Opryland, Nashville

The next day, Friday, June 14, 1985, we went to Opryland USA, a theme park in Nashville, a 120-acres park operated from 1972 to 1997. During the late 1980s, nearly 2.5 million people visited the park annually that we were part of. Opryland was built as a complement to the new Grand Ole Opry House. Billed as the “Home of American Music,” the park featured many musical shows along with amusement rides, such as roller coasters. Opryland was closed and demolished following the 1997 season. Instead, on its site Opry Mills was built, an outlet-heavy shopping mall, that opened in 2000. The Grand Ole Opry radio program had been at the Ryman Auditorium since 1943, but was suffering from disrepair along with increasing urban decay in the mid-1960s. Despite these shortcomings, the show’s popularity was increasing as its weekly crowds outgrew the Ryman 3,000-seat venue. The company sought to build a new, air-conditioned auditorium with a larger capacity and ample parking in a then-undeveloped area of Nashville, providing visitors a safer and more enjoyable experience than was possible at the Ryman. This theme park opened to the public in May, 1972, well ahead of the Grand Ole Opry House, which debuted in March, 1974, with a visit from President Richard Nixon. The amusement park was named for WSM disc jockey Grant Turner’s early morning show, “Opryland USA.” However, despite the nominal connection to country music, the park’s theme was American music in general. There was jazz, gospel, bluegrass, Broadway show tunes, pop, and rock and roll-themed attractions with shows, in addition to country music shows. Opryland’s focus was more on its musical productions than its rides and other attractions, which helped attract adults as much as children, the target of other similar venues. As such, it was billed as a “show park,” instead of an “amusement park,” or “theme park.” There were nine different shows the day we were there with a schedule for each show. I think that we went to one or two of those shows. It cost us $13.25 each of the three of us for an all-day ticket. The Grand Ole Opry House and The Roy Acuff Theater were outside the entrance. Inside there were many themed areas with a showplace theater and many rides. Thus, there was the General Jackson area, the Hill Country Area, the New Orleans Area, the Riverside Area, the Lakeside Area, the American West Area, the Do Wah Diddy City, the State Fair Area, and the Grizzly River Rampage. We had a good time. I have seven postcards from Opryland, featuring seven different rides, a couple of water rides, an old car, a steam engine, and some air spinning rides. I assume that we might have ridden on some of these. Of course, there were restaurants and fast-food areas to eat. I know that we had a full day and were tired that night. Do you like themed or amusement parks?

Music Village, USA, Nashville, Tennessee

Jackson to Nashville was about two hours, on I-40, about 130 miles. After our planation visit, we headed toward our hotel. We stayed three nights at the Holiday Inn at I-24 East, June 13, 14, and 15, 1985, that still exists today as a Holiday Inn Express. That evening, we went to Music Village USA, just north of Nashville in Hendersonville. We visited Twitty City, that country singer Conway Twitty opened in 1982, as it served both as his home and as a country music venue. Harold Lloyd Jenkins (1933–1993), better known as Conway Twitty, was initially part of the 1950s rockabilly scene, but was best known as a country music performer. Harold Jenkins named himself Conway Twitty, after two towns on a map, Conway, Arkansas, and Twitty, Texas. Twitty achieved stardom with hit song in 1970, “Hello Darlin.” In 1971, he released his first hit duet with Loretta Lynn, “After the Fire Is Gone.” He received a string of four consecutive Country Music Association awards (1972–1975) for these duets with Loretta Lynn (1932-2022). He was inducted into both the Country Music and Rockabilly Halls of Fame. Due to his following being compared to a religious revival, he was called “The High Priest of Country Music.” Twitty topped Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart 40 times in his career, a record that stood for two decades. In 1978, Twitty issued the single, “The Grandest Lady of Them All” honoring the Grand Ole Opry. Somewhat ironically, Twitty was never a member of the Opry during his lifetime. Twitty lived for many years in Hendersonville, Tennessee, just north of Nashville, Tennessee, where he built a country music entertainment complex named Twitty City at a cost of over $3.5 million. Twitty City was a popular tourist stop throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s, when it was shut down after his death in 1993. We walked around his estate at no cost, since he only had concerts on Wednesday night, the night before we were there. In 1984, the year before we were there, Music Village USA opened next to Twitty City. However, it was sold in 1989, five years later, so that it no longer exists. That night, he saw Steve Wariner (1954-) an American country music singer, songwriter, and guitarist. We had a southern style barbeque buffet dinner before we paid $4.00 each for the tickets in row L on the floor of “Showcase of the Stars.” Initially, Wariner was a back-up musician for Dottie West, Bob Luman, and Chet Atkins before he began a solo career in the late 1970s. He released eighteen studio albums and over fifty singles for several different record labels. Ten of Wariner’s singles reached the number-one position on the Hot Country Songs charts. Wariner holds several writing credits for both himself and other artists, and has collaborated with Nicolette Larson, Glen Campbell, Diamond Rio, Brad Paisley, Asleep at the Wheel, and Mark O’Connor, among others. He has also won four Grammy Awards. Thus, we ended out first night in Nashville at a country music concert. Have you ever heard of Conway Twitty or Steve Wariner?

