Memphis is a city of music legends. From the birth of the blues to the invention of rock 'n' roll, the perfection of soul and the development of Southern hip-hop, the Bluff City has spawned visionaries and stars across multiple genres and generations. And yet, despite its long and rich history, the city’s icons are somewhat underrepresented in physical form — specifically in the way of statues.
Still, there are a handful of local music greats who have been cast in bronze, and all are free to visit, view, pose with and take pictures of.
Here are the top music statues to check out in Memphis.
Two Kings of Memphis: Elvis Presley and B.B. King
If you go to the I-40 Tennessee Welcome Center (located at 119 N. Riverside Drive) you get a chance to hang with Memphis music royalty. Inside, there are large statues of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elvis Presley (depicted during his ’68 Comeback era) and the King of the Blues, B.B. King (playing his beloved guitar Lucille).
The Presley statue, done by sculptor Eric Parks, was the first-ever sanctioned statue of the King. Created in 1980, it originally stood on Beale before being moved indoors in the mid-‘90s.
The B.B. King statue was created by artist Ed Dwight and completed in 1996.
Both are prominently displayed in the Welcome Center which is open seven days a week from 7 a.m.-7 p.m. For details, go to TNvacation.com.
Father of the Blues: W.C. Handy
The first and oldest music statue in Memphis is dedicated to W.C. Handy, the songwriter, trumpeter, band leader, music publisher and man known as “The Father of the Blues.”
Located at the entrance of the Beale Street park bearing his name (at Beale and Third), the life-sized Handy statue was commissioned in 1960 — just two years after Handy’s death — and sculpted by Leone Tommasi at the Fuse Foundry in Florence Italy.
Handy Park, which also hosts live music on its stage regularly, is open daily from 6 a.m.-8 p.m. For details, go to Bealestreet.com.
Blues Guitar Great: Little Milton
One of Southern blues’ great artists, Little Milton Campbell, can be glimpsed in bronze form Downtown. The statue of Little Milton stands, or more accurately sits, at the front of the Blues Foundation’s headquarters and the site of the Blues Hall of Fame Museum (at 421 S. Main St.)
The statue of Campbell, a 1988 Blues Hall of Fame inductee, is based on the cover of his final studio album, "Think of Me," and shows him embracing his Gibson ES-335 guitar while seated on a “gar bench” (benches with legs the shape of gar fish found in the Mississippi River).
The statue is the work Memphis sculptor Andrea Holmes Lugar and was cast in bronze by her husband, Larry Lugar. The piece was unveiled in 2015 to coincide with the launch of the Blues Hall of Fame Museum.
For details, go to Blues.org.
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R&B Crooner: Bobby 'Blue' Bland
If you head to the corner of South Main and Martin Luther King, you will be greeted by the statue of the great R&B crooner Bobby “Blue” Bland.
Born in tiny Rosemark, Tennessee, as a teen Bland moved to Memphis with his mother and began a career that would ultimately see him enshrined in the Blues Foundation’s Hall of Fame in 1981, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, and as part of the inaugural class of the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2012.
A singular vocal talent and true giant of American R&B, he always seemed most at home with a microphone in hand, singing his blues.
Bland — who died in 2013 at age 83 — became the subject of life-sized statue capturing him mid-song in 2017. The piece was created by Andrea and Larry Luger, the same artists responsible for the Little Milton statue in front of the Blues Hall of Fame.
For details, go to TNvacation.com.
Young King: Elvis Presley
The second Elvis Presley statue in Downtown Memphis offers an earlier version of the King, in his hip-swiveling mid-'50s pomp.
The statue — located at the Elvis Plaza at 115 Beale between South Main and South Second — captures the rockabilly cat in mid-gyration, with an acoustic guitar slung around his body, and wearing the kind of eye-catching outfit he likely purchased at the nearby Lansky Brothers clothiers.
Like several of the other statues around town, this early Elvis piece was done by the Lugars. Dedicated in 1997, it filled a spot left vacant after the original Elvis statue moved to the Welcome Center.
For details, go to TNvacation.com.
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The Man in Bronze: Johnny Cash
While most of the Memphis music statues will be found Downtown, Midtown can boast of a tribute to The Man in Black, Johnny Cash, in the form of a bronze statue location near the site of the singer's first public performance.
Sculpted by Memphis artist Mike McCarthy, the life-sized statue — convincingly lanky and Lincoln-esque, and detailed down to the wedding band on its powerful-looking left hand — was erected in 2019, outside 999 S. Cooper, an apartment complex adjacent to Galloway United Methodist Church. Galloway is the church where Cash and the "Tennessee Two" — guitarist Luther Perkins and bassist Marshall Grant — played for pay for the first time, in a Christmas season fundraiser organized by a women's Bible study group.
Coated in an appropriately black patina, the 400-pound statue — based on a 1962 portrait of Cash by photographer Leigh Wiener — sits just south of the bustling intersection that gives the Cooper-Young neighborhood its name.
For details, go to Memphisart.org.
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2023-06-28 10:00:40Z
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