Memphis Audio Walking Tour

Highlights

• 
  Graceland

  Your first glimpse of Graceland is the mansion Elvis Presley bought in 1957 for $102,500, a fortune for a young man earning forty-one dollars a week driving trucks. The white-columned Colonial Revival mansion sits on thirteen acres and became Elvis's sanctuary, his playground, and ultimately his prison.

• National Civil Rights Museum

  Your tour reaches the National Civil Rights Museum, built around the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. The museum traces the full arc of the American civil rights movement, from the origins of slavery through the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, the March on Washington, and the Memphis Sanitation Strike.

• Lorraine Motel Room 306

  Your gaze meets Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel, the balcony where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot on April 4, 1968. He had come to Memphis to support the sanitation workers' strike and was scheduled to lead another march the following day.

• 
  Mason Temple

  Your path leads to Mason Temple, the largest Black-owned church building in the United States at the time of its construction and the site of one of the most extraordinary speeches in American history. On the night of April 3, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood at this pulpit and delivered what would be his final public address.

• 
  Stax Museum of American Soul Music

  Here on the exact site of the original Stax Records studio, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music honors one of the most consequential recording studios in American history. From 1960 to 1975, this small converted movie theater in South Memphis produced a sound that was raw, gospel-drenched, and ferociously danceable.

All 40 stops

• Beale Street (Downtown)

  Beale Street holds the deepest roots in American music, and you can feel them under your feet.

• B.B. King's Blues Club (Downtown)

  Look at the marquee bearing B.B. King's name, honoring the man many call the greatest blues guitarist who ever lived.

• W.C. Handy Park (Downtown)

  Picture the bandleader honored in this small park: W.C. Handy, the man they call the Father of the Blues.

• Sun Studio (Midtown)

  Notice this modest storefront: it's the actual birthplace of rock and roll.

• Graceland (Whitehaven)

  Your first glimpse of Graceland is the mansion Elvis Presley bought in 1957 for $102,500, a fortune for a young man earning forty-one dollars a…

• Elvis Presley's Memphis (Downtown)

  Elvis Presley's Memphis fills a massive entertainment complex on Beale Street, celebrating the life of the King of Rock and Roll.

• National Civil Rights Museum (Downtown)

  Your tour reaches the National Civil Rights Museum, built around the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

• Clayborn Temple (Downtown)

  Clayborn Temple, the Romanesque Revival church in front of you, served as the beating heart of the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike.

• Mason Temple (South Memphis)

  Your path leads to Mason Temple, the largest Black-owned church building in the United States at the time of its construction and the site of…

• Lorraine Motel Room 306 (Downtown)

  Your gaze meets Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel, the balcony where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot on April 4, 1968.

• Stax Museum of American Soul Music (Soulsville)

  Here on the exact site of the original Stax Records studio, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music honors one of the most consequential recording…

• South Memphis / Soulsville USA (South Memphis)

  Soulsville USA, the South Memphis neighborhood you have walked into, gave the world the Stax Records sound.

• Full Gospel Tabernacle (Whitehaven)

  Full Gospel Tabernacle is the church where soul and gospel legend Al Green has ministered since 1976.

• Orpheum Theatre (Downtown)

  Downtown Memphis keeps its crown jewel right here: the Orpheum Theatre, one of the great surviving movie palaces of the 1920s.

• Peabody Hotel (Downtown)

  Memphis has no more storied address than the Peabody Hotel, where, as the saying goes, the Mississippi Delta begins in the lobby.

• Peabody Ducks Rooftop Palace (Downtown)

  Up on the rooftop of the Peabody Hotel, high above you, lives one of the most charmingly absurd traditions in American hospitality.

• Tom Lee Park / Mississippi Riverfront (Riverfront)

  Tom Lee Park puts you on the banks of the Mississippi River, the most powerful and consequential waterway in North America.

• Memphis Pyramid / Bass Pro Shops (Riverfront)

  Thirty-two stories of stainless steel rise beside you on the bank of the Mississippi River: the Memphis Pyramid, without question one of the strangest buildings…

• Mud Island River Park (Riverfront)

  Mud Island River Park begins right here, a five-block-long peninsula that juts into the Wolf River Harbor just north of downtown Memphis.

• Cotton Row (Downtown)

  Cotton Row, the block of Front Street under your feet, was once the commercial nerve center of the antebellum cotton economy and one of the…

• Auction Square (Downtown)

  Auction Square, this quiet block, was once one of the largest and most active slave markets in the antebellum South.

• Victorian Village (Downtown)

  Victorian Village spreads out in front of you, a neighborhood of extraordinary nineteenth-century mansions that tells the story of Memphis's Gilded Age prosperity and its…

• Shelby County Courthouse (Downtown)

  Since 1909 the Shelby County Courthouse, the Beaux-Arts landmark facing you, has anchored Downtown Memphis.

• Court Square (Downtown)

  Court Square, the park you have reached, is the oldest public park in Memphis and one of the oldest in Tennessee, established when the city…

• Overton Park (Midtown)

  Overton Park spreads 342 acres of urban forest, cultural institutions, and open green space through the heart of Midtown Memphis, and it is the site…

• Memphis Brooks Museum of Art (Midtown)

  Founded in 1916 through the generosity of Bessie Vance Brooks, who bequeathed her estate for a public art museum in memory of her husband, the…

• Memphis Zoo (Midtown)

  Ahead of you is the entrance to the Memphis Zoo, one of the top-ranked zoos in the United States and a beloved institution that has…

• Frayser (North Memphis)

  Frayser, the working-class neighborhood you have entered in North Memphis, was incorporated into the city in the 1950s and has long been one of the…

• Manassas High School (North Memphis)

  Manassas High School, just ahead of you, is one of the oldest historically Black high schools in Memphis, with an alumni list that reads like…

• Central Station Hotel (Downtown)

  Central Station Hotel occupies the historic Memphis Central Station, which opened in 1914 and served as the gateway through which Memphis met the world for…

• Pinhook / Early Memphis (Riverfront)

  Long ago the rough settlement of Pinhook sat near this spot, preceding the formal founding of Memphis in 1819.

• Young Avenue Deli (Cooper-Young)

  Young Avenue Deli, the beloved neighborhood bar and music venue you have come to, has been the social anchor of the Cooper-Young neighborhood since 1994.

• Binghamton (East Memphis)

  Binghamton, the East Memphis neighborhood you have reached, has undergone a remarkable transformation over the past two decades through one of the most ambitious community…

• Cooper-Young Arts District (Midtown)

  At the intersection of Cooper Street and Young Avenue, you have found the heart of Memphis's Cooper-Young Arts District, a neighborhood saved from decline by…

• Midtown Memphis (Midtown)

  Many Memphians consider Midtown Memphis, the neighborhood you have entered, the true soul of their city.

• Crosstown Concourse (Midtown)

  Crosstown Concourse towers over you, one of the most ambitious and successful adaptive reuse projects in American urban history.

• Vollentine-Evergreen (Midtown)

  Welcome to Vollentine-Evergreen, the residential district in North Midtown where you now walk, which takes its name from two of its main streets and represents…

• Elmwood Cemetery (South Memphis)

  Established in 1852, Elmwood Cemetery, whose gates rise in front of you, is one of the oldest and most historically significant cemeteries in the American…

• MLK's Last March / Sanitation Strike Route (Downtown)

  Under your feet runs the route of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s final marches through Downtown Memphis in support of the 1968 Sanitation Strike.

• Ernest Withers Photography (Downtown)

  Ernest Withers, the most important photographer in Memphis history and one of the most significant documentary photographers of the American civil rights era, had his…

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