Stax/Volt Story by David Edwards and Mike Callahan Last update: July 18, 1999 Jim Stewart was born in 1930 in Middleton, Tennessee, he went into the Army and was in the Special Services where he played the violin, he studied Business at Memphis State and graduated in 1956. His intention was to be a banker but while working in a bank, he still played fiddle in Western swing bands around Memphis. His older sister, Estelle Axton, worked as a teller at the Union Planter's Bank in Memphis. Jim Stewart began fooling around recording music in a garage around 1957 and he put out his first record in 1958, a country and western song named "Blue Roses" by a disc jockey named Fred Bylar. The record label was called Satellite (probably because Sputnik, the Russians' first artificial earth satellite, was launched in October, 1957, and dominated the news). In 1958, Estelle became involved when Jim Stewart asked her to invest in his record company, she took out a second mortgage on her home and they bought new recording equipment.

The label was located in Brunswick, Tennessee in an old storehouse. In 1960, they moved the label back to Memphis to an old movie theater on East McLemore. Estelle ran a record shop in the front of the building. They recorded a local disc jockey named Rufus Thomas, who had had a minor hit with Sun Records earlier called "Bearcat". Rufus and his 17 year old daughter Carla recorded a duet titled "Cause I Love You" and it became a local hit in Memphis. The song came to the attention of Jerry Wexler, who was Vice President of Atlantic Records, he leased the record and obtained a five year option for future Satellite product for $5000. After "Cause I Love You", Carla Thomas recorded a song she had written called "Gee Whiz". The record came out on Satellite, but Wexler immediately claimed it for Atlantic, and it was released nationally on Atlantic. "Gee Whiz" went to Billboard #5 and became the first big national hit for Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton. Estelle Axton's son Packy played tenor sax in a rock and roll band named the Royal Spades.

Along with Packy was Steve Cropper on guitar, Charlie Freeman on guitar, drummer Terry Johnson baritone sax player Don Nix and bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn. This group became the Mar-Keys and recorded an instrumental named "Last Night" which became the next big hit for Jim and Estelle. When this song started up the charts, Jim Stewart became aware of another record company in California called "Satellite" so rather than risking litigation, the name of the company was changed to "Stax", the ST from Stewart and the AX from Axton. A young piano player named Booker T. Jones lived in the neighborhood near the Stax studio, and started hanging around. He joined up with Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn from the Mar-Keys and with Al Jackson and they became the backbone of the "Stax Sound". They also recorded on their own as Booker T. and MG'S (standing for Memphis Group) and soon had a giant hit named "Green Onions". Steve Cropper became an important producer for Stax and both wrote songs and produced many other acts for Jim Stewart. In 1962, Johnny Jenkins came to the Stax studio to record a single for Atlantic.

When the recording session for Jenkins turned into a disaster, they used the last half hour of studio time to record Jenkin's 21 year old driver, Otis Redding. He recorded a ballad he had written called "These Arms of Mine". "These Arms of Mine" was released in October of 1962 on Stax's new rhythm and blues subsidiary named Volt. It made the charts in March of 1963 and in September of 1963, Otis came back into the Stax studio and recorded "Pain In My Heart" which became an even bigger hit. With the success of Booker T. and the MG'S, Carla Thomas, the Mar-Keys and Otis Redding, Stax studios became a magnet for other acts. Atlantic Records brought in two of their recording acts, the duo Sam and Dave and Wilson Pickett, to Memphis to record at the Stax studio. Stax Records itself had added William Bell, Eddie Floyd, the Mad-Lads and a top notch producing and song writing duo named Isaac Hayes and David Porter. In 1965 Stewart hired a very successful black Washington DC disc jockey named Al Bell as national sales director.

From the beginning, Al Bell took over the effective leadership of the company and greatly expanded it's roster of artists. On December 10, 1967, Otis Redding was killed in a plane crash and had his biggest hit, "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay," posthumously. Shortly after losing their most important artist, the distribution deal Stax had with Atlantic was to expire and had to be renegotiated. To the horror of Jim Stewart, he found out that the original contract had given Atlantic the ownership of all of the Stax masters. Atlantic owned the entire Stax catalog! The negotiations dragged on for several months, but Stax had no leverage, since Atlantic already owned their catalog. Instead of giving up and signing with Atlantic, Stewart sold the company in May 1968 to Gulf and Western for several million dollars. At this point the Stax numbering system was changed. The most successful act on Stax/Volt other than Otis Redding was Sam and Dave, even though Sam and Dave's material was being released on Stax, their contract was with Atlantic so they were no longer on Stax.

Even with the loss of Otis Redding and Sam and Dave, the company did very well without Atlantic. They had additional hits by Booker T. and the MG'S, Johnnie Taylor, and William Bell. Stax had formed a subsidiary label called Enterprise in 1967 and released an album by one of their producers named Isaac Hayes called "Presenting Isaac Hayes" but it was not very successful. After the break with Atlantic, Hayes made another album called "Hot Buttered Soul" and it went triple platinum. After a couple of years, sales were down and there were internal troubles at Stax. External pressure was coming from Gulf and Western who really didn't have a clue about the creative aspects of a record company. Jim Stewart thought he could rescue the company and he and Al Bell repurchased the company from Gulf and Western in July 1970. At this point, the numbering system changed again. Soon the company was challenging Motown for the lead in black album sales, with new artists such as the Soul Children, the Staple Singers, Frederick Knight, Jean Knight, Rance Allen, Mel and Tim and the Emotions.

Richard Pryor was signed to the company and had a giant debut album called "That Nigger's Crazy" on Partee, the comedy subsidiary. Other new subsidiary labels were also formed including Gospel Truth, Hip and Respect. In 1972, Al Bell made a deal with Columbia Records for the distribution of Stax product. Columbia gave Stax a six million dollar loan for expansion. In October of 1972, Al Bell used the money to buy out Jim Stewart. Even though he no longer owned the company, Stewart agreed to stay on as President for up to 5 years, but Al Bell ran the company. The handshake deal between Al Bell and Clive Davis, President of Columbia Records called for Columbia to pay Stax for every record it delivered, irrespective of sales, an unheard of agreement. In 1973, Clive Davis was fired and Columbia altered the deal, cutting the payments to Stax by 40%. This led to the financial decline of the label and in January 1975, Stax was unable to meet it's payroll and a bankruptcy judge ordered the it's closing on January 12, 1976.

