A country music aficionado, fiddler and banker, Jim Stewart somehow became the unlikely incubator of Southern soul music.
Stewart was the founder of Memphis, Tennessee’s Satellite Records. That might not ring bells, but when a California label of the same name sued, Stewart changed his company’s name to Stax, a label that would come to define the R&B sound of the South in the ’60s and early ’70s.
Like Motown, its contemporary soul-music competitor in Detroit, Stax was a self-contained unit with a stable of songwriters, a house band, and its own, unique sounding studio. Stewart built the label by investing in the amazing, racially integrated core of musicians, producers and executives with which he surrounded himself, and by turning that racially integrated core into a strength in the heart of a racially divided city.
Stewart initially launched Satellite in 1957 to record country and rockabilly sides. Soon, he was introduced to R&B by staff producer Chips Moman, who would later go on to found American Sound Studios and produce hits with Elvis Presley. Stewart said discovering Black music was “like a blind man who suddenly gained his sight.” From that point on, nearly all of Stax’s output was R&B, including major hits from its remarkable stable of artists, from Booker T. & the M.G.’s and Carla and Rufus Thomas, to Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, the Staples Singers, the Dramatics and others. The label’s unique studio, a converted theater with its original sloped floor that gave recordings a thick, bass-heavy sound, helped create the gritty sound of Southern R&B.
Along the way, Stewart cultivated a legendary team, many of whom have been recognized by Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement or Trustees Awards themselves. Perhaps most notable was his sister and early investor Estelle Axton, a key figure in the company’s success. As the proprietor of the record shop attached to Stax’s studio, her love of music and interaction with the community of young music fans led to the discovery of nascent talent and kept the label’s finger on the pulse of the market. In addition, there was interracial house band Booker T. & the M.G.’s (primarily Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, Donald "Duck " Dunn, Lewie Steinberg, and Al Jackson Jr. Cropper would serve as a primary A&R man and songwriter); house writers Isaac Hayes and David Porter; the Memphis Horns (Wayne Jackson and Andrew Love); Al Bell, who would later head the Motown Records Group; and, of course, Moman.
Like many small labels, Stax was obliged to turn to larger companies for distribution. It found a home in the early ’60s with the like-minded Atlantic Records, but when Atlantic was sold to Warner Brothers in the late ’60s, it began a cascade of financial issues that Stax ultimately couldn’t surmount. But by then, the legacy of this label that changed soul music, and the man who launched it, was firmly set.