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An Apollonaut travel guide
A neighbourhood of music.
An introduction to South Memphis, where the Stax Museum stands on East McLemore Avenue in the neighbourhood known as Soulsville.
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Read the city from the street
The museum stands at 926 East McLemore Avenue in South Memphis, on the site of the Capitol Theatre that Stax used as its studio. The Stax Music Academy and a charter school share the campus.
A city guide can give context without turning a neighbourhood into a backdrop. Notice how a cinema marquee became a record label’s sign, and how a street became known around the world. Respect homes, schools and places of worship.
A marquee, a sloping floor and a church
The museum rebuilds the old theatre’s form, including the sloping floor of Studio A that shaped the sound recorded there. Inside stands a wooden church from the Mississippi Delta, built around 1906 and reassembled in the galleries.
Begin with a detail and ask how it was made, changed and maintained. A photograph alone cannot tell you who built a wall or wired a studio, or the conditions in which they worked.
A Stax chapter
The Stax Museum shows a side of Memphis that is about neighbourhood as much as fame: a family label in a local cinema, open to the young musicians who lived nearby.
Look at the meeting of the two: a modest street corner and music that travelled around the world.
Make room for context
Pair this city reading with the museum’s history and the Journal. This is an introduction for visitors, not a claim that our team manages these places, commissions their restoration or represents their makers.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
Links lead to the original publishers.
