Editor’s Journal: A visit to a sacred site of rock ‘n’ roll history in Memphis

“I’ll meet you in the lobby at 4:30,” my friend said after we’d checked into our rooms at the fabled Peabody Hotel in Memphis. “We can see the ducks and then get dinner.”

I gave him a puzzled look. “The ducks?”

He smiled. “You’ll see.”

When I came back downstairs, a long red carpet was rolled out in front of the elevator. On either side of the red carpet, velvet ropes hung from metal stands. I was astute enough to understand that all this fuss wasn’t for me. I spied my friend standing behind one of the ropes and walked over to him. By then, a crowd had started to gather.

“What is this?” I asked.

He smiled. “You’ll see.”

A few minutes later, precisely at 5 o’clock, the parade began. I watched as five ducks (North American mallards, to be precise) climbed one by one out of the big fountain and, with considerable pomp and circumstance, formed into a line and waddled single file to the elevator. And then into the elevator. The doors closed and they were gone, all to applause and laughs of joy from everyone who had gathered to watch.

It was one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen: ducks getting the red-carpet treatment in the lobby of a luxury hotel. “It’s a famous Memphis tradition,” my friend explained. “They’re headed up to a coop on the roof for the night. Then they’ll come back down tomorrow at 11 and swim in the fountain all afternoon.”

Not only did they have cushy jobs, they got to sleep in every day. Nice work if you can get it.

The next morning after breakfast, we watched the beginning leg of the ducks’ daily journey. We had a meeting at 2 p.m., and until then our day was free. “Graceland or Sun?” my friend asked.

I had to ponder that one for a moment. “Sun,” I finally replied.

We drove a few blocks and reached one of the most hallowed addresses of my life: 706 Union Avenue, Sun Studio. I could almost see a youthful Elvis Presley nervously hanging around outside, trying to get the courage to go in and record a ballad to give to his mother.

A tour guide took us up the steps, and when we reached the door leading into the studio, I stood there for a moment to soak it all in. I was struck by how tiny it was—barely large enough to squeeze in a band with a full drum kit. Yet this was the room where Elvis had recorded “That’s All Right” with Scotty Moore on guitar and Bill Black on bass on a steamy July night in 1954. That moment, in the eyes of many, marked the invention of rock ‘n’ roll.

To my right was a stand that held a vintage microphone. “This is where Elvis stood at his first recording session, and this is the actual mic he used,” the tour guide said.

In a corner, a dark acoustic guitar sat on a stand. Near the nut, high up on the neck, a playing card was threaded through every other string. It was a replica of the guitar Johnny Cash used when he recorded at Sun. “If you listen to ‘I Walk The Line,’ you think there’s a drummer on that record,” the guide said. “There was no drummer. That was Johnny playing the ‘boom-chicka-boom’ rhythm with his guitar. That’s why he put a playing card through the strings, to mute them so he could get that sound.”

The three of us stood in that room for nearly an hour, asking questions and swapping stories about Elvis, Cash, Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison, all music heroes who found their sound in that one little recording studio. It was religious.

Sun Studio is part of this month’s “Must-Do South” feature story, in which we share some of our favorite spring travel destinations across the Southeast. We hope it inspires you to get out and explore the states around us.

And the ducks. By all means, you’ve got to see the ducks.

This article appears in our March 2025 issue.

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