The Stax Records Story: Rising Up Against Oppression
A New Documentary on HBO Max Meets At The Intersection of American History, Politics, and Music, Offering Deep Insights and Revelations
As the decades of life pass, and if you live long enough, you may be fortunate to intersect with a medium that allows you to see the historical events you lived through transform themselves from sepia-toned, largely hazy memories that rattle around in your consciousness, into clear images and perceptions that bring on revelations previously unknown.
Such was the case when, in admitted frustration, I had to turn away from the information overload on YouTube and X to indulge in a bit of escapism.
That respite came in the form of a brand-new documentary on HBO Max entitled Stax: Soulsville USA, which was all at once entertaining, nostalgic, thought-provoking, and in a nod to current troubled times, reminded me that fighting power, and struggling for equality and human dignity against the ugly forces that seek to oppress and eradicate the same NEVER ends.
So much for escapism.
The story begins in 1957, when two white residents of Memphis, Tennessee, Jim Stewart, and his sister, Estelle Axton, sowed the seeds that would change the fates of a talented group of young white and black singers, performers, and musicians in the sleepy town of Memphis, Tennessee. Against a backdrop of strictly enforced racial segregation, Axton and her brother, through the miracle and joy of music, perhaps unwittingly, brought a divided bi-racial community together:
Stewart founded Satellite Records in Brunswick, Tennessee. With a loan and the support from his sister Estelle Axton, the duo relocated Satellite Records to Memphis in 1959, setting up shop in an old movie theater at 926 E. McLemore Avenue. From this partnership, Stax Records emerged and so did its name—combining the first two letters of Stewart and Axton. The establishment of this new company marked the beginning of a transformative journey in soul music
It can’t be over-emphasized how miraculous it truly was, that, in a city like Memphis, defined by its legally enforced segregation policies as it was across the American South, that black and white youth could come together to work and play in the temporary no man’s land of Satellite Records and STAX Recording studios performing, listening, and dancing to music with no fear. I was astounded to learn that sometimes the dancing spilled out into the street. Remember, Memphis was a town where racist police would jump out of their cars wielding batons and threatening violence if they even observed black people occupying the same space as white people on the sidewalk, as Jim Stewart recounted.
In that positive environment, racial boundaries were broken, and friendships and musical partnerships were formed that would change not only the fortunes of the people who would soon evolve into the Stax Records family, but the face of American music itself.
Younger people might be forgiven for rolling their eyes and dismissing boomer nostalgia, but those people who lived it know that STAX Records and their iconic logo were imprinted on our consciousness as deeply as the music itself. For me, there were two distribution points: Radio, and a cousin’s record collection, where I first heard the joyful, deeply soulful sounds of the biracial Booker T. and The MGs (Named after the British sports car on a whim) featuring the guitar of Steve Cropper and the rock steady groove of the iconic bass of Donald “Duck” Dunn, and drummer Al Jackson Jr. Of course, unless you saw them live, you would have never known that they were an integrated band, and for an innocent youth of the time it didn’t matter.
In 1967, At the age of 10, I was only barely aware of the earth-shaking changes that were happening in the integration of music. This documentary emphasizes that it took many years of effort under the genius-level business strategies of the ambitious promotion manager for STAX, Al Bell, to introduce the raw soul and immense talent of artists like Otis Redding to American audiences.
Specifically, no American radio stations catering to white audiences or performance venues at the time were willing to embrace STAX phenomenons like Redding, Carla and Rufus Thomas, or Sam and Dave.
Al Bell, who is both the hero and protagonist of the STAX story, thought outside the box and became aware through fan mail to STAX that the artists and catalog were, in fact, widely popular across the pond through airplay on the British “pirate station” Radio Caroline:
“ Radio Caroline is a British radio station founded in 1964 by Ronan O'Rahilly and Alan Crawford initially to circumvent the record companies' control of popular music broadcasting in the United Kingdom and the BBC's radio broadcasting monopoly.[1] Unlicensed by any government for most of its early life, it was a pirate radio station that never became illegal as such due to operating outside any national jurisdiction, although after the Marine, &c., Broadcasting (Offences) Act 1967 it became illegal for a British subject to associate with it.”
Thus, Bell took the MGs as the house band to back up Redding, Thomas, et.al on a massive tour of Great Britain and continental Europe, where the integrated bands and black performers were embraced enthusiastically with love and respect instead of being scorned. The performances are no less than electrifying, as the STAX musicians were finally set free to be themselves without fear.
Al Bell, standing in the roaring success of the European embrace of the STAX/Volt Records tour, decided, at that point, to be audacious enough to go after white American audiences. How he did this was to embrace the American counter-culture who were fed up with war, prejudice, and living life solely for material success, by booking Redding and the MGs at the Monterey International Pop Festival.
As recounted by Bell, they were the only people wearing suits in a 100-mile radius. The white youth of America gave Redding a standing ovation. A barrier was broken, and STAX records were finally being played on white radio and distributed to a white audience.
