HOWZAT

"Even the Rolling Stones never came close to the impact of rock'n'roll in creating a generational gap and forcing new values into the open," Bakke said.

Kevin Kane, president of the Memphis Convention & Visitors Centre, says there has been a huge increase in British visitors to Memphis in recent years, in part because the baby-boomer generation is starting to retire, prompting them to take stock of themselves and giving them more time to travel. The wave of nostalgia sweeping Britain, in the face of relentless technological innovation and uncertainty in a rapidly-globalising world, has probably added to Memphis' attraction.

"Rock'n'Roll defined the generation after the War and had a huge impact on fashion, attitudes and ideals. That generation is becoming more reflective," Kane says.

But it is not just the baby-boomers. Jim Holt, the executive director of the annual Memphis in May celebrations, of which the Beale Street festival is the centre-piece, said the number of British visitors to the event has doubled in each of the past four or five years.

Many of them are considerably younger and are carried on the retrospective wave that has characterised recent years as musicians and fashion designers rework the past more heavily than in recent decades.

Furthermore, samples of old songs feature regularly in hip-hop and other contemporary style, which can be tracked down relatively easily through the internet. That Justin Timberlake, America's hottest contemporary solo artist, is a Memphis native and frequently cites the city as a major influence can't hurt, either.

Against this backdrop, more than a third of all visitors to Graceland are now aged 34 and less. They run the gamut from musicians with their own bands to reluctant children dragged by their parents. In between are the willing children, most touchingly the father and son, topped and tailed in identical Elvis quiff and two-tone leather or (sometimes blue) suede shoes.

David Nicholson, the UK representative for Memphis Convention Visitors Centre, said the image of Elvis Presley in Britain has changed dramatically since he took up the job 15 years ago.

"In 1992 we had a bit of a problem selling Elvis because many people remembered the fat failing Elvis of the 1970s, rather than the dynamic and hugely influential figure of the 1950s and 60s."

"But in recent years Elvis has gone from what, for many, was an object of ridicule to one of respect, as people reassess his contribution to musical history," Nicholson adds.

The King regained his crown once and for all in 2002, when Junkie XL, a Dutch DJ, recorded a remix version of Elvis' A Little Less Conversation in 2002, which was played heavily in nightclubs and went to number one in more than 20 countries, Nicholson says.

This, more than anything else, explains why the number of tour operators offering trips from Britain to Memphis has risen from about 15 in 1992 to about 80 today, Nicholson says.

But Britain's fascination runs much deeper than Elvis.

"From the beginning of pop to Amy Winehouse today, the English have always had a fascination with the music and culture of America," says Jon Hornyak, senior executive director of the Memphis Chapter of the Recording Academy, the organisation behind the annual Grammy music awards.

"They seem to particularly identify with the music of Memphis and the surrounding Mississippi Delta area because it is heartfelt and real," he added.

Memphis may be most popular among the people of Liverpool, whatever their age, because the two melting pots were essentially "sister cities", says Kane.

"Memphis was the capital of the US cotton industry, Liverpool was the cotton capital of Europe. Cotton would be shipped from Memphis port to the Liverpool docks, priced, and transported to the Manchester textile mills."

"Memphis lies on the Mississippi, Liverpool on the Mersey, and both were fairly rough, blue-collar cities. Elvis is chapter one, the Beatles are chapter two," Kane adds.

Though Memphis may have made the first move, its relationship with Liverpool was by no means one way. For Hornyak and many other Memphis-dwellers who came of age during the so-called British Invasion of the mid 1960s, it was the Beatles that introduced them to the music of Elvis Presley, right on their doorstep. At around the same time, acts like the Yardbirds and John Mayall introduced them to the blues that had grown up on the cotton fields that line the banks of the Mississippi.

That a city so small and out of the way, with little commerce and barely a nod to the past 40 years, should attract such numbers of visitors demonstrates just how much influence Memphis has wielded over Britain. These days the once-vibrant city that gave birth to the modern world may be more a giant, urban museum, frozen in time, than a living breathing community. But, given the importance of understanding the past before we can move onto the future, its significance is likely to remain undiminished for some time to come.

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