Catchup part 2

Memphis
Again, no hostel in Memphis so I had to stay in a motel, pretty close to the Greyhound station. I went to Sun records first, where Elvis had his big break, and it was a pretty cool place. They had a lot of memorabilia, and the story of Sam Phillips, the owner, and how he set up the studio, got sued for copyright, then, by discovering and selling Elvis, managed to break even and put out records by Jerry Lee Lewis and other famous country singers, was a fascinating one, and getting to see the studio where Elvis first recorded was pretty cool too. They still use it as a studio, with updated equipment obviously.
After that I went to the Rock and Soul Museum, which was excellent. It had a large blues, country, rock and roll, and soul collection, with an audioguide thingy that had about a hundred songs on it as examples of the various styles. If I'd had more time I would have sat there for ages just listening to it. I also suddenly saw what made Elvis so great. When playing the original "That's allright" by some blues guy (Arthur Crudrup) then playing the Elvis version you can see why the world went crazy. He adds a country style bassline, with more rocky guitar riffs, and you get rock and roll. The other big exhibit was the Memphis Sound of the sixties, with all the soul music with a horn section made in Stax records, which I visited the next day. I'm not particularly into soul music, but Stax was pretty interesting, even though I was only in there for an hour before it closed, as I had difficulty finding it.
I also visited Graceland, Elvis' home and gravesite, as well as a lot of other stuff. His house was pretty cool, a bit garish in places, but the hall with all his gold records was pretty impressive, as were his car collection and his aeroplanes.
The evening i was in Memphis I went to Beale Street, the music area, which is a bit cheesy touristy, but in one place I was in I saw a really good young guitarist/singer, as well as a lot of big blues bands which featured some good instrumentalists, but not much originality. Still, I'd like to go back there with a car, when I'm 21, so I can get to the further out places which are less touristy. The same goes for exploring the Delta, something which isn't really possible with Greyhounds.
Next I went to New Orleans, where I visited Bourbon Street, an absolute shithole, full of drunk tourists and more cheesy blues bands, although I did catch a couple of decent bands, a Zydeco band which is amodernised version of the folk music that comes from the Cajuns/Creoles, who are the various mixed groups who have inhabited New Orleans over its history, as well as a good traditional jazz band. The next day I went on a walking tour of the French Quarter, which was pretty interesting. The history of New Orleans is pretty fucked up with large groups of Spanish and French as well as a large influx of French Canadian catholics who came down when the British chucked them out of Canada. That night I went out with some people from the hostel to the area where the locals go. We caught an excellent blues band, then for some reason went back to Bourbon Street, tourist central, hovered around there for a while, caught another pretty good blues band, then headed back to the pub round the corner from the hostel, where we ended up staying til half six in the morning. The next day I understandably didn't do very much, then, yesterday I went on a tour of the cemetery where they shot Easy Rider, then caught the overnight bus to Austin Texas, which is where I am now, in the Youth Hostel which took me an age to find.