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Memphis
Here on Beale Street, turn-of-the-century Alabama cornetist W.C. Handy helped make blues popular. Now, stars like B.B. King carry on the tunes.
 
TRAVELER Magazine Memphis
Any Memphian will tell you that there’s more to Memphis than Elvis Presley’s Graceland. In recent years the city has transformed itself from a rundown has-been to a center of Southern chic. World-class museums, international exhibits, festivals, and beautiful Victorian homes all make interesting diversions. Then there’s Mud Island, where a scale model—five city blocks long—replicates every branch, backwater, eddy, and oxbow of the lower Mississippi Valley.

Musicians of every variety—jazz, blues, country, rock-and-roll—make pilgrimages to record here. Beale Street, where Memphis blues went big-time, is now a popular nightspot with restaurants, shopping, and live music. Elvis would be proud.

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© 1997 National Geographic Society.   All rights reserved.   Photograph by Gail Mooney.
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