The Stax masters prior to 1968 are owned by Atlantic Records, but the Stax masters produced after the split with Atlantic are now owned by Fantasy Records of San Francisco. The discographies on the related pages (links below) were constructed from our personal record collections, Schwann catalogs from the 1960s, Phonolog, various catalogs from Stax over the years, and other materials. We are indebted to Rob Bowman for information he sent us in personal correspondence, as well as the wealth of information in his book, Soulsville, USA: The Story of Stax Records. We would appreciate any additions or corrections to this discography. Just send them to us via e-mail . Both Sides Now Publications is an information web page. We are not a catalog, nor can we provide the records listed below. We have no association with Stax Records or associated labels. Stax is currently owned by Fantasy Records. Should you want to contact Fantasy, or should you be interested in acquiring albums listed in this discography (which are all out of print), we suggest you see our Frequently Asked Questions page and follow the instructions found there.

This story and discography are copyright 1997, 1999 by Mike Callahan. The Sounds of Soulsville, U.S.A. - Los Angeles Review of Books The Sounds of Soulsville, U.S.A. By Aaron Gilbreath FEBRUARY 4, 2014 WITH THE DECLINE of magazine page space and the withering of once-towering institutions like Rolling Stone and The Village Voice, many have declared music writing dead. It’s certainly changed since Robert Christgau and Lester Bangs’s day, but work like Robert Gordon’s Respect Yourself proves that music still provides rich territory for narrative exploration. In Respect Yourself, Gordon’s sixth book, the Grammy Award-winning music writer and filmmaker tells the story of Stax, the Memphis-based record label that gave the world Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Mavis Staples, and Booker T. & the MG’s during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. “Contrary to its intentions,” Gordon writes in his preface, Memphis, Tennessee’s racial violence and segregation “inspired great art, desperate art, lifesaving art.” As a longtime Memphis resident, Gordon understands this complex city, its darkness and glory, and the fertility of its complications.

Exhaustive without being exhausting, Respect Yourself is the definitive document of one of America’s most important record labels, an engrossing tale of creativity, resilience, and struggle in the face of unprecedented adversity. Wisely, Gordon starts his mammoth biography not with a statement but a scene: the label’s co-owner, Jim Stewart, seated in a barber chair. At this point Stewart’s a country boy, a fiddler, and despite his future collaborations, he doesn’t know a single person of color. Gordon paints this youthful portrait to contrast with Stewart’s future position as cultural arbiter and business mogul. Here, Stewart’s just another Southern Caucasian living on what bluesman Albert King called the outskirts of town. The scene is also pivotal because that chair is where he got the idea to start a label: Stewart’s barber ran one and recommended it as a lucrative side business — if you could keep the publishing rights. Originally named Satellite Records, Stewart’s new venture released two singles, one that, Gordon writes, “sounded terrible” and another that “rocked,” though “neither got very far out of the box.” It’s tempting to assume that it would only be up for Stewart from here, but the graveyard of American independent labels proves otherwise.

Through hard work, luck, openness to all races and ideas, Jim and his sister Estelle Axton modeled their company after the record that rocked. Axton mortgaged her house so the fledgling company could get a $2500 Ampex 350 mono reel-to-reel console tape recorder and improve their records’ fidelity. What first appeared an ill-advised investment (Axton’s husband feared they’d end up living “in a tent”) proved one among many wise decisions she would make in her time at Stax. The young label faced a series of hurdles — loss of studio space, loss of equipment, vulturous distributors — followed by an accumulation of successes. Their first big score: when Mercury Records bought national distribution rights to Satellite’s first release by a band of color, The Veltones’s “Fool in Love.” This first brush with the majors generated only a small sum, but was a harbinger of big things to come.

¤ Gordon’s book belongs on the shelf alongside canonical works such as Peter Guralnick’s Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley and Nat Hentoff’s Jazz Is, not solely because of its subject, but because it does what the best music writing does, and which traditional criticism often fails to do: it gazes beyond the music itself. Stax Records and soul music provide a window into the story of America’s central tensions and triumphs, that of racial segregation and the Civil Rights Movement. It’s there, alongside the well-known protests, marches and sit-ins that we see the small human scale on which progress also happens, the way seemingly mundane interactions between regular people help take integration out of the realm of legislation and abstraction and down to the every day of the street — the way they did at Stax. Maybe it’s the timeless spirit of commerce. Maybe it’s the American hunger for riches, but in the first half of the 20th century, America was filled with tiny, independent record labels, from country labels that folded after months to small but significant ones like Jewell and Excello. Nothing about Stax’s first incarnation distinguished it.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, recording was the kind of business everyone from visionaries to used car salesmen got into. Two Turkish-American brothers formed Atlantic Records. A Detroit autoworker formed Motown. Two Polish immigrants formed Chess. Culturally, these labels altered life on earth. Stax did, too. But each is of a time and place. Respect Yourself is the story of a record label that functioned as an extension of a city: Memphis, Tennessee. In 1950s and ’60s Memphis, people of color had to use separate bathrooms, separate drinking fountains, and had endured decades of systematic voter suppression and violence. It was the kind of place where policemen pulled over people of color for sport, the kind of place that preferred to shut down its public pools for two consecutive summers rather than integrate them. When the city’s sanitation workers organized to publically request bins that didn’t leak maggots on their heads, and private showers where they could cleanup after work, Memphis’s Mayor convinced the Teamsters Union to abandon the workers entirely. Stax recorded soul music, but the way it went about it ran contrary to what the Memphis majority considered normal.

It mixed races in bands, mixed races in the studio, hired full-time black employees and made some of them rich. Stax’s policy was to hire anybody with ability or promise. Its ranks were filled with people who’d come in off the streets to record, buy records, and socialize. Unlike most major studios, they didn’t erect a physical barrier between the studio floor and the control room; instead, they let engineers and musicians freely interact during the session. They kept few hard lines about song arrangements. Song ideas were loose and often hummed rather than charted (a format called “head arrangements”), and recording involved lots of improvisation. “Everyone was welcome everywhere,” Gordon said. It’s an approach he calls the “democracy of the studio.” Stax’s business model embodied the way its staff thought about people in general. “At the studio,” said cofounder Estelle Axton, “we just looked at people as talent, not the color of their skin.” The reason: Stax assumed that everyone potentially had something to offer. Though they weren’t trying to make a statement, Stax lived by Dr.

King’s suggestion that we judge people by the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin — or, in Stax’s case, their musical abilities: Can you play an instrument? Can you arrange a song? Can you cold call DJs with promotional material? Even Booker T. & the MG’s breakout “ Green Onions ” exemplified that ideology. Here was a mixed band led by a young black man, playing a song that blended musical styles, including Blues, R&B, rock and roll, country and swap, to create something new and unconcerned with type. Stax offered what the American dream always purports to be about: an even playing field. And they did it in the shadow of Emmett Till’s murder and the Little Rock Nine. Gordon shows that cultural shifts occur from an accumulation of small interactions, which is to say, an accumulation of changing minds. When songwriter and DJ Rufus Thomas decided to ask Stewart for recording work, he, like many black Southerners, had had what he called “some rough experiences—wrong experiences, bad experiences—with white folks.” He didn’t trust Stewart, because he didn’t trust white people in general.

“But I knew I had to work,” Thomas said, “and the white folks had the jobs so I did what I had to do.” After Stewart and Axton proved their character, Thomas continued to work with them, as did his talented daughter, Carla Thomas. For all of its barriers, Memphis was a place where ideas and cultures still mixed enough to birth new musical forms. Elvis represents the most visible example of that hybridization: a white country boy playing his hillbilly version of what was then called black music. Jazz is filled with examples of this, from dynamic collaborations to outright cultural appropriation. Consider the origin of jazz itself in New Orleans: the blending of African and European traditions. In mid-century Memphis, you had white Southern kids sneaking around black clubs to hear R&B and doo-wop music. As one of those kids, the MG’s bassist Donald “Duck” Don, recalls: “Now if you can imagine, white kids had never heard R&B music before. It was like going to another planet, a real good planet. It was just unbelievable good vibes—Where has this been?” The “where” is clear.

And yet, these kids heard it, and they took it back to their own little worlds, their high schools, bedrooms and rehearsal spaces, and later, to places where everyone else could listen. The teenage nights those white players spent standing outside clubs watching bands play through the window, or listening to music come through bars’ outside air vents — those are the moments of quiet revolution, the points where social standards and ideas of “normalcy” get dismantled and new attitudes forged. Revolution comes in many forms. As writer James Baldwin said, “[W]hen the black man, whose destiny and identity has always been controlled by others, decides and states that he will reject the identity imposed on him, and control his own destiny, he is talking revolution.” Teenagers’ challenging their culture’s dominant paradigm was nothing short of revolutionary. They weren’t trying to change anything. They just liked music. It’s that same casual attitude that defined the Stax label and created such honest music. As Gordon says: Musicians had been crossing proscribed thresholds in the city [of Memphis] for years. B.B. King had gotten his radio show on WDIA by walking through the front door on a rainy day and asking for an audience.

Howlin’ Wolf walked into Sun [Records], having heard that the white man Sam Phillips would give you a fair shake. The door Elvis walked through was metaphorical, but his success grew from his knowledge of music on the other side. ¤ Gordon’s sentences are simple and his scenes strong. His prose gets out of the story’s way. His style isn’t blandly workmanlike, it’s sonorous and sufficiently textured, but it does favor function over form. As with the scene of Stewart in the barber chair, Gordon isolates key moments within the flood of historical detail to bring the story to life. A fancy hotel forced Rufus Thomas’s family to ride the back service elevator, accessible through an alley, in order to talk business with Stewart and Atlantic Record’s white representative Jerry Wexler. Gordon shows us how Stewart and the Thomases had known each other on “only respectful, pleasant terms. [Yet] Here, the real world intruded; the alley, the freight elevator—the humiliation.” As Wexler the New Yorker put it, Memphis and its leaders were “Stone Age.” Other absorbing scenes show the way original music gets made.

Here, it’s often accidentally: musicians goofing around in the studio, tinkering with riffs they’d written or combinations of notes they find themselves drawn to. In this quiet way, Respect Yourself portrays the enigmatic workings of creativity — and the role of common, unplanned events — as with the way the chorus to Sam and Dave’s breakout hit “Hold On, I’m Comin’” resulted when Dave was sitting on the toilet, and Isaac Hayes kept telling him to hurry up and get back downstairs to the studio. The way Otis Redding came to Stax’s attention while working as a chauffeur for a visiting guitarist, and kept asking people at the session to let him sing. And how Rufus Thomas casually recorded his big hit “Walking the Dog” during a quick studio visit on the fly between church and Sunday dinner. Gordon wisely contrasts Stax’s loose “organic” approach with Motown’s assembly line, automaker approach. As Isaac Hayes put it, “Stax was down-to-earth, raw, very honest music.” The book also unveils the mystery of hit-making.

Unassuming books still become best-sellers and promising titles still get ignored, proving labels haven’t figured out why one song becomes a hit while another flops. The forces that propel songs to the top of the charts remain elusive, mysterious, often a combination of sound, exposure, timing, and luck. In the Stax story, you can see many of these mechanisms at work: missed opportunities and dogged self-promotion, session tapes that got shelved too long, and songs played at the right place and the right time. Also on display: the essential role of serendipity. When a singer leaves a session prematurely, he inadvertently creates an opportunity for the remaining musicians to record an original instrumental. Not only did that song become a nationwide hit, it established a model for countless sultry, Southern, late-night jams. That song was “Green Onions.” You can’t plan for coincidence, but you can leave room for it the way Stax did. As Gordon puts it, Memphis was “the town where nothing ever happens, but the impossible always does.” Respect Yourself provides a clear look into the South’s mind through the story of some of the world’s finest music-makers, offering a broader, more nuanced conception of this influential region.

The South is beautiful. It’s bountiful, and it’s fascinating. Its complicated and contradictory character also inhibits easy summation. Thankfully, Respect Yourself shines a necessary light into its past and works against its stereotypes. Music is undoubtedly the universal language, a unifying medium of both simple pleasures and revolutionary power. It stirs us partly because it works on the physiology that we all share, offering further proof that no matter where you live, what you look like or what you believe, we are, at our core, more alike than we are different. Stax knew this. Many of us do, but we could work on showing it. Music can help. ¤ Stax Records Stax in 1960s With the success of Booker T. and the MG's, Carla Thomas, The Mar-Keys , Bar-Kays and Otis Redding, Stax studios became a magnet for other acts. Atlantic Records brought in two of their recording acts, the duo Sam and Dave and Wilson Pickett, to Memphis to record at the Stax studio. Stax Records itself had added William Bell, Eddie Floyd, the Mad-Lads and a top notch producing and song writing duo named Isaac Hayes and David Porter.

In 1965 Stewart hired a very successful black Washington DC disc jockey named Al Bell as national sales director. From the beginning, Al Bell took over the effective leadership of the company and greatly expanded it's roster of artists. On December 10, 1967, Otis Redding was killed in a plane crash and had his biggest hit, "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay," posthumously. Shortly after losing their most important artist, the distribution deal Stax had with Atlantic was to expire and had to be renegotiated. To the horror of Jim Stewart, he found out that the original contract had given Atlantic the ownership of all of the Stax masters. Atlantic owned the entire Stax catalog! The negotiations dragged on for several months, but Stax had no leverage, since Atlantic already owned their catalog. Instead of giving up and signing with Atlantic, Stewart sold the company in May 1968 to Gulf and Western for several million dollars. At this point the Stax numbering system was changed.

The most successful act on Stax/Volt other than Otis Redding was Sam and Dave, even though Sam and Dave's material was being released on Stax, their contract was with Atlantic so they were no longer on Stax. Johnnie Taylor William Bell Isacc Hayes (R) with co producer Dave Porter Even with the loss of Otis Redding and Sam and Dave, the company did very well without Atlantic. They had additional hits by Booker T. and the MG'S, Johnnie Taylor, and William Bell. Stax had formed a subsidiary label called Enterprise in 1967 and released an album by one of their producers named Isaac Hayes called "Presenting Isaac Hayes" but it was not very successful. After the break with Atlantic, Hayes made another album called Hot Buttered Soul and it went triple platinum. Al Bell and Jimmy Stewart After a couple of years, sales were down and there were internal troubles at Stax. External pressure was coming from Gulf and Western who really didn't have a clue about the creative aspects of a record company. Jim Stewart thought he could rescue the company and he and Al Bell repurchased the company from Gulf and Western in July 1970. At this point, the numbering system changed again.

Soon the company was challenging Motown for the lead in black album sales, with new artists such as the Soul Children, the Staple Singers, Frederick Knight, Jean Knight, Rance Allen, Mel and Tim and the Emotions. Richard Pryor was signed to the company and had a giant debut album called "That Nigger's Crazy" on Partee, the comedy subsidiary. Other new subsidiary labels were also formed including Gospel Truth, Hip and Respect. Stax just before it was torn down Ben Cauley playing at 1991 marker dedication Historic marker where Stax stood In 1972, Al Bell made a deal with Columbia Records for the distribution of Stax product. Columbia gave Stax a six million dollar loan for expansion. In October of 1972, Al Bell used the money to buy out Jim Stewart. Even though he no longer owned the company, Stewart agreed to stay on as President for up to 5 years, but Al Bell ran the company. The handshake deal between Al Bell and Clive Davis, President of Columbia Records called for Columbia to pay Stax for every record it delivered, irrespective of sales, an unheard of agreement.

In 1973, Clive Davis was fired and Columbia altered the deal, cutting the payments to Stax by 40%. This led to the financial decline of the label and in January 1975, Stax was unable to meet it's payroll and a bankruptcy judge ordered it's closing on January 12, 1976. The Stax masters prior to 1968 are owned by Atlantic Records, but the Stax masters produced after the split with Atlantic are now owned by Fantasy Records of San Francisco. Stax Records - Concord Music Group Stax Records Facebook↗ Twitter↗ Label Site↗ Since its inception in 1959, STAX RECORDS has been synonymous with Southern soul music, the combination of rhythm & blues and gospel that connects to the innermost emotions of its listeners. The label served as the driving force of unity during the civil rights era from its hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, uniting people through music in a time of great social unrest. Among the many artists who scored hits on STAX and its VOLT subsidiary during the sixties were Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, the Staple Singers, Booker T.

& the M.G.’s, Sam and Dave, Rufus and Carla Thomas, Johnnie Taylor, Albert King and the Dramatics. While the STAX label forms a vital and historic part of CONCORD’s catalog, it also continues as a dynamic force in producing new soul-based recordings that remain true to the brand. These new productions includes recordings by STAX greats, such as William Bell, music legends, such as Melissa Etheridge, and new breakthrough artists, such as Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats. The label is also proud to contribute to the STAX legacy by supporting the Stax Academy of Music and the Stax Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. FEATURED ARTISTS Al Bell: Out of Exile, Back in Soulsville - The New York Times The New York Times Music |Out of Exile, Back in Soulsville Search Continue reading the main story Photo Al Bell, who led Stax Records in Memphis during the labels 1960s and 70s heyday, has returned to the city as chairman of the Memphis Music Foundation to resuscitate its entertainment stature.

Credit Josh Anderson for The New York Times MEMPHIS AS the peacock-blue Cadillac with the gold trim and fur lining spun on a giant turntable in the Stax Museum of American Soul Music here, Al Bell, the final owner of the late, great record label, chuckled. Decades before 50 Cent with his customized Rolls-Royce and Akon with his tricked-out Lamborghini, there was Isaac Hayes with this pimped-out ride, an over-the-top gift from Stax to its over-the-top star, who wore slave chains like emancipatory bling across his bare, buff chest. “The reason I chuckle is because I think of what has been born out of the rap and the hip-hop world, and then I look at what we were doing back then, and, you know, we were really ahead of our time,” Mr. Bell said. His chuckle is rueful, though. When Mr. Bell, 69, stands by that revolving Cadillac, he sees the arc of his life come full circle, unexpectedly. The original Stax Records is long gone, (though it resurfaced several years ago under new management), Mr.

Hayes and many other Stax artists, from Otis Redding to Rufus Thomas, have died, and, until recently, Memphis showed little interest in reclaiming or building on its soul-music heritage. Six years ago, though, the Stax Museum opened. And earlier this summer Mr. Bell was invited back to Memphis with a bittersweet mandate: to resuscitate the city’s once great music industry as chairman of the Memphis Music Foundation. As a result, after years of exile, Mr. Bell now has the opportunity both to promote a more enlightened Memphis and to redeem his own legacy, which was tarnished when Stax was forced into involuntary bankruptcy in 1975 and when he himself was tried for — and acquitted of — bank fraud. Continue reading the main story What happened at Stax in the turbulent years after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in Memphis was complicated, as was Mr. Bell’s role in it. But in retrospect Deanie Parker, interim chief executive of the Soulsville Foundation, which runs the museum, boils it down pungently to this: “In its own way, Stax Records was fighting the same fight as Dr.

King, and Stax Records was assassinated too.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story In its heyday Stax, a rhythm and blues label founded by a white brother and sister, Jim Stewart and Estelle Stewart Axton, represented the model of an integrated workplace in a deeply segregated city. Under Mr. Bell it became one of the nation’s largest black-owned companies. Its failure devastated not only those whom it sustained financially and artistically but also those who saw it as an inspiration. Many African-American leaders, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, viewed Mr. Bell’s prosecution as persecution; his trial included testimony that a local banking official had bragged, using a racial slur, about “running those” blacks “and especially the chief” black “out of town,” Mr. Bell’s defense lawyer, James F. Neal, a former Watergate prosecutor, recollected recently. Despite his acquittal Mr. Bell left Memphis with his career in tatters. “I didn’t feel broken — I’m a fighter — but I did experience the low lows,” said Mr.

Bell, who is imposingly tall (6 foot 4 ¾ in his precise accounting) and dapper, with pinstripe suits, monogrammed cuffs and silk pocket squares that match his ties. Photo The Staple Singers, an act Mr. Bell signed to Stax. Credit Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images To many, then, it seems a fitting, if not poignant, postscript that Memphis is welcoming Mr. Bell back with outstretched arms. “The way that Al Bell was treated in that city at the end of the history of Stax Records was despicable,” said Rob Bowman, the author of “Soulsville U.S.A,” the definitive history of the record label. “I think it’s wonderful that he has been chosen for this position. Al did so much for Memphis. In taking Stax from a mom-and-pop operation to an R&B powerhouse, he really put Memphis on the map.” Born Alvertis Isbell in Brinkley, Ark., Mr. Bell is a mix of velvety charm and prickly pride, with the rhetorical cadences of a preacher and the unwavering self-confidence of a politician.

His bumpy career path intersected with crucial figures and moments in 20th-century African-American — and entertainment — history. The product of a black high school and college in Little Rock, Mr. Bell marched with Dr. King, worked as a black-radio D.J. in Washington at the peak of the civil rights movement, ran the two major black record companies — he served briefly as president of Motown Records too — and eventually started his own independent label, Bellmark, with hit songs as varied as “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” (Prince) and “Whoomp! (There It Is)” (Tag Team). Now, at an age when others choose to retire, Mr. Bell is trying to reinvent himself. In Memphis his mission at the private, nonprofit foundation is nothing less than to help make Memphis the independent-music capital of the country, first by nurturing local artists and music businesses. In a personal venture, he recently started an Internet radio network, albellpresents.com , with an e-commerce link, and its first station features soul music with Mr. Bell hosting in his suave baritone. Returning to the role of disc jockey, like returning to Memphis, is “precious,” he said.

His “jock” career began in high school, when he was president of the audio-visual club. This put him at the helm of the sock hops, for which he borrowed records from girls, whom he quizzed thoroughly about their interest in, say, the Coasters or Nat King Cole. “This gave me so much insight until finally I got me a microphone,” he said. Soon he was a gospel music D.J. on a Little Rock station. After high school, in 1959, Mr. Bell went to work under Dr. King at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He spent a year in Georgia until “breaking rank” with the nonviolent-resistance ethos at a march in Savannah, Ga. When a hostile bystander spit on him, Mr. Bell pulled a switchblade from his pocket and plunged into the crowd. Fellow marchers restrained him, “fortunately,” Mr. Bell said, but Dr. King was not pleased. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Earlier, Mr. Bell said, he had brushed aside Dr. King’s concern about his switchblade by joking to him, “Well, Doc, Jesus had Peter with him, and Peter carried a sword.” But Mr. Bell said that after the march Dr.

King, calling him Alvertis, rebuked him for his increasing advocacy of self-defense against the police and their dogs. “So I said, ‘O.K., Doc.’ And I left the next day, with love.” Back in Little Rock, Mr. Bell, while attending college, resumed his radio career, eventually graduating in 1961 to WLOK in Memphis, where he used this sign-on: “This is your 6 feet 4 bundle of joy, 212 pounds of Mrs. Bell’s baby boy, soft as medicated cotton, rich as double-X cream, the women’s pet, the men’s threat, the baby boy Al” — and then he rang a bell — “Bell.” Photo Al Bell, right, with the Rev. Jesse Jackson at Wattstax, the 1972 soul concert in Los Angeles. Credit Fantasy/Concord Music Group/Stax Museum of American Soul Music At the time, in a converted movie theater in a black neighborhood, Mr. Stewart and Ms. Axton, who died in 2004, were getting Stax off the ground. Mr.

Bell promoted their artists, not only in Memphis but also, more significantly, in Washington, when he moved to WUST in 1963. Two years later it seemed a natural fit for Stax to hire Mr. Bell as its first in-house promotions man. A 25-year-old workaholic who posted a giant thermometer in the lobby to track sales, Mr. Bell injected considerable energy into the small company. “You could say that Stax didn’t really begin until he got there,” said William Bell, 70, whose “You Don’t Miss Your Water” was an early Stax release. “Jim Stewart was a behind-the-scenes guy. Al Bell was a wheeler-dealer.” In Mr. Bowman’s book, Booker T. Jones of Booker T. and the MGs, the house band that shaped the Stax sound, calls Mr. Bell “our Otis for promotion.” Otis Redding, a year younger than Mr. Bell, was the life force of the studio. “‘Everybody looked up to him,” Mr. Bell said. Asked if he too looked up to him, Mr. Bell said, “I looked at him.” In his drive to promote the gritty Memphis sound outside the South Mr.

Bell took a Who’s Who of Stax talent to the Apollo Theater in Harlem for 10 days in 1967. It was during those shows that Redding became a kinetic performer instead of a stationary crooner, according to Mr. Bell. As Redding, the headliner, watched from the wings, Johnnie Taylor would energize the crowd by shouting, “I want everybody here to give me the clap,” and Sam and Dave would “set the stage on fire.” “Finally,” Mr. Bell said, laughing, “Otis came out, grabbed the microphone and went hustling from one end of the stage to the other.” On Dec. 10, 1967, when Mr. Bell was attending a radio industry convention in Las Vegas, a loudspeaker announced that Redding, 26, had died in a small plane crash near Madison, Wis. “I lost it,” Mr. Bell said. That night he drank himself into a stupor while playing craps. He learned the next morning that he had made $85,000. “But Otis was still gone,” he said. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Four months later, on April 4, 1968, Mr.

Bell was presiding over, in retrospect, a bizarrely timed recording session of “Send Peace and Harmony Home,” a song that he, with others, had written for Dr. King. He was staying nearby at the black-owned Lorraine Motel, the only place in town where Stax’s racially mixed artists were free to socialize and where classics like “In the Midnight Hour” were written. According to Mr. Bell, Homer Banks, a singer and songwriter, burst into the studio, calling out, “They just shot Dr. King, and he’s dead.” The tape was rolling, and the vocalist, Shirley Walton, started singing wrenchingly and crying. “My God,” Mr. Bell said, shuddering. Photo Jim Stewart, one of the founders of Stax Records, with Mr. Bell during the labels peak period. Credit Stax Museum of American Soul Music Racial tensions escalated in Memphis. Stax remained safe while other white-owned businesses were burned. But inside the company, Mr. Bell said, there developed “a new color consciousness.” Around that time Mr. Bell was given a stake in Stax, and he soon signed his favorite group, the Staple Singers. But there were business problems.

After Warner Brothers bought Atlantic Records, which had been Stax’s distributor, Stax learned that it no longer owned its chief asset, its back catalog. In an effort to create a new catalog from scratch, Mr. Bell called on Stax’s entire roster to produce. “He was our ‘Yes, we can’ man,” said Ms. Parker, who was director of publicity. In May 1969 alone Stax released 27 albums and 30 singles. “Craziness!” Mr. Bell said. The most successful album was “Hot Buttered Soul,” which Hayes, who was primarily a songwriter, had to be coaxed into recording. He had been lured into the studio to make his first album, which was not very successful, after Mr. Bell loosened him up with Asti Spumante at a party one night. This time Mr. Bell urged him to do whatever he wanted, which resulted in unconventionally long songs like an 18-minute 42-second version of “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and a 9-minute Bell-Hayes collaboration called “Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic” (a word that Mr.

Bell said he coined to describe those who abuse big words). Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy To the surprise of many “Hot Buttered Soul” was a hit. It was followed by the soundtrack for the movie “Shaft” and ever-increasing success for Mr. Hayes and for Stax. The company was continually expanding yet also losing its original intimacy, and some of its original musicians, as new personnel and heightened security ruffled feathers. In the summer of 1971 Mr. Bell’s younger brother Louis was murdered in Arkansas. Right before the funeral, Mr. Bell said, he sat on the hood of a junked school bus in his father’s yard and a song came to him: I know a place Ain’t no smilin’ faces Lyin’ to the races. Afterward Mr. Bell brought the song to a recording session with the Staple Singers, who “took it to the next level,” he said, and “I’ll Take You There,” with its island groove, became one of their biggest hits. Mr.

Bell likes to say that he did not write the song but that it was “written through me.” Still, he claimed sole songwriting credit, irking Mavis Staples, who believed the song to be collaborative, according to Mr. Bowman. Mr. Bell increasingly saw Stax, which branched into spoken-word albums with Mr. Jackson, Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby, as a platform for black advancement. Looking back at “Wattstax,” the 1972 concert — later a film — at the Los Angeles Coliseum that was referred to as the black Woodstock, Mr. Bell still takes pride: “Here’s this black guy from Memphis, Tenn., pulling together 112,000 black people in Hollywood.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story But the unraveling of Stax began not long afterward. Mr. Stewart wanted to leave, with cash for his half of the company. Mr. Bell made a distribution deal with Clive Davis, who ran CBS Records, which allowed him to buy out Mr. Stewart. But CBS soon dismissed Mr. Davis and relations between the two companies disintegrated, ultimately causing severe cash flow problems for Stax.

Photo Al Bell at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis. Mr. Bell was a major player in the citys music scene in the 60s and 70s. Credit Reed Bunzel “The time came for the big fish to eat the little fish,” Mr. Bell said. Stax filed an antitrust suit against CBS, and its bank, Union Planters, also accused CBS of economically strangling Stax. But Union Planters, which was facing its own financial troubles, was squeezing Stax too, and it brought pressure to bear with racist rhetoric, as came out at Mr. Bell’s trial. At the same time Stax found itself under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service. Employees started going without paychecks, and artists were jumping ship. Mr. Bell came under attack in the Stax family, although Ms. Parker said that many later regretted that they had not been “the wind at Al’s back instead of the wind in his face.” Mr. Stewart, the company founder, who tried to salvage Stax with his own money, never held Mr. Bell responsible for Stax’s downfall, Mr. Bowman said.