Belle Meade Planation, Nashville

That Thursday afternoon, June 13, 1985, we stopped at the Belle Meade Mansion in Nashville, meaning “beautiful meadow,” a historic farm plantation established in 1807. Five generations built, owned, and controlled this southern planation that had 5,400 acres with 136 enslaved workers. The centerpiece was a Greek revival mansion built in 1853. However, Belle Meade Farm gained a national reputation in the latter half of the 19th century for breeding thoroughbred horses for racing, especially the horse Iroquois. After a financial downturn in 1893 and the later death of the owner and his heir, the estate was dismantled and sold in parcels in 1906. Much of the vast area of the original plantation became incorporated in 1938 as the city of Belle Meade that became an upscale residential area. Since 1953, this plantation mansion has been administered in trust by the Association for the Preservation of Tennessee Antiquities, a private non-profit corporation. In the 1970s, this mansion was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Today, this historic site is now operated as an attraction, museum, and winery with an onsite restaurant together with various outbuildings on the 30 remaining acres of property. This was my first encounter with a southern plantation. I later saw many more plantations, but this first one with slave houses and the big mansion made a big impression on me. Have you ever been to a preserved southern plantation?

Casey Jones Village, Jackson, Tennessee

About 90 miles along I-40 from Memphis to Nashville is the town of Jackson, Tennessee, about an hour and a half away. Thus, on Thursday morning, June 13, 1985, we stopped at Casey Jones Village in Jackson, Tennessee, the county seat of Madison County, Tennessee, with a population of 68,205 on 50 square miles. Beginning in 1851, this city became a hub of railroad systems ultimately connecting to major markets in the north and south, as well as east and west, with the further construction of railroads after the American Civil War. Originally named Alexandria, the city was renamed in 1822 to honor General Andrew Jackson, a hero of the War of 1812, who was to become the sixth President of the USA in 1829. John Luther “Casey” Jones (1864–1900) was an American railroader who was killed when his passenger train collided with a stalled freight train in Vaughan, Mississippi, on April 30, 1900. Jones was a locomotive engineer for the Illinois Central Railroad, noted for his exceptionally punctual schedules. He drove the powerful ten-wheeler Engine Number 382, known as the “Cannonball.” Jones managed to avert a potentially disastrous crash through his exceptional skill at slowing the engine and saved the lives of the passengers at the cost of his own. For this, he was immortalized in a traditional song, “The Ballad of Casey Jones.” However, besides the book of Fred J. Lee, Casey Jones: Epic of the American Railroad, published in 1939, many other musicians have written songs and sang about this thirty-six-year-old Casey Jones, as he has become a folk hero of the steam engine railroads. Casey Jones’s fame is largely attributed to the traditional song, “The Ballad of Casey Jones,” also known as “Casey Jones, the Brave Engineer.” Over 30 musicians have recorded songs about Casey Jones, people like Mississippi John Hurt, Harry McClintock, Furry Lewis, Johnny Cash, Ed McCurdy, the Grateful Dead, The New Christy Minstrels, Kris Kristofferson, Allan Sherman, Josh Ritter, Hank Snow, AC/DC, Joe Hill, Roy Acuff, Connie Francis, and Hank Williams Jr. There have been movies and various references to him in TV and films. In 1956, the city of Jackson purchased the Chester Street home of this famed locomotive engineer, Casey Jones, to turn it into a museum and tourist attraction. This house was then moved to a plot of land next to Interstate 40 in 1978. Jones’s widow, Janie Brady Jones, died in 1958, at the age of 92. I have four postcards from this museum in Jackson, one with a caboose in the air, his steam engine on the ground, his house, and a general store. I was interested in these railroad steam engines, since I grew up on Railroad Avenue in Carteret, NJ, with a railroad track across the street, and heard a lot about Casey Jones. Have you ever heard of Casey Jones?

