Riverfront Park, where we rested our feet and watched the riverboat from Opryland make its turnaround in front of Nissan Stadium, home of the Tennessee Titans across the river.

Lunch was at Jack’s BBQ on Broadway, our first taste of real southern barbecue and it was, in a word, incredible. Yes, the lineup made us think twice about waiting but we sure were glad we did.

The next day took us to the Country Music Hall of Fame. It was interesting but spent way too much time and space on Bob Dylan!!! Yeah, he had some influence on country music but hardly worth the attention paid to his one foray into that musical genre. It was almost as if Dylan and Johnny Cash were the only stars profiled. Like an insult to the likes to Chet Atkins, Gene Autry, Patsy Cline, George Jones, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton and more modern icons like Reba and Garth.

The evening was spent at Opryland, a monstrous complex featuring the Grand Ole Opry and the opulent Opryland hotel with a lobby-rotunda that takes forever to walk through its winding river, waterfall, and living garden complex.

The Opry was a pleasant surprise. The featured artist was Little Big Town, a trio we both enjoy, but the show included three Albertans! First up was Lindsay Ell of Calgary and later, High Valley — brothers Brad and Curtis Rempel from Blumenort, a small community near the hamlet of La Crete. Making a name for themselves in country music, they were excellent in performing “A Father’s Love (The Only Way He Knew How)” a tribute to their dad who financed their early days and their latest hit, Make You Mine.

Before the show we ate at The Aquarium restaurant, which featured a huge floor to ceiling fish tank that engulfed the entire centre of the room. And yes, it’s mixed menu did include a lot of fish dishes….seemed a little odd to be eating fish while watching hundreds of them swimming in the tank.

While Nashville was everything we expected, Memphis turned out to so much more.

Graceland was fabulous, our hotel was right beside it and played non-stop Elvis music, and Sun Records studio provided such insight into the birth of rock and roll music.

For me, to finally see where Elvis lived all those years and to look at the amazing museum of his music was worth the trip alone. The walls of gold records are a sight to behold.

Interesting fact: despite all his gold and platinum records and all his awards, in his lifetime Elvis only won three Grammy Awards and all were for his gospel songs.

I had been told on a number of occasions not to expect much of Graceland, that was tacky and old. Not true. It’s a magnificent building with huge grounds. Yes, a couple of the inside rooms are a little tacky – like the jungle and pool rooms – but it was an excellent example of 1960s southern U.S. architecture and design. And extremely well cared for.

Then it was on to Sun Records where Elvis was discovered. And where we learned it wasn’t actually Sam Phillips, owner of Sun Records, who discovered the greatest singer in history, but his secretary, Marion Keisker. Turns out when Elvis showed up at Sun, Sam was out and Marion convinced him to go ahead and record. She loved his sound. Sam didn’t. It was a ballad and Sun wanted rhythm and blues. About a year later when an unknown group walked in and was looking for a leader singer Keisker suggested they try Elvis. They did. Sam still wasn’t impressed, although he was intrigued by his voice. But after the session ended Sam asked if Elvis had anything else. That’s when he stepped to the mic and sang That’s All Right, Mama. The rest, as we know, is history.

Interesting facts:

— The same mic used to record by Elvis and so many other great stars, from Johnny Cash to Jerry Lee Lewis to Roy Orbison to B.B King, is still used today. Visitors get to pose with it, sing into it and take photos. Also still there in the piano from that famous Dec. 4, 1956 session when Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash got together and jammed. I sat on the same bench and touched the same keys on that piano as Elvis did for that equally famous picture.

–Elvis only recorded at Sun for about year before Phillips sold his contract to RCA because he needed money to keep the studio open.

— While Elvis is the King of Rock and generally credited with the birth of that genre, Rocket 88, by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, is considered the first rock and roll record. It was recorded in 1951 at Sun Studios.

— U2 used Sun Studio to record three songs for their 1988 Rattle and Rum album – Angel of Harlem, When Loves Comes to Town, and Love Rescue Me. They left behind their drum set that still sits in the studio

From historical music to the dark side of Memphis and the southern U.S. – the National Museum of Civil Rights, located in the motel when Martin Luther King was assassinated and the rooming house across the street from where James Earl Ray fired that fatal shot on April 4, 1968.

Even though I lived through that era, when assassinations claimed the lives of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Kennedy’s brother, Robert who would have become president, in Canada we lived on the perimeter…we read about the killings, the racism and the segregation battles, but to visit the museum is a shocking eye-opener.

To see videos, pictures and signs that tell the story of how black slaves were treated in the early days and how blacks in general were treated right into the ‘70s was somewhat disturbing. We spent several hours there and still could have spent several more. It definitely is a museum that every living person today should visit. And, dare I say it, if Canadian Indians think their ancestors had it bad because of residential schools, a visit to the National Museum of Civil Rights should be mandatory. Then they would understand what racism really is.

We made it to the luxurious Peabody Hotel – no we didn’t stay there, way beyond our price range – just in time for the 5 p.m. departure of the ducks. That’s right folks, ducks in the lobby fountain. Turns out the hotel has had ducks for decades and every day they march into the lobby in the morning and in the evening back to their Royal Duck Palace on the hotel’s rooftop. The $200,000 Palace is made of marble and glass and features its own fountain.

It was in Memphis that Lynne got her riverboat cruise – short but still a riverboat so she at least got a taste.

One of the interesting stories about Memphis that we learned on the riverboat was that the arena built for the NBA Memphis Grizzlies is now a Bass Pro Shop, one of the largest retail stores in the world.

The Memphis Pyramid, initially called the Great American Pyramid, was built as a 20,142-seat arena for the Grizzlies and the University of Memphis basketball team.

Today it features the tallest freestanding elevator in the U.S., 28 stories to the top of the Pyramid to a glass-encased and glass-floored observation deck.

Before we departed Memphis we spent an hour or so in the cotton museum, learning a bit about the history of the plantations that were on the forefront of the slavery traffic from Africa and how cotton was grown, harvested and sold.

On our way back to Nashville the next day we took a brief detour to Brownsville – just a few minutes up the interstate from Whiteville – to visit the Tina Turner museum. It’s small, just the one-room schoolhouse she attended in Nutbush, about 10 miles away.

But, since Tina is one of my all-favourite singers, we had to make the stop. It was, however, disappointing in that it was so small. At least it did have some of her gold records and those glitzy outfits she wore so well on stage where she truly was the hardest working woman in showbiz.

I started out towards Nutbush, to visit Turner’s birthplace but ran out of time because we had tickets to that evening’s Nashville Predators-Pittsburgh Penguins NHL game.

Should have gone to Nutbush. While it was interesting to see the arena, the game was a disappointment and the fans were rude and obnoxious with their childish chants that ended by calling opposing players losers and chanting “you suck.” Classless.

Sunday, however, is NFL day and yes, we took in the Tennessee Titans-Jacksonville Jaguars game. Oddly there was hardly any of the tail-gating that is such a big part of the NFL in many of their cities.

But hey, Lynne got to see P.T. Subban of the Predators take off his shirt at midfield as part of the pre-game ceremony. As beloved as he was in Montreal, he’s quickly becoming a god in Nashville.

Monday morning, I said to Lynne, I think we booked one day too many. There’s really nothing left to do. How wrong I was. We drove out to the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Centre to look at the massive 2,880-room hotel complex. It features nine acres of lush, indoor gardens and cascading waterfalls, 17 restaurants and a river large enough for boat tours running though the gardens.

Our final meal we decided had to be Hot Hattie B’s Chicken. Lynne had heard so often that it was one of those “can’t miss” eateries and the guide books said there is always a lineup but the wait is worth it.

Even at 1:30 p.m. the lineup was about 40 minutes. But, as promised, it was definitely worth it. The southern fried chicken was incredible. I had the medium heat, about three stops below their hottest, and it was plenty warm enough for the taste buds.

Then came the cherry…Garth and friends. I had read somewhere in our journey that Garth Brooks was giving a free concert Monday evening at the Nashville Amphitheatre. Since it only holds 4,000 people big screens were being set-up outside in the park so we decided we would head there to watch on the screens and listen to great music.

We were sitting there on a small concrete wall at the back of the ever-growing crowd about two minutes before the show was to begin when this big, black policeman came up and asked if we were Garth fans.

Absolutely I said. He handed us two tickets and said, go inside and see it. Say what? Really? We rushed to the gate, got in and we walking past the stage, about 20 feet away, when Garth came on and introduced his first guest of the evening, Reba McIntyre!