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
Egypt's ancient capital Memphis stood on the Nile, and the founders borrowed its name in 1819 for their new town on another great river.
Q 03Which future US president was one of the three founders of Memphis in 1819?
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson founded the town on 22 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 is named for Isaac Shelby, the former Kentucky governor who helped negotiate the 1818 purchase of West Tennessee from the Chickasaw; Memphis lost the county seat to Raleigh for decades before winning it back.
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 those who stayed in 1878; tens of thousands fled, and the bankrupt city lost 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
E. H. Crump was removed as mayor in 1915 for failing to enforce state prohibition, yet 'Boss' Crump went on steering Memphis politics from behind the scenes until his death in 1954.
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
Little Rock, Arkansas: Fred Smith founded Federal Express there in 1971 but began flying from Memphis in 1973, where the airport was central, rarely shut by weather and willing to build for him.
Q 10What was the name of Elvis Presley's Memphis mansion?
Graceland
Graceland was not Elvis's name for it: the Toof family had called their farm that, after a daughter named Grace, long before the house was built in 1939 or Elvis bought it in 1957.
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 12Who moved into the Whitehaven mansion with Elvis after he bought it in 1957?
His parents and grandmother
His parents and grandmother: fans had overrun the street outside the family's previous Memphis house, so Elvis, 22, paid $102,500 for a mansion with land around it.
Q 13Who opened Elvis's home to tourists in 1982?
Priscilla Presley
Q 21Stax's Memphis studio was set up inside what kind of former building?
A movie theater
A movie theater: Stax rented the old Capitol on East McLemore, and the sloping floor built for cinema seats gave its recordings their distinctive sound; Estelle Axton ran a record shop on the premises.
Q 22Which house band, an integrated group, backed most Stax hits?
Booker T. & the M.G.'s
Booker T. & the M.G.'s became hitmakers by accident: killing time at a session booked for another singer in 1962, they jammed, the label taped it, and the B-side they worked up was 'Green Onions'.
Q 23At which Memphis lodging was Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated on April 4, 1968?
The Lorraine
Priscilla Presley, an executor of the estate: upkeep and taxes were costing about half a million dollars a year, so rather than sell the house she opened it for tours in June 1982.
Q 14Where was Elvis born, before his family moved to Memphis when he was 13?
Tupelo, Mississippi
Tupelo, Mississippi: Elvis was born in a two-room house there in 1935; his twin brother was stillborn, so he grew up an only child, 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 studio in 1950 and at first recorded Black bluesmen such as Howlin' Wolf and Junior Parker at the start of their careers, before the young rockabilly singers who made Sun famous.
Q 16Which 1951 recording made at Sun Studio is often called the first rock and roll record?
Rocket 88
Rocket 88 was credited to Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, but the band was really Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm; its fuzzy guitar is said to come from an amplifier damaged on the drive up to Memphis.
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 composer, known as the Father of the Blues, wrote 'The Memphis Blues' and 'Beale Street Blues'?
W. C. Handy
W. C. Handy, a Beale Street bandleader, published 'The Memphis Blues' himself in 1912 and, short of money, sold the rights cheaply; the buyer added lyrics and turned it into a hit.
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 20Who was Stax's biggest star when he died in a 1967 plane crash?
Otis Redding
Otis Redding died when his plane went down in Lake Monona, Wisconsin, days after he recorded '(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay'; rushed out as a single, it became a No. 1 hit after his death.
The Lorraine was one of only a few Memphis hotels open to Black guests in the segregation era, hosting stars such as Cab Calloway and Count Basie; King was shot on the balcony outside Room 306.
Q 24What institution was built around the site of King's assassination?
National Civil Rights Museum
The National Civil Rights Museum opened in 1991; the motel where King was shot had gone on taking guests for some twenty years, until the late 1980s, before it was converted with his room preserved.
Q 25King had come to Memphis in 1968 to support a strike by which city employees?
Sanitation crews
Sanitation crews walked out after two workers, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were crushed to death by a malfunctioning garbage truck; their marches carried signs reading 'I Am a Man'.
Q 26Which was King's final speech, in Memphis?
I've Been to the Mountaintop
'I've Been to the Mountaintop', given at Mason Temple the night before he was killed, almost went unspoken: ill and exhausted, King sent Ralph Abernathy instead, until Abernathy phoned to say the crowd wanted him.
Q 27Which NBA team plays at FedExForum in Memphis?
Grizzlies
Grizzlies: the team spent its first Memphis seasons in the Pyramid, which fell short of NBA standards though barely ten years old, so the city built FedExForum, opened in 2004.
Q 28From which city did Memphis's NBA franchise relocate in 2001?
Vancouver
Vancouver landed an NBA expansion team in 1995 alongside Toronto, but six losing seasons, thin crowds and a weak Canadian dollar followed, and the franchise left for Memphis in 2001.
Q 29Which guard, drafted second overall by Memphis in 2019, was the NBA's Rookie of the Year in 2020?
Ja Morant
Ja Morant was found by accident: a Murray State assistant, scouting another player at a 2016 camp, went looking for the concession stand and spotted the unranked guard playing three-on-three in a side gym.
Q 30What did the Memphis Pyramid reopen as in 2015?
A Bass Pro Shops store
A Bass Pro Shops store: founder Johnny Morris says he vowed, while fishing beside the empty arena in 2005, to build there if his party landed a 30-pound catfish, and a friend duly hooked one.