Tupelo, MS
A two-room shotgun shack in East Tupelo, built by Vernon Presley in 1934 with $180 borrowed from his employer. Elvis Aaron Presley was born here January 8, 1935 — his identical twin Jessie Garon was stillborn. The Presley family lost the house to the bank when Elvis was two; they moved around Mississippi for the next eleven years before leaving for Memphis in 1948. The house was bought by the city of Tupelo in 1957 with proceeds from a benefit concert Elvis performed for the local youth. The 15-acre Elvis Presley Park surrounding the house includes the original Assembly of God church where Elvis was first exposed to gospel music (moved here from its original site), an "Elvis at 13" bronze statue, and a museum tracing his early years in the Shake Rag community. More than 100,000 visitors a year. Designated a Mississippi historic landmark; part of the official Mississippi Blues Trail.
A Victorian-Gothic rectory built in 1875 for St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Columbus, MS. Thomas Lanier Williams III — better known as Tennessee Williams — was born here March 26, 1911, the grandson of the rector Reverend Walter Dakin. He lived in the house for the first three years of his life before the family moved to Canton, then Clarksdale, and eventually St. Louis. Williams went on to write "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1947) and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1955), winning two Pulitzer Prizes. The house was scheduled for demolition in 1993 when St. Paul's needed expansion space; preservationists moved it on flatbeds to a new site at Main Street and Tennessee Williams Way (formerly Third Street S), where it was restored to its 1911 appearance and now serves as the official Columbus Welcome Center. A certified National Literary Landmark. Columbus also produced Pulitzer Prize winner Eudora Welty (who attended Mississippi University for Women in town) and is home to Columbus Air Force Base — one of the country's largest pilot training operations.
Two small studios in northwest Alabama produced a wildly disproportionate share of 20th-century American popular music. FAME Studios at 603 East Avalon Avenue in Muscle Shoals (founded 1959 by Rick Hall) recorded Aretha Franklin's breakthrough "I Never Loved a Man" (1967), Wilson Pickett's "Mustang Sally" and "Land of 1000 Dances," Etta James's "Tell Mama," Otis Redding, Percy Sledge, and dozens more — the "Muscle Shoals Sound." Hall's famous rhythm section (the Swampers — Barry Beckett, Roger Hawkins, David Hood, Jimmy Johnson) broke off in 1969 to open their own room at 3614 Jackson Highway in Sheffield, where they recorded the Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar" and "Wild Horses" (December 1969, three days of sessions captured on tape and film), plus Lynyrd Skynyrd's first album, Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll," Paul Simon, the Staple Singers, Cher, and Bob Dylan. Both studios are open for public tours and still actively record. Helen Keller's birthplace Ivy Green is six miles east in Tuscumbia — Keller was born June 27, 1880 in a small white cottage on the family property; the pump where Anne Sullivan first communicated the word "water" to seven-year-old deaf-blind Helen by spelling it into her hand is still there.
After the White House, Graceland is the most-visited private home in America. Elvis Presley bought the Colonial Revival mansion on a 14-acre estate in 1957, at 22, for about $100,000, and lived there until he died in 1977 — he is buried in the Meditation Garden beside the pool, alongside his parents and grandmother. The house is a perfect time capsule of mid-century excess: the Jungle Room with its green shag carpet on the ceiling and Polynesian furniture, the yellow-and-blue TV room with three sets built into the wall (a habit he picked up from LBJ), the racquetball building, his cars and two airplanes including the Convair 880 "Lisa Marie." A modern entertainment complex across the street holds the rest of the collection.