Stax Museum of American Soul Music

Stax began in the late 1950s when a brother and sister, Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton, converted an old movie theater in South Memphis into a recording studio. The label's name came from combining their surnames. The theater's sloping floor and unusual acoustics helped shape a distinctive, gritty sound, and a nearby record shop in the front of the building kept the owners in touch with what young listeners wanted to hear.

Through the 1960s Stax built a house band and a roster that produced hit after hit. Booker T. and the M.G.'s, an integrated group of studio musicians, laid down the grooves behind much of the label's output while scoring their own instrumental hits. Otis Redding became the label's great star, Sam and Dave brought explosive energy, and the Memphis Horns gave the records their punchy brass signature. The sound was rawer and more Southern than the polished pop coming out of Motown up north.

The label was also a beacon in a segregated South. Its studio was integrated at a time when much of Memphis was not, and Black and white musicians created together as equals. That collaboration, and the neighborhood that surrounded it, gave Stax a cultural weight beyond its music, though the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis in 1968 and business troubles would eventually take a heavy toll on the label and its community.

In its later years Stax reached new heights with Isaac Hayes, whose lush, orchestral soul, most famously the theme from the film Shaft, won him worldwide fame and an Academy Award. His success embodied the label's ambition and its reach beyond Memphis, and his gold-trimmed custom Cadillac, on display in the museum, is one of the most photographed objects in the building.

Financial and legal troubles eventually brought Stax down, and the label collapsed in the mid-1970s. The original studio building was later demolished, and for years the site sat empty, a painful loss for the neighborhood. But the memory of the music endured, and community leaders and music lovers came together to bring Stax back to life, not as a working label but as a museum, an academy, and a school on the same hallowed ground.

The museum is a careful re-creation of the original Stax studio complex, rebuilt on the site of the demolished theater. Inside, visitors find instruments, stage costumes, gold records, recording equipment, film, and listening stations that trace the full arc of the label and the wider story of Southern soul music. A restored rural church moved to the site anchors the story in gospel, the wellspring from which soul flowed.

Highlights include Isaac Hayes's flamboyant Cadillac, artifacts from Otis Redding and other stars, and a recreation of the studio itself. Beyond the exhibits, the museum is part of a living campus that includes a music academy and a charter school serving the neighborhood, so the institution carries the Stax legacy forward by training a new generation of musicians in the very place the sound was born.

As an indoor museum, Stax is a comfortable destination in any weather and a natural anchor for a music-focused Memphis trip year round.

Spring and fall bring the mildest weather to Memphis and the easiest sightseeing, ideal for pairing the museum with the city's other music landmarks on foot and by car.

Summer is hot and humid in Memphis, and the air-conditioned galleries and listening rooms make a welcome escape from the heat while the music plays on.

Winter is quieter in the city, a good time to take an unhurried visit and dig deep into the exhibits and listening stations without the peak-season crowds.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.