Stax Museum of American Soul Music - Memphis, TN

If you care about American music at all, Stax needs to be on your pilgrimage list. The Stax Museum of American Soul Music sits on McLemore Avenue in South Memphis, on the original site of Stax Records, the little neighborhood studio that helped define the sound of the 1960s and 70s.

Built by a brother (Jim STewart) and sister (Estelle AXton) team, STAX Records started in a garage and became a multi-million dollar business bringing local, then national, talent to commercialize and popularize soul music.

This place is not just “a museum with some records.” It is a love letter to soul, to Black creativity, and to the weird magic that happens when regular people walk into a cheap converted theater and walk out as legends.

A Quick Bit Of Context

Stax Records started in a former movie theater and went on to launch or nurture careers like Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, the Staple Singers, Sam & Dave, Booker T. & the M.G.’s, Carla Thomas, Albert King, Rufus Thomas, and a long list of others.

The museum opened in 2003 and is run by the nonprofit Soulsville Foundation, which also operates the Stax Music Academy and The Soulsville Charter School next door. The three together anchor the Soulsville U.S.A. neighborhood and keep the Stax story tied to real kids and a real community instead of just nostalgia for tourists.

What You’ll See Inside

The museum is about 17,000 square feet and packs in more than 2,000 artifacts, photos, instruments, and pieces of memorabilia. It’s laid out as a narrative: church, neighborhood, early days of the label, big hits, civil rights era, decline, and then the rebirth through the museum and the academy.

A few highlights that stand out:

The 1906 Delta church – They brought in an actual circa-1906 Mississippi Delta church and rebuilt it inside the museum to show how deeply soul grew out of Black gospel. You walk in, sit in the pews, and you can feel how “church music” turned into “soul music.”
Re-created Studio A – Stax was originally the Capitol Theatre. The museum rebuilt the studio, complete with the slightly sloped floor, vintage recording gear, and the layout used when they tracked those classic records.
The Hall of Records – A wall of around 900 45s and 300 LPs from Stax and other soul labels. It’s one of those “oh yeah, that song too” moments repeated about 300 times.
Soul Train dance floor – They literally have the Soul Train dance floor looping footage from the show. Yes, you can step on the floor and embarrass yourself, which is kind of the point.
Icons beyond Stax – Even though the focus is Stax, the museum also showcases other soul labels like Motown, Hi, Atlantic, and Muscle Shoals, with video of artists like Aretha Franklin, Al Green, Marvin Gaye, James Brown, and others.
Isaac Hayes’ Cadillac – A custom 1972 Cadillac Eldorado, peacock-blue, gold-trimmed, shag carpet, TV, the whole thing. It is over the top in exactly the way you want Isaac Hayes’ car to be.

Isaac Hayes’ Custom Cadillac

More Than Music History

One thing that sets Stax apart is how deliberately it connects music to the civil rights struggle and to Memphis itself. Exhibits talk directly about segregation, the Watts rebellion, the way integrated bands on Stax sessions were radical for their time, and how soul music became a soundtrack for change.

Stax is also a living campus:

Stax Music Academy: After-school program for middle and high schoolers. Every senior since 2008 has been accepted to college, and more recently they have been getting music scholarships.
Soulsville Charter School: A college-prep school that bakes music into the curriculum, with orchestras and choirs that have performed with some heavy hitters.

You get the sense that this place is not just preserving the past, it is actively building a pipeline of future musicians and creators.

Why It’s Worth Your Time

A few reasons this hits harder than a typical museum stop:

It’s wildly specific – This is the only full museum on American soul music built on the actual site where the songs were recorded, not a random building with some display cases.
It feels human sized – Stax was never a giant corporate machine. The exhibits are full of stories about drivers who begged for a chance to sing, local teenagers who wandered in to audition, and working-class players who turned into giants.
It is an “experience,” not just a museum – Between the video rooms, the dance floor, and the recreated studio, it feels more like walking through a time capsule than reading wall text.
You walk out with a playlist and a perspective – It is very hard to leave without a new favorite artist and a clearer picture of how tightly music, race, economics, and politics have always been tied together in the American South.