Jim Stewart
Open-hearted Stax co-founder BORN 1930
AS CO-FOUNDER of Memphis’s Stax Records, Jim Stewart built a musical institution where black and white musicians worked side by side, an anomaly in the segregated South of the 1960s.
A country fiddler and banker by trade, he launched a country-pop label called Satellite in 1957 with financial help from his sister, Estelle Axton. The first letters of their last names made up the Stax rebrand a few years later, and in 1959 the label moved to the former Capitol Theater in South Memphis where Stewart cut an R&B duet, Cause I Love You, by veteran entertainer Rufus Thomas and his daughter Carla. After it hit, Atlantic Records began distributing Stax. “Prior to that I had no knowledge of what black music was about,” Stewart recalled. “It was like a blind man who suddenly gained his sight.”
Over the next few years, Stewart would tap the talents of many young black neighbourhood kids to solidify the Stax sound: Booker T. Jones, William Bell, and songwriters David Porter and Isaac Hayes among them. Stewart produced and guided the label through its mid-‘60s glory years, led by signature stars Otis Redding and Sam & Dave.
In the late ’60s, Stax was hit by the death of Redding and the loss of distribution partner Atlantic (which, through a contractual loophole, took all of Stax’s back catalogue). Stewart and his new partner Al Bell would relaunch Stax with the backing of entertainment conglomerate Gulf & Western, reviving the company’s fortunes.
As Stax embraced black awareness in the early ’70s – with projects like the WattStax concert and the Shaft soundtrack – Bell bought out Stewart. Stax soon faced financial trouble however, and Stewart poured much of his personal fortune into saving the company. When Stax finally shuttered in 1976, Stewart lost nearly everything.
Though he built life back up financially, Stewart largely removed himself from the music business, even skipping his induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. Yet he remained proud of the Stax Museum and its offshoot music academy, which fostered the talents of young Memphis musicians, just as his label had decades earlier.