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Summary
Summary
The story of Stax Records unfolds like a Greek tragedy. A white brother and sister build a record company that becomes a monument to racial harmony in 1960's segregated south Memphis. Their success is startling, and Stax soon defines an international sound. Then, after losses both business and personal, the siblings part, and the brother allies with a visionary African-American partner. Under integrated leadership, Stax explodes as a national player until, Icarus-like, they fall from great heights to a tragic demise. Everything is lost, and the sanctuary that flourished is ripped from the ground. A generation later, Stax is rebuilt brick by brick to once again bring music and opportunity to the people of Memphis.
Set in the world of 1960s and '70s soul music, Respect Yourself is a story of epic heroes in a shady industry. It's about music and musicians -- Isaac Hayes, Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, the Staple Singers, and Booker T. and the M.G.'s, Stax's interracial house band. It's about a small independent company's struggle to survive in a business world of burgeoning conglomerates. And always at the center of the story is Memphis, Tennessee, an explosive city struggling through heated, divisive years.
Told by one of our leading music chroniclers, Respect Yourself brings to life this treasured cultural institution and the city that created it.
Author Notes
Robert Gordon has written for major publications in the U.S. and England, and has contributed to several books. He produced the Al green CD box set, "Anthology", for which his liner notes were Grammy nominated. As a filmmaker, he directed the award-winning blues documentary "All Day and All Night", and his music video work has appeared on MTV, BET, and CMT. He is the author of a forthcoming biography of Muddy Waters, and director of the companion documentary. He lives in Memphis with his wife and two daughters.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In the late 1950s, Jim Stewart, and his sister, Estelle Axton, moved their little fledgling recording studio into the defunct Capitol Theater in Memphis, Tenn., opening their doors and establishing the record label that gave birth to gritty, funky soul music. A masterful storyteller, music historian Gordon (It Came from Memphis) artfully chronicles the rise and fall of one of America's greatest music studios, situating the story of Stax within the cultural history of the 1960s in the South. Stewart, a fiddle player who knew he'd never make it in the music business himself, one day overheard a friend talking about producing music; he soon gave it a try, and eventually he was supervising the acclaimed producer Chips Moman in the studio as well as creating a business plan for the label; Estelle Axton set up a record shop in the lobby of the theater, selling the latest discs but also spinning music just recorded in the studio and gauging its market appeal. Gordon deftly narrates the stories of the many musicians who called Stax home, from Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, and Otis Redding to Isaac Hayes, Sam and Dave, and the Staples Singers, as well as the creative marketing and promotional strategies-the Stax-Volt Revue and Wattstax. By the early 1970s, bad business decisions and mangled personal relationships shuttered the doors of Stax. Today, the Stax sound permeates our lives and, in Gordon's words, "became the soundtrack for liberation, the song of triumph, the sound of the path toward freedom." (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Say Stax Records and certain names may come to mind: Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Booker T. and the M.G.'s, Isaac Hayes. Others may think of the guitarist Steve Cropper and bassist Donald Duck Dunn or the producer Chips Moman. Stax was the epitome of southern soul. These people and many others are all part of the Stax story as described in music writer and filmmaker Gordon's wonderful cultural history of not only a record company but also the city of Memphis itself. But it is also the story of America writ large: of racism and segregation, of civil rights and riots in the street, of President Lyndon Johnson and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Stax was founded in 1957 as Satellite Records by white siblings Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton; their combined names gave the company its now historic name, Stax, in 1961. They believed in racial harmony and felt, or at least hoped, that their record company could in some way mend the deep chasm between the races. Gordon tells the Stax story from its humble beginnings to its heyday, to its bankruptcy, and to its present-day incarnation as the Stax Museum of American Soul Music with expertise, feeling, and a sure hand.--Sawyers, June Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
