Rock N Soul Museum

To me this was just another so-​so museum. I would have enjoyed more interactive exhibits or videos. There is a lot of history here, but other museums in Memphis are more engaging.

So much history! My folks were in town visiting from Utah and we decided to stop by the Rock N Soul Museum before hitting up a Grizzlies game next door.
We entered at around six and they told us that we probably wouldn’t have time to read/​listen to everything but that we could use our tickets again the next day to finish up if we wanted. Since my parents were so interested that’s what we ended up doing! So I ended up here twice in 24 hours.
This museum highlights many important parts of Memphis culture and history and now that I’ve been through it I have a higher regard for all that this city has been through.

Wanted to feel welcomed and encouraged to enjoy full tour, but nope.
Exhibit itself was nice. What wasn’t so nice: on phone staff member said last tour begins at 6pm and they close at 7pm. Arrived about 5:45pm and fast and low talking staff member cautioned that we might not have time to see everything as it takes about 90 min to go through everything. He was all too eager to get us outta there— and we had just arrived at the admission desk. Sheesh! Enjoy your job much? No joy felt from the staff. Glum. Like the slogans on some gift items say, «Got rock?» or «Got soul?» ?!! Unfortunate.
Tried to block that from mind and enjoy the audio tour through the headphones, watching the clock and having to skip parts throughout.

The Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum in Memphis provides a great look into early rock ‘n’ roll and soul music, its roots, and local labels in a relaxed interactive environment. Just steps from Beale Street, this is a great stop if you don’t have time to do STAX/​SUN on their own.
I’ve been to both of the former, and we had a Grizzlies game to attend with a tight timeline, so this was a great pop-​in before the game. Staff here are relaxed, but helpful and a delight. There was a brief introductory film, and then you get a set of headphones and a keypad operator, which you can use to listen to exhibits that interest you. I love this. They have this at the EMP in Seattle, and it allows you to skip what you don’t care for, and drill down into things that really interest you!
You start with the roots of the blues and country, on the plantations and farms. Exhibits are nicely done, and there are plenty of musical examples, along with the history lesson. My son liked this museum, because he could roam away from me, and not get lost, and explore on his own for a bit.
Further rooms let you explore the legacies of Sun Records, STAX, Hi Records, and even Ardent has some fair representation (although leaving out that the Replacements recorded Pleased to Meet Me at Ardent Studios was an error of omission I’d correct)! But this is the little museum that could, and they even note they can’t list everybody– that’s just how cool this museum is.
This is a great little museum with a great selection of memorabilia, history, and great musical examples and it’s close to Beale; for an all-​in-​one experience you really can’t beat it!

The Rock and Soul Museum is definitely worth seeing. The Plus side– I love that they focus on the history of what African Americans brought to the music table here! I mean, I won’t say I don’t love the sound of Elvis’s smooth voice but I was really happy to see credit was given where credit was due. The video before hand was a bit sketchy though. I mean, they did kinda down play the whole stealing of music thing and make it sound like everybody was just friends and it was fine that white people got famous off the music that black people wrote and sang and no one wanted to apparently hear it from. I wasn’t there when these things happened but I didn’t like the perspective of the film. The actual stuff in the museum told another story though. And its definitely a beautiful history of music! One thing I wasn’t a fan of– it was really audio heavy. I was visiting a friend and I didn’t want headphones on the whole time I was in a museum. That was odd. On the plus though, they didn’t charge for the headphones like most museums. The video playing in the back room was informative. I thought the jukeboxes were pretty cool because you can hear all kinds of music– they had Memphis Minnie a personal fave of mine. Well, that’s what I gathered from this trip. Although I was a little distract by this weirdo walking around with no shoes on. Where was security? haha All around fun trip.

This is a really cool place to visit. We’ve been living in the Memphis area for almost 8 years now, and this is the first time we went. We took the kids, and at first I thought they wouldn’t enjoy the place, but I was very wrong. We have a 10 yo and a 5 yo, and the whole thing with the earphones and recorder is a great idea for people that won’t be likely to read all the displays. And of course, the music they play for you in every display!
The place is small, but the artifacts they have to show are really cool.
I took lots of pictures so I can allure my family interested in music to come visit us.
But please, take note: if you are planning on touring around Memphis, and getting to know all the history of this grand city, this place is not going to be enough, this is just one of pieces of the puzzle. To get the whole picture, one needs to visit Sun’s Studios, Graceland, this museum, Civil Rights Museum and probably the Cotton Museum… then you will understand why Memphis is so important for this Country’s history.

A very good museum. Starts with a short movie and the tour is self paced. Audio guide is part of the admission. Allow for 2 or more hours if you want to listen to all the audio.

This is a very nice museum in the heart of the downtown area.
The collection is well done, but, it suffers when compared to the STAX Museum.
Well worth the visit, but, not as compelling as others in town.

This is one of the BEST museums I have ever been in.
It is a small museum but in a convenient location (FedEx hall, Gibson Guitars, Beale Street). What I really liked about this place were all the opportunities to listen to MUSIC! It really put all the information & display items into perspective in a way that no other museum has ever done.
When you enter you receive a recorder. You can choose to listen to have certain areas explained to you (which I liked better than reading massive entries) or select music from certain areas & do your own reading/​exploring.
Really amazing museum. AAA discount at entrance.

The self guided tour was very well put together. I understand the museum consulted with the Smithsonian in Washington DC.
I learned a lot about rock and soul music. We were there for five and a half hours. I probably could have stayed a little bit longer listening to all that music.
There was a lot going on back in the day in Memphis. I’m glad this museum was on our itinerary.

When I saw this place, I thought another tourist trap. I was kind of right. My surprise was I learned about the influence of Memphis to American music. The education was inspiring and interesting. You pay for your ticket and wait for the introduction movie. My wait was short. Then the put you into this small room with an informative movie. Afterwards, they hand you an audio tour player where you type in the number of the display you are looking at and they give you more information. You could spend hours if you go through every number, but you won’t. This is my gripe. It was hit or miss with the audio and some were lengthy and boring. It was like the lottery, you didn’t know when you were going to get a winner. The good ones were good. The bad ones were boring. I probably missed some good ones since the bad ones made me skip different displays.

Not the most sexy museum but one that I learned a lot from and felt really satisfied with by the end.
There are a ton of ditties to put into your self-​guiding transmitter, so you can learn about the old music history, the musicians of the time and the happenings of Memphis throughout the years.
I personally enjoyed putting in numbers from the big song boards and walking around the museum reading whilst listening to a slew of different tracks.
It gave me lots of ideas for futures artists to check out. But particularly if you’re already familiar or attuned to these pre-​rock n’ roll musicians you might find this even more rewarding since this is a slice of music history not as contemporary and thus high-​lighted as many other genres.
And you’ll learn 3X as much about Soul for ¹⁄₃ the price as Graceland.

It’s worth the $ 11.00.
Make sure you get the hang of playing with your audio player.
You don’t have to listen to every exhibit all the way through.
You can sort of create a custom playlist while you learn about the history of Memphis Rock and Soul.
Note: this is the Memphis rock and soul museum so there is no heavy metal.
I would like to have seen a mention of local artist Jimi Jamison.
Overall this was as enjoyable as a Presidential library.
I’m thinking the Gerald Ford one.

Good tour! This is an audio guided tour and has good information. It has neat items on display — signed guitars, Elvis’ costumes etc. This ties in how rock and roll came about from the southern states.

I LOVE music… all kinds of music.
The Rock and Soul Museum was such a treat for me. It is jam packed with the history of American music and tons of music memorabilia.
The tour is self-​guided with a recorder. It starts by discussing the origin of music sang by African Americans during slavery and ends with Memphis’ very own rap group Three 6 Mafia winning a Best Song Academy Award for «It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp» and it covers everything in between (Elvis, Tina and Ike Turner, BB King and many many more).
You can easily spend upwards of 1.5 — 2 hours watching the initial film and stopping to listen to each of the recordings but even skipping around the tour took me an hour, which was well worth it.
The museum is located in the heart of downtown and one block form Beale Street. Do yourself a favor and check it our.

