Motor coach will take participants to the Beethoven Club. Standing and walking in the Rock n Soul Museum and the Metal Museum up to an hour.
At the hotel.
After breakfast, our coach will transport the group to the Beethoven Club where we will enjoy a special presentation with a professional historian who literally “wrote the book” on Beale Street and the blues — an illustrated and entertaining project on the rich variety of music in Memphis through the years. Sit back and enjoy the professional historian/musician perform a private piano session for our group. After an energetic lecture and performance, we will visit the Memphis Metal Museum. Located on 3.2 acres overlooking the Mississippi River, south of downtown Memphis, is one of Memphis' best kept secrets. This property which includes three historic buildings was formerly part of a public health service hospital and is now the residence for artists, a museum, and a library.
On your own.
After lunch, we will meet meet up at the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum, the first museum ever jointly developed by the Smithsonian Institution and the National Museum of American History. Debuted in August 2004, it came out of a traveling exhibition on the roots of uniquely American music in the South, from “field hollers” to work songs, blues, country, and gospel. These more countrified forms gradually met and mingled with their urban cousins: blues, jazz, and what became rock ‘n’ roll, rockabilly, rhythm and blues, and soul music.. It charts the story of a field of music that has had a tremendous impact on popular culture and lifestyles from the mid-20th Century through today. It also documents the story of musical pioneers who overcame racial and socio-economic barriers to create music that changed our world. The museum’s digital audio guide lets us move at our own pace on a self-guided visit through seven galleries of audio-visual programs, instruments, costumes, other musical treasures, and more than 300 minutes of information including more than 100 songs.
Dinner will be at the famous B.B. King's Blues Club. The house band is B.B. King’s All Stars, and guest musicians include some of the best in the business for one of the most diverse, sophisticated line ups of modern blues and R&B in Memphis — a good show every night of the week. Feel free to jump up and dance or sit back and relax. This is the real deal! Then go out and hear music up and down Beale Street on your own.
At leisure or continue the fun at B. B. King's Blues Club.