Stax Recording Studios

Stax's trouble was paper. In 1965 Jim Stewart signed a national distribution contract with Atlantic without reading it. After Otis Redding died in a plane crash on December 10, 1967, and Atlantic was sold to Warner, Atlantic claimed rights to Stax masters recorded between 1960 and 1967. Stewart sold the label to Paramount on May 13, 1968; Al Bell became a co-owner and Estelle Axton was pushed out. Stewart and Bell bought it back in 1970, and a federal judge ordered the company closed on January 12, 1976.

What the plaque says

Stax Recording Studios On this site stood Stax Records, Inc. which boasted such stars as Otis Redding, Rufus and Carla Thomas, Isaac Hayes, the Staple Singers, Albert King, the Bar~Kays, and many others. It relied upon its deep soul roots to carry it through, struggling from a back~street garage in 1957 to become a multi~million~dollar organization.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stax Museum of American Soul Music — steps away
  A rebuilt Stax studio on the site of the old Capitol Theatre, with a replica of the sloped-floor Studio A, Isaac Hayes's Cadillac and the story of an integrated soul label.
• Elmwood Cemetery — 0.6 mi
  Memphis's oldest active cemetery, a rural garden cemetery of about 1,500 trees opened in 1852, with Black civic leaders, yellow fever victims and the city's whole history in its lots.
• Sun Studio — 1.7 mi
  The small Union Avenue room where Sam Phillips recorded Rocket 88, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley and the Million Dollar Quartet, now a National Historic Landmark.
• 1866 Memphis Massacre Marker at Army Park — 1.9 mi
  A privately funded NAACP marker in a small downtown park, placed in 2016, that names the May 1866 attack on Black South Memphis as a massacre.

More markers nearby

• LeMoyne-Owen College — 0.3 mi
• The 1960 Memphis Sit-In Movement — 0.3 mi
• Forrest's Artillery Positions -Aug. 21, 1964- — 0.3 mi
• Dr. Joseph Edison Walker — 0.4 mi