RECORDS
American, based in Memphis, Tennessee. In 1957 Jim Stewart started up a label called 'Satellite'; the following year, after his sister Estelle Axton had invested heavily in the record company, he found that there was already a Satellite label, in California, so he changed his label to Stax - the name was derived from the 'ST' of Stewart and the 'AX' of Axton. The company prospered, and, with Otis Redding, Booker T. & the M.G.s, Carla Thomas and the Mar-Keys on its roster, its reputation grew. In 1965 disc jockey Al Bell was hired as national sales director; he took over effective leadership of the company and greatly expanded its stable of artists. Stax was sold to Gulf & Western in 1968, after which sales declined somewhat; Stewart and Bell bought it back in 1970. The Staple Singers and Frederick Knight provided new impetus. Bell bought Stewart out a couple of years later, but financial decline set in; Stax was closed by a bankruptcy judge in January 1976. Pre-'68 masters are owned by Atlantic; post-68 ones by Fantasy. In Britain Stax was a member of the Polydor family in from 1967-68, with a light blue label and numbering in the 601-000s, it moved to EMI in late 1968, adopting a yellow label and STAX-100 numbers in the process. A return to Polydor followed in 1972 and lasted to 1974, singles from this era have numbers in a 2025-000 series, and the later ones are injection-moulded. Around 1975 Stax moved on to Pye, and the numbering became STXS-2000, but from late 1977 it returned to EMI. EMI initially used a red label and a STAX-2000 series for reissues and a purple-and-white label and a STAX-500 series for new releases, though at least a few oldies came out on the purple-and-white label probably in another burst of reissuing, in 1980. In 1982 Stax moved yet again, to RCA; the yellow label returned but the numbers changed again, to STAX-1000. The dates on the labels can be misleading, because hits were reissued several times on different types of label: for example, the red-labelled Staple Singers record appeared in 1977 but has 1972 on it. As for company sleeves: the purple one dates from the EMI era, the black one from the Pye years. Post-'72 Phonogram issues came in a standard Phonogram sleeve. Although much-loved by Soul fans, and deservedly so, Stax was less successful over here than it was in its native land; a fate that befell most American labels of the '60s and '70s. The discography of the STAX 2025 SERIES is full of holes, many of which are down to the fact that the numbers were either used for overseas issues or not used at all. Thanks to Robert Lyons For the info.
A FULL DISCOGRAPHY OF STAX 601 SERIES 1967-1968 CAN BE FOUND HERE
A FULL DISCOGRAPHY OF STAX STAX-100 SERIES 1967-1968 CAN BE FOUND HERE
A FULL DISCOGRAPHY OF STAX 2025 SERIES 1970-1974 CAN BE FOUND HERE