“Al Bell went to Herculean efforts to try to save Stax,” he said. “Jim Stewart found the racism involved in the end to be despicable.” On Dec. 19, 1975, after three small creditors, prompted by Union Planters, brought an involuntary bankruptcy petition against Stax, the company’s receiver, accompanied by armed guards, arrived at Stax. Mr. Bell said the receiver addressed him with a slur, saying, “You got 15 minutes to get out of the building.” He got out. Not long afterward Mr. Bell was indicted for conspiring with a former Union Planters official to defraud the bank. The banker had confessed to making fictitious loans and to forging Mr. Bell’s signature as a guarantor on those loans. “It was a bitter story,” Mr. Bell’s lawyer, Mr. Neal, said. “The bank engineered the government into charging him criminally. I never thought he was guilty, and neither did the jury.” Mr. Bell moved his family into the unfinished basement of his father’s house in Little Rock.

“I went from a man that owned a company whose masters were valued by Price Waterhouse at $67 million to a man that could scrape together 15 cents from time to time,” he said. Advertisement Continue reading the main story After the bankruptcy Union Planters deeded the studio to the Southside Church of God in Christ for $10, and the church eventually tore it down. Occasionally, Mr. Bell said, he visited the vacant lot. “I’d see beer bottles and paper bags and all that,” Mr. Bell said. “It was a like a dumping ground, yet all this creativity was still vested in that soil. I would cry.” But Mr. Bell, and Stax’s music, with its singles rereleased in very successful box sets in the ’90s, both outlasted Union Planters. Mr. Bell gradually made his way back into the entertainment business, greatly assisted by Berry Gordy Jr., the founder of Motown. “He mainstreamed me back into the industry,” Mr. Bell said. And the Stax Museum’s opening kick-started the process of bringing Mr. Bell back to Memphis and Memphis back to him.

“He has a reputation, he is a brand name, and we need him,” said Dean Deyo, president of the Memphis Music Foundation. Sometimes, Mr. Bell said, he has to pinch himself. A version of this article appears in print on , on Page AR1 of the New York edition with the headline: Out of Exile, Back in Soulsville. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe downtowner tax Records Memphis Soul Music Rhythm & Blues Otis Redding Eddie Floyd Booker T. & The MG's By Tom Carlson "Don't it always go to show You don't know what you got til it's gone" --Joni Mitchell It's so Memphis. So American, really. Something thrives in your civic midst that ends up defining your city. You're proud, of course, but too busy to pay much attention. People from all over the world enjoy it more than you do. You're just too darn busy. Then, like anything else in this world, it inevitably suffers rocky times. A shame, but ... the tax men come, followed by the bulldozers, and the complaints from all over the world.

Then, oh, then, the collective realization: "You know, we really had something there." And, finally, the decision, after looking at the old photos, to try to put it back together. Site work has begun at the original location of the Stax Studio at McLemore and College. Museum proponents and local government officials envision the Stax Museum as the catalyst for neighborhood revitalization. It happened to much of Beale Street. It almost happened to the Lorraine Motel. More recently, it happened to Stax Records. Stax Records! Go to Paris, London, Rome. Go to Irkutsk, Bucharest, Reykjavik, Nairobi, Kuala Lumpur: Memphis is known for three things, and not one of them is barbeque. One, tragically, is that Memphis is where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was murdered. The other two? Elvis, of course. And third? Well, you simply have to group them: Isaac Hayes, Booker T. and The MG's, Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, the Staple Singers, et al.

Which is to say Stax Records, a record company responsible for feeding more rhythm and blues, more soul music, not just into the national consciousness but into the international consciousness, than any other organization this side of Motown. And we bulldozed it. But there are people now in Memphis, little ones, and big ones, too - Deanie Parker, president and executive director of Soulsville, the organization established in 1997 to coordinate the rebirth of Stax, will gladly and enthusiastically name some of them: Andy Capes, Charles Ewing, Kenneth Robinson, Stanley Cates, and so many others whose cultural consciousness has been raised; who, like so many of us now, realize what had been right under our noses all along. A Memphis history. A Memphis musical tradition. A Memphis Sound. That's now, but back then-in the '80s and before that-it was different. Back in the late '50s, the record label had been called Satellite Records. Its founders were First Tennessee banker Jim Stewart and his sister, Estelle Axton. They eventually moved their operation into the abandoned Capitol Theater at 926 East McLemore.

A young girl named Deanie, still in high school, went to work for them. In 1961, Stewart took the first two letters of his last name (ST) and added the first two letters of sister's last name (AX) and the new label name, Stax, was born. The logo became a falling stack of records. From roughly 1960 to 1975, Stax Records in Memphis was the epicenter of a unique brand of music embraced around the world. We all know the litany: Isaac Hayes ("Shaft"), Booker T. and The MGs ("Green Onions"), Otis Redding ("The Dock of the Bay"), Rufus Thomas ("Walking the Dog"), the Bar-Kays ("Soul Finger"), the Staples Singers ("I'll Take You There," "Respect Yourself'), Luther Ingram ("If Loving You is Wrong"), and on and on. Eight hundred singles. Three hundred albums. Eight Grammies. One Oscar. But in the mid 1970s, Stax began experiencing management and financial difficulties.

Bad decisions, lack of coordination, overreaching, hanky panky, whatever: Stax Records, producers of megahit after megahit, was forced into bankruptcy. Two years later, the company sold its master tapes at bankruptcy auction to Fantasy Records in California. In 1981, Union Planters deeded Stax Recording Studios to the Southside Church of God in Christ for one dollar. And in 1989, the church tore down the recording studio. The irony is, says Sherman Wilmott, curator of Soulsville and owner of Shangri-la Records, that if it had been today, "it never would have happened." Even back then, there were people outraged at the prospect of Stax becoming a weed-choked lot. "I've heard that people got [former Shelby County mayor] Bill Morris to dispatch police cars to block the bulldozers," says Deanie Parker, "while people worked frantically downtown to get the proper paperwork to halt the razing." All to no avail. The contents of the building scattered, and in a matter of days, Stax was gone. In body certainly, in building perhaps, but not in spirit. Almost immediately, some people began planning a resurrection.

