JIM STEWART, who was a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the CO-FOUNDER of the R&B label Stax, passed away on Monday, according to a longtime staff member and Stax songwriter David Porter. Stewart was 92.
Porter said in the caption of a social media post that accompanied a photo of the Stax Museum bus that “there is no way a poor child from a housing project’s image in Memphis would be on a bus moving around Memphis if it were not for this man, JIM STEWART the ST of the word Stax” (the museum is located at the original location of Stax Records). “I love him, and I honor both his memory and his presence. Rest in peace, my beloved friend and supporter of American soul music.
Stewart’s birthday is July 29th, and he was born in Middleton, Tennessee, in 1930. After convincing his sister Estelle Axton to take out a second mortgage on her home and assist him in the establishment of Satellite Records in 1957, which would eventually become known as Stax Records, he went on to become one of the company’s co-founders.
The record label and recording studio on McLemore Avenue in South Memphis would become a haven for a new generation of Memphis R&B hitmakers beginning in the early 1960s and continuing through the middle of the 1970s. This era spans from the early to the mid-1970s. The success of the label was aided by artists such as Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Carla Thomas, William Bell, Booker T. & the MGs, Sam & Dave, and Eddie Floyd, amongst others.
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According to Commercial Appeal, the number one hit single “Gee Whiz” by Carla Thomas has sold a half million copies. Other chart songs soon followed, including “Last Night” by the Mar-Keys, “Green Onions” by Booker T. & the MG’s, and the game-changing debut of Georgia singer Otis Redding.
“The spirit that came from Jim and his sister Estelle Axton allowed all of us, black and white, to come off the streets, where you had segregation and the negative attitude, and come into the doors of Stax, where you had freedom, you had harmony, and you had people working together.” “The spirit that came from Jim and his sister Estelle Axton allowed all of us, black and white, to come off the streets, where you had segregation and the negative attitude, and come into the doors According to what Bell told author Robert Gordon, “it developed into what became what was really an oasis for all of us.”
In the 1960s, Stax would be rocked by a string of tragic events, including Otis Redding’s murder in a plane accident in 1967, the company’s split with distribution partner Atlantic in 1968, and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis in that same year.
Following the dissolution of his business partnership with his sister Estelle Axton in 1968, Stewart restarted Stax Records with the assistance of Al Bell and the entertainment giant Gulf & Western.
After Stewart’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, the organization stated that “As producer, engineer, businessman, and mentor, Jim Stewart was at the center of it all.” Stewart had been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.
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