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June 16 • 2013 The Irish Mail on Sunday More

Childhood wonder in Santa’s elfdomPage 86

I was walking in Memphis…

travel

If it’s good enough for Prince William, it should be good enough for you,’ the man next to me tells his wife. The woman in question, like myself, has just been informed that she will be eating dinner with a plastic knife

and fork, from a Styrofoam plate. We are in

Charles Vergos’ Rendezvous, the world-famous rib joint with the red-and-white chequered table cloths, where William and Harry feasted on dry ribs a few months ago.

Feeling jaded after the drive from Atlanta, I dumped my bags at my hotel, the Madison on Madison Avenue, and took a two-minute

stroll, peeling off the main drag down a dingy alley behind South Second to find this Memphis institution.

In a town with over 100 barbecue shacks, when you ask locals where to go for great ribs, you can expect to hear ‘Rendezvous’ every time. Vergos founded the restaurant

streetcar: Elvis got his

break in Memphis

where trams transport

tourists on Main Street

Catherine Fegan tours Tennessee’s music shrines and squeezes in plenty of Southern cooking, too

83

Headford Road, Galwayvisit pillohotelgalway.com

or call 091 513200

book time at

the Spa during your

stay

THE BIG PILLO SALEIS BACK

in 1948, when he discovered a coal chute in the basement of his restaurant and decided to put his grilling skills to work. The history is plastered on the walls, with presidents Clinton and Bush and entertainers such as Bill Cosby, Justin Timberlake and Mick Jagger among the many pictures.

Since then, Rendezvous has been knocking out pork ribs and shredded shoulder, brisket and lamb riblets to the hungry masses. I had the char-coal-broiled pork ribs and shoulder combination, which comes with beans and slaw, washed down with a few glasses of Ghost River golden ale.

It was my first night in Memphis, the town that gave birth to rock’n’roll. It’s a city whose dramatic past feels eerily present. There is a daily party on Beale Street, where bands play Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis to excitable tour-

ists. At the Lorraine Motel, now a wonderful civil rights museum, you can stand on the very spot where Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated. At Graceland, as you feast your eyes on Elvis’s gold-plated bathroom fittings and crystal chande-liers, it feels as if he’s popped out to race one of his Cadillacs.

It’s also a place of many contradictions. Statistically, it is one of America’s most murderous cities yet, as a visitor, I didn’t feel uncomfortable or threatened and on several nights went deep into its hinterland. Music is everywhere – whether it’s the twang of a guitar at a country music festival or a man singing the blues in a juke joint, with his hat at an angle and his eyes half shut.

On my first day, I headed to Sun Studios, where Elvis cut the demo tape that launched his career. Here, a smart young guide by the name of Cody Fletcher took me through the beginnings of

travel84

rock’n’roll, from Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats’ recording of Rocket 88 (featuring a 19-year-old Ike Turner on piano, right here in this studio in 1951) through to the early Sun record-ings by Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis that lit up the world. The place is full of memora-bilia, pictures and old recording equipment, including a chance to grab a photograph posing with the microphone into which Presley & Co. belted out their early numbers.

At the Stax Museum in nearby McLemore Avenue, I pored over the Ike and Tina Turner displays and marvelled at Isaac Hayes’s restored 1972 gold-trimmed, peacock-blue Cadillac Eldorado. The museum, rebuilt from the ground up to look as it did during the label’s heyday in the 1960s and early 1970s, is just off Beale Street. Stax produced some 300 albums and 800 singles and, to generations of popular music lovers, was one of the shrines of Southern soul. Inside, it’s wall-to-wall music, along with a history of the record label, from its beginnings as a home base for local musicians to an interna-tional sensation.

The Sun and Stax museums contrast vividly with that other Memphis rock’n’roll shrine, Graceland. A fitting tribute to the flamboyant talent and manic excess of the man whose remark-able voice shaped half a century

of popular music, Graceland attracts about 700,000 visitors a year. Behind the white columns and lions perched beside the portico is a tribute to Seventies era kitsch – most notably the famous Jungle Room, with its indoor waterfall and shag car-pets on the walls and ceiling as well as floor.

The museums are one thing, but if you want to get to the soul of Memphis music, you have to go out

into the night and that is pre-cisely what I did.

After a cocktail on the rooftop terrace at my hotel, enjoying one-of-a-kind sunset views of the Mississippi River and the sparkling bridges that span it,

I strolled onto Beale Street, the nation’s blues capital. There are plenty of great spots on Beale, all providing great live music, but I decided on BB King’s. It was only $5 to get in and I heard that occa-sionally BB shows up, much to the delight of the crowd. I sat at the bar and enjoyed a local brew while listening to the music. The stage was right across from the bar so I had a great view of a lively eight-piece.

Next was a stop at the obliga-tory Irish bar, Silky O’Sullivan’s, home of the infamous live goats. Yes, you read it right. Past the pub’s duelling pianos, beyond the specialty drinks served in huge plastic buckets, a goat pen lines O’Sullivan’s outdoor-seat-ing area. I sat out on the patio, a playground for grown-ups com-plete with a climbing tower for

Late DEALS

The honky-tonks along the Broadway strip heave with beer-bellied forty-somethings in Stetsons

BAG A BARGAIN: Topflight’s big January

holiday sale started on St Stephen’s Day. With savings of up to 50%, offers include an Italian holiday, a cruising adventure, a ski holiday or trips further afield. The sale ends on January 8. To see all options, visit topflight.ie or call (01) 240 1700.

SPA SURPRISE: The Northern Ireland

Tourist Board’s offer of the week is a last-minute deal for a New Year’s spa break at the four-star Corick House Hotel and Spa in Clogher, Co. Tyrone. The price of €176pps includes one night B&B. There will be a bottle of bubbly waiting to greet you in the spa’s Serenity Suite (which is reserved just for you for a whole hour). You can choose a further hour-long treatment before your four-course dinner and full Irish the following morning. Call 1850 230 230 or visit discovernorthernireland.com .

SPLASH OUT: Book during January

to avail of Tropical Sky’s discounts on February

getaways including one to the Indian Ocean tropical paradise of the Seychelles. Savings of up to €650pp are available for a seven-night stay at the four-star Cerf Island Resort if booked by January 31. Cerf Island resort is right next to a national marine park, The price of €1,589pp includes return flights with Emirates from Dublin and transfers. For more, see tropicalsky.ie or call (01) 664 9999.

More the Irish Mail on Sunday December 28 • 2014

You can pose at the mic Elvis and others used to belt out their early hitscelebrated: Beale Street in Memphis is filled with blues clubs and is mentioned in many songs, including WC Handy’s classic Beale Street Blues

V1

travel85

where it all began: Sun Studios where Elvis recorded his first single, That’s All Right, in 1954.

Presley, right, with record producer Sam Philips,

Leo Soroka and Robert Johnson in 1956

Aer Lingus flies direct to Atlanta for around €650 return. See Aerlingus.com.Catherine drove from Atlanta to Memphis and Nashville. For car hire, check out www.hertz.com.For details on the Madison Hotel on Madison Avenue, check out madisonhotelmemphis.comCatherine was on Loews Vanderbilt’s Rhythms of the South package, which includes Grand Ole Opry tickets and other perks. See loewshotels.com as the hotel frequently runs other such offers.If you’re planning a Nashville trip, be sure to log on to visitmusiccity.com before you go for full details of all the city has to offer including upcoming concerts.

GETTING THEREradio: The Grand Ole Opry

the resident goats. After listening to some great live music, it was on to the Beale Street Tap Room to sample one of its 30 beers on tap.

Too soon, it was the next day and time to set off on the 200-mile journey along Highway 40 to Nashville. The scenery en route is frustratingly repetitive – mile upon mile of flat highway, punctuated by petrol stations and fast-food out-lets. A cemetery flashes past, then a Baptist church, then a tiny hard-ware store, then an enormous billboard promising Affordable Divorce. On the car radio, Hank Williams is singing about feeling so lonesome he could cry.

I arrived into Nashville late in the afternoon. It was the perfect time to arrive in Music City, giving me just enough time to settle into my hotel, grab a drink and head out to hear live music.

I was staying in the fabulous Loews Vanderbilt, a sleek 340-room, 14-suite hotel opposite the Vanderbilt University. There are great views from its upper floors, and it is about a three-minute cab ride from downtown. Before a

night out on the tiles, I started with a cocktail in the modish Mason Bar off the lobby, with its chunky mason jar chandelier and bour-bon and ‘Moonshine’ white whisky cocktails. Favourites of the night included the Red Zone – a concoc-tion of hot-pepper-infused Souza, Monin Habanero Lime Syrup, Aperol and lime juice – and the Front Porch, Ketel One vodka with house made watermelon soda.

Later, I met my friend Sheila and we decided to hit the honky-tonks – the rowdy live country-music bars on neon-lit Broadway, downtown, where stars from Waylon Jennings to Garth Brooks have earned their stripes. But before

the madness, it was time to sam-ple some more southern cooking. We headed for Puckett’s, where we feasted on pulled pork, home-cooked green beans, cornbread and fried okra, devoured to the sound of live bluegrass music.

Out on Honky Tonk row, a mini-Vegas strip of music clubs that come alive from 10pm on, the carnival-like atmosphere was infectious. This three-block strip of pubs, cafés and nightspots — less than a 10-minute cab ride from my base at the Vanderbilt – bounces to

the beat of bluegrass, blues, country, rock and just about every other genre. The honky-tonks heave with beer-bellied forty-somethings in Stetsons. The air is thick with the kind of cornball coun-try songs in which women stand by their man and the Good Lord holds families together.

The morning after

the night before I headed to the city’s must-see spot, the Country Music Hall of Fame. From outside, the building looks vast but ordinary. Then you realise the windows have been designed to resemble the keys of a piano.

From above the edifice is shaped like a bass clef and the front wall’s slanted end is meant to be a late-1950s Cadillac tail

fin. It takes up a whole block. It’s hardcore and insane. Step through the doors and hundreds of forgot-ten songs ring in your ears: Brenda Lee having big fun on the bayou, Reba McEntire belting out Mama’s warnings to Fancy.

It has everything from Elvis’s gold Cadillac to Hank Williams’s acous-tic guitar and you need at least half a day to get the most out of it. The hall of fame also runs tours to RCA Studio B, where you can sit at the Steinway at which Elvis recorded Are You Lonesome Tonight? and see where Dolly Parton once drove into a wall. It houses the battered piano

played on Roy Orbison’s Only The Lonely and Patsy Cline’s Crazy and you can even touch the instruments.

By now on the verge of frenzied cowboy-hat purchases, I headed to the Grand Ole Opry. Billed as a must for anyone visiting Nashville, it’s the longest running live radio show in the United States.

It’s wholesome family entertain-ment, with babies and grandparents in the audience, teens and veter-ans on stage. Lyrical highlights included ‘I miss having your bis-cuits in my gravy pan’, sung by an elegant old-timer with a rigid blue rinse. There was banter, there was glitter, there were sequins.

Next it was off to Hattie B’s, a Nashville institution that has been serving up hot chicken for 80 years. Feeling brazen, and despite warn-ings from staff, I ordered ‘Shut the cluck up,’ a dish that comes with a burn notice. I’ve been eating hot chicken for two weeks, I thought, I can handle it. That night, as I sat at the hotel bar guzzling my fourth pint of water, my chicken-burnt tongue screamed otherwise. Shut the cluck up? Gladly.

taste sensation: Catherine after sampling the best ribs in Memphis at Carlos Vergos’s Rendezvous barbecue shack

December 28 • 2014 the Irish Mail on Sunday More