Soulsville, U.S.A.: The Story of Stax Records by Rob Bowman (Schirmer Books)
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Stax was founded in the late 50s by Jim Stewart, a banker who played the fiddle, with help from his older sister, Estelle Axton. (The company name comes from the first two letters of each sibling’s surname.) Stax didn’t set out to record exclusively rhythm and blues–Stewart recalls that its earliest efforts were “washed-out” country pop. But the studio and adjoining Satellite record shop were “in the heart of what was fast becoming a black ghetto,” Bowman writes, and many key players came to Stax just by dint of geography. After Carla Thomas, who’d been trained in gospel and opera at the nearby black Hamilton high school, struck gold with “Gee Whiz (Look at His Eyes)” in 1960, Axton and Stewart decided to focus on R & B.
In late 1961, songwriter David Porter wandered in from across the street, where he was working at a grocery store; he’d eventually be responsible for all-time great tunes like Sam & Dave’s “Hold On! I’m Coming” and “Soul Man,” many cowritten with Isaac Hayes–a session musician who’d failed several vocal auditions. Guitarist Steve Cropper and bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn of Booker T. & the MG’s fame came into the fold after touring in a band with Axton’s son Packy, and would eventually develop a seminal relationship with Otis Redding. That blend of aching vocals and minimal, funky arrangements became for many people the sound of Memphis soul. Cropper and Dunn were white and Redding was black, so the combination aroused the ire of some locals, but with Atlantic distributing the label’s hits nationwide, Stax was able to triumph over provincial hostility.
Jet magazine writer Chester Higgins popularized Hayes’s Black Moses image, but it was more than just media hype. Hayes organized the Black Knights, who brought discrimination complaints directly to Memphis mayor Henry Loeb and collected food and money for impoverished families. During the riots sparked by the police beating of a black teenager, Hayes took to the streets to help defuse the situation. That he was unable to quell the clashes between Stax’s own security guards and musicians is a poignant irony.
