page_title: Stax Records
section_title: 1965–1967: Stax/Volt's continued success
hierarchical_section_title: Stax Records / History / 1965–1967: Stax/Volt's continued success
caption_attribution_description: Stax Records museum in Memphis, Tennessee.
context_page_description: Stax Records is an American record label, originally based in Memphis, Tennessee. Founded in 1957 as Satellite Records, the label changed its name to Stax Records in 1961 and shared its operations with Volt Records, a sister label created to avoid the impression of favoritism among radio stations playing their records.
  Stax was influential in the creation of Southern soul and Memphis soul music. Stax also released gospel, funk, and blues recordings. Renowned for its output of blues music, the label was founded by two siblings and business partners, Jim Stewart and his sister Estelle Axton. 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."
context_section_description: In 1965, Jim Stewart signed a formal national distribution deal with Atlantic Records, although fatefully he signed the contract without reading it—a decision that would later cost the label dearly. Carla Thomas also formally rejoined the Stax label in 1965. Perhaps more importantly for the label's fortunes, the songwriting team of Isaac Hayes and David Porter began to establish themselves as Stax's new team of hit writer/producers. Hayes would also permanently join the Stax house band, often subbing for Booker T. Jones, who was studying music full-time at Indiana University during the mid-1960s.
  In addition to hits by stalwarts Redding, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, and Carla Thomas, 1965 saw the chart debuts of Stax artists the Astors and Sam & Dave plus Volt artists the Mad Lads. Sam & Dave were technically on the Atlantic roster but were "leased" to Stax by Atlantic, with Stax overseeing their recordings and issuing them on the Stax label. Virtually all of Sam & Dave's Stax material was written and produced by Hayes and Porter.
  Atlantic's Jerry Wexler also brought Don Covay and Wilson Pickett to record at Stax, though these songs were released directly by Atlantic. Covay's hits "See Saw" and "Sookie Sookie" and Pickett's 1965 and 1966 hits "In the Midnight Hour," "Don't Fight It", "634-5789" and "Ninety-Nine and a Half (Won't Do)" were Stax songs in all but name, as they were all co-written by Steve Cropper, recorded at Stax, and backed by the Stax house band. 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$811 in 2019 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.
  Unlike Motown, which frequently packaged its artists on review tours, Stax only infrequently sponsored concerts to promote its acts. The first of such concerts was in the summer of 1965, in Los Angeles rather than in Memphis. While the show was a success, the Watts riots began the day afterward, and several Stax artists were trapped in Watts during the violence. Stax also sponsored a Christmas concert in Memphis for several years, the most notorious of which was held in 1968, when special guest Janis Joplin performed drunk and was booed off of the stage. The most successful Stax package revue was a tour of England and France in 1967, which played to sold-out crowds. Stax released several live albums from the tour recordings, including the best-selling Otis Live in Europe'."
  In 1967 Stax was at the height of its fame. Alongside Otis Redding were soul singers Sam and Dave, Carla Thomas and writer Isaac Hayes, who would have a deep impact on funk music in the 1970s. Also signed to the record label was the house band, Booker T. and the M.G.’s, who were breaking boundaries in integration. Two o
caption: The Stax Museum on McLemore Avenue in Memphis, founded in 2003, is a replica of the Stax studio, built on the same site where many of the historic Stax recording sessions took place. The original Stax studio was demolished in 1989.
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