IF, A QUARTER century after his death, Elvis Aaron Presley stepped down from a southbound train on the outskirts of Memphis to walk through the city where he was raised, he’d probably be surprised at some of the changes that civil rights, economic depression, the white flight to the suburbs and the rise of the New South have wrought.

Nevertheless, the "pussy-whipped mother’s boy" of the Lauderdale Courts projects, as then-neighbour Jimmy Denson still refers to him, would no doubt be grateful that in Memphis some things just stay the same.

Thankfully, Memphis remains, as the one-and-only Jim Dickinson once contended "the city where nothing happens but something always does," with its crazy signs, mouth-watering BBQ and soul food, drive-ins, juke joints and bowling alleys existing in a timeless limbo, seemingly only engaged in the process of slowly returning to the very earth from whence they came.

We trust this selection of snaps will give you a true flavour of the thang. Click on the pix for large versions.