From Memphis to Nashville to the Great Smoky Mountains – for music enthusiasts and country fans, a trip like this is the ultimate. We present the twelve most important stops on this route – from Beale Street in Memphis to Nashville, where Taylor Swift also began her career.
“You ain’t nothing but a hound dog, crying all the time,” comes Elvis Presley’s voice from the car loudspeaker. Music nerd Jonathan is behind the wheel of the black Ford waiting for us at the Memphis airport. He will be leading me and my small tour group through Tennessee for the next few days and has put together a soundtrack for our road trip through the 16th state of the USA. We drive across the country: from Memphis in the southwest via Nashville to the Great Smoky Mountains, the national park in the east.
In Memphis we enter one of the most important locations in American music history. Blues, soul and of course rock ‘n’ roll developed here. With almost 650,000 inhabitants, Tennessee’s second largest city is located on the east bank of the Mississippi.
Memphis’ musical center is Beale Street with its colorful historic facades. In the 1920s and 1930s it was the hotspot of the African-American music scene. Even today, international blues, soul and country musicians meet in dozens of clubs, bars and restaurants for a musical melange. There is live music inside and outside, and street artists and acrobats give their performances on the street. The most famous is the “BB King’s Blues Club”, named after the blues guitarist BB King.
Even more famous is the King of Rock’n’Roll, Elvis Presley. We encounter his spirit everywhere here, be it from loudspeakers, on billboards and through doppelgangers on the live stages and in the audience. The Sun Studio, where Elvis recorded his first song, is not far away. Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison also produced their records in the narrow red brick corner house. Today it is a museum and can be visited during the day. If you want, you can have your photo taken with the microphone that Elvis used. Music is still produced here at night. Elvis’ rise from casual worker to superstar began at Sun Studio. He had saved money to record two songs for his mother for her birthday. The studio manager’s secretary heard Elvis’ voice, recommended him to her boss and the rest is history.
If you want to find out more about Elvis, the best place to go is south of Memphis, to “Graceland”. The King bought the impressive southern mansion with his first salary and resided here from 1957 until his death in 1977. Around 650,000 visitors visit the house every year. An audio tour describes the life of the superstar. Elvis’ unique fusion of rock ‘n’ roll, gospel and blues revolutionized the music industry. We visit the living room with a several meter long white leather couch, the jungle room where he hung out with his buddies, the billiards room.
Everything is decorated in such a way that you would think the King of Rock’n’Roll was coming back. Amateur videos showing Elvis with his family play in some rooms. On the property there are stables, a racquetball court, a trophy room with Elvis gold records, stage costumes and many collectibles. There are also two of his private planes here, which can be viewed. Elvis is buried next to his mother in the meditation garden next to the house.
It wasn’t just music history that was written in Memphis. The city also played an important role in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The sad highlight was the assassination of Martin Luther King in the Lorraine Motel in 1968. Today the motel is part of the National Civil Rights Museum. The museum’s exhibition documents the black population’s struggle for equal rights: from their arrival in the British colonies in 1619 to Martin Luther King’s death.
“Sholeene! Sholeene! Sholeene! Sho lee ee ee en!” Dolly Parton sings to me from the car loudspeaker. The song, released in 1973, is one of the singer’s biggest hits and will accompany me through Nashville, the capital of country music. Nashville, 350 kilometers east of Memphis, is the city of the “Queen of Country Music”. Her musical career began here, where she performed at the Grand Ole Opry, a famous country music venue. In the decades that followed, she managed to become one of the most successful singers of our time with 25 number one hits, eleven Grammys and over 100 million records sold.
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Before my trip to Tennessee, I identified country music when I heard a harmonica or banjo and the musicians wore cowboy hats and boots. I know better now, not least since I visited the Country Music Hall of Fame in downtown Nashville. The museum is itself a show because of its architecture: the elongated main building – with windows arranged like a piano keyboard – swings up at one end like the tailfin of a Cadillac.
On 32,500 square meters it shows the history and artists of country music. The collection includes musical instruments, stage clothing, photos, documents, manuscripts and numerous changing multimedia presentations. And of course music plays from hundreds of speakers. For me, the exhibition is a crash course through the history of country music.
