Discover the music notes of Memphis

A guitar strum can fire up a memory, gospel voices can silence a church while a rhythmic beat along Beale Street adds a skip to a stroll past spilling bars and crowded pavements. In Memphis music is amplified between the notes, not muffled under headphones. It spills from porches, churches, barbecue joints and old recording studios plastered with memorabilia. Here, music reflects a heritage founded on sweat, tears and survival. Blues, gospel, soul and rock ’n’ roll collide with electrifying force. The Great Migration brought Black communities through Memphis, converging around Beale Street where clubs, restaurants and record stores became incubators of sound.

Think Memphis, think Elvis Presley, the king and legend who still reigns here. Gift shops gleam with rhinestone tee shirts, studded belts and pink Cadillac fridge magnets. Jukeboxes play ‘Burning Love’ and ‘Suspicious Minds', while somewhere nearby somebody sings ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ in an open mic bar.

I travelled to Memphis, Tennessee, to dig into the city’s musical roots, beginning with Graceland, Elvis Presley’s eccentric home and tourism empire. It’s smaller than people imagine, but huge in spirit. Each room uncovers layers of Elvis’s personality. The television room is decked in yellow and black with mirrors, shag pile carpet and three televisions side by side. The Jungle Room, inspired by Hawaii, reveals his restless imagination, while outside the pink Cadillac gleams alongside motorcycles and a custom jet. The Meditation Garden is where the mood shifts completely. Fans fall silent before the grave of the man who gave the world ‘Return to Sender’ and ‘It’s Now or Never’.

Elvis was shaped by Memphis. Raised among gospel choirs and the blues clubs of Beale Street, he absorbed the sounds around him before blending them into something new. At Sun Studio in 1954, producer Sam Phillips recognised the raw talent in the young singer hoping for a break. Through these doors passed B.B. King, Ike Turner and Johnny Cash. Prison inmates known as The Prisonaires even recorded here in shackles. Visitors now pose beside the same microphone once used by Elvis, while by night the studio returns to its original purpose of recording music.

The Stax Museum of American Soul Music stands in Soulsville where the city’s Black musical heritage transformed global culture. Former owner Al Bell once described Stax as a cultural and spiritual movement as much as a record label. During a period of fierce racial tension in America, black and white musicians worked side by side here, united by rhythm and instinct, creating a new sound which carried Memphis around the world. Inside, tours move through galleries celebrating artists including Otis Redding and Rufus Thomas while Isaac Hayes’s gold-plated Cadillac displays his style and swagger. Music resonates around every room from ‘Shaft’ to ‘Sittin’ On The Dock of the Bay’.

Royal Studios sits inside a neighbourhood building that looks more like a family home than a legendary recording space. The walls carry signatures from Robert Plant, Joss Stone and Beverley Knight. Lawrence ‘Boo’ Mitchell, son of producer Willie Mitchell, continues the family legacy amid organised chaos, speaking passionately about the Memphis sound and how soul music was crafted through feeling rather than technical perfection. Willie Mitchell helped shape the sound of Al Green, whose voice turned songs like ‘Let’s Stay Together’ and ‘Tired of Being Alone’ into classics. Al Green later stepped away from mainstream music to become a reverend at the Full Gospel Tabernacle Church in South Memphis. Visitors can join Sunday services where the soul legend preaches among skin-tingling gospel harmonies.

Memphis still lives through music. It pours from open doorways along Beale Street where neon signs flicker. The pavements vibrate with bass sounds from B.B. King’s Blues Club and Silky O’Sullivan’s. Yet the city also continues finding new ways to listen. Inside Crosstown Concourse, once a vast Sears distribution centre, the Memphis Listening Lab invites visitors into curated listening sessions. Nearby, the Overton Park Shell, built in 1936, hosted Elvis Presley’s first paid concert in 1954 and later welcomed Johnny Cash and ZZ Top. Today it continues as a non-profit venue offering free community concerts, preserving Memphis’s tradition of accessible live music.

The city’s heartbeat extends beyond music into history itself. The National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, where Dr Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated, is a sobering must visit. Walking through the exhibits, it becomes clear how blues, soul and gospel emerged from struggle, hope and resilience.

Memphis buzzes with independent shops, galleries, riverboats and chef-owned restaurants. Food takes centre stage from soul food and southern cooking to contemporary fine dining. Central BBQ remains a local institution for ribs and pulled pork sandwiches. Sunrise Memphis draws queues around the block for giant breakfasts. The Four Ways Grill serves catfish, yams and peach cobbler beneath murals celebrating neighbourhood history. Dr Martin Luther King Jr once ate here, one of the few places where black and white diners sat together. Elvis would slip through a side entrance of The Arcade Restaurant, Memphis’s oldest diner, to his favourite booth. For fine dining, Catherine and Mary’s serves elegant Tuscan and Sicilian inspired dishes, Felicia Suzanne’s serves creative southern food, renowned for their interpretation of Fried Green Tomatoes while Amelia Gene’s delivers refined contemporary dining and polished cocktails.

In the recording studio, Boo Mitchell played ‘Uptown Funk’ at full volume and suddenly the room seemed to change temperature and Mitchell seemed to drift into another world. This was where Bruno Mars created the Grammy winning Record of the Year and where Memphis once again proved its relevance to modern music. Sitting among tangled cables, vintage microphones, I realised Memphis does not preserve music behind glass. It lives it. Music is not simply entertainment here, it is memory, identity and emotion entwined into the soul of Memphis.

For more information: memphistravel.com

Where to stay

The Guest House at Graceland delivers an Elvis immersion. Spacious guest rooms are wired directly into Elvis music channels and nightly screenings of his films take place in the theatre. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, one of Presley’s favourite snacks, are offered to guests each evening. It is convenient for Graceland with shuttle buses transporting excited fans making their pilgrim visit.

ARRIVE is a boutique hotel with an industrial chic feel and a touch of Soho House style, convenient for Beale Street and the National Civil Rights Museum. Spacious bedrooms, a café and lively bar attract Memphis’s local cool crowd.