Elvis and Musical Spaces

Abstract This chapter explores the relationship between sound, celebrity, and place, as manifested in Nashville’s music tourism industry. It contends that fans’ desires to reconnect with the sources and circumstances of musical sounds delivered to them in an alienated form result in geographically specific heritage tourism. In relation to Elvis, this takes two forms in Nashville: one associated with performance of the city on Broadway, the other with situated immersion respectively on Music Row tours. On Broadway, Elvis is not presented as a museum artifact locked behind glass with limited opportunities for interaction. Fans are instead invited to interact with both his music and persona through a performance of the city. In contrast, fans are taken to Music Row and RCA Studio B by bus, and the studio is not otherwise open for walk-up tours. Visitors get the sense that they are traveling into historic Nashville and this allows them to immerse themselves in a space fully established as the home of country music. As the tour narrative unfolds, fans are allowed to stand where Elvis recorded, touch the very piano heard in his records, and they hear intimate stories of Elvis’s interaction with the space. During the tour, the atmosphere of Elvis Presley’s legendary creative process is recreated, reanimating the myths of both Elvis and RCA Studio B. Thus, through the parallel routes of performance and immersion, Elvis’s unique association with Nashville is brought alive for tourists.