Stax Records is an American record company, originally based in Memphis, Tennessee. Founded in 1957 as Satellite Records, the label changed its name to Stax Records in September 1961. It also shared its operations with sister label Volt Records.
Stax was influential in the creation of Southern soul and Memphis soul music. Stax also released gospel, funk, and blues recordings. The label was founded by two siblings, business partners Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton, whose last names formed the basis of the label's name (Stewart + Axton = "Stax"). It featured several popular ethnically integrated bands (including the label's house band, Booker T. & the M.G.'s) and a racially integrated team of staff and artists unprecedented in that time of racial strife and tension in Memphis and the South.
Following the death of Stax's biggest star, Otis Redding, in 1967, and the severance of the label's distribution deal with Atlantic Records in 1968, Stax continued primarily under the supervision of a new co-owner, Al Bell. initially operating in a garage. Satellite's early releases were country music, rockabilly records or straight pop numbers, reflecting the tastes of Stewart (a country fiddle player) at the time.
In 1958, Stewart's sister Estelle Axton began her financial interest in the company.
Around this time, Stewart was introduced to rhythm and blues music by staff producer Chips Moman. In the summer of that year, Satellite released its first record by a rhythm and blues act, "Fool in Love", by the Veltones, which was soon picked up for national distribution by Mercury Records. However, Satellite remained primarily a country and pop label for the next year or so.
While promoting "Fool in Love", Stewart met with Memphis disc jockey and R&B singer Rufus Thomas, and both parties were impressed by the other. Around the same time, and at the urging of Chips Moman, Stewart moved the company back to Memphis and into an old movie theater, the former Capitol Theatre, at 926 East McLemore Avenue in South Memphis; Stewart recalled that he chose the building because "it was in the area close to where Rufus Thomas (WDIA Radio disk jockey) lived [alongside] several of the other musicians and writers that are still working with the studio today. They drifted in and we got locked in on the rhythm and blues field." From this point on, Stewart focused more and more on recording and promoting rhythm and blues acts. Not having really known anything about the R&B genre prior to having recorded acts such as the Veltones and Rufus & Carla, Stewart likened the situation to that of "a blind man who suddenly gained his sight." From 1961 on, virtually all of the output of Satellite Records (and its successor labels Stax and Volt) would be in the R&B/southern soul style.
As part of the deal with Atlantic, Satellite agreed to continue recording Carla Thomas but allowed her recordings to be released on the Atlantic label. Her first hit, "Gee Whiz", was originally issued as Satellite 104, but it was quickly reissued as Atlantic 2086, becoming a hit in early 1961.
1962–1964: Stax and Volt in ascendancy
By 1962, the pieces were in place that allowed Stax to turn from a successful regional label into (alongside Motown and Atlantic) a national R&B powerhouse. The store quickly became a popular hangout for local teenagers and was used to test-market potential Stax singles, as acetates of recently recorded Stax music were played to gauge customers' reactions. It also provided regular employment for many of the young hopefuls who later became part of Stax's musical family and provided cash flow in the early years while the label was struggling to establish itself. In his 2013 book Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion, Robert Gordon highlighted the importance of Estelle Axton to the company. Often addressed as "Miz Axton" or "Lady A.", she was respected by the Stax staff and performers and was regarded as a mother figure in the company. Although she had no formal training or experience in marketing, she had an unerring instinct for music and made many valuable suggestions to the young writers and musicians. Booker T. Jones described Estelle as "an inspirer":
A&R
Original A&R director Chips Moman left the company at the end of 1961 after a royalty dispute with Stewart; he soon opened his own studio across town. Mar-Keys member Steve Cropper replaced Moman as Stewart's assistant and A&R director. Cropper would quickly become a writer, producer and session guitarist on scores of Stax singles.
House band
In the first few years at Stax, the house band varied, although Cropper, bassist Lewie Steinberg, drummers Howard Grimes or Curtis Green, and horn players Floyd Newman, Gene "Bowlegs" Miller, and Gilbert Caple were relative constants.
By 1962, multi-instrumentalist Booker T. Jones was also a regular session musician at Stax (he was primarily a pianist and organist, but he played sax on "Cause I Love You"), as was bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn. Jones, Steinberg and Cropper were joined in mid-1962 by drummer Al Jackson Jr. to form Booker T. & the M.G.'s, an instrumental combo that would record numerous hit singles in their own right and served as the de facto house band for virtually every recording made at Stax from 1962 through about 1970.
Stax studio
Another important factor in Stax's success was the studio itself. The recording studio, located at 926 E McLemore Ave in Memphis, was a converted movie theater, which still had the sloped floor where the seats had once been. Because the room was imbalanced, it created an acoustic anomaly that was audible on recordings, often giving them a big, deep yet raw sound. Soul music historian Rob Bowman notes that because of the distinctive sound, soul music fans can tell often within the first few notes if a song was recorded at Stax. When Tom Dowd first arrived at Stax in 1963 the studio was still using the veteran Ampex mono recorder it had purchased in the late Fifties. Dowd immediately suggested that a two-track recorder should be installed. The Stax team were appalled at the idea, fearing that the distinctive "Stax sound" would be destroyed. However, Dowd pointed out that stereo albums sold for a higher price, which would mean more income for Stax, so in the summer of 1965 he installed an additional two-track recorder, allowing Stax to record sessions simultaneously in mono and stereo, and in 1966 he upgraded the studio further with a four-track recorder.
Early successes
The label's biggest early star, soul singer Otis Redding, also arrived in 1962. Redding, however, technically was not on Stax, but on its sister label Volt. In that era, many radio stations, anxious to avoid even the hint of payola, often refused to play more than one or two new songs from any single record label at one time, so as to not appear to be offering favoritism to any particular label. To circumvent this, Stax, like many other record companies, created a number of subsidiary labels. Volt, founded in late 1961, was the label home to Otis Redding, the Bar-Kays, and a handful of other artists. Volt releases were initially issued by Atlantic through its subsidiary Atco Records. Other Stax subsidiaries over the years included Enterprise (named after the USS Enterprise from Star Trek, of which Al Bell was a fan), Chalice (a gospel label), Hip, Safice, Magic Touch, and Arch.
Redding's first single, "These Arms of Mine", issued in October 1962, hit both the R&B and the pop charts. Though the label had enjoyed some early hits with the Mar-Keys and Booker T. & the M.G.'s, Redding became the first Stax/Volt artist to consistently hit the charts with each release—in fact, each of Redding's 17 singles issued during his lifetime charted. (Carla Thomas also charted with some consistency, but her pre-1965 releases were on Atlantic, not Stax or Volt.)
Between January 1962 and December 1964, Stax and Volt released several chart hits each by Otis Redding, Rufus Thomas, and Booker T. and the M.G.'s. However, despite dozens of other releases, only three other Stax/Volt singles charted during this time, and all just barely: William Bell's "You Don't Miss Your Water" hit No. 95 in early 1962; the Mar-Keys' "Pop-Eye Stroll" hit No. 94 in mid-1962 (although it was a big hit in Canada, hitting No. 1 on Toronto's CHUM Chart), and Barbara & the Browns' "Big Party" made it to No. 97 in mid-1964.
Beginning in 1965, when the label formalized its distribution agreement with Atlantic, Stax/Volt artists made the charts much more frequently. Although Wexler was greatly enamoured of Stax's "organic" recording methods, some of the artists they brought in created conflict. A June 1965 session with Don Covay created bad feelings, which came to a head in early 1966, when Wilson Pickett returned to record new material. Although the session produced two hit songs—"634-5789" and "Ninety-Nine and a Half (Won't Do)"—Pickett's "corrosive" character caused havoc in the studio; the session musicians eventually walked out, and the breaking point came when Pickett followed them outside and offered them $100 each (US$ in dollars) to complete the session. As a result, the furious house band bluntly told Jim Stewart not to bring "that asshole" to the studio again. Also tired of another label capitalizing on the Stax sound, Stewart phoned Wexler soon after the Pickett session and told him that he wanted to do no more Stax productions of non-Stax artists. One Atlantic artist who was thus not able to record at Stax was the newly signed Aretha Franklin. She instead was sent to Rick Hall's FAME studios in Alabama, which had a sound similar to that of Stax. Pickett's subsequent hits were also recorded elsewhere, including at Fame and American Group Productions, Chips Moman's Memphis studio.
Through 1966 and 1967, Stax and its subsidiaries hit their stride, regularly scoring hits with artists such as Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Carla Thomas, William Bell, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, Eddie Floyd, the Bar-Kays, Albert King, and the Mad Lads.
Stax was located in Memphis, Tennessee, which was still a segregated city, where Martin Luther King Jr., a leader of the civil rights movement, was assassinated in 1968.
1968: break with Atlantic Records
In 1967, Atlantic Records was sold to Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. The sale of Atlantic to Warner activated a "key man" clause (which Jim Stewart had insisted upon) in the distribution contract between Stax and Atlantic. This called for the renegotiation or termination of the distribution deal in the event that Stewart's nominated "key man" at Atlantic—Jerry Wexler—either left the company or sold his stock in Atlantic. Stax initially hoped to join Atlantic in the Warner buyout, so Jim Stewart, Estelle Axton and Al Bell flew to New York hoping to negotiate a deal, but according to Stewart the figure they were offered was "an insult". Stewart then approached Warner-Seven Arts directly, but their offer was similarly unacceptable to Stax.
Unhappy with either offer, Stewart then asked for the return of the Stax masters, but the executives at Warner-Seven Arts refused. It was then that he was informed that Atlantic's lawyer Paul Marshall had included a clause in the 1965 distribution contract that gave Atlantic all right, title and interest, including any rights of reproduction, in all Stax's Atlantic-distributed recordings between 1960 and 1967. Wexler expressed his resentment of the situation in his 1993 autobiography Rhythm and the Blues: