When night falls in Memphis, the neon of Beale Street beckons, where the music from about a dozen clubs and as many street musicians blends into a glorious din of electric guitars and screaming horns, and the musicians are as accessible as their music. That's the beauty of Beale Street, the way local blues artists and tourists mingle. Some long for the old days, when Beale Street featured solitary bluesmen playing three-chord songs about wayward women and picking cotton. The music now is big and brassy, geared more for tourists than for purists. The musicians of Beale Street constantly argue about the authenticity of their music.
Blues is about romance and heartache, good times and bad, about sex and love and hate.
It's about real people, not race. Two hours from Memphis, I stopped at Shiloh National Military Park, where one of the bloodiest Civil War battles took place. A 25-minute film provides a good introduction to the battle, and a paved loop allows the visitor to drive to vital memorials and plaques. Housed in Pusser's old ranch house, the museum has things like Pusser's American Express card and eight-track tapes. And, of course, being in Tennessee, the museum has an Elvis angle.