Here’s a random bit of Memphis history, one that Scott Bomar pointed out when we ate at the Belmont Grill the other night:
At the intersection of Mendenhall and Poplar Avenue in East Memphis is where Elvis got off the train and walked home to his Audubon Drive house after returning from New York, where he appeared on The Steve Allen Show and, wearing a tuxedo and tails, sang “Hound Dog” to an actual hound dog.
Photographer Alfred Wertheimer, who photographed the trip, returned with Elvis back to Memphis via train, and documented when the train dropped him off and Elvis walked home to his house.
All of Wertheimer’s photographs were collected in a book called Elvis at 21, and they are just astounding. You see a young Elvis Presley, who is famous, but not so famous as to be unable to walk down the street in his own hometown.
Of course, this area of East Memphis has changed dramatically since 1956, but this is the spot where the train dropped off Elvis, allowing Wertheimer to snap these incredible shots of him, possibly in the last moments of Elvis Presley‘s life where he could be this “normal.”