"KNOCK ON WOOD," "Soul Man," "Hold On, I'm Coming," "In the Midnight Hour," "These Arms of Mine," "I've Been Loving You Too Long," "Green Onions," "I'll Take You There," "Who's Making Love" and, of course, the theme from "Shaft": The list of hits produced by Stax could fill this page by itself. But Robert Gordon's "Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion" - "Respect Yourself" as performed by the Staple Singers, that is - is much more than a nostalgia trip or a soundtrack on paper. Gordon, a Memphis resident who has written books about his city's music and a well-received biography of Muddy Waters, profiles singers, songwriters and producers. But he has also written a social history, viewing the company that for more than 15 years produced some of the most popular and important music in America as part of the history of Memphis and of the civil rights movement. Stax began in 1957 when a 27-year-old banker named Jim Stewart, who played the country fiddle on weekends, decided to do some recording. Soon his older sister Estelle Axton mortgaged her home so they could buy a mono tape recorder. In 1959 they rented the former Capitol Theater, at the intersection of College and McLemore in an African-American neighborhood. The location attracted walk-ins, like Rufus Thomas and his daughter Carla, who were responsible for some of the studio's first big hits. Another draw was the Satellite Record Shop (from Stax's original name), managed by Axton. Her record sales were market research; Axton could track young people's taste and convey what she learned to her brother. She allowed them to listen to music for hours. "That's the first place I heard Ray Charles, the first place I heard John Coltrane," one of the neighborhood boys remembered. "I listened to hundreds of records, for hours." That young man was Booker T. Jones, a high school student who soon found himself in the studio playing saxophone and keyboards. He would become famous as the leader of Stax's house band, Booker T. and the MG's, and the writer of their 1962 hit "Green Onions." Also from the neighborhood were the studio's first songwriting team, David Porter and Isaac Hayes, who would become famous as... Isaac Hayes. Estelle's son brought along two guitarists from his high school, Steve Cropper and Donald (Duck) Dunn, who made up the MG's with the drummer A1 Jackson. Perhaps the most famous Stax walk-in was the driver and equipment handler for a Georgia artist who showed up one day in August 1962. After the session he stuck around, and Cropper and Stewart let him perform. Otis Redding blew them away with "These Arms of Mine," and Stax had a superstar. As early as 1962, some of the qualities that made Stax unusual were apparent. The most important was the absence of racism in a Memphis that was still completely segregated. "Being treated like an equal human being ... was really a phenomenon," Al Bell, who later became the executive vice president of Stax, recalled. "The spirit that came from Jim and his sister Estelle Axton allowed all of us, black and white, to... come into the doors of Stax, where you had freedom, you had harmony, you had people working together." An obvious symbol of that harmony was Booker T. and the MG's, consisting of two black musicians and two white. Gordon makes clear how extraordinary this atmosphere was by following the stories of the effort to unionize Memphis's mistreated sanitation workers and of the white flight that followed the city's slow compliance with Brown v. Board of Education. ANOTHER CONTINUING THEME Was the difficulty - hardly confined to Stax - of getting records played on the air. Payments to radio stations and disc jockeys were common. To address this problem, Stewart made a production and distribution deal with Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records. The New York company also lent several artists to Memphis: Wilson Pickett, who cut "In the Midnight Hour" there in 1965, and two talented singers from Miami, Sam Moore and Dave Prater. They had not been successful at Atlantic, but at Stax, playing songs by Hayes and Porter with Hayes on keyboards, they found their groove. By 1966 "Hold On, I'm Coming" was