Memphis Mud Island

On Wednesday, June 12, 1985, we visited Mud Island, a small peninsula in Memphis, bordered by the Mississippi River, 1.2 miles from downtown. Mud Island included a museum, restaurants, an amphitheater, and a residential area. Activities on Mud Island included concerts/performances, kayaking, paddle boarding, and biking, but we did not do any of those things. This park was managed and operated by the Memphis River Parks Partnership with free admission. Mud Island River Park, opened in June, 1982, on the south end of the peninsula, a couple of years before our trip in 1985. The Riverwalk was a replica scale model of the Mississippi River carved in cement, 2,000 feet long with plaques about details of the river’s history. Thus, we were able to walk the Mississippi River. However, the Mississippi River Museum was only on Mud Island from 1982 to 2019, so that it is no longer there. The Mud Island Amphitheater was a concrete outdoor amphitheater built for concerts and shows in 1982 that seats up to 5,000 people. The northern portion of Mud Island included mansions, single-family homes, and apartment complexes with a total population of about 15,000 people in Harbor Town. Mud Island had been formed by a buildup of silt, gravel, and sand by 1899. It was originally referred to as City Island until the 1950s. Mud Island became the location of the Memphis Downtown Airport in 1959 and was used primarily by wealthy businessmen to access Downtown Memphis. However, the airport was shut down in 1970 due to the construction of the Interstate 40 bridge. In 1976, the architect responsible for the Memphis International Airport and Memphis College of Art came up with a project to turn 50 acres of the property owned by the city into a destination designed to attract locals and tourists alike. The proposed name for the park was Volunteer Park, but it was later named Mud Island Park when it was opened on July 4, 1982. I remember later watching the 1993 movie, The Firm, where the climax of a chaotic Tom Cruise chase ended up here on Mud Island. I really liked this, since we had as much time as we wanted to look around. It was very educational about the Mississippi River. Have you ever heard of Mud Island?

