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Few American cities wear their cultural identity as openly as Memphis. Sitting on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River in the far south-west corner of Tennessee, it occupies a place in music history that is genuinely without parallel. Blues took root here along Beale Street in the early twentieth century, and what grew from that foundation, soul, rock and roll, gospel, R&B, reshaped popular music across the entire world. That is not a local boast; it is simply what happened.

The geography of the city shapes how visitors move through it. Downtown anchors most first visits, with Beale Street running east from the river through a corridor of clubs, restaurants, and historic facades. The Mississippi itself is ever-present, wide and slow and brown, best appreciated from Tom Lee Park or the bluffs above it. South of downtown, the Soulsville neighbourhood carries a quieter, more considered kind of significance. It was here, on College Street, that Stax Records operated from 1960 until 1975, recording Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Booker T. and the MGs, and dozens of others whose work defined a genre. The Stax Museum of American Soul Music now occupies a faithful reconstruction of the original studio building, and its collection of instruments, costumes, and original recordings makes the case, without any need for exaggeration, that this single city block changed American culture.