The great American road trip that music lovers will adore

Times

5 hours ago

Out they stream, hands a-clappin' and feet a-tappin', a whirl of crimson cowboy shirts and petticoat-boosted skirts. Saturday night is square dance night at the Grand Ole Opry and the packed house is loving it, the woman sitting next to me more than anyone.
'That's my granddaughter,' she says proudly, pointing up at one of the dancers. 'Let's go, Casey!'
Grand Ole Opry, America's longest-running radio programme, turned 100 this year. Broadcasting live musical performances (with the odd high-kicking interlude) from Nashville, it is known as the show that made country music famous, showcasing everyone from Hank Williams to Taylor Swift (tickets from £32; opry.com). There is a full calendar of special events to mark the centenary, including the Opry's first foray overseas, at the Royal Albert Hall in September, when the golden boy Luke Combs will headline.
I was at the start of a week of pure musical indulgence, going from the honky-tonks of downtown Nashville to the blues bars of Memphis and the jazz joints of New Orleans: a 600-mile dream of a road trip with a no-skip playlist.
The Opry has been staged at a snazzy 4,000-capacity venue next to an out-of-town shopping mall since the mid-Seventies. Actually, the shopping mall is relatively new; until 1997 there was a theme park here called Opryland. What I would give to have seen Dolly Parton riding the log flume while Johnny Cash minded the bags and nibbled at a corn dog.
For the real romance of the Opry you have to go downtown to the Ryman Auditorium, the former church that hosted the show for the 30 years beforehand. Built by a riverboat captain who found God, the Ryman is where the likes of Patsy Cline and Elvis Presley took some of their first steps towards stardom, performing in front of audiences perched on wooden pews. The Opry may have moved on, but the magic of the Ryman lingers and a tour will give you backstage access (from £35; ryman.com).
Not that everyone wants to linger behind the scenes. Nip out of the rear door and you're in the alley that separates the Ryman from the country bars, or honky-tonks, of Lower Broadway. Plenty of musicians have livened up a soundcheck with a few sharpeners or an impromptu set at Robert's Western World or Tootsie's Orchid Lounge; Willie Nelson even sang of the '17 steps to Tootsie's and 34 steps back'.
Lower Broad, as the street is known in this patch of Tennessee, is very much the party strip in this booming city. Thirty or so bars, most with live bands, jostle for space while neon signs flash and party buses cruise the street. The open-backed buses all seem to be filled with women in pink cowboy hats holding on to stripper poles and screaming along to Shania Twain. Alcohol may be involved. Welcome to Nash Vegas, hen-do capital of the US.
The three-hour, 200-mile drive west to Memphis is largely unremarkable, other than the odd church sign on the side of the road telling me that 'Satan is on a rampage'. But there are points of interest if you know what you're looking for. Interstate 40 takes you right past Jackson, where Carl 'Blue Suede Shoes' Perkins is buried, as well as Brownsville and Nutbush, Tina Turner's old stomping grounds.
I know to look out for these places because of a guy called Aubrey Preston, whom I'd met in Leiper's Fork, a pretty village half an hour's drive south of Nashville. Preston is a music nut and his passion project is the Americana Music Triangle, an initiative that uses live music events and guided driving routes to champion the stories of the musicians and places dotted between the three cities I'm visiting (americanamusictriangle.com).
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Over a plate of barbecue at Fox & Locke, the village's main bar (mains from £6; foxandlocke.com), we chatted about how British and Irish immigrants moved inland from the Appalachians towards Nashville, bringing their fiddles and ballads. And about how that music mixed with the banjos, drums and rhythms of enslaved Africans, the folk songs of Cajun settlers, Spanish guitars and countless other influences that made their way up and down the Mississippi River.
'It all came crashing together inside this triangle, like in a big washing machine,' Preston said. 'And what came out of it was country, blues, jazz, rock'n'roll, gospel … everything. It's all related. And there's music everywhere.'
It's something I thought about as I checked out of the Dark Horse Estate the next morning. A rustic retreat between Leiper's Fork and the small city of Franklin, the Estate is a working recording studio with a handful of simple, comfortable, overpriced rooms, primarily for artists to stay in while making albums. Keith Urban, Carrie Underwood and Tim McGraw have all recorded here, although I don't know who was playing drums as I packed up the car.
Pulling off the highway into Memphis, the contrast with the country music capital is immediate and obvious. While Nashville felt glossy and prosperous, Memphis feels gritty and unvarnished. But what the city lacks in glitter, it makes up for in soul. And blues. And rock'n'roll.
