Stax Records — 926 E McLemore Ave, Memphis

Stax Records occupied a converted movie theatre at 926 East McLemore Avenue in the South Memphis neighbourhood of Soulsville from 1960 until 1975, and in those fifteen years produced a body of recorded work that ranks among the most important in American music. The label was founded by siblings Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton — Stax from Stewart-Axton — and operated in a part of Memphis that was African-American, working-class, and entirely disconnected from the tourist geography of Beale Street. The building's marquee out front still read "Soulsville U.S.A." when the label was at its peak.

The house band was Booker T. & the MGs — a racially integrated group of musicians who functioned as the rhythmic and harmonic foundation of virtually every Stax record: Steve Cropper on guitar, Donald "Duck" Dunn on bass, Al Jackson Jr. on drums, and Booker T. Jones on organ. The artists who recorded over their playing are the catalogue of American soul: Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Wilson Pickett (early sessions), Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, Isaac Hayes, The Staple Singers, William Bell, Eddie Floyd, Albert King. Redding in particular made the Stax studio his creative home, recording there from 1962 until his death in 1967. His sessions with Cropper produced "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay," completed two days before the plane crash that killed him.

Stax declared bankruptcy in 1975 and the building was demolished in 1989. The site sat vacant until 2003, when the Stax Museum of American Soul Music was built on the original footprint, with a replica of the original studio inside. The museum is open for visits; the surrounding Soulsville neighbourhood, which gave the area its name, has been the subject of sustained community investment since. The original sloping floor of the theatre — which gave Stax recordings their particular acoustic character — is reproduced inside.