As much as the STAX records story is a classic, Univeral tale of triumph over oppression, in this polarized world, tragedy was waiting to have its say in events, and soon after his triumphant Monterey performance, Otis Redding met his fate, along with members of the original Bay-Kays, his backup band, in a tragic plane crash, the first blow to the camaraderie of the STAX family. Speaking of revelations, I was surprised to learn that in the Summer of 1967, like much of the youth of America, Redding had been incessantly listening to The Beatles’s “Sgt, Peppers’ Lonely Hearts Club Band.” As the Beatles had been directly inspired by the STAX catalog, so too was Redding inspired by the compositions on Pepper to change his songwriting style. This resulted in one of the most classic, iconic songs Redding ever wrote and recorded, “(Sitting On) The Dock Of The Bay.” Redding, tragically, was becoming as famous as contemporary artists like Taylor Swift, only to have “Dock Of The Bay” become his swan song.
Just as Oliver Stone has rewritten history with his investigations on the Kennedy assassinations, so too, this documentary revealed to me something I had been previously unaware of: STAX Records and some of their personnel were, by strange fate, connected to the horror and tragedy of Martin Luther King assassination. The Lorraine Motel, where King was gunned down, had become a safe hangout for the white and black artists and employees of STAX where black and white employees could mingle relatively free of harassment.
Long recording sessions at the Stax studios were often followed by late night dinners at the Lorraine Hotel. Quoting from one of the displays at the Stax Record Museum:
“While Stax itself was an oasis of racial sanity within a segregated society, there were few places outside of the company, for the integrated Stax personnel to socialize. The Lorraine Hotel was an exception, and it became a Stax Family hangout.”
The Lorraine Hotel sign. (Photo by Dennis Lund)
“The Lorraine was more than just a hotel, not only to the Stax lineup but to the many musicians who came to Memphis to record there, as well as to predominantly black visitors in need of a good hotel. Continuing:
“Guest rooms were often used to write songs. Steve Cropper and Eddie Floyd stopped by Wilson Pickett’s room and wrote ‘In the Midnight Hour.’ Cropper and Floyd also wrote ‘Knock on Wood’ there. Trumpeter Wayne Jackson recalls often visiting the Lorraine after a gig to work out horn parts for upcoming sessions.”
In 1968, another year of turmoil in the Civil Rights struggle, King had been active in bringing national attention to the Memphis garbage strike, brought about by the negligent deaths of two black employees. As noted in the documentary, black employees were never allowed to drive the truck, only to work in the collecting and compacting.
A STAX engineer and another employee were asked by King’s entourage to assist in transporting him to the Lorraine, which they obliged. One of the employees grabbed a camera, unknowingly documenting King’s final hours. A few hours after his last speech King was gunned down on a balcony overlooking the Lorraine parking lot. The shockwaves rippled through the STAX organization and across the world. As an unintended consequence, it also fractured the friendships within bands like the MGs, as Booker T. Jones noted, the black artists at STAX rarely mentioned the effect day-to-day racism and segregation had on them to their white colleagues.
STAX was very poorly managed by Stewart in the early days, resulting in a big shark eats little fish predatory contract with Jerry Wexlers Atlantic Records distribution. If not for the drive and savvy of Al Bell, the company would have been lost to history on two critical occasions both before, and during, the advent of STAX Records’ 70s success.
Thankfully, due to the savvy, drive, and enthusiasm of Bell, longtime sidemen like Issac Hayes were able to not only tap into the new era of fierce black pride, claiming success in their own right but also were able to redefine Soul music entirely, exemplified in Haye’s long-form tracks like “Walk On By” from his album “Hot Buttered Soul” and the symphonic scoring of the Shaft movies.
To younger people who might only know Hayes in the one-dimensional, comic role as the voice of the South Park character, “Chef,” the documentary makes clear that Hayes had, like Otis Redding, Taylor Swift-level fame. Hayes was the first black artist EVER to win an Academy Award for “Theme From Shaft”.
Perhaps the greatest climax to the early 70s era of revived STAX records was the moment when over 100,000 all-black attendees celebrated the music and their culture at the Wattstax festival, an unprecedented number for an audience at that time, in an entire day of good vibes. STAX, through Al Bell, insisted on paying for security themselves, as the LA police had years of increasingly tense relations with the WATTS community. There was not a single incidence of violence or death from the peaceful crowd, defying the predictions of the city officials.
I wish I could say that there was a happy ending but in the case of STAX records, shady business deals with both predatory Atlantic Records, and later, CBS Records Clive Davis, initiated on separate occasions by Bell and Stewart, were like acid chipping away at the financial integrity of the company. STAX records chief lender, Memphis-based Union Planters Bank, railroaded and villainized the hard-working and honest Al Bell into an unwinnable court case, in which an unscrupulous bank lender and UPN bank framed Bell as a co-conspirator for embezzlement and fraud. Bell was acquitted on all charges, but it was the effective end of STAX.
All that remains of the original STAX records is brick and rubble, and even that has been removed.
Tragedy.
It says something about the power of the music, and the movements that music created though, that even when STAX was reduced to rubble people came on a modern-day pilgrimage from all over the world to grab a piece of glass or brick or rubble to take with them and hold.
The music meant that much.
Triumph.
A new museum now exists as a fitting tribute to the memories of the people who contributed to this extraordinary story and historical journey.
Trailer: