Backbeat Tours' Elvis Week 2014 Scavenger Hunt

Happy Elvis Week, everyone! For 2014, we’re hosting a special Elvis Week Scavenger Hunt, running August 9-14. There will be a new “hunt” posted every day at 8AM CT, along with a little history about the location. This is all you have to do!:

Take a photo of the “hunt” of the day, post your picture via Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook with the hashtags #BackbeatTours and #ElvisWeek2014 —From this, we will follow participants, repost pictures, and choose winners! There will be one winner every day, announced at 7pm, and the prize will be $10 in ELVIS BUCKS to use at Graceland and a special Backbeat Tours sticker.

This will be so much fun and we’re so looking forward to seeing everyone’s entries! You get to show off your photography skills, enter to win prizes, and experience a little “backbeat” Elvis history all at once. The King would want you to... 

Here is a list of scavenger hunt places for each day of the contest:

Sat - University Park Cleaners, 613 N. McLean, where Elvis, Bill Black, and Scotty Moore practiced when they first started.

Sun - Coletta’s, 1036 S. Parkway; Italian restaurant that Elvis frequented, and home to the BEST BBQ PIZZA IN MEMPHIS!

Mon - Scotty Moore’s home, 1248 Meda.

Tues - Sears Crosstown, where the Presley’s shopped frequently. Priscilla purchased blue drapes for Graceland, while elvis purchased much of the furniture for Circle G Ranch here.

Wednesday - First Assembly of God church (now called Alpha Church), 1084 McLemore; The Presley’s church when Elvis was a Teenager.

Thursday - Holiday Inn “Rivermont”. Now condos on the south end of Tom Lee Park, this is where Elvis was named one of the 10 Outstanding Young Men of America by the Jaycees). 

** Entries must be made according to the location corresponding date and tagged both “#BackbeatTours and #ElvisWeek2014” to win. 

Elvis Week is Coming!

We can't wait for Elvis Week! The glitz, the glamour, the vigil, the tribute artists! As always, we're offering our special all-Elvis Hound Dog Tours, but this year they're bigger and better than ever!  To celebrate, we'll be giving away free tickets to the Hound Dog and Mojo tours during our Elvis Trivia contest the weekend of June 27-29. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter to play along.

If you've never been on the Hound Dog tour before, you don't want to miss this unique show on wheels! Led by professional, local musicians who are Elvis devotees, it's a high-energy concert and sightseeing tour rolled into one. You'll hear your favorite Elvis hits performed live on the bus while seeing where he grew up, where he went to school, where he worked, and where he dreamed.

Elvis at Lauderdale Cts.

19-yr. old Elvis before an early concert.

The 2 to 3-hour tour includes an optional visit inside the Presley family apartment at Lauderdale Courts, where a 13-year old Elvis lived shortly after his family moved from Tupelo to Memphis. Restored to its 1950s appearance, a visit to the Presley apartment is like taking a step back in time, offering a glimpse into the lives of Elvis, the teenager, and his family.

(a) Elvis at Sun w/Sam Phillips and Marion Keisker; (b) with prom date, Regis Wilson, (c) on Main Street

Other sites on the tour are:

• Sun Studio
• Elvis' home on Audubon Drive, where the family moved shortly after Elvis made it big
• Elvis' high school
• Lansky Bros. clothing store
• The former Memphian Theater
• The Overton Park Shell, where Elvis gave one of his first concerts
• The Hotel Chisca, home of WHBQ radio station
• Supercycles, where Elvis purchased his motorcycles
• And much, much more!

Elvis at 1034 Audubon Drive, poolside and out front signing autographs

(a) Elvis on motorcycle; (b) with Bernard Lansky; (c) at Memphian Theater with date

The Hound Dog Tour has become an Elvis Week tradition with many passengers returning year after year. Come celebrate the man behind the legend. Whether you're a longtime fan or a new admirer, we guarantee fun for all!

Here's a video preview, courtesy of the Elvis Presley You Tube Channel.

Hound Dog Tours are scheduled for August 9, 10, 12, 14, 16, and 17. For times, information, and prices, click here or call (901) 527-9415. For more information about other Elvis Week events, go to http://www.graceland.com/elvisweek/.

Again, don't forget to play along via Facebook and Twitter in our Elvis Week Trivia contest for fun prizes! And if you're as big a fan as we are, @BackbeatTours to share some Elvis trivia of your own!

Happy Birthday Elvis! Life Before He Was King

Happy birthday, Elvis! To celebrate, Backbeat Tours and Graceland have teamed up for a very special 60 Years of Rock ‘n’ Roll Tour that you don’t want to miss. Click here for tour times. And make sure to check out the links at the end for other great events here and in Tupelo, Mississippi.

Forty years ago the City of Memphis held a parade down Elvis Presley Boulevard to the gates of Graceland, complete with floats and marching bands and both city and county mayors in attendance. Elvis himself came down to the gates and joined the festivities. Can you think of anything more awesome than your own city proclaiming a special day in your honor, and holding a parade down a street named after you to your very driveway, just to wish you happy birthday? (In case you’re reading this, Mayor Wharton, my birthday is April 17. Plenty of time to plan!) Elvis was accustomed to fame long before this, of course, but still, it had to be a thrill for him. 

But what about before all the fame and hoopla, back when he was just another kid in East Tupelo? I’ve been reading a lot about Elvis’ childhood in Depression-Era Mississippi, and it got me wanting to celebrate Elvis’ birthday the old East Tupelo way. (Because nothing says "party!" more than "Depression-Era Mississippi.")

So what were they like, Elvis’ birthday celebrations back in the day? Certainly far from the extravaganzas of later years. The Presleys were poor – “poor as a snail,” as one family friend put it, which sums it up pretty well. A few of Elvis’ friends would gather at the honoree’s house, and everyone would have the usual meal of beans and potatoes. (They weren’t vegetarians – that was just typically all they had.) If it was a good year, maybe Gladys would cook a chicken (after wringing its neck that very morning). There was usually cake and ice cream, of course – it was a birthday celebration, after all – but the ice cream, like the cake, was homemade, churned in an old-timey ice cream machine. The kids would all take turns cranking the handle for hours on end. (Fun!)

And what about presents? Elvis would typically receive a shirt. A single shirt. I don’t know how many little boys’ birthday parties you’ve been to recently, but if the kid in question received a single shirt, and nothing else….well, let’s just step back from the horror of it all and simply remark that times have certainly changed. The shirt would be homemade out of feed sack material, a common practice during the Depression when many families didn’t have money to spend on store-bought clothing. Gladys, like many other Depression-era mothers, saved the bags that held the chicken feed, hog feed, flour and oatmeal that they purchased. These were big 50 lb. sacks sometimes made of colorful patterned cotton designed to attract the customer who was as interested in the sewing material as much as the chicken feed. Once the bags were emptied and washed and the labels and any printing removed, Gladys stitched and sewed them into dresses for her or shirts for Vernon and Elvis. Magdalene Morgan, a childhood friend of Elvis’, remembered that “Gladys was very good at sewing. She worked in a sewing factory. So Elvis would wind up getting the shirt, maybe a bar of candy.” There’s something in the simplicity of it all that’s appealing, even today. 

So drag out the ol’ ice cream machine, and get crankin’! As Magdalene puts it, “Those were the good ol’ times, something we will always remember.”

Elvis Birthday Celebration in Memphis: http://www.elvis.com/news/birthday_celebration_2014.aspx
Elvis Birthday events in Tupelo: http://tupelo.net/things/elvis_in_tupelo/default.aspx

Backbeat & The Buddy Holly Story: A Perfect Match

Tuesday, we had the honor of taking the cast of Buddy - The Buddy Holly Story to Graceland. We love everything rockabilly so we were extremely excited to meet the people who bring this wonderful musical to life on stage. Hopefully we hid our over-enthusiasm fairly well!

The tour – led by Backbeat’s own rockabilly superhero, Brandon Cunning – started off with a bang. There was some great harmonizing to Blue Suede Shoes – a salute to our hometown boys, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley. As much as we love the Texas-born Holly, we do live in Memphis after all, so we could hardly resist a little friendly competition. It was some of the best singing and rhythm our bus has ever seen – I don’t thnk we’ve ever had more talented passengers!. My favorite part of the day, though, was when the cast joined Brandon to sing the Holly hit Oh Boy. Check out the video!

The tour was a treat for Brandon, who grew up listening to Elvis, the Ventures, Bo Diddly, and yes, Buddy Holly. He and his band, the Stunning Cunning Band, regularly perform Holly tunes such as Oh Boy, That’ll Be the Day, Maybe Baby, Rave On, I’m Looking for Somebody to Love, and others in their Beale Street shows. (Brandon’s favorite Holly song? Raining in My Heart.)

Brandon and I both had a chance to meet lead actor Todd Meredith, who is reprising the role of Holly in the national touring company for his fourteenth time. (The musical originally opened in London in 1989.) Meredith has been a fan of Holly for most of his life and has his own tribute band to Holly called “The Rave-Ons.” Click here to check out this footage of Meredith’s personal tour of Graceland led by one of their archivists.

Later that night, many of our Backbeat staff members, all ardent Holly fans, went to see the opening night performance of the show. If you like jukebox musicals that grab you by the heart and make you want to get up and dance, then this is the show for you! The story follows the life of young Holly from his early days in Lubbock, Texas, to the formation of his band, the Crickets, and the development of the unique Holly rockabilly sound. The highlight of the first act was a recreation of the Crickets’ legendary performance in Harlem at the Apollo Theatre, where the band was mistakenly booked by someone who thought they were African-American. The cast’s performances of Oh Boy, Peggy Sue, Words of Love, and Shout got me dancing in my seat.

It was the second act’s recreation of the Winter Dance Party Tour, though, that really captured my heart. It featured what would end up being Holly’s last performance. By this time in Holly’s career, Buddy had split with the Crickets and met and married the love of his life, the Puerto-Rican beauty Maria Elena Santiago. Along with him on the tour were the Big Bopper, played by Greg Kalafatas, and Ritchie Valens, played by Danny Caraballo. Kalafatas and Caraballo did rousing renditions of Chantilly Lace and La Bamba, but it was Meredith’s performance of Johnny B. Goode that brought the crowd to its feet, singing and dancing along with the cast.

We’ll never know what might have happened had Buddy Holly not taken that fateful flight to Minnesota in the winter of 1959. Though we can’t take back that night, at least we can relive Holly’s memory with this great musical. It’s not too late to get your tickets! The show runs through Sunday, October 20, at the Orpheum. See below for ticket information.