While they were still reeling from this double blow, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. spelled the end of their separation from the reality of the division between black and white people in American society at the time. They had been able to keep the world from the door until then, but the world started to force its way through the door and they could no longer be what they once were. Director of publicity and promotions Al Bell devised a method for the company to survive, but it meant producing twenty-some odd albums in a short period of time in order to restore their catalogue and focusing on the black market for the first time. Thanks to the success of Isaac Hayes' Hot Buttered Soul and signing The Staple Singers to the label, Stax was not only able to recover their lost standing economically, but become a major player in and proponent of the Black Pride movement that filled the vacuum caused by Dr. King's death.
For a while things were great with Isaac winning an Academy Award for the Stax-produced movie Shaft and the success of their concert in Los Angeles for the residents of the ghetto Watts - Wattstax - but the end came bitterly and badly in 1975. Whether it was through mis-management, as their bank claimed when they called in a ten million dollar loan, bad luck, with CBS canceling their distribution deal and denying Stax much needed revenues, or whether the motivations behind both CBS's and the bank's decisions were racially motivated, what the documentary makes clear is the end result was the death of Stax.
The music survived as Fantasy records bought the back catalogue and continued to reissue them, but that must have seemed like small consolation to Jim Stewart who lost everything he owned in an attempt to save the company. Today if you go to Memphis you'll find that the original Stax studio has been rebuilt at its old location and right next door to it stands the Stax Academy of music where neighbourhood kids are being taught music by the musicians who made Stax what it was in its heyday. As part of the Concord Music Group the Stax label is once again recording and releasing new soul recordings and the legacy of Otis Redding and Booker T. And The MGs lives on.
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