Memphis Trivia
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108 free Memphis trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
54 free Memphis trivia questions with answers. Memphis trivia for anyone who has walked Beale Street, toured Graceland or argued about dry versus wet ribs. This quiz covers the city's founding by Andrew Jackson and friends, the yellow fever years and Boss Crump, the music (Sun Studio, Rocket 88, W. C. Handy, Stax and Otis Redding), the civil rights history of the Lorraine Motel and the sanitation strike, and the modern city of FedEx, the Grizzlies, the Pyramid-turned-Bass-Pro and the Peabody ducks. Easy questions ask which river the city sits on and where Elvis lived; harder ones want the price he paid for Graceland, who Graceland is named after, and what the Tigers called the Pyramid. It works for a Memphis-themed party, a bar quiz or a road trip down Highway 61. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the city, its landmarks, its music and its teams, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 108 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Memphis sits on the banks of which great waterway?
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River; Memphis sits on the fourth Chickasaw Bluff above its floodplain and is the largest city proper anywhere along the river.
Q 02Memphis was named after an ancient capital of which country?
Egypt
The founders chose the name in 1819 after Memphis, the ancient Egyptian capital on the Nile, another great city on a great river.
Q 03Which future US president was one of the three founders of Memphis in 1819?
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson founded Memphis in May 1819 with partners John Overton and James Winchester, months after the 1818 Chickasaw Cession opened West Tennessee to settlement.
Q 04Which Spanish conquistador is credited with the first European exploration of the Memphis area in 1541?
Hernando de Soto
Hernando de Soto's expedition reached the Mississippi near present-day Memphis in May 1541, the first Europeans known to do so; the Interstate 40 bridge across the river is named for him.
Q 05Memphis is the seat of which Tennessee county?
Shelby
Shelby County, Tennessee's most populous county, has its seat in Memphis; the city itself is the state's second-largest after Nashville.
Q 06Which disease devastated Memphis in a series of 1870s epidemics, killing more than 5,000 in 1878 alone?
Yellow fever
Yellow fever killed more than 5,000 of the roughly 19,000 people who stayed in 1878; tens of thousands fled, and the bankrupt city surrendered its charter in 1879 to become a state taxing district.
Q 07Which political machine leader controlled Memphis from the 1910s to about 1950?
E. H. Crump
Edward Hull 'Boss' Crump, mayor from 1910, ran Memphis's Democratic machine until his death in 1954, delivering Shelby County's votes to statewide candidates for decades.
Q 08Which company is the largest employer in Memphis, with its global air hub at the airport?
FedEx
FedEx, Memphis's largest employer, runs its World Hub at Memphis International Airport; founder Fred Smith moved operations there in 1973 for the central location and reliably flyable weather.
Q 09Where was FedEx (then Federal Express) founded in 1971 before moving to Memphis?
Little Rock, Arkansas
Smith incorporated Federal Express in Little Rock, Arkansas, in June 1971, after sketching the overnight-delivery idea in a Yale term paper; he moved the operation to Memphis in 1973.
Q 10What was the name of Elvis Presley's Memphis mansion?
Graceland
Graceland, on Elvis Presley Boulevard in Whitehaven, was bought by Elvis in 1957; it draws around 600,000 visitors a year, often called the second most-visited house in the US after the White House.
Q 11The Whitehaven mansion Elvis bought in 1957 was named after whom?
Grace Toof, the first owner's daughter
Stephen C. Toof founded Memphis's oldest commercial printing firm and named the farm for his daughter.
Q 12How much did Elvis pay for his Whitehaven mansion in March 1957?
$102,500
Elvis paid $102,500 for Graceland in March 1957, slightly over the $100,000 budget he had given his parents to find a farmhouse with space around it.
Q 13In which year was Graceland designated a National Historic Landmark?
2006
Graceland became a National Historic Landmark on 27 March 2006, fifteen years after its 1991 listing on the National Register of Historic Places and 24 years after opening for tours in 1982.
Q 21Stax's Memphis studio was set up inside what kind of former building?
