The Sun King

Day Two: Little Rock, AR to Pigeon Forge, TN. 570 miles.

Oh, Pigeon Forge. How sleepy and alpine you seemed when we read about your motels all those weeks ago. What a terrible surprise you had ready for us at the end of this long, long day’s journey…

About a million years ago, the four of us stood before the State Capitol in Little Rock, Arkansas on a warm, bright morning. Eight in the morning on a Sunday is a good time to visit, it turns out. The place is shut, but you have it to yourselves; the white stonework shines in the sunlight; the sprinklers plunge the flower beds and lawns into a cloud of gleaming raindrops. The building is a copy of the federal Capitol in Washington DC. I suppose if anyone ever comes down from the federal government they will be mad as all hell about that.

But of course, and seriously, the federal government did come down here, to Little Rock Central High School in 1958. President Eisenhower sent in the army to protect nine black students who were trying to attend the (until then) all white school, after the local police had physically barred them entering. We sat outside the impressive, almost grand, building whilst we explained this to William. He was suitably appalled.

“And that still goes on today doesn’t it,” he said.

“Er, no,” we replied, trying to sound confident. “Segregation is illegal now.”

“But why are there boy restrooms and girl restrooms?” he insisted. “Why can’t everyone just share?”

Instead of answering that, we went and had breakfast. Loose talk of visiting the Clinton Presidential Library came to nothing – it doesn’t open until 1pm on Sundays. So with nothing else to keep us in Little Rock, we soon hit the road again, heading for the Mississippi River, the state of Tennessee and Memphis.

It’s Arkansas all the way to the river, but the Mississippi immediately makes its presence felt. The gentle rolling hills give way to an immense, flat plain: farmland filled with corn, the enormous fields divided by distant lines of trees. The river itself is undeniably impressive. On the map it is a broiling mass of swirls and oxbow lakes, like writhing eels – face to face it is a stately thing, wide and brown.

Memphis is just on the other side and we weren’t really sure what we wanted to see. We absently headed for Graceland, pulled there by the sheer gravitational mass of the Elvis legend. Perhaps unsurprisingly the place has an uncomfortable feel – a combination of sourings. All the associations, for me at least, are of bloatedness and excess: not only a poor boy from Tupelo, MS, gone to fat on burgers and rhinestones, but the zealous fervour with which he is still venerated by millions as something more than an entertainer. Elvis today is a commodity and, having got there, we didn’t want to feed. We eschewed the tour and the queues and the endless souvenirs. We stood outside the gaudy gates of Graceland for a few minutes before going in search of the real thing.

And, of course, we found it. The Sun Records Studio stands on Union Avenue in Memphis, a tiny odd shaped red brick building. It was here in the ’40s and early ’50s that Sam Phillips had built up a business, recording blues numbers and eventually launching his own record label, Sun Records. For $3 anyone could come in off the street and have their own song pressed and it was here that the 17 year old Elvis Presley came to do just that.

We took a forty minute tour about the building and found the authenticity we had wanted. The guide gave us the history of the place, played us music and showed us original recording equipment before finally taking us into the small studio itself where Elvis, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis had all performed. But we discovered even more about the black musicians who had previously recorded here and influenced them: Howlin’ Wolf, the Prisonaires (who met in the county jail and won pardons due to their hit songs), Little Milton and Rosco Gordon. It was a fabulous place, miraculously preserved and, undeniably, the real deal.

Then after a late lunch it was back in the car. Incredibly we now had to drive almost the entire length of Tennessee before bed. It was another beautiful journey, another gentle rollercoaster of a road that rose and fell in countless waves of green trees. Occasionally the thick walls of forest would be buttressed by cliffs of stratified grey rock, washed peachy-brown by the afternoon sun. As we carried on, through Nashville and on towards Knoxville, the hills grew steeper and the evening darker. A lightning storm, crackling high up in the clouds was consolation for missing the sunset that reddened the sky behind us. Soon it was pitch black and we left the freeway, heading for the unseen Smoky Mountains of Tennessee/North Carolina border, and the sleepy little town of Pigeon Forge.

Except that, on arrival we were presented with a incredible couple of miles of tawdry illuminations. Someone has had the idea to turn this place into some sort of Vegas-style strip, a miasma of neon restaurants, motels, aquariums, mini golf courses, cabaret theatres and other odd attractions of an uncertain nature. We’ll have to see what it actually looks like in the daylight, and I’m sure a lot of it will actually prove to be fun, but it wasn’t what we were expecting in the foothills of a National Park.

Sometimes America is too much Graceland and not enough Sun Records.