Beale Street, Home of the Blues

On Tuesday afternoon, June 11, 1985, we headed for Beale Street in downtown Memphis, that runs from the Mississippi River to East Street, approximately 2 miles, a significant location in the history of blues music. Today, the blues clubs and restaurants that line Beale Street are major tourist attractions in Memphis, as festivals and outdoor concerts frequently bring large crowds to the street and its surrounding areas. Created in 1841, during the 1860s, many black traveling musicians began performing on Beale Street in the many blues clubs, originating the unique Memphis blues sound. Thus, it was nicknamed the “Home of the Blues.” In 1890, Beale Street underwent renovation with the addition of the Grand Opera House, later known as the Orpheum. Beale Street Baptist Church is Tennessee’s oldest surviving African American Church edifice, built beginning in 1869. In the early 1900s, Beale Street was filled with many clubs, restaurants, and shops, many of them owned by African-Americans. In 1903, W. C. Handy made Memphis his home, so that he is called “Father of the Blues.” Beale Street has become a national historical landmark. From the 1920s to the 1940s, Louis Armstrong, Muddy Waters, Albert King, Memphis Minnie, B. B. King, Rufus Thomas, Rosco Gordon, and other blues and jazz legends played on Beale Street and helped develop the music style known as Memphis Blues. As a young man, B. B. King was billed as “the Beale Street Blues Boy.” After World War II, electric guitars took precedence over the original acoustic sound from the Mississippi Delta. Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison all made their first recordings there. The song “Beale Street Blues,” written by W. C. Handy, contains the oldest known references to Beale Street, but other singers have made a reference to Beale Street in their songs including: Joni Mitchell, Cab Calloway, Todd Agnew, Marc Cohn, Eric Church, Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmy Buffett, Bette Midler, and John Lee Hooker. In the 1960s, Beale St. had fallen on hard times and many businesses closed, as it became a virtual ghost town after a disastrous urban renewal program. In 1973, the Beale Street Development Corporation (BSDC), began for the redevelopment of Beale Street between Second and Fourth streets. In 1982, the City of Memphis recommended that the BSDC hire a management company for the development of the street by securing new tenants, collecting rents, and handling certain maintenance and security issues. Each new lease had to be agreed upon by BSDC, the City of Memphis and the management company. I have four postcards and a brochure from Abram Schwab, a store started in 1874, at 163 Beale Street. As the twentieth century wore on, this Schwab store remained an anchor in this community. Ultimately, it was the only business that survived. In 1974, in the face of dismal traffic, Schwab launched the Beale Street Museum showcasing the community’s rich heritage. In the 1980s, the Schwab family played a vital role in the re-launch of Beale Street as an entertainment district. They adapted their merchandise to appeal to tourists while continuing to offer an old-fashioned experience. That is when we were there in 1985, as the store became a museum that still sold regular an tourist items. Did you ever walk on Beale Street?

Graceland

On Tuesday morning, June 11, 1985, we had three tickets for Graceland that that cost $6.50 each, scheduled for 9:33 AM, tour number 21. We did not tour Elvis’ private jet the “Lisa Marie” plane or his touring bus that was across the street. Thus, we entered through the music-themed gate. I have two brochures and four 1985 postcards from our visit. Graceland is a mansion on a fourteen-acre estate in Memphis, the former home of the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley, who is buried there with the rest of his family. Graceland is about ten miles south of central Memphis and less than four miles north of the Mississippi state border. Located at 3764 Elvis Presley Boulevard, Graceland was opened to the public as a house museum on June 7, 1982, and has attracted more than 650,000 visitors annually. In May, 2016, they welcomed their 20 millionth visitor. Thus, we were there three years after it opened. Since then, many famous visitors have visited Graceland, that has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places since 1991, and a National Historic Landmark since 2006. Graceland Farms was originally owned by Stephen C. Toof, but named after Toof’s daughter, Grace (1860-1928) who never married. After her death, the property passed to her niece Ruth Moore (1893-1974), who commissioned the construction of a 10,266-square-foot Colonial Revival style mansion in 1939, the same year I was born. Today, this Graceland mansion is a 17,552 square feet house with 23 rooms. Elvis Presley purchased Graceland on March 19, 1957, for a $102,500. Graceland continued to be occupied by members of his family until the death of Elvis’ aunt Delta in 1993, who had moved in at Elvis’ invitation, after her husband’s death. Graceland is a two-story, five-bay residence with two one-story wings on the north and south sides. The central block’s front and side facades are limestone from Mississippi, and its rear wall is stucco. Flanked by two marble lions, four stone steps ascend from the driveway to the two-story central projecting portico. Above the main entrance is another rectangular window, completed with a shallow iron balcony. We only got to see the first-floor rooms, because someone was still living on the second floor. To the left of the Entrance Hall is the mirrored Living Room, a little bit like Versailles, and then the Dining Room. In the mid-1960s, Presley enlarged the house to create a den as his favorite room that became known as the Jungle Room, which featured an indoor waterfall of cut field stone on the north wall. This room also contained items related to and imported from the state of Hawaii, with shag carpeting. In 1976, this Jungle Room was converted into a recording studio, where Elvis recorded the bulk of his final two albums. The new wing initially housed a slot car track, but he remodeled it to become his Trophy Room. The Entrance Hall contained a white staircase leading to the house’s second floor with a wall of mirrors. Downstairs in the basement was the three TV room, with a billiard pool table. One of Presley’s better-known modifications was the addition of the Meditation Garden, where he and his family members are buried. Paul Simon named an album Graceland, as well as its title track that won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1987. Have you ever been to Graceland?

