A style of blues music created in 1920s and 1930s by Memphis-area musicians like Frank Stokes, Sleepy John Estes, Furry Lewis and Memphis Minnie. The style was popular in vaudeville and medicine shows and was associated with Memphis' main entertainment area, Beale Street.

Some musicologists believe that it was in the Memphis blues that the separate roles of rhythm and lead guitar were defined, which has become a standard in much popular music.

In addition to guitar-based blues, jug bands such as Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers were extremely popular practitioners of Memphis blues. The jug band style emphasised the danceable, syncopated rhythms of early jazz and a range of other archaic folk styles. It was played on simple, sometimes homemade, instruments such as harmonicas, violins, mandolins, banjos and guitars, backed by washboards, kazoo, Jew's harp and jugs blown to supply the bass.

After WWII, electric instruments became popular among Memphis blues musicians. As African-Americans left the Mississippi Delta and other impoverished areas of the South for urban areas, many musicians gravitated to Memphis' blues scene, changing the classic Memphis blues sound. Musicians such as Howlin' Wolf, Ike Turner and B.B. King performed on Beale Street and in West Memphis, and recorded some of the classic electric blues, rhythm and blues and rock and roll records for labels such as Sun Records.