By CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER
McClatchy News Service
By the time Otis Redding gets to the first "you-oooo" in "I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)," you know it's there.
What: "Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story"
When: 8 p.m. Wednesday
Where: PBS (Channel 10, WMVS-TV)
Stax Facts
Stax's biggest hits
"Green Onions," Booker T. and the MG's (1962)
"Soul Man," Sam & Dave (1967)
"(Sittin' on) the Dock of the Bay," Otis Redding (1968)
"Theme From Shaft," Isaac Hayes (1971)
"I'll Take You There," Staple Singers (1972)
The making of ...
"Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay," remembered by Steve Cropper: "Probably the toughest job of my whole life was mixing that record. I did it in a 24-hour period. They still hadn't found Otis yet. That was tough. I'm not even sure why I said yes. They called and said, 'We've got to get a record out on Otis real quick. What have you got?' I started it on a Tuesday morning, put it on a plane on Wednesday. They didn't find Otis' body until that Friday, I think. So it's not always fun to reminisce about 'Dock of the Bay.'
"Hot Buttered Soul," recalled by Isaac Hayes: "I figured out what I had to say couldn't be said in 2 minutes, 30 seconds. So I just went off. (Stax president) Al Bell said, 'Do what you wanna do,' and that's what I did. I told the musicians what I was going for, they played it, and then I ended it. That's the record."
Favorite hidden gems
Isaac Hayes: "Some of the Luther (Guitar Junior) Johnson records. He did a lot of good songs that me and David (Porter) wrote. I think some of those songs got lost."
Deanie Parker (longtime Stax publicist): "'Live Wire Blues Power," by Albert King. You've got to get that record! But fasten your seat belt before you put it on."
Steve Cropper: "The 'Jammed Together" album (featuring Cropper, Albert King and Pop Staples). Even when I listen to it, I can't believe we were never in the studio at the same time. That record was all overdubs. It worked well."
The Stax Museum
Officially dubbed the Stax Museum of American Soul Music (unofficially: Soulsville U.S.A.), it has become a shrine for rock and R&B fans.
Opened: in 2003 on the demolished site of Stax Records, at 926 E. McLemore Ave. in Memphis, with the old theater marquee and even the recording studio resurrected.
You can feel it anytime those first notes from Booker T.'s organ come pumping through the speakers on "Green Onions," or whenever the horns light up on "Soul Man."
"It" is that special mix of soul, pride and musicianship that makes your hair stand on end. It is what made Stax Records a legendary label in American music, a legacy that finally can start growing again thanks to the company's 50th anniversary relaunch.
That is "long overdue," said one of Stax's most enduring stars, Isaac Hayes. "This music is powerful and it's unique. Some people have forgotten what was so special about it."
Stax's "it" was strong enough to bring black and white musicians together in Memphis in the years leading up to Martin Luther King Jr.'s journey to the Lorraine Motel, where Stax's musicians wrote many of their tolerance-preaching hits.
It was potent enough in the '70s to turn Stax into (pick any): the most prominent business in Memphis; the most successful independent record label in the world; the nation's fifth-biggest black-run company.
But Stax's special thing wasn't able to stand up to bank execs and bigger record-company moguls who, in 1976, contributed to the bankruptcy filings that closed its doors for three long (and less funky) decades.
Many of Stax's principal players believe the powers-that-be didn't trust or appreciate the success of the label's black stars.
Now the question is whether Stax's "it" can stand up to the test of time. Or at least that was one of many queries thrown at Steve Cropper, guitarist in Booker T. and the MGs and a producer and writer of many of Stax's hits, Hayes and other Stax players at the South by Southwest Music Conference in March, where they converged for a coming-out party to market the label's relaunch.
With the indie conglomerate Concord Music taking up ownership of Stax, the relaunch campaign is in high gear with a flurry of reissues, some new releases, the PBS special "Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story" premiering tonight and scattered all-star performances.
The label was created in 1957 as Satellite Records by white country musician Jim Stewart and his sister, Estelle Axton
The siblings (who combined their last names for the Stax moniker in 1960) knew next to nothing about black music. But it didn't matter.
They opened their studio in the former Capitol Theater in south Memphis, the black neighborhood where Aretha Franklin and Al Green grew up. So black musicians came to know all about Stax.
"It brought a lot of pride to the neighborhood, as well as some much-needed jobs and money," said veteran publicist Deanie Parker, who started there at age 16.
The integration at Stax began almost immediately and the hits soon followed.
Singers started coming from beyond Memphis.
Otis Redding arrived from Georgia in 1962, driving the vehicle for another band and talking his way into a studio tryout that yielded his first hit, "These Arms of Mine."
Atlantic Records then sent down two of its burgeoning acts, Sam & Dave and Wilson Pickett, to benefit from the Stax magic (beginning Stax's forever-tenuous relationship with bigger labels).
Unlike its Detroit rival, Motown, Stax didn't cater to white teenagers.
The so-called Stax Sound maintained a looser, livelier quality that sounded even better on stage than on the radio.
Hayes said, "It had a church feel, with parts of blues, rock, country and some jazz."
The first heyday of Stax ended with two well-known tragedies.
Redding's plane crashed into Lake Monona in Madison, Wis., on Dec. 10, 1967, killing the singer and four band members.
King's assassination the following spring also left its mark.
The label's focus became more distinctively African-American, driven in large part by Al Bell, a black executive who took the label's reins from Stewart in the '70s.
Before Stax, "we didn't own our own talent," the Rev. Jesse Jackson says while praising the label in the PBS special.
The high point of '70s-era Stax was the 1972 mega-concert Wattstax, designed as "a black Woodstock" to heal the scars of the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles.
Eventually, Stax got involved with everything from a basketball team to comedy, and creditors thought it was spread too thin.
Its bank and CBS Records called in its debts and the FBI investigated Bell on fraud charges (he was cleared).
"If it had not been an integrated company, but had been an all-white company, Stax would have still been in business today," Parker said. "Memphis was not sophisticated or forward-thinking enough to embrace it then."
The city did finally embrace Stax in 2003, when it put up money for the Stax Museum of American Soul Music and Stax Music Academy on the site of the old studio.
That in turn sparked interest in reviving Stax as a label.
So what will the new Stax look like?
The label is quickly updating itself.
Many of its old titles have been released on the Internet via iTunes, eMusic and its own site, Stax50.com. There are new reissues on CD, including a two-disc 50th anniversary best-of (out now) and a three-CD "Wattstax" set (coming Aug. 28).
Stax is also operating as a label for current artists.
This week Boston jazz-funk ensemble Soulive puts out its latest CD via Stax.
"There's a lot of good new stuff," said Hayes, who plans to issue his first album in 30 years, probably next year.
No one from Stax's history is pretending it will be the same label as before, though.
"Music has changed. It's not like it was," Hayes said, pointing to the social significance of the original Stax. "The musicians, black and white, got together to make music. That was a unique thing then. That's what made the sound. That's not a big deal now."
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