at the top of the R&B charts. While Stax was becoming an R&B powerhouse in Memphis, another record company, 700 miles to the north, was successfully producing black music. But Motown consciously appealed to white as well as black audiences. Its slogan, Gordon points out, was '"The Sound of Young America,' defining itself not by race but by age." Its music was "bright and inviting... easily digestible." The documentary "Respect Yourself" - written by Gordon for PBS's Great Performances series in 2007 - revealingly juxtaposes a performance of "My Girl" by the Temptations, with their matching suits and stylized choreography, and a heartfelt one by Otis Redding. "Hitsville, U.S.A.," read the sign on Motown's headquarters; the marquee of the Capitol Theater countered, "Souls ville, U.S.A." Beginning in late 1967, Stax sustained several terrible losses. That December, just a few months after a Stax European tour and his triumph at the Monterey Pop festival, Otis Redding died in the crash of a small plane. Redding was not only Stax's biggest (and still rising) star, but "everybody loved him," as Steve Cropper of the MG's recalled. Then Stewart discovered that his handshake distribution agreement with Wexler was backstopped by a contract that gave Atlantic the right to the masters Stax had recorded. Stax now had no catalog; it also lost Sam and Dave, who returned to Atlantic. Finally, in April 1968, Martin Luther King, in Memphis to support the striking sanitation workers, was assassinated. At Stax as elsewhere, King's death signaled the end of the optimistic phase of the civil rights movement. The interracial cooperation that characterized Stax had less appeal, especially to African-Americans, many of whom now embraced the idea of black power. Before King's assassination, Cropper remembered, "there was never ever any color that came through the doors. ... After that, it was never the same." The first order of business for the company was to rebuild the catalog. Al Bell, a former disc jockey in Memphis and Washington who had become the label's promotions director in 1965, had a plan. Bell helped engineer a sale to Gulf & Western, which brought new money into the company. He then embarked on an ambitious attempt to produce what he called a "soul explosion," creating 30 singles and 28 albums in a period of about eight months. Personnel changes accompanied Bell's ascent. Estelle Axton, with Jim Stewart's tacit agreement, was forced out of the company. And Bell hired the thuggish Johnny Baylor to take charge of protection and of relations with radio stations and stores, a duty he often discharged through threats. Stewart withdrew, leaving Bell in charge, and for years Stax thrived. Bell believed in black economic power, and the Stax of the early '70s was one of the most successful black-run businesses in the nation. Its new star was the songwriter and producer Isaac Hayes, whose albums "Hot Buttered Soul" and "Black Moses" sold well, and his performance of the theme from "Shaft," which he wrote, was a huge hit. In 1972, he became the first black musician to win an Oscar for best original song. Hayes was one of the stars of Wattstax, a concert sponsored by the company in Los Angeles in 1972 to mark the seventh anniversary of the Watts riots. It produced a popular documentary about the event, part of its increasing involvement in the movie business. THEN IT ALL came crashing down. Johnny Baylor's suitcase was screened at the Memphis airport and found to be stuffed with cash, drawing the attention of the I.R.S. and the F.B.I. Lawsuits proliferated as the company's relationships with the United Planters Bank in Memphis and with its owner, Columbia Records, came under scrutiny, and Stax was forced into bankruptcy in 1975. There is a coda of sorts : In 2006 Concord Music Group restarted the label, and has been issuing new work as well as compilations. And the Stax Museum of American Soul Music now stands at the site of the studio at 926 E. McLemore. Gordon presents this complicated story clearly, teasing out the various details of the business and of personal relationships. As a result of his work on the documentary "Respect Yourself," he had hours' worth of interviews, and those, along with interviews conducted by others, are the heart of this book. The voices of the members of the Stax family, and Gordon's deep knowledge of Memphis, give the book a significance that extends beyond a single recording studio. Robert Gordon knows the place, and he'll take you there. ELSA DIXLER is an editor at the Book Review.