More than 35 years later, a civic group took the remaining letters of the Stewart and Axton names, and formed Ewarton, an organization dedicated to creating a living legacy to Stax. In 1997, it announced plans to build the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, a music academy, and a performing arts center on the site of the old Stax enterprise and adjacent to it. Ewarton later became the Soulsville organization, with a tiny staff of four people and two contract employees. With Executive Director Deanie Parker at the helm - Deanie who had been at Stax from the beginning, who had worn almost every hat the Stax organization had, who even wrote two songs that Otis Redding recorded ("Don't Mess with Cupid," and "You Sure Made a Man Out of Me"), and whose heart was broken at the end - they got down and got busy. The response was overwhelming. Architectural plans were drawn for the building complex. The facade of Stax would be recreated, and the building would house a museum, with a reproduction of the Stax recording studio as its centerpiece, featuring much of the original equipment.

Current state of-the-art recording equipment being much more compact and computerized, individuals and groups would be encouraged to bring what they need into the Stax studio and record there. Also, the studio building would house a museum of Stax memorabilia. Right next to and just west of the Stax building would be the Music Academy, a 27,000-square-foot teaching and performing facility. Behind the Music Academy would be an outdoor music amphitheater. Phase Two, hopefully, would include a fullfledged performing arts center with a 40-50-seat lecture hall, just west of the Music Academy. This collage of legendary Stax recording artists barely scratches the surface of a 30-year-old musical legacy. Nearby LeMoyne-Owen College eagerly came on board. They already had an active Community Development Corporation directed to neighborhood improvement, both domestic and retail. Their own campus music facilities were woefully inadequate. A deal was worked out. The new Music Academy would house the college's music department, and the college would also enjoy the benefits of being associated with the Stax name.

In return, Owen's teachers and students would act as mentors for the academy's after-school, weekend, and summer programs for at-risk, pre-collegiate youth. That program is already under way. Called SNAP! 2001, it is currently serving several hundred kids at the LeMoyne-Owen campus and nearby Stafford Elementary School. Of course, there's always the matt of the m-word. Money. Estimated project costs hovered around $20 million, $18.5 of that for construction and the balance for an operating endowment. The response was incredible. Five million through two anonymous foundations. The City of Memphis kicked in $2.5 million and promises of infrastructure support. The Shelby County Commission did the same. The Plough Corporation added $3 million, with additional challenge funding opportunities. The Hyde Foundation pledged $500,000 a year for four years. Senator Bill Frist and Congressman Harold Ford, Jr., delivered a package of Federal funding and are actively seeking more. And soon, Deanie Parker and Soulsville will kick off a $6 million fundraising drive whose success will put them over the top. But, as with any public/private enterprise, there are caveats.

"It's very important that this remain a community project," cautions Parker. "We want the people empowered here dollar donations, fish fries; and rummage sales to raise funds, radio-thons, and so on." She knows exclusive bigwig ownership will kill it. If the recent Groundbreaking/ Groundshaking ceremonies for the museum in April were any indication, Parker has nothing to worry about. Isaac Hayes was there, along with Rufus Thomas, Steve Cropper, Mrs. Otis Redding, Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout, and other celebrities. But so were people from the neighborhoodordinary folks, white and black, just the way it was inside Stax itself three-plus decades ago. One of the major hurdles that remains is location, location, location. Or, to be more precise, the other m-word: marketing. East McLemore is in a poor part of town and is not easy to find. If, as Sherman Wilmott says, cab drivers tell visitors they won't go there-or if waiters in downtown restaurants discourage tourists because of some perception of crime-then the project is in trouble. Community redevelopment will help. So will a police substation right across the street from the new Stax complex.

So would the proposed extension of the trolley system to include the Civil Rights Museum and the Stax facilities. Short of that, notes Wilmott, they're working with MATA on a music heritage minibus shuttle that would include Sun Studio, Beale Street, The Rock `N' Soul Museum, the National Civil Rights Museum, Stax, and Graceland. "That's why we're all working together-the Blues Foundation, the Memphis Music Commission, the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau, and so on," adds Parker. "We want to be able to say to visitors, `If you want the whole ball of waxrock `n' roll, rhythm and blues, jazz, or gospel-here's your ticket. Get off and on the shuttle anywhere you want.' That way, we won't be a oneor two-night destination. People will stay longer." And, say both Parker and Wilmott, what people will see at the Stax complex will be unique: a functioning music school with outreach children's programs and a one-of-a-kind museum.

It'll be oneof-a-kind, says curator Wilmott, because of the replicated studio, but also because so many of the Stax artists are alive, still in town and eager to donate their personal memorabilia to the museum. The Stax Museum is close to the heart of Deanie Parker, executive director of Soulsville, USA, and a former Stax employee. Finally, says Wilmott, the day before the groundbreaking ceremonies, they finalized negotiations to obtain the Montague collection. This is the collection from the now defunct Memphis Music Hall of Fame across from The Peabody. "They had amassed probably the best collection of soul music items anywhere," he says. The collection contains more than 200 items and instruments belonging to Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, Booker T, and others, plus a lot of excellent equipment and costumes. "These are three-dimensional items," Wilmott points out, "the kind you can build an exhibit around." What about the famous Stax letters and falling records logo from the original building's marquee? "They're at Rum Boogie Cafe, and the other set is across the street at Alfred's on Beale. We're working on those," says Wilmott, optimistically.

"By the time we're through and we open, hopefully in 2002, we'll have 99% of what we wanted. Everyone who's involved is optimistic. Deanie Parker is down right biblical in her optimism. "I feel I am an instrument and I don't mean the musical kind," she says, laughing. "This project will happen. Smart money shouldn't bet against it. Smart money should make a donation. JULY 2001 -THE MEMPHIS DOWNTOWNER MAGAZINE (reproduced with permission)

Question: Which record label called itself “Soulsville USA”?
Answer: Stax