32 Facts About Stax Records

Stax Records is an American record company, originally based in Memphis, Tennessee.

Stax Records, originally named Satellite Records, was founded in Memphis in 1957 by Jim Stewart, initially operating in a garage.

Stax Records's first hit, "Gee Whiz", was originally issued as Satellite 104, but it was quickly reissued as Atlantic 2086, becoming a hit in early 1961.

Stax Records was always bringing us up there, having us listen to records.

Stax Records encouraged the entire Stax roster from her little perch behind the counter.

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Cropper, Dunn, Hayes, Jackson, Jones and Porter were collectively known as the "Big Six" within the walls of Stax Records and were responsible for producing almost all of the label's output from about 1963 through 1969.

Stax Records's unusual working methods first came to Wexler's attention in the fall of 1963.

Stax Records was expecting a new single from Carla Thomas, but when he contacted Stax he was told that they had been unable to record for two weeks because of faults in the recording equipment, so he immediately flew Atlantic's highly skilled house engineer Tom Dowd down to Memphis that Friday.

Stax Records was amazed by the loose, improvisational feel of the session and by the way Thomas and the musicians developed and recorded the song: Thomas simply sang through the new number for the band once or twice, humming suggestions for their parts and sounding the rhythm by clacking his teeth close to their ears.

The Stax Records team were appalled at the idea, fearing that the distinctive "Stax Records sound" would be destroyed.

Stax Records instead was sent to Rick Hall's FAME studios in Alabama, which had a sound similar to that of Stax.

Stax Records sponsored a Christmas concert in Memphis for several years, the most notorious of which was held in 1968, when special guest Janis Joplin performed drunk and was booed off of the stage.

The most successful Stax Records package revue was a tour of England and France in 1967, which played to sold-out crowds.

Stax Records released several live albums from the tour recordings, including the best-selling Otis Live in Europe'.

In contrast to Stax Records's rapidly rising fortunes at this time, most of the house band were struggling to make a living: the musicians often worked long hours in the studio during the day, developing songs and arrangements, but they were paid for recordings only when the actual sessions took place, so most had to play at local venues in the evenings to earn enough to support themselves and their families.

Bell persuaded Jim Stewart to set up a "production pool", in which a small portion of the royalty payments Stax Records was receiving from Atlantic was split equally between the Big Six to pay them for their production duties with the artists they backed.

Stax Records was located in Memphis, Tennessee, which was still a segregated city, where Martin Luther King Jr.

Stax Records initially hoped to join Atlantic in the Warner buyout, so Jim Stewart, Estelle Axton and Al Bell flew to New York hoping to negotiate a deal, but according to Stewart the figure they were offered was "an insult".

Consequently, Stax Records was forced to move forward without the most desirable portion of its back catalogue and without Sam and Dave, who had been unofficially "on loan" to Stax Records up to this point, and who were forced to return to Atlantic after the split.

Stax Records was dealt another crushing blow when its biggest and best-loved artist, Otis Redding, as well as all but two of the members of the Bar-Kays, died in a plane crash on December 10,1967.

Above all, the Stax Records sound is mellow, not sweet or cool or otherwise untrue to its roots, but mellow.

Two remaining MGs stayed on at Stax Records, working as session musicians on various Stax Records recordings, although they worked elsewhere.

In particular, Al Jackson worked extensively with Al Green at crosstown rival Hi Stax Records, co-writing a number of Green's hits between 1971 and 1975.

Stax Records, meanwhile, subsisted on its own between 1970 and 1972, using independent distributors.

Bell even created a comedy subsidiary label, Partee Stax Records, which released albums from the likes of Richard Pryor and Moms Mabley; and he made a bid for the white pop market by signing Big Star and licensing albums by Terry Manning, the UK progressive rock band Skin Alley, and Lena Zavaroni.

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In July and December 1973, Elvis Presley recorded three albums at Stax Records: Raised on Rock, Good Times, and Promised Land, which produced four top 20 hits for RCA, the label to which Elvis had been signed since 1955.

However, although CBS was uninterested in fully promoting Stax Records, it refused to release the label from its contract, for fear that Stax Records would land a more productive deal with another company and then become CBS's direct competitor.

Stax Records had signed artists like Joyce Cobb bringing her over from their Truth country music label that year, but were never able to produce recordings with her and other new talent.

Jim Stewart, unwilling to see the company die, returned to active participation in Stax Records and mortgaged his Memphis mansion to provide the label with short-term working capital.

Effectively, that meant that Fantasy owned and controlled all Stax Records material recorded after May 1968 and the handful of pre-May 1968 Stax Records singles and albums Atlantic initially declined to distribute nationally in the 1960s.

Porter signed several new acts to Stax Records, including Fat Larry's Band, Rick Dees and Sho Nuff, and re-signed mid-1970s Stax Records acts Rance Allen, Soul Children and Shirley Brown.

In 2016, Stax Records issued an album of new material by one of the label's original artists, William Bell, recorded in New York City and co-produced by him and Jon Leventhal.