The TRAVELER'S JOURNAL: January twenty-first, remembering the four Kings of Memphis.

Memphis, Tennessee, was a scruffy frontier settlement back in 1819, when its founders laid out its streets on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. But they had a prophetic sense to name it after Egypt's city of kings. Four kings have helped shaped this Memphis.

The first was King Cotton. As steamboat center of the upper Delta cotton fields, the young city flourished. Though it largely escaped Civil War ruin, the end of the steamboat era and a series of deadly epidemics sapped Memphis' strength and, for a decade, left it a bankrupt place. Music helped bring it back to life.

A century ago, W.C. Handy, a Memphis musician, popularized traditional Delta Blues, the rootstock from which ragtime, jazz and rock 'n roll sprouted. Handy's music empowered two other Memphis kings.

In 1954, a skinny young guitar player walked into the local Sun Studios and recorded "That's All Right Mama." The song was an instant hit, and the musical career it started earned Elvis Presley the title "King of Rock 'n Roll." Elvis made Memphis his home and since his death, Graceland, his estate, has become a national shrine. Another guitarist, Memphis native B.B. King, has also taken on international icon status. The role B.B. played in revitalizing Beale Street has recharged Memphis nightlife.

Today we celebrate the birth of the fourth Memphis king, even though he was not a native. Dr. Martin Luthur King's assassination in Memphis 1968 galvanized the Civil Rights movement. The Lorraine Motel, site of the tragedy, is now the National Civil Rights Museum.

FMI For Information on the National Civil Rights Museum www.civilrightsmuseum.org or 901-521-9699

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