This is the one touristy thing I make sure to tell others to do when they visit.
Get the headphones and immerse yourself — which is what I love about this place. If I’m learning about music, I don’t want to read or see it, I want to hear it.
The tour is self — guided, so you can take your time looking at something and just type in a number when you move to the next display, which I thought was pretty great.
I’ve been able to answer more than one trivia and Jeopardy question thanks to the time spent here one afternoon :)

We had just come from Nashville where we visited RCA Studio B, the Grand Olé Opry, and the Ryman Auditorium. There wasn’t a whole «new» for us to discover at this place. Still, it’s right there, right across the street from the Gibson factory, and just a short walk from Beale Street. It was impossible to stay away.
The prices is right, the adventure is nice, and I never grow tired of looking at artifacts while traveling through rock and roll history. The museum is well done, but it just falls short after having seen all of the things I’ve seen, and experienced all the things I experienced in the days just before. If you are new to Beale Street, or you didn’t grow up with the music, walk on in, and enjoy the discovery. If you are already fairly familiar with the history, you’ll not find anything particularly new here, but go in anyway just for posterity’s sake, and to keep the place going.

We really enjoyed this museum. They start you off with a great movie, showing entertaining vintage footage of many old performers in action. This was awesome to me, because many of these great musicians I have only seen perform when they were much older, so I loved seeing them when they were young and hip.
Then you are geared up with headsets for an audio tour, so you can move through the museum at your own pace. I love that they had multiple little sections in each room to stop at and listen to, so we didn’t all pile up at the same one or two spots. Each section featured knick knacks and clothing, and stories and songs, about many popular artists and groups and how their careers got started.
Also cool were the jukeboxes set up in every room, so you could punch in a number, and hear a hit from way back when. The only problem I noticed with this system were those visitors that felt the need to sing along, out loud, usually extra loudly (since they still had their headphones on), and not quite as in tune as the original performer. Fact: many many people out there do not sing as well as they think they do.
The museum still looks like a work in progress — you can tell they have another exhibit opening soon. Your tour currently seems to rather abruptly end. And then — surprise — the gift shop, stocked full of things you absolutely need to have. Good times, definitely recommend.

$ 11pp and we spent around an hour and a half to two hours here.
I think this was my favourite museum of the trip — and probably ranks very highly in my list of all-​time faves, we parked in the parking garage next to the Peabody Hotel and walked the block or two to get to the museum. I loved the self guided headphone tour, it was easy to use, type in the 3 digit numbers that are posted on exhibits and hit the play button — user friendly, good sound and plenty of information about each exhibit.
There’s a 12 minute introductory film to the museum, you will probably find yourself singing along with both the film and other patrons — like the Stax museum, you can’t help yourself! (or at least I couldn’t!)
A blend of country, gospel and blues music — who’d have thought such a fab sound would come of it?! LOL!
I, personally, favoured all of the juke boxes, I loved hearing the info about the machines themselves, and rockin’ out to some of the mu-​sac as I looked at the exhibits (I must have listened to ‘Soul Man’ about 10 times, boppin’ every time!) the music is fab and you really could just spend a few hours playing all of the songs in the juke boxes.
Lots to look at, lots to learn and a variety of artists whos music you’ve probably heard but you don’t necessarily know their names. The rich complexity of music of this era and the tapestries and stories woven within the music is amazing and awe-​inspiring. At a time where many people were angry and hurt and scared, the music remained hopeful and less racial than one might think. Definitely progressive for its time. What an education in this place!
As for the reviewer that said it was a little boring for non-​music fans — who in their right mind would go to a music museum, if they weren’t a fan of music? And to the lady who was upset with the ‘small scope the tour covered’, were we in the same museum?
Put this museum top of your Memphis to-​do list!

I love the music of the Mississippi River Delta region from the Blues, Soul, and early days of Rock n Roll. The museum spotlights the stories of the history of Blues and Soul, and the blending of everything into early Rock n Roll.
The Memphis Rock n Soul Museum is located along Main Street in Memphis, adjacent to the new FedEx arena.
Upon entering the museum, you are handed a hand-​held audio device with a set of headphones. As you move through the museum, you watch for the 3-​digit number affixed to the display cases, and then dial in that number to listen to the story of the photos and artifacts within that case. Also within each room is a jukebox, with 3-​digit numbers associated with each of the songs in the jukebox. And so, being the total music junkie that I am, I started dialing in the tunes and the be-​bopping around the other cases to read the signs.
This is a fabulous museum for anyone who enjoys the stories and the music of various Blues artists like Albert King and BB King, and then the story of Sun Records, Elvis, and so many other wonderful early Rock n Roll performers, and then finally Memphis’s answer to Motown Records — Stax Records, with all of the great soul singers from this region.
An outstanding museum!

