Jim Stewart, founder of soul-R&B powerhouse Stax Records, dies at 92
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[December 07, 2022]
By Steve Gorman
(Reuters) - Jim Stewart, the white country fiddler whose powerhouse
R&B-soul label Stax Records launched such stars as Otis Redding, Isaac
Hayes and Sam & Dave, has died at age 92 in Memphis, Tennessee, where he
started the label in the 1950s in an in-law's garage.
Stewart, widely credited as a trailblazer for his role in helping
integrate American pop music at a time of strict racial segregation in
the Deep South, died on Monday at a Memphis hospital.
His death was confirmed to Reuters on Tuesday by Tim Sampson, a
spokesperson for the Memphis-based Stax Museum of American Soul Music.
Sampson said the Stewart family did not disclose a cause of death.
Between 1959 and 1975, the label released 800 singles and 300 albums,
among them Hayes' soundtrack for the 1971 movie "Shaft," which won him
an Oscar.
The talent roster included the Staples Singers, the Emotions, the Soul
Children, and Booker T. & the MG's, which served as a house band for
Redding, Sam and Dave and scores of other Stax artists.
Redding's signature hit "(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay," was recorded
at Stax. And Wilson Pickett's breakthrough single, "In the Midnight
Hour" was recorded there as an outside production for Atlantic Records.
The Stax label amassed a total of eight Grammy Awards, produced three
No. 1 hits, a dozen top-10 hits and 167 top-100 singles. Stewart himself
was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.
Through the 1960s and early '70s, the label lived up to its "Soulsville,
USA" moniker, offering a grittier alternative to the larger, assembly
line hits machine of Motown Records.
'HILLBILLY FIDDLER'
As noted in an appreciation of Stewart published in the Memphis
Commercial Appeal newspaper, it was an unlikely twist of fate that "the
greatest, funkiest soul label in the world, one of the most powerful
outlets for Black expression, was started by a white hillbilly fiddler
named Jim Stewart."
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Stewart grew up in the Tennessee
farming town of Middleton and moved to Memphis at age 18 to attend
college, later taking jobs as a store clerk and bank teller while
performing with various country music bands after hours, according
to a biography published by the Stax Museum.
Inspired by the success of Memphis-based Sun Records founder Sam
Phillips with the likes of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee
Lewis, Stewart began recording country artists on a tape machine in
the garage of his wife's uncle in the mid-1950s, founding a label he
named Satellite in 1957.
His sister, Estelle Axton, mortgaged her home a year later to help
Stewart buy some recording equipment and joined him in the studio
venture they later moved into a converted movie theater.
Stewart turned his focus from country to rhythm-and-blues music
after scoring a regional R&B hit with a single by Rufus Thomas and
his then-teenage daughter, Carla, "Cause I Love You." Of the label's
transformation, Stewart later recounted: "It was like a blind man
who could suddenly see."
With the advent of their first million-selling record, Stewart and
Axton learned of a California-based label already called Satellite
Records, prompting the siblings to rebrand their label as STAX -
combining the first two letters of their last names.
Renowned for its integrated staff and talent roster, Stax cranked
out hits and launched the careers of numerous artists over the next
15 years before being forced into involuntary bankruptcy in 1975.
The label's assets and master recordings were sold to film mogul
Saul Zaentz's Fantasy Records at auction for $1.3 million, and the
original studio was razed in 1989 by a church that bought the
property for $10.
Los Angeles-based Concord Music Group acquired Stax as part of its
purchase of Fantasy in 2004 and announced two years later it was
reactivating the long-dormant soul label, launching efforts to woo
artists and rebuild its catalog. Stewart's sister died in 2004.
(By Steve Gorman; Editing by Robert Birsel)
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