A movie theater
Stax converted the old Capitol Theatre on East McLemore Avenue, a former movie theater whose sloped floor shaped the studio's sound; Estelle Axton ran a record shop in the lobby where the refreshment stand had been.
Q 22Which house band, an integrated group, backed most Stax hits?
Booker T. & the M.G.'s
Booker T. & the M.G.'s, two Black and two white musicians, backed most Stax sessions; their own instrumental 'Green Onions' reached No. 3 in 1962.
Q 23At which Memphis lodging was Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated on April 4, 1968?
The Lorraine
Q 14Where was Elvis born, before his family moved to Memphis when he was 13?
Tupelo, Mississippi
Elvis was born in a two-room shotgun house in Tupelo, Mississippi, on 8 January 1935; his twin Jesse Garon was stillborn 35 minutes earlier, and the family moved to Memphis in 1948.
Q 15Who ran Sun Studio at 706 Union Avenue and discovered Elvis, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis?
Sam Phillips
Sam Phillips opened the Memphis Recording Service at 706 Union Avenue in January 1950 with assistant Marion Keisker, and launched the Sun Records label from the same room in 1952.
Q 16Which 1951 recording made at Sun Studio is often called the first rock and roll record?
Rocket 88
Rocket 88, cut at Phillips's studio in March 1951 and released on Chess, was credited to Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, though the band was really Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm.
Q 17The 1951 record Ike Turner's band cut at Sam Phillips's studio praised which carmaker's new model?
Oldsmobile
The Oldsmobile Rocket 88, with its new overhead-valve V8, was the car Brenston sang about; he admitted the song borrowed from Jimmy Liggins' 'Cadillac Boogie'.
Q 18Which Memphis thoroughfare is a national historic landmark and the heart of the city's blues heritage?
Beale
Beale Street runs about 1.8 miles from the Mississippi River to East Street; its historic district, where W. C. Handy played in the 1910s, was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1966.
Q 19How did Stax Records get its name?
From founders Stewart and Axton
The sibling partners started out as Satellite Records in 1957 and switched names in 1961.
Q 20Which was Stax's biggest star, who died in a 1967 plane crash?
Otis Redding
Otis Redding, technically signed to the sister label Volt, died when his plane crashed into Lake Monona, Wisconsin, on 10 December 1967, days after recording '(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay'.
The Lorraine Motel on Mulberry Street, where King was shot on the balcony outside Room 306 at 6:01 pm on 4 April 1968; James Earl Ray pleaded guilty to the killing in 1969.
Q 24What institution was built around the site of King's assassination?
National Civil Rights Museum
The National Civil Rights Museum opened at the Lorraine Motel in 1991, preserving Room 306 and the balcony; it reopened after a major renovation in 2014.
Q 25King had come to Memphis in 1968 to support a strike by which city employees?
Sanitation crews
The strike began after two workers, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were crushed to death in a garbage truck.
Q 26Where did King give his final 'I've Been to the Mountaintop' speech?
Mason Temple
Mason Temple, the Church of God in Christ's headquarters, hosted the 3 April 1968 speech; King spoke despite a storm and exhaustion, telling the crowd 'I've seen the Promised Land'.
Q 27Which NBA team plays at FedExForum in Memphis?
Grizzlies
The Memphis Grizzlies have played at FedExForum since it opened in 2004, the only NBA team in Tennessee and the city's only major-league franchise.
Q 28From which city did Memphis's NBA franchise relocate in 2001?
Vancouver
The Vancouver Grizzlies joined the NBA in 1995 alongside the Toronto Raptors and moved to Memphis in 2001 after six losing seasons in Canada.
Q 29Which Memphis guard, drafted second overall in 2019, was NBA Rookie of the Year in 2020?
Ja Morant
Ja Morant, taken second overall in 2019 after starring at Murray State, was the 2019-20 Rookie of the Year and started the 2022 All-Star Game.
Q 30What did the Memphis Pyramid reopen as in 2015?
A Bass Pro Shops store
Bass Pro Shops turned the 321-foot Pyramid, empty since 2007, into a megastore in 2015 with the Big Cypress Lodge hotel, a bowling alley and a glass observation deck at the apex.