Stax's first playback speaker

When Stax first started, it couldn't afford a playback speaker to listen to recordings. At the time, the label didn't have any idea of what was about to happen there. It was trying to record country music. But Stax was originally an old movie theatre, which had left its old speakers behind, so they were used for the first couple of years. We have one on display now – a huge wooden speaker about 6ft tall and 3ft wide.

Isaac Hayes' 1972 Cadillac El Dorado

Cadillac gave Isaac Hayes this car in 1972 as a reward for his Hot Buttered Soul album and as a PR stunt to go with the release of the Black Moses album. It's trimmed with gold and lined with white fur and even has a refrigerator and a TV in it. I don't know how long he had it for, but I know he drove it around town. It's one of our most popular exhibits. I've never driven it, but I've sat in it.

Original Mississippi Delta gospel church

The museum actually has a church in it. It was built in 1906, down in the Mississippi delta near Duncan. Its an old, dilapidated, paint-peeling building, but everything in it is preserved just as it was when it was out in the country. It's got handcarved church pews, the same 1906 cornerstone, the original pulpit, the stove. We took it apart in Mississippi and put it back together inside the museum. It's part of our Roots of Soul exhibit that helps explain the gospel influence on soul music. It is very typical of African-American churches in the rural southern US. In every one of those churches from that era, that's where soul music basically got its start.

Phalon Jones's saxophone

Phalon Jones was a member of The Bar-Kays. His saxophone was fished out of the plane wreckage when Otis Redding and the band's plane crashed into a lake in Wisconsin and everyone on board, apart from one person, died. Right before we opened, his mother donated it to the museum, so it's a very special artefact.

Duck Dunn's pipe

One of my favourite artefacts is a bone pipe that belonged to Donald "Duck" Dunn. He was known for smoking a pipe and this one looks just like him – it's got his face carved into it. I don't know if he had it made, or if it was given to him, but it's in the Booker T & the MGs exhibit next to his photo. He gave it to us when we opened.

Interview by Will Coldwell

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