Kirkus Review
A spellbinding history of one of the most prolific hit-making independent record companies in the history of American music. What made Stax Records so fascinating was its context in time and place: Memphis in the 1950s, '60s and '70s. Gordon (Can't Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters, 2002, etc.), who is from the city and has written and made films about its music for two decades, is uniquely qualified to tell the studio's rather complicated story. Its beginnings as a side interest of banker and swing fiddle player Jim Stewart and his musically adventurous elder sister, Estelle Axton, were simple enough. Then, almost by accident, the open-hearted white siblings began recording songs by black neighbors of the studio's location at College and McLemore, beginning with RB veteran Rufus Thomas ("Walking the Dog") and his daughter, Carla ("Gee Whiz"), who would continue to make hits with black and white listeners for Stax in the decades to come. In 1965, Stewart brought in African-American promotions man Al Bell to guide the company's growth. This interracial partnership, echoed by the studio's house band, Booker T. and the MGs, was unusual anywhere, let alone the segregated city where Martin Luther King would be murdered during a labor dispute between the white mayor and black sanitation workers. King's assassination, within a year of the loss by plane crash of the label's major star, Otis Redding, marked a stark line in the histories of Stax, Memphis and America, opening a period of revolutionary rhetoric and action and a coming-of-age of soul music as personified by a new kind of superstar, Isaac Hayes. In zesty prose, Gordon ably narrates this whole story, ending with the convoluted financial machinations that led to the label's stunningly rapid collapse. Deep cultural and social history enlivened by a cast of colorful characters.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Gordon (Can't Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters) follows up his similarly titled 2007 PBS documentary with this expansive account of the rise and fall of Memphis label Stax Records, a driving force in the development of R&B and soul music from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s. His fluent prose and quotes from interviews keep the reader's attention as he combines technical accounts of recording sessions with the unfolding of historical events in the African American community of Memphis, for example, busing, elections, and workers' strikes. Major stars such as Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes gave Stax its renown, but the keys to its sound were in the production values exemplified by founders Jim Stewart and his sister Estelle Axton (and later Al Bell) and their long-serving house bands. Photos peppered throughout are good contemporary illustrations-one wishes there were more. VERDICT Although treading much of the same ground as Rob Bowman's Soulsville, U.S.A., Gordon's title brings the story up to the present and is both less dense and more objective. For anyone interested in independent record labels and their music in mid-20th-century America.-Barry Zaslow, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Foreword | p. ix |
| Preface: City Streets | p. xi |
| Part 1 Integration | |
| 1 Cutting Heads and Hair (1957-1959) | p. 3 |
| 2 A New Planet (1960) | p. 14 |
| 3 A Capitol Idea (1960) | p. 24 |
| 4 The Satellite's Orbit (1960-1962) | p. 39 |
| 5 A Banker and a Gambler (1961-1962) | p. 48 |
| 6 "Green Onions" (1962) | p. 62 |
| 7 Walk Right In (1962-1963) | p. 72 |
| 8 The Golden Glow (1963-1965) | p. 87 |
| 9 Soul Men (1963-1966) | p. 97 |
| 10 A Rocket in Wing Tips (1965-1966) | p. 109 |
| 11 Kings and Queens of Soul (1965-1966) | p. 120 |
| 12 Unusual Success (1966) | p. 131 |
| 13 Fatback Cacciatore (1967) | p. 143 |
| 14 White Carnations (1967-1968) | p. 154 |
| 15 "Born Under a Bad Sign" (1968) | p. 173 |
| Part 2 Independence | |
| 16 "Soul Limbo" (1968) | p. 187 |
| 17 A Step off the Curb (1968) | p. 202 |
| 18 The Inspirer (1968-1969) | p. 209 |
| 19 The Soul Explosion (1968-1969) | p. 215 |
| 20 A Pot of Neckbones (1969-1970) | p. 234 |
| 21 Shaft (1971-1972) | p. 257 |
| 22 Balance Sheets and Balancing Acts (1971-1972) | p. 273 |
| 23 Wattstax (1972) | p. 289 |
| 24 The Spirit of Memphis (1972-1974) | p. 308 |
| 25 A Vexation of the Spirit (1973-1974) | p. 327 |
| 26 A Soul and a Hard Place (1975) | p. 347 |
| 27 "I'll Take You There" (Epilogue) | p. 358 |
| A Wrap-up of Other Key Players | p. 379 |
| A Note on Stax Recording Equipment by René Wu | p. 383 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 385 |
| A Note on the Interviews | p. 389 |
| Selected Bibliography | p. 391 |
| Turn It Up, Baby: Notes on Sources, Reading, and Listening | p. 403 |
| Index | p. 441 |
