I’m pretty certain that Memphis wasn’t this hot 200 years ago. It’s mid-May and even the Climate-Change-Denier-in-Chief has to acknowledge that it’s dangerously, unseasonably hot. The mercury is well over 100 degrees before 10am and as we’re dropped off in the parking lot outside Gracelands, we slap on the Factor 50 with abandon.

Our tickets are booked for the 10.30 tour and we kill the wait with a trawl through the gift shop and grab a snap in front of a huge photo of Elvis at his devilishly handsome best. Soon enough we’re led into a cinema room where we’re shown a short film about the history of Elvis. Having never been a particular fan, thinking of him more as a cheesy Vegas entertainer than a rock’n’roll revolutionary, I’m suitably impressed by the performance clips, the testimonies about him as a musician and above all, his cultural impact not just on music but on the ending of segregation in America.

His taste however was definitely not sophisticated! After the obligatory photo we have to pose for before getting on the shuttle bus across the road to his mansion, we are led inside the hallowed doors of Gracelands and wow, it really does display a unique style. Cast in the amber of the 1970s, each room is a riot of conspicuous wealth and vivid imagination, with shag-pile white carpets, stained glass displays, OTT drinks cabinets, textured wallpapers, yellow leather couches, a state of the art American kitchen circa 1974 and, best of all, Elvis’ “jungle room” – basically his living room decorated with a grass floor and African wildlife.

We’re not allowed upstairs to see Elvis’ bedroom – or the toilet where he famously died of a heart attack brought on by a diet of fried peanut butter and jelly sandwiches – but walk through his garage, past the offices and the horse paddock, and then through an exhibition of awards, photos, furniture and personal effects of his life together with Priscilla, his parents and daughter Lisa-Marie, who all lived here together. The exit is past his kidney-shaped swimming pool and around the Meditation Garden where Elvis is laid to rest with his parents. It’s been kitsch and fun.

We leave Gracelands at midday on another shuttle bus, this one taking us through some run-down parts of Memphis and on to the legendary Sun Studios where the owner Sam Philips cut some of the most iconic music of the 20th Century. This little warren of rooms was where rock’n’roll was born. Having recorded the likes of Howlin’ Wolf and BB King, Sam was responsible for recording Jackie Brenston’s 1950 hit ‘Rocket ‘88’, written by Ike Turner who also played keyboards on it, widely hailed as the first ever rock’n’roll record.

We’re led around by the current studio-head, a gregarious and talented chap called Daniel, who weaves the tales of the greats who walked through the door with real skill and passion, playing snippets of old tracks as we go, including the very first song Elvis ever recorded. It was this ballad, which an 18 year old Elvis paid to lay down with Sam’s faithful assistant Marion Keisker, that gave Sam the idea for giving him a full session with a backing band.

The session didn’t go well, mostly comprising saccharine ballads and twee country songs, and Sam thought he’d wasted his time getting Elvis back into the studio. Sam walked out and returned to find Elvis covering an old blues track ‘That’s Alright Mama’ in a brand-new sped up style. Sam started the tapes rolling and a couple of days later took the track to local DJ Dewey Philips, who played it on air 14 times in a row and Elvis became an overnight sensation. The rest as they say is history.

Daniel’s evocative recounting of the story comes into real focus when we enter the room itself where this, and hundreds of other world-famous recordings, were made, dominated by a huge black and white photograph of Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins sat around the very piano we’re looking at and singing into the very microphone that we’re encouraged to get our photos taken singing into. There’s definitely a crackle of electricity in the air!

Our next stop on the shuttle bus is the Rock & Soul Museum in downtown Memphis, just a couple of blocks from our hotel. A wide-reaching display of American musical history, tracing the birth of the Blues from share-croppers and cotton pickers singing mournful songs in the fields, through its marriage with gospel and country to form rock’n’roll in the ‘50s and on to the golden age of Soul in the ‘60s and ‘70s, it’s packed with displays. The history of Sun Records and the Stax and Hi labels is there, along with exhibits about Roy Orbison, Isaac Hayes, Otis Redding, Al Green, Ann Peebles, Booker T & The MGs and many more.

However, despite the recorded audio tour, it lacks the presentation skills of Daniel, who brought Sun so vividly to life and after a while we’re feeling pretty tired. Yet the history of this music is intrinsically linked with breaking down racial barriers in the United States, and the integration that followed. In fact Memphis was a hotbed of civil rights and racial change, and it was here that Martin Luther King Jr came in 1968, to show solidarity with striking sanitation workers, and where he was assassinated.

We learn that his murder took place a short walk away and so, despite our fatigue, we brave the ferocious heat to head to the Lorraine Motel to pay our respects. It’s now been turned into the National Civil Rights Museum, but outside on a balcony facing the street a wreath marks the spot where at 6pm on April 4th 1968, MLK was killed with a single shot whilst talking to his friends.

Time is against us as we’re due back at the Peabody at 5pm for the March of the Ducks, which Coman wants to see, but we decide to do a super-quick visit to the museum. It’s incredible, and deserves far, far more time than we could afford. Brilliantly laid out and incredibly educational, it lays bare the history of racism at the heart of the United States and gives us a vivid background to our journey ahead.

We see the horrors of slavery, learn how the Civil War offered a brief hope of freedom but failed to lead to the promised emancipation, instead condemning the black population of America to segregation, second class citizen status, the Jim Crow laws, lynchings and the Ku Klux Klan, the flawed idea of ‘separate but equal’ and constant discrimination. This potent crucible of hate is what Trump is stirring and unleashing on a febrile population once more.

The displays take us through Rosa Park’s exhausted defiance in 1955, the atrocities of the white authorities in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, JF Kennedy’s civil rights bill, the March on Washington and MLK’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech and the rise of Black Power and the Black Panthers. It ends with the solemn walk through the adjoining motel rooms where MLK stayed, was shot and died on a bed… laid out exactly as it was on the day he died. It’s chilling.

The temperature outside however is still set to inferno status and our power-walk back to the hotel, through the Martin Luther King Jr Reflection Park, drains the life out of us. We manage to snag two seats at the lobby bar and knock back a hugely refreshing ginger beer just in time to watch the ritual that has happened every day since the 1930s when the owners of the Peabody Hotel first introduced ducks to their fountain.

At 5pm sharp every day, the Master of the Ducks gives a speech and then leads the waddling parade of feathered creatures along a red carpet from their daytime home of the fountain in the lobby to the lift where they are whisked to their night-time home on the roof of the hotel. The entire lobby is packed with tourists craning over each other to watch, with others peering down from the balconies above. It’s quaint, ludicrous and not a little bizarre!

Hotel tradition duly done, and energy levels somewhat restored by a cold drink, a seat and some air-conditioning, we head back out into the late afternoon humidity and tick off a few more sights – seeing Main Street and Beale Street in daylight, popping into A Schwab, a renowned vintage store and milkshake bar, and clothing store Lanksy Bros who made many of the famous outfits for Johnny Cash, Elvis and more.

Back at the hotel, we follow the example of the Peabody Ducks and head to the roof where a party is in full-swing with cocktail bars, barbeques and a DJ pumping out a baffling set of EDM-remixed hits in ludicrously fast succession. We last about 30 minutes until the sun sets and then beat a hasty retreat from the hordes of increasingly day-drunk tourists and locals who are Instagramming the shit out of themselves, opting for the more refined climes of the hotel’s Italian restaurant Cappriciosa.

We’ve got a long, long drive tomorrow and a chilled dinner is definitely what’s required!