Stax Records Week (pt 1)

Today, it's hard to imagine a record label sharing anywhere near the importance of the music it releases. Our modern recording industry is somehow both more liberated and more corporate-homogenized than ever: peer-to-peer filesharing, self-released indie LPs, and online music stores like iTunes have all blurred the boundaries between song and product. The music (or "tune," if you will) is what's important; anything else can be reduced to just a few bytes of data in an ID3 tag. So in an era when the album is rapidly deteriorating as a medium of choice, and when up-and-coming musicians could just as easily get their music heard through MySpace and other means of DIY promotion as they could through the antiquated label-based publicity machine, why should we still care about the logo on the sleeve?

If there's an answer to that question, it can be found in Stax Records. One of the handful of American record labels which leave music fans speaking in hushed tones (think Sun, Motown, Chess), Stax and its subsidiary Volt carry a prestige which not only matches, but in many case exceeds the artists it handled. You might not know all the practitioners - seriously, just try to name some of the B- and C-listers on the tomelike Complete Stax-Volt Singles boxes - but you know the sound. If Motown was the glitzy, metropolitan side of the sound of young black America, then Stax was its ragged country cousin: gritty, raw and thrillingly rough around the edges, "funky" long before the term was in vogue, music which came straight out of the plantations, juke joints and dusty front porches of segregated Tennessee and onto the airwaves of America.

(Booker T. & The M.G.'s: celebrated!)

Not that pop had nothing to do with it, or that Motown's brand of soul was somehow lacking; it's just that Stax/Volt feels more directly connected with the pre-soul traditions of gospel, blues and R&B, more immediately a primer for the later trajectory of hardcore funk. Motown had crooners like Smokey Robinson and girl groups like the Supremes, heavenly music to be sure, but Stax had Otis Redding, Rufus Thomas, Sam & Dave - acts whose hard-edged sound represented the very essence of "soul." They also had not one, but two fabulous studio crews: the celebrated Stax house band, Booker T. & The M.G.'s, whose legendary guitarist Steve Cropper penned many of the label's most indelible songs, and later, the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, another classic session band favored by musical director Al Bell.

("We specialize in dissolving racial barriers": Jim Stewart's business card.)

The former group's interracial line-up became an explicit reminder of one of Stax's most impressive accomplishments outside of pure music-making: the dissolution of racial barriers in a Memphis - and a United States - which still bore the ugly hallmarks of Jim Crow segregation (an excellent piece on Stax's progressive approach to race can be found in the May 2005 issue of Mojo Magazine). It was an element of the label that existed from 1959, when white founder Jim Stewart recorded his first black group, The Veltones. Before long, Stax was a place where ever-divided black and white musicians could share both stage and studio, where Steve Cropper (a white man) could help write and perform such cornerstones of black music as "Knock on Wood" and "In the Midnight Hour"; furthermore, though it remains best known for its predominantly African American soul music, Stax continued to release music by white rock artists over the years, including the original two albums by Memphis power pop phenoms Big Star.

For all its importance in popular music history, however, Stax's own history, like that of most great projects, was far too brief, and constantly fraught with difficulty. Stewart's brainchild began life as struggling independent Satellite Records in 1957, financed in part by a mortgage from his sister and financial partner Estelle Axton. Early on, the brother/sister team made money selling records in the front of the building where the label was based; their first taste of success with their own music came in 1960 from another family affair, "Cause I Love You" by Rufus and Carla Thomas. This minor chart hit managed to score Satellite a five-year distribution deal with Atlantic Records, a partnership which would lead to financial gain but also to a loss in independence and, ultimately, a convoluted legal situation by the end of the decade. The following year, the imprint was rechristened "Stax" after the first two letters of Stewart's and Axton's respective names, while pianist Booker T. Jones joined up with members of local bar band The Mar-Keys to form The M.G.'s and the definitive Stax/Volt sound. It wasn't long before the label had recruited its greatest hitmaker, a young soul shouter named Otis Redding, and its golden age was in full flight.

(Fresh blood, final hurrah: Isaac Hayes with the Rev. Jesse Jackson at Wattstax - from the 1973 film Wattstax by Mel Stuart)

Perhaps fittingly, the period which had begun in 1962 with the release of Redding's "These Old Arms of Mine" came to its close with that same singer's untimely 1967 death. At the same time, renegotiations of Stax's contract with Atlantic fell through, resulting in its being sold to Gulf and Western in 1968. The distribution change completed the shake-up which Redding's loss had begun: Sam & Dave, Stax Records' second best-selling artist, remained under contract with Atlantic. Thus the stage was set for a new, different crop of talent: names like Isaac Hayes and the Staple Singers became Stax's stock in trade, and its music embraced the times, becoming harder and funkier under the tutelage of new owner Al Bell. This period of renewal culminated in Wattstax, an attempt at a "black Woodstock" on the seventh anniversary of the 1965 Watts riots and still one of the defining moments in black music. Wattstax became something like the label's final hurrah in the face of mounting money problems. The label's profits were cut by their distributor, now Columbia Records, in 1973; by January of 1976, less than twenty years after its founding, Stax had gone bankrupt.

Still, the influence of Stax Records persists. From its halcyon mid-'60s days to its 1968-1972 revival, Stax remains a gold standard for soul music; in terms of musical quality and historical importance alike, only Motown can measure up. And though the music industry of 2006 hardly resembles the one into which Stewart and Axton first ventured, if one looks hard enough, resonances of the star quality possessed by this seminal label can be found. The spirit of Stax lives on in countless tiny but important independent record companies, most of them local or regional, who make it their purpose to document the music around them in the best and most caring way possible. Whenever a record company like that exists - one who you can trust to put out great and worthwhile music, with mass appeal or without - it's a reminder of the consistence of quality represented by labels like Stax. Just listen to the series of discs which comprise Concord Music Group's recently-released Stax Profiles series (all of which will be reviewed on this page over the following month): Otis Redding, Booker T. & The M.G.'s, Carla and Rufus Thomas, Eddie Floyd, Rance Allen, Albert King, Johnnie Taylor, Little Milton, and the Staple Singers are a diverse group of artists, united by an enduring place in the hearts and turntables of the world. And while they probably would have been possible without Stax, one gets the sense that they wouldn't have been quite the same.

So here's to Sub Pop, Def Jam, Sugar Hill, Rough Trade, Astralwerks, In the Red, 4AD, Alternative Tentacles, Kill Rock Stars, Paisley Park, Norton, K, Stiff, Merge, and Bomp!; to Cass, Ghostly, and No Fun. In other words, to the great labels: the legacy of Stax.

The Modern Pea Pod celebrates one of our all-time favorite labels with Stax Records Week...because we like our iPods and all, but music still tastes better when it's on a platter. Watch this page throughout the week for updates...

Fathers, Daughters, Soul: Rufus and Carla Thomas
This One's for the Groomsman: Eddie Floyd
The Forgotten King of Blues: Albert King
The Devoted Son of Blues: Little Milton
The Architects: Booker T. & The M.G.'s
Renaissance Man: Johnnie Taylor
Roots and Branches: The Staple Singers
Force of Nature: Rance Allen
The Fallen Giant: Otis Redding
The Living Word: Wattstax

See Also: The Stax Museum, Memphis, TN
History of Rock: Stax Records