Plantation Inn Nite Club

The Plantation Inn Nite Club was a music venue in West Memphis (Crittenden County) from 1942 until 1964. The club played an important role in the development of “the Memphis Sound,” or southern soul, a gritty combination of gospel, rhythm and blues (R&B), and blues produced at Stax Records and Hi Records in Memphis, Tennessee.

The Plantation Inn building originally served as a plantation house and later a gambling hall and roadhouse. In 1942, Morris Berger opened the Plantation Inn as a supper club with live music, dancing, and dining, and by the mid-1940s, it was one of the liveliest nightlife spots in the West Memphis region.

During the 1940s and 1950s, West Memphis was a thriving entertainment district in part because of lax enforcement of liquor, gambling, and age-restriction laws. Trumpeter Wayne Jackson, a West Memphis native and member of the house band at Stax Records, told music historian Robert Gordon that “West Memphis is where everybody came to party back then,” and, according to Gordon, “everything was looser across the river.”

It was the music—especially at a trio of clubs, including the Cotton Club and Danny’s, along with the Plantation Inn Nite Club—that drew crowds across the river. At Danny’s, guitarist Rick Ireland told Gordon, “they had chicken wire around the bandstand so the beer bottles wouldn’t hit the musicians when fights broke out.” Ireland said they were a “little more subtle” at the Cotton Club, where live electric wire kept drunk patrons off the stage but would not stop flying bottles. The Plantation Inn was different in several ways. “It was one of those places the adults went,” Jackson said. “They had linen tablecloths, good steaks and good music.”

While the Cotton Club and Danny’s featured primarily country music, the Plantation Inn regularly booked African American musicians who played blues, jazz, and R&B. Musicians who performed at the Plantation Inn included the jazz- and blues-oriented Newborn family—drummer Phineas Newborn Sr. and sons Calvin Newborn (guitar) and Phineas Newborn Jr. (piano)—as well as bandleaders Ben Branch, Gene “Bowlegs” Miller, and Willie Mitchell. These musicians were key figures in the local Black music scene after World War II and were involved in recording studios and touring bands in Memphis.

The Plantation Inn provided an informal music education for younger white musicians from both Arkansas and Tennessee. Because West Memphis clubs were more accessible than segregated venues in Memphis, underage musicians were able to hear professional Black bands up close. Gordon credits the Plantation Inn with shaping young musicians’ understanding of R&B and horn arrangements.

The Plantation Inn survived a crackdown on West Memphis nightlife in the early 1960s but closed permanently in 1964. By that time, many musicians influenced by the club had begun professional recording and performing careers, carrying stylistic elements developed at the Plantation Inn into recording studios such as Stax Records. Scholars and musicians have noted similarities between the rotating personnel of Plantation Inn bands and the studio culture—the “Memphis Sound”—that later emerged in Memphis.

The site of the Plantation Inn was turned into a parking lot for a Mexican restaurant near the Mississippi River, but starting in the early 2000s, local organizations—including the West Memphis Blues and Rhythm Society, the Crittenden Arts Council, the West Memphis Public Library, and the Convention and Visitors Bureau—began work to document and promote the city’s musical heritage, emphasizing West Memphis’s contribution to music history.

For additional information:
Gordon, Robert. It Came from Memphis. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1995.

Mehr, Bob. “West Memphis Landmark Laid Down the Vibe for Much of What Became the Memphis Sound.” Commercial Appeal, October 19, 2007. https://archive.commercialappeal.com/entertainment/plantation-inn-where-stars-rose-in-the-west-ep-398547400-323989421.html (accessed May 1, 2026).

Tooms, Robert. “Where the Music Came From.” American Blues News, November 16, 2009. https://americanbluesnews.blogspot.com/2009/12/memphiswhere-music-came-from-posted-on.html (accessed May 1, 2026).

Jeff Waggoner
Nassau, New York