If you’re grateful for the music of Stax Records, you may at one time have wondered, “Boy, if I ever got to meet that Mr. Stax, I’d sure like to thank him for making such great music.”

Well, Virginia, there is no Mr. Stax for you to thank. But there IS an explanation for how the “Stax” name came about.

It all began in 1957, when Jim Stewart, a country music fiddler by disposition and a Tennessee banker by trade, set up a studio to record country music in a North Memphis garage that his wife’s uncle owned, and christened his homemade operation Satellite Records.

Stewart sought to relocate his recording studio the following year. His sister Estelle Axton was familiar with the Memphis music scene through her son (and Stewart’s nephew) Charles “Packy” Axton, who played saxophone in the Mar-Keys with guitarist Steve Cropper and other local musicians. She mortgaged her home to help pay for relocating and purchasing new recording equipment.

In 1959, Stewart and Axton moved their operations again and converted an abandoned neighborhood movie theater, the Capitol on McLemore Avenue in South Memphis, into their new studio. Stewart and Axton produced several rockabilly and country recordings for their fledgling label and optimistically converted the theater’s concessions stand into the Satellite Record Shop.

But they scored their first hit in 1960 with “Cause I Love You,” a duet by Rufus Thomas, a DJ for Memphis’ local R&B radio station WDIA, with his daughter Carla. This kept Stewart and Axton alert for R&B and blues sounds, which quite fortunately thrived all around them.

In 1961, the Mar-Keys released their infectious instrumental “Last Night” on the little label. As the single steamed up the national charts, Satellite took off like a rocket. Stewart and Axton learned of another company that was operating under the name Satellite Records, in California. They decided to change their own company’s name to avoid the risk of legal complications and confusion with the other.

Since his sister mortgaged her home to help get them started, Stewart combined the first two letters of his own last name with the first two letters of his sister’s last name and S-T-A-X Records was born!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 at 4:51 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.