Stax Records
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. It featured several popular ethnically integrated bands and a racially integrated team of staff and artists unprecedented in that time of racial strife and tension in Memphis and the South. According to ethnomusicologist Rob Bowman, the label's use of "one studio, one equipment set-up, the same set of musicians and a small group of songwriters led to a readily identifiable sound. It was a sound based in black gospel, blues, country, and earlier forms of rhythm and blues. It became known as southern soul music."
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. Over the next five years, Bell expanded the label's operations significantly, in order to compete with Stax's main rival, Motown Records in Detroit. During the mid-1970s, a number of factors, including a problematic distribution deal with CBS Records, caused the label to slide into insolvency, resulting in its forced closure in late 1975.
In 1977, Fantasy Records acquired the post-1968 Stax catalogue and selected pre-1968 recordings. Beginning in 1978, Stax began signing new acts and issuing new material, as well as reissuing previously recorded Stax material. However, by the early 1980s, no new material was being issued, and for the next two decades, Stax was strictly a reissue label.
After Concord Records acquired Fantasy in 2004, the Stax label was reactivated, and is used to issue both the 1968–1975 catalog material and new recordings by modern R&B and soul performers. Atlantic Records continues to hold the rights to the vast majority of the 1959–1968 Stax material.
History
1957–1960: early years as Satellite Records
Stax Records, originally named Satellite Records, was founded in Memphis in 1957 by Jim Stewart, initially operating in a garage. Satellite's early releases were country music, rockabilly records or straight pop numbers, reflecting the tastes of Stewart at the time.In 1958, Stewart's sister Estelle Axton began her financial interest in the company. Taking a considerable financial risk, she mortgaged her family home to invest in the company, enabling Satellite to purchase an Ampex 350 mono console tape recorder.
The company set up a small recording studio in a converted garage near National Cemetery in Brunswick, Tennessee, in 1959. In 1970, Stewart recalled this portion of the label's origins, and remarked, "I don't even remember the address. We didn't have any sound equipment or anything else but a small building and a lot of desire."
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 lived 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." In the summer of 1960, Rufus Thomas and his daughter Carla were the first artists to make a recording in this new facility; the record, "Cause I Love You", became a substantial regional hit and was picked up for national distribution by Atlantic Records on its Atco subsidiary. It went on to sell between thirty and forty thousand copies, becoming Satellite's biggest hit to that time.
1961: name change to Stax and beginning of partnership with Atlantic
With the success of "Cause I Love You", Stewart made a distribution deal giving Atlantic first choice on releasing Satellite recordings. 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 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. Her recordings would continue to be issued on Atlantic through mid-1965, though much of her work was recorded in the studios at Satellite or in Nashville under the supervision of the Stax staff.
In June 1961, Satellite signed a local instrumental band, the Royal Spades. Changing their name to the Mar-Keys, the band recorded and issued the single "Last Night", which shot to No. 3 on the US pop chart and No. 2 on the R&B chart.
"Last Night" was the first single to be nationally distributed on the Satellite label; previous Atlantic issues of Satellite material were issued nationally on the Atlantic or Atco label. This led to a complaint from another company named Satellite Records, which had been in operation in California for some years but was previously unaware of the Memphis-based Satellite label. Accordingly, in September 1961, Satellite permanently changed its name to "Stax Records", a portmanteau of the names of the two owners of the company: Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton.
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 a national R&B powerhouse. Throughout the rest of the 1960s, the label's operations would be greatly aided by several unique factors, including the label's record store, studio, artist and repertoire department and house band, which regularly voted with Stewart on which records would be issued on the label.Record store
While Stewart ran the recording studio where the auditorium had been, Axton ran the Satellite record shop, which she established in the cinema's old foyer, where the refreshment stand had been. The Satellite store sold records from a wide variety of labels, which gave the Stax staff first-hand knowledge of what kind of music was selling—and was subsequently reflected in the music that Stax recorded. 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, 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. Dunn eventually became the band's primary bassist, replacing Steinberg in 1964. Jones was frequently absent from Stax over several years in the mid-1960s, while he pursued his musical studies at Indiana University, so during this period Isaac Hayes usually replaced him as the house band's regular pianist, although the two occasionally performed on recordings together when Jones was back in Memphis.
Other members of the house band included horn players Andrew Love, Joe Arnold, and Wayne Jackson. Hayes had auditioned for Stax in 1962, unsuccessfully, but by 1964 he became a vital part of the Stax house band, along with his songwriting partner, David Porter. Cropper, Dunn, Hayes, Jackson, Jones and Porter were collectively known as the "Big Six" within the walls of Stax and were responsible for producing almost all of the label's output from about 1963 through 1969.
The Stax house band's working methods were unusual for popular music recording at the time, and it was this that attracted the interest of Atlantic Records' Jerry Wexler. For most major recording companies at the time, the standard practice was for the label's staff producer or A&R manager to hire a studio, an arranger and the session musicians who were to back the featured vocalist or instrumentalist, and the arranger would write sheet music arrangements for the musicians to work from. Such unionised sessions were run strictly "by the clock" and there was a strict demarcation between the studio and the control room. By contrast, the Stax sessions ran as long as was needed, the musicians moved freely between the control room and the studio floor, and all were free to make suggestions and contributions as they worked up what are known as head arrangements, in which none of the musicians' parts were written down and nothing was worked out in advance.
Stax's unusual working methods first came to Wexler's attention in the fall of 1963. He was expecting a new single from Carla Thomas, but when he contacted Stax he was told that they had been unable to record for two weeks because of faults in the recording equipment, so he immediately flew Atlantic's highly skilled house engineer Tom Dowd down to Memphis that Friday. Dowd had the equipment fixed within two days, and on the Sunday he was able to act as engineer during the creation of a new Rufus Thomas track. He was amazed by the loose, improvisational feel of the session and by the way Thomas and the musicians developed and recorded the song: Thomas simply sang through the new number for the band once or twice, humming suggestions for their parts and sounding the rhythm by clacking his teeth close to their ears. Once the new head arrangement was established, Dowd started recording, and Thomas and the band nailed the song in just two takes. When Dowd returned to New York the next day he had the tape of Thomas' breakthrough hit "Walking the Dog", which Jim Stewart lauded as the best-sounding record Stax had yet produced. Wexler later commented: