You have to wonder what it is about Memphis, Tennessee that so much great music has come out of that city. Sure there are plenty of other cities which are hotbeds of musical talent, but it was two independent record companies out of Memphis that created what are arguably the sounds that have most influenced popular music. In the mid-1950s little Sun Records started putting out records that were a strange hybrid of white country and black blues music. Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others integrated the music they grew up playing with the music they grew up hearing, and rock and roll was born.
While Sun Records may have taken flack for integrating black and white music, that was nothing compared to what happened a few years later in the converted movie theatre that Jim Stewert and his sister Estelle Axton turned into a recording studio. When they opened their doors in 1957 it was with the intent of recording country music; however they were located in the heart of Memphis' black neighbourhood. When local musicians came knocking on the door, Jim and Estelle threw it open and welcomed everybody. They may not have quite understood what it was they were hearing, but they knew it was good music and Stax Records was born.
The idea of integrated anything in 1961 was miraculous, yet from the moment the doors opened at Stax it was the music that mattered, not the colour of anyone's skin. Although the company went down in flames fourteen years later in 1975, mainly because CBS reneged on a distribution deal, it's now being given new life as part of the Concord Music Group. However, for those of you wanting to take a peek into the past at the remarkable rise and fall of the original Stax company, Concord, through the Infinity Entertainment Group, has released Stax DVD.
The Stax DVD is a two-disc set made up of two previously released DVDs under one cover: a documentary about the company that originally aired on PBS, Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story and The Stax/Volt Revue: Live In Norway 1967, a concert film co-produced with Reelin' In The Years Productions. The two discs complement each other beautifully, for although there are excerpts of performances during the documentary, it's watching the concert film of how Stax performers were received in Europe that you understand how big this little label from Memphis was. There was no way of knowing of course that the European tour was the apex of the innocent early days of that were marked by colour blindness, but innocence died for a lot of the world the year following the tour—1968—and Stax wasn't exempted.
Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story is exhaustive in the details it provides about each era of the company's growth. Through interviews with the original core musicians and staff we hear about how various acts, performers, and songs grew out of the company's habit of keeping the doors open to the whole community. The three surviving members of Booker T. and The MGs, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Booker T. Jones, and Steve Cropper, who were the core musicians for almost every album produced until 1968, recount how people like Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes first became part of the Stax family. It was definitely a case of "if you build it, they will come", as talented performers from the surrounding area were drawn to the old movie theatre.
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