60 free Memphis trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 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 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Memphis sits on the banks of which great waterway?
Mississippi River
It is the largest city proper anywhere on the river, perched on the Chickasaw Bluffs above the floodplain.
Q 02Memphis was named after an ancient capital of which country?
Egypt
The founders chose the name in 1819 for another great city on a great river, the Nile.
Q 03Which future US president was one of the three founders of Memphis in 1819?
Andrew Jackson
John Overton and James Winchester were his partners; the city was founded less than five months after the Chickasaw ceded the land.
Q 04Which Spanish conquistador is credited with the first European exploration of the Memphis area in 1541?
Hernando de Soto
The I-40 bridge over the Mississippi carries his name today; locals call it the 'M Bridge'.
Q 05Memphis is the seat of which Tennessee county?
Shelby
It is the second-most populous city in Tennessee after Nashville.
Q 06Which disease devastated Memphis in a series of 1870s epidemics, killing more than 5,000 in 1878 alone?
Yellow fever
Twenty thousand residents fled within four days, and the city lost its charter and much of its middle class.
Q 07Which political machine leader controlled Memphis from the 1910s to about 1950?
E. H. Crump
W. C. Handy's 'The Memphis Blues' began life as a campaign song for him in the 1909 mayoral race.
Q 08Which company is the largest employer in Memphis, with its global air hub at the airport?
FedEx
Founder Fred Smith chose the city for its central location and calm weather, moving operations there in 1973.
Q 09Where was FedEx (then Federal Express) founded in 1971 before moving to Memphis?
Little Rock, Arkansas
Fred Smith sketched the idea in a Yale term paper that his professor was unimpressed by.
Q 10What was the name of Elvis Presley's Memphis mansion?
Graceland
It sits on Elvis Presley Boulevard in Whitehaven and receives around 600,000 visitors a year, second only to the White House among US homes.
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
He gave his parents a $100,000 budget to find a farmhouse with some space around it; they went slightly over.
Q 13Elvis's mansion was the first site on the National Register of Historic Places for significance to what?
Rock music
It was listed in 1991 and became a National Historic Landmark in 2006, another first for a rock site.
Q 21Which was Stax's biggest star, who died in a 1967 plane crash?
Otis Redding
He was technically signed to the sister label Volt; his death and the loss of the Atlantic deal nearly sank the company.
Q 22Stax's Memphis studio was set up inside what kind of former building?
A movie theater
Estelle Axton ran the Satellite record shop in the old cinema foyer where the refreshment stand had been.
Q 23Which house band, an integrated group, backed most Stax hits?
Booker T. & the M.G.'s
Their own instrumental 'Green Onions' was one of the label's early hits.
Q 14Where was Elvis born, before his family moved to Memphis when he was 13?
Tupelo, Mississippi
His twin brother Jesse Garon was stillborn 35 minutes before him.
Q 15Who ran Sun Studio at 706 Union Avenue and discovered Elvis, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis?
Sam Phillips
He opened it in January 1950 as the Memphis Recording Service with his assistant Marion Keisker.
Q 16Which 1951 recording made at Sun Studio is often called the first rock and roll record?
Rocket 88
It was credited to Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats but the band was really Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm.
Q 17The 1951 Sun single that Ike Turner's band cut was a hymn of praise to a new model from which carmaker?
Oldsmobile
Brenston admitted it borrowed from Jimmy Liggins' 'Cadillac Boogie'; the band was really Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm.
Q 18Which Memphis thoroughfare is a national historic landmark and the heart of the city's blues heritage?
Beale
It runs about 1.8 miles from the Mississippi River to East Street.
Q 19W. C. Handy, the 'Father of the Blues', wrote 'The Memphis Blues' as a campaign song for whom?
Mayoral candidate Edward Crump
It was originally titled 'Mr. Crump'; publishing the sheet music in 1912 launched Handy's style nationally.
Q 20How 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 24At which Memphis lodging was Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated on April 4, 1968?
The Lorraine
The night before he had delivered his 'I've Been to the Mountaintop' speech at Mason Temple.
Q 25What institution was built around the site of King's assassination?
National Civil Rights Museum
It became a Smithsonian affiliate in 2016 and reopened after major renovations in 2014.
Q 26King 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 27Where did King give his final 'I've Been to the Mountaintop' speech?
Mason Temple
Mason Temple is the headquarters of the Church of God in Christ, the largest Pentecostal denomination in the US.
Q 28Which NBA team plays at FedExForum in Memphis?
Grizzlies
They are the only major-league franchise in the city and the only NBA team in Tennessee.
Q 29From which city did Memphis's NBA franchise relocate in 2001?
Vancouver
They had joined the NBA as an expansion team in 1995 alongside the Toronto Raptors.
Q 30Which Memphis guard, drafted second overall in 2019, was NBA Rookie of the Year in 2020?
Ja Morant
He starred at Murray State before the draft and started his first All-Star Game in 2022.