A tour to the recording studios RCA Studio B is a must when visiting the museum. Red-haired Charly, himself a guitarist, guides us. He describes how Elvis, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson and Roy Orbison recorded their records here so vividly and enthusiastically that I have the impression that he was there himself back then.
What Beale Street is to Memphis is Broadway to Nashville. But before we start an evening with live music, we first fortify ourselves with the typical Tennessee barbecue in Martin’s Bar-B-Q Joint. Various types of meat, especially beef and pork, are slowly cooked over charcoal fires at relatively low temperatures. Together with the marinades and seasoning mixtures, it has a wonderfully spicy, smoky taste. The menu includes steaks, ribs and of course burgers in all variations. We also eat cornbread, hushpuppies (cornmeal croquettes) and French fries. You should definitely try the Nashville Hot Chicken, a kind of national dish: fried chicken coated with a spicy mixture of spices.
We move from club to club that evening. The most famous is the Tootsies Orchid Lounge, directly opposite the Rymann Auditorium, where legends like Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson have performed live. In the neighborhood is Honky Tonk Central, also an iconic club, where there are several stages on three floors. The audience flows up and down, with every change of musicians, the listeners also change. When the band is popular, we stand so close that I can hardly breathe. If they don’t inspire me, the hall empties very quickly because the next attraction isn’t far.
Country music is as alive in the United States today as it was 50 years ago. And Nashville has continued to expand its role as the capital and hub of the genre, playing a crucial role in the contemporary music scene. For example, numerous music events take place here, including the Country Music Awards and the Country Music Festival.
The city is home to hundreds of recording studios, producers, record labels, music publishers specializing in country music. World star Taylor Swift also started her career in Nashville. Like Dolly Parton, she began her career performing at the Grand Ole Opry and quickly gained a fan base. Taylor Swift cowboy boots might have fit in Dolly Parton’s shoes. But then the country world became too small for her and she switched to pop music to become the most successful singer in the world. Although she doesn’t deny her roots, the country world is resentful. The Legends Corner in Nashville’s Downton proves this. A meter-long mural shows country stars such as Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Loretta Young and Kid Rock. Taylor used to sit in the front row. Today it is painted over.
Dolly Parton’s numerous forays into pop and, more recently, into rock, however, no one has blamed her. She is the epitome of the American dream and something of a national saint. It seems that there is no one in the USA who doesn’t like them. To understand Dolly Parton, we recommend a trip further into East Tennessee to the Great Smoky Mountains. On the way there we make a stop at Dolly’s niece, Danielle Parton.
The highly decorated US Air Force pilot, who looks like Dolly’s younger twin sister, doesn’t work in the music business, but she continues another family tradition: she makes schnapps like her ancestors and runs the “Shine Girl” label. She immediately invites us to a tasting of her whiskey, which is flavored from rose to coconut and is primarily intended to suit female tastes. Danielle calls herself “The other Parton girl” on her website and is also like her aunt in terms of business acumen.
Now we’re in the right mood for the drive to the Great Smoky Mountains. The mighty mountain range stretches across the Tennessee-North Carolina border and runs through one of the most visited national parks in the United States. The Appalachian Trail, one of the most famous long-distance hiking trails in the world, runs through 800 square kilometers of nature. The world’s largest population of black bears lives here, as well as moose, bobcats and bald eagles.
A man-made highlight is the SkyBridge, one of the longest suspension bridges in North America. With a length of 170 meters and a height of almost 40 meters above the ground, the SkyBridge offers a spectacular experience. From here, visitors can enjoy breathtaking panoramic views of the surrounding mountains and valleys.
Dolly Parton comes from this remote mountain region. She was born in 1946 on Locust Ridge in the Smoky Mountains, the fourth of twelve children. Back in 1986, she fulfilled a dream and founded the Dollywood amusement park in Pigeon Forge, 90 kilometers from her birthplace. Visitors can easily spend a day here. There is a village with simple wooden houses like the one where Dolly lived with her family and huts where traditional crafts are shown, a rescue center for injured bald eagles, several music halls where there are changing live shows, some rides and the ” Dollywood Express,” a historic steam locomotive that takes guests on a nostalgic journey through the Smoky Mountains. With Dollywood, the singer created a monument to her homeland and herself.
How fitting that the world hit “I will always love you”, sung by Whitney Houston, is playing in our black Ford as we say goodbye, one of the biggest hits that Dolly composed.
*Research was supported by the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development