The birthplace of the blues and the city where Elvis Presley walked into Sam Phillips' Sun Studio at 18 years old — where Beale Street still runs neon-lit seven nights a week, the Civil Rights Museum is built into the balcony of the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, pitmasters smoke dry-rub ribs over hickory for 14 hours, and the soul of the American South comes through in every note and every bite
Memphis (630,000; metro 1.35 million) is the largest city in Tennessee and the seat of Shelby County — positioned on a bluff above the Mississippi River at the point where Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi meet. Memphis is the city most responsible for the shape of American music: blues (B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson recorded here), rock and roll (Elvis Presley at Sun Studio, 1954 — 'That's All Right' changed everything), soul (Otis Redding, Al Green, Isaac Hayes at Stax Records, 1960s), and gospel (the Staple Singers, Thomas A. Dorsey's 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord') all have pr…
The Chickasaw Nation occupied the bluffs above the Mississippi River for centuries before European contact — Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto arrived in 1541 and became the first European to see the Mississippi, from approximately the site of present-day Memphis. Memphis was incorporated in 1826, named for the ancient Egyptian capital on the Nile (the city's founders saw parallels between the Nile Delta's fertility and the Mississippi River's agricultural richness). Yellow fever epidemics of 1873 and 1878 killed 10% and 20% of Memphis's population respectively — the city was stripped of its…