Ein weiteres Museum, das wir bei unserem Aufenthalt in Memphis, Tennessee besucht haben ist das Memphis Rock’n’ Soul Museum.
Dieses ist leicht zu finden, da es direkt an der Beale Street und dem Fed Ex Forum in Memphis liegt.
Wir konnten es von unserem Hotel aus in wenigen Minuten zu Fuss erreichen.
Im Eintritt enthalten ist ein Audio Führer, leider gab es den nur in Englisch.
Wir erhielten jedoch einen Hefter mit deutschen Text, der dem Wortlaut des Audio Führers entsprach.
Die Übersetzungen waren gut und flüssig lesbar. Da das Audio System auch viele Musikbeispiele enthielt, haben wir uns erst den Text durchgelesen und dann den Audio Führer gehört, dies bedeutete zwar einen längeren Aufenthalt im Museum, trug aber zum besseren Verständnis bei. Der englische Text des Audiosystem war zwar gut verständlich, aber man sollte schon mehr als rudimentäre Englischkentnisse haben.
Das Museum entstand im Jahr 2000 und ist seit August 2004 im Fed Ex Forum integriert. Hier wird die Geschichte der Rock’n Soul Musik von ihren Anfängen bis zu den 70er Jahren vorgestellt. So führt die Ausstellung erst einmal zu den Anfängen der Musik auf den Felder der Südstaaten. Alles wird anhand von Musikbeispielen untermalt, die einen guten Eindruck über die Art der Musik geben. Etliche Exponate aus der Zeit zeigen auch die Lebensumstände der damaligen Bevölkerung. Danach führt die Ausstellung weiter durch die Zeit, stellt die diversen Künstler vor, welche die Musik im Laufe der Zeit prägten. Es handelt sich dabei um Künstler die ihre Urspünge in Memphis und Umgebung haben, dabei sind so bekannte Namen wie Elvis Presley, Otis Redding, B.B. King, Jerry Lee Lewis und noch viele weitere. In Memphis und Umgebung entstanden mehr als 120 Top 20 Titel und daran versucht das Museum auch zu erinnern.
So kann man auch etliche Orginale von Liedertexten sehen, Kostüme verschiedener Künstler (am besten gefielen mir die glitzernden Platteauschuhe der 70 er Jahre) sowie Musikinstrumente. Viele Fotogallerien zeigen Stationen im Leben der Künstler.
Am interessantesten war jedoch der Audioführer, da man darüber viele Musikbeispiele und Erklärungen bekommt. Bei vielen Liedern gab es einen Wiedererkennungseffekt, ebenso bei den Namen und Fotos der diversen Künstler.
Insgesamt verbrachten wir 2 Stunden in diesem Museum und hätten sicher noch mehr Zeit gebraucht, um alle Musikbeispiele und Filmsequenzen zu hören und zu sehen.
Der Gesamteindruck von diesem Museum war sehr gut, die Ausstellung war in guter chronologischer Reihenfolge aufgebaut, mit vielen Erklärungen und Exponaten, die einen umfassenden Eindruck über das zeigten, was den Inhalt dieses Museum ausmacht.
Die Rock’n Soul Musik von den Anfängen bis zu den 70 er Jahren, aber auch der politische Anspruch, der hinter der Musik steckte wird aufgezeigt. Die Bewegung für Gleichberechtigung von Schwarz und Weiss und das Erwachen des Selbstbewusstsein bei der farbigen Bevölkerung Amerikas.
Wie üblich endete der Besuch der Ausstellung im Souvenirshop, der mit erträglichen Preisen aufwartete.
Die sanitären Anlagen habe ich dort auch mal wieder besucht und fand diese ordentlich und ausreichend.
Mein Fazit:
Wer sich für ein paar Tage in Memphis aufhält, sollte sich dieses Museum anschauen, da es gut und interessant aufgebaut ist. Der Eintrittspreis hält sich im erträglichen Rahmen. Ein absolutes Muss für dieses Museum ist nicht gegeben, aber da wir in Memphis praktisch alle Museen gesehen haben die er dort zum Thema Musik gab, fanden wir dieses als Abschluss recht gelungen und interessant, zumal die verschiedenen Museen zum Thema Musik meist nur eine Facette der Musik von Memphis und Umgebung abdeckt. Insgesamt ergab sich für uns durch die verschiedenen Museen ein rundes Bild der Musik im Laufe der Zeit.
Wer sich noch weiterführend informieren will, findet auf der Homepage weitere interessante Informationen und kann sich auch Soulmusik anhören.