Stax Records: The Memphis Sound as a Production Blueprint

A cinema, a family business and a house band

Stax began as Satellite Records, started in the late 1950s by Jim Stewart and his sister Estelle Axton; the name Stax came from the first letters of their surnames. They moved into the old Capitol Theatre in South Memphis, kept the record shop in the lobby, and turned the auditorium into a studio. The sloped cinema floor and the size of the room shaped the sound: a natural, slightly roomy ambience with very little artificial reverb.

The label's secret weapon was its house band, Booker T. & the M.G.'s: Booker T. Jones on organ, Steve Cropper on guitar, Donald "Duck" Dunn on bass and Al Jackson Jr. on drums. They played on most of the label's 60s records as well as making their own, starting with "Green Onions" in 1962. Add the Mar-Keys horn players, Wayne Jackson and Andrew Love, later known as the Memphis Horns, and you have the core of the Stax sound. In a segregated city, it was a racially integrated band, and that was part of the label's identity.

The two eras

The first era runs from the early 60s to 1968: Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Carla and Rufus Thomas, Eddie Floyd, William Bell, Albert King. Atlantic Records distributed Stax in this period, and when the deal ended in 1968, Atlantic kept the master recordings of the earlier catalogue. Otis Redding had died in a plane crash in December 1967, along with most of the original Bar-Kays. Stax lost its biggest star and its back catalogue within months.

The second era, under executive Al Bell, was a reinvention. The label released a wave of albums in 1969 to rebuild its catalogue, and among them was Isaac Hayes's Hot Buttered Soul, four long tracks of orchestral, slow-burning soul that sold far beyond expectations. Hayes went on to score Shaft (1971), the Staple Singers had hits with "Respect Yourself" and "I'll Take You There", and the Wattstax concert in Los Angeles in 1972 became a landmark of Black cultural pride. Financial trouble followed, and Stax was forced into bankruptcy in 1975.

What producers can take from it

• •Leave space. Stax arrangements are sparse: the guitar plays short chops on the backbeat rather than filling every bar, so the vocal and horns have room.
• •Bass and kick as one instrument. Duck Dunn's lines sit right on Al Jackson's kick; together they carry the groove so the drums can stay simple.
• •Horns as punctuation. The Memphis Horns hit short, unison stabs at the ends of phrases. Those stabs are some of the most sampled sounds in hip hop because they are short, clean and loud.
• •Record the room. Much of the character is the live band in one space, with bleed between instruments. If a sample sounds "glued", that is often why.

Stax in samples

Stax records are all over hip hop. Public Enemy built "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" on Isaac Hayes's "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic"; The Notorious B.I.G.'s "Warning" is built on Hayes's version of "Walk On By"; Big Daddy Kane's "Ain't No Half-Steppin'" uses The Emotions' "Blind Alley", released on the Stax subsidiary Volt. The Bar-Kays, Rufus Thomas and the M.G.'s instrumentals are full of breaks and stabs that work on their own.

Isaac Hayes's long-form albums are especially useful: the extended intros on Hot Buttered Soul and its follow-ups often run for minutes before the vocal arrives, which means long stretches of clean strings, organ and drums.

Where to start digging

• •Booker T. & the M.G.'s: Green Onions (1962) and Melting Pot (1971)
• •Otis Redding: Otis Blue (1965)
• •Isaac Hayes: Hot Buttered Soul (1969) and Shaft (1971)
• •The Staple Singers: Be Altitude: Respect Yourself (1972)
• •The Bar-Kays: Gotta Groove (1969)
• •Albert King: Born Under a Bad Sign (1967)

Beyond the famous names, the Stax and Volt singles catalogue and the smaller artists from the 1969–1975 period are where unfamiliar loops still hide. On CrateDrop, filter to Funk / Soul, set the years to 1965–1975 and open the Stax label page to dig through what has already been pulled.