That’s how many Stax success stories from 1960's to 1975 started. Jim Stewart created the company and asked his sister Estelle Axton to partner with him. Years later, after struggling with distribution through Atlantic Records, Stewart recruited popular disk jockey, Al Bell.
He led radio promotion at Stax before becoming part owner. “The two key writers at that time were Issac Hayes and David Porter. They could listen to an artist and hear the unique and the gift in that artist,” Bell said. Bell also had a relationship with the folks at Motown.
Nestled in South Memphis, Stax Recording Studio on East McLemore recorded hits like Otis Redding’s “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” and Sam and Dave’s“Hold On, I’m Coming.”. Although the record company launched the careers of many successful artists, it struggled financially, eventually filing Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in 1975.
Stax reopened as a museum in 2003, adjacent to the Stax Academy, which opened three years earlier. “It’s a great tourist attraction for Memphis and people love what they see and feel in here, because it reflects what we saw and felt as we came in making that great music, and it’s alive and well today,” Bell said.
Otis Redding recruited the Bar-Kays as his band. “One of the many things we learned from Otis Redding was that you definitely need to own your own music.”. A plane crash in 1967 claimed the lives of Redding and all the original members of the Bar-Kays except Ben Cauley. James Alexander wasn’t on the private jet.
Stax’s contract with Atlantic Records said Atlantic owned the Masters to the albums they distributed and that’s when the financial problems got really bad. The company was sold to entertainment group, “Gulf and Western.”
James Alexander wasn’t on the private jet. “I just happened to be one of the guys on the commercial flight that day. We had no system, it was no rhyme or reason, kind of like who wanted to do it – that’show it happened,” Alexander said. “Their distribution agreement with Atlantic Records, ceased in 1968 and Stax was forced to reinvent itself,” said ...
That's very much like the situation with Wilson Pickett, who was also signed to Atlantic and started out recording at Stax records. In fact, one of his most famous records "In the Midnight Hour", was a number one RnB hit in the summer of 1965, number 23 on the pop charts.
So, Sam & Dave started working very closely with Isaac Hayes and David Porter and that produced a whole series of hits using the Stax band and the Stax horns and all that, maybe the most important of those songs or the one that everybody knows is "Soul Man".
The one that Jerry Wexler really liked from Muscle Shoals, was a record that they licensed by Percy Sledge called "When A Man Loves A Woman" what a fantastic tune that is, number one on the RnB charts, number one on the pop charts in 1966.
So, he finished the single off in the New York studio and in fact it turned out that Aretha recorded much of the rest of her music her Southern Soul, in New York City .
And so, Jerry Wexler was familiar with another studio in the South in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. That had produced hits, that he liked the sound of those records too. They'd already licensed Joe Tex's record "Hold On to What You've Got", which had been a number five pop hit, a number two RnB hit in 1965.
We will follow the story of how this rowdy first wave of rock and roll (1955-59) was tamed in the early 60s but came roaring back with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and then went psychedelic by the end of the decade.
So in many ways Aretha Franklin coming at the end of this Southern Soul thing and what's ironic is that she's not on Stax. The records are not even recorded in the South, but they still are emblematic of this Southern Soul style, which is seen in juxtaposition to the music of Motown.