Stax Records Co-Founder Jim Stewart Dead at 92
Photo by Bill Carrier Jr., Courtesy of Concord
Yesterday, Jim Stewart, the co-founder of Stax Records, died. He was 92 years old.
The news of Stewart’s passing was confirmed by Stax Museum of American Soul Music, which wrote on its website, “Mr. Stewart died peacefully surrounded by his family, and will be missed by millions of music fans around the world as one of the great pioneers of soul music and an architect of the Memphis Sound.”
Stewart was born in Middleton, Tenn., where he grew up before moving to Memphis after he graduated high school in 1948. Though he planned to attend Memphis State University, he was drafted into the army, where he served for two years before returning to Memphis in ’53. After he return, he secured a day job working at a bank but in his spare time connected to the music of the city by playing the fiddle in a local band called the Canyon Cowboys.
Before long, Stewart became aware of Sam Phillips’ Sun Records, which recorded the likes of Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley, and decided to found his own label, Satellite Records, in 1957. Stewart’s sister, Estelle Axton, mortgaged her home to assist in purchasing recording equipment while Stewart set out to record rockabilly and country records. However, that direction wouldn’t last long after Memphis DJ Rufus Thomas came to the former movie theater where Satellite operated to record a song with his 16-year-old daughter Carla titled “Cause I Love You.” The song became a hit in the region, and Stewart started to lean towards R&B music. He would later describe the experience as “a blind man who could suddenly see.”
Stewart and Axton decided to change the label using the first two letters of their respective surnames, and Stax was born. Over the years, the label would go on to launch the careers of incredibly successful R&B artists, including Otis Redding, Booker T., The Staple Singers, Isaac Haynes, Albert King, Sam & Dave and many more.
After selling millions of records, Stax would go on to declare bankruptcy in 1976, though it would recover, and Stewart kept to himself in the following decades. He was, however, inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2002 and made a handful of appearances at the Stax Museum, which sits on the original site of Satellite Records and opened in 2003.
See Stax Museum of American Soul Music announcing his passing below.