Memphis, Tennessee

Memphis is a city in western Tennessee, the county seat of Shelby County, in the most southwestern part of the state, along the Mississippi River, with a population of 633,104, the largest city bordering the Mississippi River, and third largest metropolitan area behind St. Louis and the Twin Cities on the Mississippi River. Memphis is one of the most historic and culturally significant cities of the Southern USA. Today, this city has a majority African-American population (61%), with white (24%), Hispanic (10%), and Asians (2%), while fifty years ago, Memphis’s population was 61% white and 39% black. Memphis is a center for entertainment with a historic music scene with founders and pioneers of various American music genres, including soul, blues, gospel, rock n’ roll, rockabilly, rap, and sharecropper country music. Occupying a substantial bluff rising from the Mississippi River, the site of Memphis has been a natural location for human settlement by various indigenous cultures over thousands of years. In the Treaty of Tuscaloosa in 1818, the Chickasaw ceded their territory in Western Tennessee to the USA. John Overton, James Winchester, and Andrew Jackson founded Memphis less than five months after the USA takeover of the territory, in 1819, naming it after the ancient capital of Egypt on the Nile River. Based on the wealth of the cotton plantations and river traffic along the Mississippi, Memphis grew into one of the largest cities of the antebellum South, as the world’s largest spot cotton market, where it was known as King Cotton. From the city’s foundation onwards, African American slaves formed a large proportion of Memphis’ population. The city’s demographics changed dramatically in the 1850s and 1860s, due to waves of immigration and domestic migration, especially Irish people who made up 23% of Memphis by 1860. A race war, between the city’s ethnic Irish policemen and black Union soldiers after the Civil war, led to three days of rioting in early May 1866, as 48 blacks died. Memphis played a prominent role in the twentieth century American Civil Rights Movement. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968, the day after giving his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech for the garbage union African-Americans. Thus, the National Civil Rights Museum has been established there. Today, the largest employer in Memphis is FedEx, which maintains its global air hub at Memphis International Airport, first or second among the world’s busiest cargo airports. A major professional NBA sports team, the Memphis Grizzlies, play at the FedEx Forum. Many famous musicians and well-known writers were from Memphis. Several songs have Memphis in their titles and lyrics. In recent years, Memphis has appeared in many movies, as it also sponsors several film festivals. The St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, focused on children’s catastrophic diseases, was conceived and built by entertainer Danny Thomas in 1962. Memphis is also home to Memphis-style barbecue and fried chicken. What do you know about Memphis?

The state of Tennessee

Tennessee is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the USA. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina to the east, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to the south, Arkansas to the southwest, and Missouri to the northwest. On top of that, the western border of Tennessee is the Mississippi River itself. Tennessee is the 36th state by area, but the 15th-most populous state in the USA, with a population of a little over 7 million people. Tennessee is geographically, culturally, and legally divided into three grand divisions of East, Middle, and West Tennessee, with 95 counties. Nashville is the state’s capital and largest city, and anchors its largest metropolitan area. Tennessee contains a mix of cultural features characteristic of Appalachia, the Upland South, and the Deep South. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the nation’s most visited national park, is in eastern Tennessee, Nashville in the center, and Memphis in the west. We were going west to east. Tennessee was initially part of North Carolina, and later the Southwest Territory, before its admission to the Union as the 16th state on June 1, 1796. It earned the nickname “The Volunteer State” due to a strong tradition of military service, starting in the War of 1812. A slave state until the American Civil War, Tennessee was politically divided, with most of its western and middle parts supporting the Confederacy, while most of the eastern region harbored pro-Union sentiment. As a result, Tennessee was the last state to officially secede from the Union and the first former Confederate state readmitted to the Union after the civil war. During the 20th century, Tennessee was aided by massive federal investment in the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the city of Oak Ridge. During World War II, the Manhattan Project’s uranium enrichment facilities for the construction of the world’s first atomic bombs was established at Oak Ridge. Tennessee had played a major role in the development of many forms of popular music, including country, blues, rock and roll, soul, and gospel. Tennessee derives its name from the Cherokee town of Tanasi in present-day Monroe County, Tennessee, on the Tanasi River, now known as the Little Tennessee River. The modern spelling, “Tennessee,” was attributed to Governor James Glen of South Carolina, who used this spelling in his official correspondence during the 1750s. Two people associated with Tennessee became USA presidents. Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) had a Nashville Hermitage plantation before he became the seventh president of the USA (1829-1837). Jackson made the Cherokee and Chickasaw move to Oklahoma in the famous Trail of Tears. Vice President Andrew Johnson (1808-1875), who became President (1865-1869) after the death of Lincoln, had been governor of Tennessee (1853-1857) before becoming Vice President. The population of Tennessee is about 70% white, 17% African American, and 7% Hispanic. The four most common self-reported ethnic groups in the state are English (8%), Irish (7%), German (5%), and Scotch-Irish (3%). About 81% of the population identifies as Christian in this Bible Belt religious state, with Protestants making up 73% of the population, Evangelical Christians represent 52% of the Protestants, while Roman Catholics make up only 6%. Have you ever been to Tennessee?

A trip to Tennessee in 1985

In the summer of 1983, we went west to California. In 1984, we went to the East Coast. Guess what? In 1985, we were heading south to spend nine days in Tennessee. We were going country! As soon as school was out in June of 1985, we headed south on I-57 to Memphis, Tennessee. Although the sign coming out of Chicago always said this way to Memphis on I-57, off the Dan Ryan highway, it really was not that close. It was an 8 and-half hour car ride, 534 miles from Chicago to Memphis, like going to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a full day’s ride including potty stops, food stops, and gas stops, sometimes all at once. Thus, we spent practically all day, Monday, June 10, 1985, on the road, on I-57. We were going to spend three nights at the Regal Inn in Memphis, that is still there today, at 4063 S. 3^rd Street. Of course, we were going to see Graceland and the King Elvis, then to Beale Street, and finally to Mud Island, on the Mississippi. Once again, I had crammed a lot of stuff into a short period of time. There were no relatives down in Tennessee, it was pure entertainment. Then, we were going to head east to Jackson, the home of the Casey Jones Museum. Then it was on to Nashville, Country Music City USA, for three days, where we were going to Opryland and the Grand Ole Opry. Further east was Chattanooga, Gatlinburg, and Pigeon Forge with Silver Dollar City, before it became Dollywood the following year in 1986, the year after we were there. We planned to stay three days in Gatlinburg, and take the Blue Ridge Parkway from the Smoky Mountains in North Carolina to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, including Asheville, NC. Then we were headed to southern Pennsylvania, to visit Gettysburg and Hershey Park, and then back home again going west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. This was going to be a packed two weeks, but we were ready for it. Have you ever traveled in the south?