Southern Tour Part One: Nashville and Memphis

Remember the "Goofus and Gallant" comic strip that ran in "Highlights for Children" magazine - the one that aimed to teach kids about manners? "Gallant" was the well-groomed boy who did everything right. He was the one your mother hoped you'd grow up to be. And his sometimes etiquette-challenged counterpart "Goofus" was, well, the guy with whom you could have a lot of fun getting in trouble.

If ever two cities embodied the best parts of Goofus and Gallant, it's Tennessee's twin music metropolises Nashville and Memphis. Nashville as Gallant is the sleek booming capital of the multi-billion dollar country music industry, and Memphis (the Goofus of the pair) is the down and dirty birthplace of Blues music and home to the best rib joints in the country as well as the castle to Rock and Roll original bad boy king, Elvis Presley.

Both cities were featured on the first leg of Luxury Gold's Southern Grace tour. If you're looking for a cruise-like experience with pre-planned itineraries but enough off-time to go and explore, this type of inland adventure may be the perfect fit.

Nashville

Our trip in Nashville started out at the Gaylord Opryland Resort, a behemoth of a hospitality complex that includes numerous restaurants, bars, water features and entertainment attractions. Think "cruise ship that never leaves the harbor, " and you get the idea. Luckily, the hotel offers shuttle service to and from downtown Nashville.

My Nashville musical adventure began on "Music Row" at RCA's famed Studio B, where some of the biggest acts in Rock and Roll and Country music recorded more than 1,000 hits. It was here that Dolly Parton recorded "Jolene," "I Will Always Love You" and "Coat of Many Colors." And it was in Studio B that after a marathon recording session, that Elvis had all the lights turned off to set the mood for him to lay down the vocal track for "Are You Lonesome Tonight?"

From Studio B, we headed downtown to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum where Luxury Gold arranged for a private performance and talk-back with Grammy Award-winning songwriter Richard Leigh. Best known for penning the platinum-selling single "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue," Leigh delighted our group with his wry quips and backstage Nashville dish.

While a stroll around the museum is a veritable feast for the ears, the fashions from Country Music's Rhinestone era provide more than a few unintended laughs. Bling may have been perfected by hip hop culture, but it's clear that its roots are in Nashville. Nowhere was this more evident than the car collection of the museum that featured Elvis Presley's solid gold 1960 Cadillac and Honky Tonk pioneer Webb Pierce's 1962 Pontiac Bonneville festooned with silver dollars, real pistols for door handles and a rifle hood ornament.

If you're staying in Nashville over the weekend, be sure to get tickets to a live broadcast of The Grand Ole Opry. This music show, a radio staple since 1925, usually plays outside of Nashville closer to the Gaylord Opryland Hotel. Fortunately, our Southern Grace tour fell during December when the radio broadcast is relocated from the Grand Ole Opry House to the historic Ryman Auditorium - a convenient hop, skip or Uber away from the city's gay nightlife and famed Honky Tonk bar scene.

Memphis

If Nashville is the town that does everything right, then Memphis would be like the boy who your mother warned you about - a little dangerous, but a damn good time. It's here where an entire block is devoted to blues bars, dry-rub ribs are perfected, and ducks ride elevators to swim in a hotel fountain. With a well-planned itinerary (be sure to avoid the occasional dodgy street), you can have a fantastic time in Memphis.

It's been said that the Mississippi Delta begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel. Built in the post-Civil War reconstruction era, the lobby of the Peabody sits in a class with The Plaza in New York City and The Palmer House in Chicago as a true gem of the Gilded Age. It also hosts one of the most bizarre, but best-trafficked shows in town: the March of the Peabody Hotel Ducks.

Each day at 11 a.m., the lobby of the Peabody is packed with tourists on hand to witness five ducks get out of an elevator, march down a red carpet and circle the lobby to a John Phillip Sousa march before climbing steps to a fountain where they'll spend the day. The event is repeated in reverse at 5 p.m. with cocktails. It's full of pomp and silliness and is not to be missed.

Luxury Gold, however, has us booked at the less campy and glamorous, but more convenient located Westin Memphis Beale Street, a mere stone's throw away from the city's most famous thoroughfare. While the Westin seemed pedestrian compared to the campy glamour of the Peabody, it's proximity to the nightlife on Beale Street made up for its lack of personality.

The neon sign at the Blues City Cafe on Beale and 2nd Street that reads "Put Some South in Your Mouth" more or less sums up this area. For lovers of food, booze and the Blues, few streets on the planet can rival Beale Street.

Memphis-style ribs are slow-cooked and dry-rubbed rather than slathered with sauce like St. Louis-style ribs. I've always preferred Memphis-style ribs and took advantage of my time in town to hit as many different rib joints as possible. Highest marks went to Central BBQ (Downtown) located across from the National Civil Rights Museum, and Blues City Cafe on Beale.

But for those not looking to get their fingers all messy with ribs, Memphis offers some fine dining options. For southern food with an epicurean flair followed by some authentic soul and blues music, BB King's on Beale Street is a one-stop shop with its eponymous blues bar, downstairs club and bordello-themed fine dining establishment Itta Bena up a side staircase.

The King

No trip to Memphis is complete without paying proper homage to "The King."

Our salute to Elvis Day began with a tour of Sun Studio where a young Elvis Presley made his earliest recordings. Presley's return to Sun Studio for an all-night jam session with Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis was immortalized in the Broadway and Las Vegas musical "Million Dollar Quartet." The energy is still evident in the room more than 60 years later. So much so, that mega stars like U2 still continue to use the museum/studio to record.

That evening, Luxury Gold arranged for a rare private night time tour of Presley's home, Graceland.

I had been to Graceland before two decades prior and was eagerly looking forward to my return to the place that I called "The Home That Taste Forgot." But low and behold, at Christmastime with the right ambient lighting from a white artificial Christmas tree and more poinsettias than there are in Macy's window, the place actually looked charming.

Guiding our tour was none other than Memphis Mafia member George Klein, a childhood friend of Elvis. Donned in a midnight blue velour track suit, Klein took us through each room in Presley's home and regaled us with one tall tale after another in which he played a key part in a major decision in Elvis' life. These stories ran the gamut from Cohen choosing "Suspicious Minds" as a single, to his fashion sense that inspired the iconic jumpsuit. One bawdy tale told by Klein involving Elvis and a blowjob from a certain red-headed siren from the 60s' will never make me look at the film "Bye Bye Birdie" the same way again.