Music tour category
Soul and Motown tours to the three small towns and two cities that made the soul records of the 1960s, in rooms you can still walk into.
Soul music had three great workshops in the 1960s, each with its own sound. In Detroit, Berry Gordy ran Motown like the car plants, with a house band called the Funk Brothers and a stable of singers who turned out pop hits for the whole country: the Supremes, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder.
In Memphis, Stax worked from an old movie theater with a racially mixed house band, Booker T. and the M.G.'s, and a rawer Southern sound for Otis Redding, Sam and Dave and Isaac Hayes. In the small town of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, FAME and later Muscle Shoals Sound gave Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and Percy Sledge the grooves that made them famous.
Our soul tours visit all three. Hitsville U.S.A. is on the Detroit and Cleveland tour, ending in Studio A. Stax is on the Memphis tours. Both Muscle Shoals studios are on the Southern road trip and on a day trip from Nashville.
In each studio the guides play the records in the room they were made in. It is hard to describe what that does to a song you have known all your life.
Motown's Studio A in Detroit.
The museum on the site of Soulsville in Memphis.
Two working studios in Alabama.
3 tours
Nashville, Muscle Shoals, Memphis, Mississippi Delta and New Orleans
Nashville, Florence, Memphis, Clarksdale, New Orleans
Ten days down the road from Nashville to New Orleans, with the studios of Muscle Shoals, Sun and Stax, two nights in the Delta and three in the jazz city at the end.
From $4,890 per person, double room
See the tourDetroit and Cleveland
Detroit, Cleveland
Five days from Hitsville U.S.A. to Lake Erie: Motown's Studio A, a jazz night at Baker's, and a full day at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.
From $2,390 per person, double room
See the tourMuscle Shoals
Nashville
A long day south to the two studios where Aretha, Wilson Pickett and the Rolling Stones recorded, with lunch in Florence and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame.
From $295 per person, lunch included
See the tourLand prices per person sharing a double room.
Top destinations
Questions
Detroit is far from the South, so not in one group tour, but the Southern road trip covers Stax and Muscle Shoals, and the Motown tour Detroit.
FAME and Muscle Shoals Sound record most weeks. Hitsville and Stax are museums.
In Memphis, yes, on Beale Street and in a few South Memphis clubs; in Detroit, often on the jazz nights.
Email us
Write to a travel advisor with the tour, the date and whether you want us to book flights. We answer within one business day with seats and the exact price. Nothing is charged until you decide.
Email a travel advisor
[email protected]SubjectSoul & Motown
What to include
We use what you send only to answer you and plan your trip. See our privacy policy.
