Beale Street — Memphis Blues Birthplace

Beale Street in downtown Memphis is the most historically significant street in American blues history — the thoroughfare where W.C. Handy heard a slide guitarist in 1903 and wrote down what he heard as 'Memphis Blues,' effectively inventing the published blues form. By the 1920s Beale Street was the main artery of Black commercial and cultural life in Memphis, lined with pawnshops, nightclubs, churches, and the offices of the Black-owned businesses that served the segregated community. Furry Lewis, Memphis Minnie, and dozens of other blues musicians played its clubs and street corners. B.B. King played on the corner of Beale and Second for tips when he arrived from the Delta.

The street's cultural life was devastated by urban renewal in the 1960s and 1970s, which demolished much of the historic built environment. A revival effort in the 1980s and 1990s restored the entertainment strip, but as a tourist precinct rather than a living community. Today's Beale Street — lined with bars, live music venues, and souvenir shops — is a commercial approximation of its former self, though the music played in the clubs maintains genuine continuity with the tradition.

The A. Schwab dry goods store at 163 Beale Street, open since 1876, is the last original Beale Street business still operating. W.C. Handy Park at the corner of Beale and Third contains a statue of Handy and is a gathering point for street musicians. The Memphis Rock 'n' Soul Museum, adjacent to FedExForum, provides the most thorough account of Beale Street's musical history.