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An Apollonaut travel guide
The place behind the music.
Sharecroppers’ songs, a famous street and the studios of Memphis offer several ways into the story told at the Rock ’n’ Soul Museum.
On this page
Rural roots
The museum’s story begins with the field hollers and porch music of sharecroppers in the 1930s, and with the blues, country and gospel that grew in the rural Delta.
Its first galleries describe daily life in the fields, including work, segregation and faith, before following families and their music into the city.
A city of studios
In Memphis the music crossed the colour line. Beale Street was its centre in the 1940s; in the 1950s radio, Sam Phillips and Sun Records helped launch rock ’n’ roll; in the 1960s and 1970s Stax and Hi Records made the city a home of soul.
The Social Changes gallery places Memphis music in the civil rights era of the 1950s and 1960s.
A museum born at the Smithsonian
The museum began as a Smithsonian Institution research project and opened in Memphis in 2000. It moved to the FedExForum plaza on Beale Street in 2004 and is today a non-profit and a Smithsonian Affiliate.
This history belongs to the musicians and communities who made it. The History page offers a longer introduction, and the timeline gives a short route through selected milestones.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
- Memphis Rock ’n’ Soul Museum
- Memphis Rock ’n’ Soul Museum: Exhibits
- Wikipedia: Memphis Rock ’n’ Soul Museum
Links lead to the original publishers.
