Downtown Memphis · Music Heritage

Memphis Music Heritage: Beale Street, Stax & Sun Studio

Memphis didn't just produce hit records — it gave the world entire genres. This guide to Memphis music history walks through the city's essential music attractions — Beale Street, Sun Studio, Stax, the Rock 'n' Soul Museum, and Graceland — and shows why living downtown at The Exchange Building puts you within a short walk of the blocks where the blues, soul, and rock 'n' roll were born.

A local guide from The Exchange Building · 9 N 2nd Street, Memphis, TN 38103

Memphis: the birthplace of blues, soul & rock 'n' roll

For a city its size, Memphis holds an outsized claim on the soundtrack of the twentieth century. The blues traveled up Highway 61 from the Mississippi Delta and found its first big-city stage here. Soul music was refined a few miles south in a converted neighborhood movie theater. And rock 'n' roll — by most accounts — was first pressed to tape in a small storefront studio on Union Avenue. Few places on earth pack this much musical history into so few square miles.

The throughline is geography. Memphis grew up where the cotton economy of the Delta met the Mississippi River and the railroads, and the people who came north looking for work carried their music with them. The official tourism office, Memphis Tourism, bills the city as the home of blues, soul, and rock 'n' roll — and unlike most slogans, you can still stand in the rooms where it all happened. The best place to start is the street that started it.

Beale Street: the Home of the Blues

Beale Street is the spiritual center of Memphis music. In 1912, bandleader W.C. Handy — the "Father of the Blues" — published "The Memphis Blues" and helped turn a rowdy entertainment district into a national landmark. By an act of Congress, Beale was later named the "Home of the Blues," and today its neon-lit blocks form a National Historic Landmark district packed with clubs, restaurants, and street performers.

You'll find the brass notes of the Beale Street Walk of Fame underfoot, A. Schwab — a dry-goods store that has anchored the street since 1876 — still open for business, and live bands pouring out of doorways every night of the week. Handy Park hosts free outdoor music, and clubs from the big blues halls to the corner juke joints keep the blues, R&B, and rock going late. For the full club-by-club rundown, see our Beale Street guide. From Court Square it's a flat, walkable trip straight down the heart of downtown.

Sun Studio: where rock 'n' roll was recorded

If one room can claim to be the birthplace of rock 'n' roll, it's the little studio at 706 Union Avenue. Sam Phillips opened the Memphis Recording Service here in 1950, and within a year he had cut "Rocket 88" — a record many historians call the first rock 'n' roll song. In 1954 a teenage truck driver named Elvis Presley walked in and recorded "That's All Right," and popular music was never the same.

The roll call of artists who recorded at Sun reads like a hall of fame: B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Ike Turner, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison. In December 1956, Presley, Cash, Lewis, and Perkins happened to be in the building at once for the impromptu jam now remembered as the "Million Dollar Quartet." Sun is a National Historic Landmark and still a working studio by night, with guided tours by day; check times and tickets at sunstudio.com. It sits about a mile east of downtown — a quick drive, and the free attractions shuttle links it with Graceland and the Rock 'n' Soul Museum.

Stax Museum of American Soul Music

While Sun lit the fuse on rock 'n' roll, Stax Records bottled the sound of Southern soul. From a converted movie theater at 926 East McLemore Avenue — the neighborhood proudly called "Soulsville USA" — Stax released a torrent of classics by Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Sam & Dave, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, the Staple Singers, and more. The label's gritty, horn-driven "Memphis sound" was made by an integrated house band at a time when that was rare anywhere in America.

The original label closed in the mid-1970s and the building was later torn down, but the Stax Museum of American Soul Music rose on the very same site in 2003. Inside you'll find Isaac Hayes' gold-trimmed Cadillac, a transplanted country church, and thousands of artifacts tracing soul, funk, and gospel. It's about ten minutes by car from downtown and well worth the trip.

The Memphis Rock 'n' Soul Museum

For the big-picture story — how all these threads weave together — start at the Memphis Rock 'n' Soul Museum, created with the Smithsonian Institution. Located at 191 Beale Street next to FedExForum, it traces the music from rural Delta field hollers and sharecropper work songs to the city sound that crossed racial and cultural lines in the 1950s and '60s. The self-guided audio tour is packed with original recordings, and because it sits right downtown it's an easy walk from the Exchange. Pair it with an event night at the arena — see our guide to AutoZone Park & FedExForum.

Graceland & Elvis Presley

No Memphis music pilgrimage is complete without Graceland. Elvis Presley bought the mansion at 3764 Elvis Presley Boulevard in the Whitehaven neighborhood, and it remains one of the most-visited private homes in America. Tour the famous Jungle Room, the trophy hallways, and the Meditation Garden, then cross the street to Elvis Presley's Memphis — a sprawling complex of car, costume, and jet exhibits. Plan your visit at graceland.com. Graceland sits about nine miles south of downtown, a 15-to-20-minute drive. Fittingly, Elvis got his start downtown at Sun and lived out his legend at Graceland — the whole arc is within reach of a single weekend.

Live music in Memphis today

Memphis is no museum city — the music is still live every single night. Beale Street's clubs run seven nights a week, and the restored Orpheum Theatre on South Main — a 1928 movie palace — hosts touring concerts and Broadway. Downtown adds riverfront concert series, intimate listening rooms, and the gospel-soaked Sunday brunches the city is famous for. Come spring, the Beale Street Music Festival draws national headliners to the riverfront, part of the lineup in our downtown events and festivals guide. Make a night of it: catch a set, then grab a table from our list of the best restaurants downtown. For current show calendars, the Memphis Tourism events listings are the most reliable source.

Living in the middle of it: downtown at the Exchange

Here's the part most music lovers don't realize until they move: you can live inside this story. The Exchange Building is a 1910 Beaux-Arts landmark on Court Square Park at 9 North Second Street — right in the historic heart of downtown. Beale Street and the Rock 'n' Soul Museum are a short walk; the Orpheum is just blocks away; and Sun Studio, Stax, and Graceland are all quick drives. The trolley, the riverfront, AutoZone Park, and FedExForum are right outside your door, too.

The building itself has history in its bones — it opened as the trading floor of the Memphis Cotton Exchange, a story we tell in our history page and cotton-exchange guide. Best of all, the Exchange is leased direct — no broker fees, with an on-site team and a simple online process. If the soundtrack of Memphis is the reason you're here, there's no better seat in the house than a downtown apartment in the middle of it all.