From Al Green singing the anthem at a playoff game to homegrown rap stars such as Yo Gotti and Al Kapone hyping up the home crowd, from Justin Timberlake’s minority ownership stake to the legion of local musicians who have performed national anthems, halftime shows and as nightly “house band” guests, the Memphis Grizzlies have a close to double-decade long relationship with Memphis music. 

But this 20th season in Memphis will be the first in which the Grizzlies will wear Memphis music across their chests. 

The team will pay tribute to Stax Records and late Stax superstar Isaac Hayes with a Nike “City Edition” alternate uniform. 

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The uniforms, dubbed “Soul City Editions,” are introduced in a video soundtracked by the wah-wah riff and high-hat beat of Hayes’ Oscar-winning “Theme from ‘Shaft’,” with Ja Morant as the bad mother (shut your mouth) modeling the new look. These alternate uniforms will join the previously announced 20th anniversary throwbacks, which duplicate the team’s look from its inaugural season in Memphis. 

The Grizzlies hope fans can dig it. 

The primarily black jerseys will feature subtle, embossed black-on-black vertical stripes meant to evoke the grooves of a record. The “Memphis” lettering across the chest will use a Stax Records logo font. Gold and turquoise secondary colors are intended to evoke both gold records and the color scheme of Hayes’ 1972 El Dorado Cadillac, which is on display at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music. 

Among the design details are African kente cloth side and neck trim, a nod to Hayes’ personal style. The venting on the front of the shorts has a patch of Stax’s classic red, black and white finger snap logo. The back has a patch of Hayes’ trademark gold sunglasses, such as the ones he wore on the cover of the 1971 album “Black Moses.” The bottom of the jersey has Hayes’ name in gold script. 

“Obviously we’re celebrating our 20th season in Memphis, but we thought it was a good tie-in to also look back at the history of music here,” said John Pugliese, the Grizzlies’ VP of broadcast and production. “Stax has always been an integral part of what we do, whether that’s (the annual benefit party) Staxtacular or mentoring through the Stax Music Academy, they’ve been part of the fabric of our franchise.”

Now literally so. (Or maybe “sew.”)

Adding these City Edition jerseys to the black, red and teal inaugural Memphis throwbacks and the Grizzlies’ regular three-uniform rotation — Beale Street (baby) Blue, midnight blue and white — will give the franchise five uniforms to feature across an abbreviated 72-game season. 

The Grizzlies don’t have their game schedule for the season yet, but Pugliese suggests the City Edition uniforms will be used eight to 10 times this season, in both home and road games.

To evoke a figure from a different segment of Memphis music, the combination of the Hayes uniforms and the throwbacks will make the Grizzlies men in black for a substantial portion of the 2020-2021 season.

The Hayes/Stax uniforms are the third Grizzlies contribution to the City Edition series, a recent partnership between Nike and the NBA to craft special-edition jerseys along city-specific themes. Among the most notable have been pastel Miami Heat jerseys modeled after the 1980s television series “Miami Vice,” and purple Minnesota Timberwolves jerseys using the script from hometown superstar Prince’s “Purple Rain” film and album. 

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The first Grizzlies’ City Edition jerseys were in the 2017-2018 season, a subtle black-and-white design that evoked the “I Am a Man” signs carried by striking 1968 sanitation workers and that were timed to that spring’s 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s in Memphis. 

In 2018-2019, the Grizzlies’ City uniforms evoked Memphis’ storied history as a professional wrestling territory. The franchise declined a City uniform last season, when it used Vancouver-era throwbacks in commemoration of the franchise’s 25th anniversary.

“We didn’t do one last year because we knew how popular the Vancouver jerseys were going to be and we didn’t want to put something up against that,” Pugliese said. “Whereas, we looked at the Memphis history we’re exploring with the 20th anniversary this year and we thought there was good synergy with the Memphis music history this uniform invokes. We can keep that historical context throughout our games and our content this year.”

Prior to the City Edition series, the Grizzlies did a black Adidas uniform meant to suggest the Lorraine Motel balcony, in conjunction with the National Civil Rights Museum. 

Other memorable special uniforms over the years have included throwbacks to the city’s history in the earlier American Basketball Association, both popular (the Memphis Sounds, red with '70s era white cursive script) and less so (the yellow and green Memphis Tams). 

The Soul City Edition uniforms were designed in a two-year process between the Grizzlies’ marketing and promotions staff and Nike designers, in conjunction with Stax Records, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music and the Isaac Hayes estate. 

As with the 20th anniversary Memphis throwbacks, replicas of the Stax/Hayes jerseys likely will not be available for purchase until after the new year, according to Pugliese. Due to COVID-related production and supply chain issues, the same will be true for related merchandise (caps, T-shirts, etc.) using the design.