How a road trip from Memphis to New Orleans helped me to understand Elvis Presley
New Orleans Music Tour today, 2 PM, with David Higgins, who is featured in this article –
“I end in New Orleans, where Elvis shot King Creole. I’m met by tour guide David Higgins in the gilded Roosevelt Hotel, where Elvis stayed during filming.
Higgins describes how a rock ’n’ roll storm was raging in here in the 50s, thanks largely to Cosimo Records, which had recorded Fats Domino’s “The Fat Man” and Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti”.
We stroll through the antiquity and iniquity of the French Quarter as Higgins brings some of the film’s most memorable scenes to life: singing from a cast-iron balcony on Royal Street and running from foes in Pirate’s Alley.
Higgins starts playing his harmonica to a sultry Louis Armstrong song as we part ways. I sit in a coffee shop on St Philip Street that looks directly on the spot that Elvis was filmed punching his antagonist in the mouth.”