Muriel plays piano

I was walkin' with my feet ten feet off of Beale.

I was walkin' with my feet 10 feet off of Beale.

Saw the ghost of Elvis on Union Avenue.

Reverend Green

The previous poster is wrong - these lyrics are entirely appropriate. While the river delta of the Mississippi River is indeed in Louisiana, this is not the Delta to which the song refers. The geographical/cultural region known as The Delta is the bluff-bordered, flat alluvial plain on either bank of the river starting around Memphis, TN and ending around Vicksburg, MS. It is called "Delta" because it's alluvial as river mouth deltas are. It is in this Delta that the "Delta blues" originated. As a walk down Beale Street will suggest, Memphis is arguably the center (at least the urban center) of the "Land of the Delta Blues."

Memphis is the land of the Delta Blues? Hello? The Delta is in Louisiana, not Tennessee.

Robert Kennedy

W.C. Handy, delta blues musician.

Blue Suede Shoes

Levon (by Elton John)

"Walking In Memphis" was a hit pop song for singer/songwriter, Marc Cohn (who had mainly been known for his country music, but finally had a pop hit right at a time when the country was ready for a blues/mainly acoustic number during a time when the country was going through a major recession and the promise of the first Iraq War did not live up to it's ending -- in maybe a sort of telling irony, the song's lyrics nearly match the stories that then Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton -- who would be elected President of the U.S. about a year after this song was a top ten hit -- was telling about his life in the region of the country sang about in this song and seen in the music video for the song). Cohn also belts this tune out, like nobody's business, leaving you with a feeling as though you will never forget him, and you took the walk around Memphis with him. Upabove I have transcribed the first verse of the tune, the main chorus, the second versed of the tune and the fourth and second to the last verse of the tune. In these lyrics there is shoutouts to Memphis, Tennessee (as with the title of the tune), the (Mississippi) Delta region of the U.S. (where Memphis is located, right in the heart of that region), Union Avenue (a real and famous street in Memphis), Beale Street (another real and famous street in Memphis), Graceland (the Memphis home of Elvis Presley), the famous Jungle Room at Graceland and a real nightclub in Memphis, actually called, Hollywood. So, this song, and the accompanying video in many, many ways was also a tourist guide to the city of Memphis, Tennessee and also serve as an artifact of how that city was back in the early 1990's.