For soul there's the Stax museum, a fabulous shrine to the record label that gave us Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes (£15; staxmuseum.org). For rock'n'roll there's Sun Studio (£15; sunstudio.com), where Elvis cut his first record, and Graceland, his mansion on the outskirts of town, which has huge exhibition halls covering every rhinestone-encrusted inch of Mr Pelvis's life (from £38; graceland.com).
And for blues? Well, as Lower Broad is to Nashville, so Beale Street is to Memphis: a live music hot box dripping in neon and party people. Musicians have been stopping to play here since the mid-1800s, its heyday coming a hundred years later, when big hitters like Muddy Waters and BB King would clamber up on to various stages here, helping to define Memphis blues.
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After a finger-lickin' dinner of crispy chicken and fried green tomatoes at Gus's, a local paper plate and plastic cup favourite (mains from £8; gusfriedchicken.com), I leave the car back at my hotel, the grand, old-school Peabody. They say the Mississippi Delta starts in the lobby here; I don't know about that, but I do know that it's home to Lansky Bros, the outfitters who used to dress Elvis in all those fabulous suits he wore when he was starting out. I also know that twice a day crowds gather to watch a man in a red tailcoat escort a parade of ducks to and from the lobby fountain.
It's a five-minute waddle from the Peabody to Beale Street, where I spend the evening dipping in and out of its two dozen music bars. I pull up a stool at the BB King's Blues Club for last orders and the final few songs from the All-Stars (£7; bbkings.com), before slipping over the road to an alleyway with a stage, a ramshackle bar and a blistering blues band who laugh in the face of closing time.
The next morning, after a breakfast of great sausage, delicious biscuits and grim, tasteless grits at the Arcade diner, an old Elvis hangout (mains from £8; arcaderestaurant.com), I point the car south.
As with the route from Nashville to Memphis, there's not much to see on the six-hour, 400-mile drive down Interstate 55 to New Orleans, but I have good company. Al Green and Jerry Lee Lewis play me through Tennessee and Mississippi, before I hit Louisiana and my old friends Dr John and Fats Domino usher me into the Big Easy.
Peering out over Bourbon Street from my hotel room balcony that evening, I can see a group of teenagers drumming on upturned buckets and, further along, a brass band cranking out some wild Dixieland tunes. The street's trickle of revellers clutching overpriced cocktails in novelty glasses is slowly turning into a river. The Bourbon is starting to flow.
But this strip is for the amateurs; everyone knows the best music in New Orleans is on Frenchmen Street. I load up on rich, tangy turtle soup and soft, sweet, pecan-crusted catfish at Palace Café on Canal Street (mains from £13; palacecafe.com) then hop on a streetcar and head Frenchwards.
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A small, rickety, dimly lit joint with a stage by the door, the Spotted Cat is jumping, courtesy of the Jumbo Shrimp Jazz Band, who are laying down some playful, horn-heavy jazz, mixing in a little country twang and bluesy muscle (drinks from £7; spottedcatmusicclub.com). I spend the rest of the night moseying between the dozen or so bars, stopping to listen to a soul singer here, pausing to catch a zydeco band there.
At Preservation Hall the next afternoon the atmosphere is more cerebral. This is a peach of a venue, a dilapidated room in the French Quarter with wooden benches for the audience and a stage where master musicians play a handful of short trad jazz sets each day (from £20; preservationhall.com). There's no a/c, booze or loos and I booked my ticket late so have to stand at the back. Yet hearing the house band steam through standards like When the Saints Go Marching In and Basin Street Blues in this hall, in this city, is so good I almost weep.
I leave and wander down towards the Mississippi, passing saxophonists on street corners and bars with trios playing to day drinkers. Past the French Market, where a jazz band entertains the beignet brigade at Café du Monde, and on to Elysian Fields Avenue, the setting for A Streetcar Named Desire. I cross Frenchmen Street and find my way to Louis Armstrong Park, named after one of the city's most famous sons and home to Congo Square. In the early 19th century this square was the only place where enslaved Africans were allowed to gather, on Sunday afternoons, and express their culture through music and dance.
Those were the rhythms that are thought to have formed the foundations of New Orleans jazz. And those were the rhythms that travelled up the Mississippi and into Aubrey Preston's incredible washing machine.
Now there's a name for a band. See you at the Albert Hall in September.Mike Atkins was a guest of the Tennessee Department of Tourism (tnvacation.com); New Orleans (neworleans.com); Sheraton Grand Nashville Downtown, which has room-only doubles from £121 (marriott.com); Dark Horse Estate, which has one night's self-catering for four from £290 (airbnb.com); the Peabody Memphis, which has room-only doubles from £148 a night (peabodymemphis.com); Hyatt Centric French Quarter, which has B&B doubles from £160 (hyatt.com); and Wexas, which has 11 nights' B&B from £2,495pp on the All-American Music Tour, including flights and car hire (wexas.com)