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Published: October 25th 2008
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The Stax Marquee...
honors one of its own. Suggested Listening for this Entry: "'Cause I Love You" by Carla and Rufus Thomas, "Last Night" by the Mar-Keys, "Green Onions" by Booker T and the MG's,
Suggested Food and Drink for this Entry: None. The music should be all you need.
The story of Stax Records began in the same manner the stories of many of the other groundbreaking record labels of the 1950s and 1960s began. A person who was a visionary, a savvy businessperson, or both, realized the breadth of musical talent around them and set off from humble beginnings to record those talented performers and present them to the public. Generally, these legendary record labels reached a creative and financial zenith for some period of time and then either fell on hard times and collapsed or were sold to larger record labels. The Stax story is different from all the others in that the label was founded by a brother and sister team and, in the late 1960s, Stax resurrected itself after nearly collapsing due to numerous reasons, and thrived again artistically until its demise in the mid 1970s.
The Stax story also has two very distinctive chapters. The first chapter played out through
Satellite Records Shop
where the Stax record label began. the mid-1960s as musicians both black and white came together in the Stax studio and on stage without any preconceived notions on race to make some of the greatest music in history. The label’s owners at the time where white, but promoted a policy of equality throughout the company. In many interviews, Rufus Thomas has said he felt Stax was the first place in and around Memphis where he was thought of as a person, singer, and entertainer first before being thought of as black.
The second chapter in the history of Stax took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s as Stax, then with an African-American company president, moved to become a predominant player in the black pride movement and the black business world. Stax’s role in these areas hit its zenith in 1972 with the Wattstax concert held at the Los Angeles Colisseum.
Opened in the spring of 2003 on the site where the original Stax recording studio was located, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music tells the history of the Stax label, its artists, and pays homage to the other soul labels located both in Memphis and in other cities. The Stax Museum experience begins with a short film introducing the visitor to the history of soul and Stax. After viewing the movie, the first museum exhibit the visitor experiences is the “Roots of Soul” gallery. The gallery explores the social climate and experiences that led to artists to meld the blues and gospel music into soul. The centerpiece of this gallery is Hooper’s Chapel AME Church. The church, originally built and located in Duncan, Mississippi was disassembled piece by piece and then rebuilt inside the Stax Museum.
Moving on to the second gallery, “Precursors of Soul”, the visitor is presented an overview of the R&B and early soul artists of the 1950s and early 1960s who led the way for the artists who were about to vault Stax to the forefront of American music. The gallery includes exhibits on Sam Cooke, Ike & Tina Turner, and Ray Charles. With this background, the visitor is prepared for the Stax Story as it is presented throughout the rest of the museum.
Stax Records was originally founded in 1957 as Satellite Records by Jim Stewart. In 1958, Stewart’s sister, Estelle Axton, joined the company. Once Stewart and Axton discovered there was another company was named Satellite Records, they changed the name of their company to Stax, creating the name by combining the first two letters of each of their last names. After operating briefly in Brunswick, Tennessee, the company moved into an old movie theater located at 926 East McLemore Ave. in Memphis. This building would soon be gain the name “Soulsville, U.S.A”.
Rufus Thomas, who had recorded Sun Records’ earliest hit, “Bear Cat”, in the early 1950s, recorded “Cause I Love You” with his daughter, Carla, for Stax. The song became a regional hit and brought the Stax label to the attention of Atlantic Records. Soon Atlantic and Stax entered into a national distribution agreement where Atlantic had first pick of the recordings made at Stax for distribution by Atlantic. While this agreement benefitted Stax greatly early on by giving Stax a channel for national sales, it would also be a major factor in Stax’s near demise in 1968.
Next to the Stax studio, Axton ran the Satellite records store. The store became a magnet for neighborhood residents. At the store, Axton was able to gauge the musical likes and dislikes of the customers, using the information as a guide for Stax Records.
In the early days of Stax Records, Axton son, Packy, played in the band the Mar-Keys with two musicians who would go on to become part of the back bone of the Stax sound, guitarist Steve Cropper and bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn. The Mar-Keys had one of Stax’s early hits with “Last Night” in 1961.
Shortly after the Mar-Keys’ hit, two neighborhood locals who had been hanging around the Stax studio and were black, drummer Al Jackson and keyboardist Booker T. Jones, joined to Cropper and Dunn, who were white, to form Booker T and the MG’s. Besides having their own instrumental hits, Booker T and the MG’s became the house band at Stax, playing on the majority of the recordings made at Stax until 1968.
With the studio and a legendary band in place, and a few hits under its belt, Stax was ready for its biggest star to arrive. A star delivered by little known performer Johnny Jenkins…….
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