Beale Street and Sun Studio are close together, roughly a mile and a half apart in or near downtown Memphis. Stax Museum of American Soul Music sits about three miles south of both, in the Soulsville neighbourhood. Graceland is the outlier — roughly nine to ten miles south of downtown, in Whitehaven, near Memphis International Airport.
Why are these four sites treated as one trail?
Beale Street, Sun Studio, Stax and Graceland are the four places most commonly cited, by museums and by the city’s own tourism materials, as the backbone of Memphis’s recorded-music history. They are not clustered in one district — they mark different decades and different sides of the city. Understanding the distance between them says something about how Memphis actually grew, not just how to plan a day.
Where exactly is Beale Street in relation to the others?
Beale Street runs through the eastern edge of downtown Memphis, from the riverfront toward Danny Thomas Boulevard. The National Park Service and the National Register of Historic Places both list the Beale Street Historic District as a protected area, and it functions as the geographic centre point for measuring distance to the other three sites — everything else in this group sits progressively further south or east of it.
For the boundaries of downtown itself, see the site’s explainer on what counts as downtown Memphis. Beale Street’s own layout, and what is and isn’t actually on the street today, is covered in a separate piece on Beale Street.
How far is Sun Studio from Beale Street?
Sun Studio, at 706 Union Avenue, is roughly a mile and a half from Beale Street — close enough to walk, though most visitors drive, cycle or take a short rideshare given Union Avenue’s traffic and lack of shade. It sits just east of downtown proper, on the edge of the Medical District.
Sun Studio’s own site describes the building as the working studio where Sam Phillips recorded artists including Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, B.B. King and Howlin’ Wolf between 1950 and the mid-1950s; it still operates as a functioning recording studio outside of tour hours, a detail Sun Studio states on its own site. Details of what was actually recorded there are covered in a dedicated piece on Sun Studio. For current hours and tour times, Sun Studio’s own site (sunstudio.com) is the source to check, since these change.
How far is Stax from Beale Street and Sun Studio?
Stax Museum of American Soul Music, at 926 E McLemore Avenue, is about three miles south of Beale Street and roughly two and a half miles south of Sun Studio. It sits in Soulsville, a residential neighbourhood south of downtown that the museum’s own materials describe as the historic base of Stax Records from 1957 into the 1970s.
The museum is built on the site of the original Stax studio, itself a converted movie theatre, and its collection includes Isaac Hayes’s Cadillac and instruments used by Stax artists — details drawn from the museum’s own site, staxmuseum.com. The neighbourhood around it is explained further in a separate piece on Soulsville, and the museum’s holdings in more detail in the Stax Museum explainer.
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How far is Graceland from the other three?
Graceland, at 3717 Elvis Presley Boulevard, is roughly nine to ten miles south of downtown Memphis and Beale Street, around eight miles from Sun Studio, and roughly six miles from Stax — figures worth confirming against a current mapping service rather than treating as fixed, since routing and road changes shift minor distances over time. It sits in Whitehaven, close to Memphis International Airport.
Graceland’s own site describes the mansion as Elvis Presley’s home from 1957 until his death in 1977, and it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. What the property includes today — the mansion, the grounds, the separate exhibition complex across the street — is covered in a dedicated explainer on Graceland. The surrounding neighbourhood is described in a piece on Whitehaven. Current ticket structures and opening times should be confirmed on graceland.com, since Graceland operates several tiers of access that change.
Can you actually visit all four in one day?
Physically, yes — the combined driving distance across all four stops is under fifteen miles. Whether it’s a reasonable day depends on how much time each site actually takes once inside, and that varies more than the driving does.
Sun Studio and Stax are typically visited on guided tours with a fixed run time, set by the operator, not by the visitor. Graceland’s mansion tour is self-paced with an audio guide but sits inside a larger complex that can absorb several hours if the exhibition halls across the street are included. Beale Street has no single visiting time at all — it’s a street, not an attraction with a door.
A realistic day accounts for tour start times that don’t line up conveniently, parking at each stop, and the fact that Graceland sits far enough out that a return trip downtown is a deliberate leg of the day, not an afterthought.
How do you actually get between them?
Downtown, Beale Street and Sun Studio are within range of walking, cycling or a short drive. Getting to Stax and then on to Graceland is a different matter — both sit outside downtown’s walkable core, and Memphis’s public transport network, MATA, runs bus routes to both areas but not with the frequency or speed of a car trip.
Most visitors driving themselves will want to understand parking in the downtown core first; that’s covered in a guide to how parking works in downtown Memphis. For the bus network itself, see what MATA is and how the bus network is structured. The broader question of whether a car is really necessary for a trip like this one is addressed directly in an honest answer on needing a car in Memphis — for a single-day run to Graceland and back, most residents and repeat visitors would say yes.
Does the distance between them say anything about the city?
It says something specific. Beale Street and Sun Studio belong to downtown and its immediate edge — dense, walkable, built up in the same era. Stax sits in Soulsville, a residential Black neighbourhood south of downtown that the museum’s own materials tie directly to the label’s identity; the museum is as much a neighbourhood institution as a tourist stop. Graceland sits further out still, in Whitehaven, a suburb-scale area that only makes sense once you understand that Memphis, like most Southern cities, grew outward along a few main roads rather than filling in evenly.
None of these four sites were ever meant to be a single afternoon. They mark different points in the city’s history and different parts of its map, and the distance between them is part of what each site is.
Where to read more
- The Memphis guide hub, for museums, landmarks and neighbourhoods across the city
- The practical planning hub, for getting around, parking and the riverfront
- The museums and galleries archive, for other institutions beyond these four
- The neighbourhoods archive, for how each district around these sites actually functions
Access Memphis is an independent guide written from published, checkable sources. We have not visited the places described here and we do not publish personal recommendations or invented ‘local favourites’ — where something is singled out as notable, we say who says so. Opening times, fares, closures and prices change at short notice, so treat everything here as a starting point and confirm with the museum, operator or venue directly before building a day around it. We give no advice on visas, insurance, health or safety; use your own government’s official guidance for those.
Featured image: Photo by Alexandra Kay from Murfreesboro, TN, United States, source, CC BY 2.0
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