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From Satellite to Stax
Stax began in Memphis in 1957 as Satellite Records, founded by the siblings Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton. Around 1960 the label moved into the former Capitol Theatre at 926 East McLemore Avenue, and in 1961 it took a new name made from the first two letters of each founder’s surname: Stax.


A studio and its house band
The theatre’s sloping floor became Studio A. From 1962 Booker T. & the M.G.’s, with Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, Lewie Steinberg and Al Jackson Jr., backed nearly every Stax recording for the rest of the decade. Stax was known for a racially integrated team of staff and artists, unusual in the South at the time, and for stars such as Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, the Staple Singers, Rufus and Carla Thomas and Isaac Hayes.
Closure, loss and a museum
Stax was forced into bankruptcy in December 1975 and closed by court order in January 1976. The original studio building was demolished in 1989. The Stax Museum of American Soul Music, built as a replica of the studio on the same site, opened in 2003, and the non-profit Soulsville Foundation runs it alongside the Stax Music Academy and a charter school on the same campus.



