Jim Stewart
Deanie Parker was a high-school glee club member aiming to be a star when she first met Stax Records co-founder Jim Stewart in 1962. Instead, she ended up occupying a front row seat as one of Stax’s longtime executives, witnessing the storied label’s rise, fall and rise again. Appointed publicity coordinator in 1965, she advanced to director of publicity in 1967, director of publicity, artist relations and public relations in 1968 and then vp of public affairs in 1973. Now retired as the founding president/CEO of the Soulsville Foundation, located at the original site of the Memphis-based label, Parker pays tribute to Stewart in this as-told-to reflection.
When I first met Jim Stewart in 1962, it had everything to do with my wanting to be on the road with Gladys Knight, Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle and Tina Turner — and to rival them. Of course, that never happened. Fortunately, both Jim and I were smart enough to know that I lacked the power and the tenacity. I also didn’t have Tina’s legs [laughs].
In the early ‘60s in Memphis, there was at least one talent show a week, mostly on Beale Street. A male group that was part of our high school glee club with me was looking for a lead vocalist. After we got together, the glee club teacher decided that we were good enough to enter one of the talent shows — the first prize being an audition for this new studio, Stax. We won first prize and auditioned for its founder, Jim.
He signed us and we later had a regional hit, but nothing beyond that. At any rate, it wasn’t long after Jim signed us that he provided me with an opportunity to experience firsthand what it was like for a Black artist to be on the road and the conditions under which they had to perform. That’s when I recognized that I was never going to compete with Stax’s queen Carla Thomas or other women artists. I was no threat at all. So I decided to pursue the administrative side of the business, publicity and marketing.
Fortunately for me, Stax was in its infancy. We were viewed as a backwater town on the Mississippi River and didn’t have anyone to publicize or promote what the organization was doing or to help groom the artists for the wonderful media inquiries that we started receiving as the hits rolled out. We were with Atlantic at the time. Jim provided the opportunity for me to learn that skill set while getting on-the-job experience.
I didn’t realize how much Jim was despised for what he was doing. People couldn’t get over the fact that he was providing opportunities for [Black] people who were being demeaned in every way that you could imagine. But the Stax philosophy was a welcoming one. Jim and Estelle [Axton, Jim’s sister and Stax co-founder] were not judgmental. Instead, they took the time to hear what it was we wanted to do, what we thought we could do and the commitments that we were prepared to make in order to make Stax better, to be part of an incredible organization that gave us this inimitable music.
Again, remember we’re in the South. Not only doesn’t anybody understand what the hell we’re doing, they don’t have any respect for it. Jim never talked about the hatred verbatim. But he was always very clear about the fact that as a country fiddler, when he first heard a Ray Charles song — I don’t remember which one now — his taste in music was never the same again. He knew then that what he wanted to do in Memphis was devote his time, attention and energy to recording his own music that would rival Charles’. He never hid that.
In terms of the racism and all of its tentacles that we were experiencing, what Jim did was take a very inflexible position about what was acceptable behavior and what would not be tolerated. He never ceased to remind us that anything that could be misconstrued as illegal would destroy us. Because the authorities and power structure in Memphis were waiting on an opportunity to take something that was uncommon in other places, perhaps, and use it against us to shut Stax’s doors.
That was his way of acknowledging that he was experiencing the same things we were. Like one day when he was standing outside underneath the marquee, talking to Isaac Hayes. A policeman came along and said, “You can’t be out here talking to Black people on the streets.” Jim tried to reason with him. But the policeman said, “I’ll take your ass down and lock you up.”
During the last 10 years, I had the opportunity to talk to Jim about how he dealt with all of that.
And he said, “My mother and father taught me something that worked and still works today that enabled me to press on and survive.” And that was the golden rule: treat people the way you want to be treated. Jim paid a hell of a price for his belief and determination in living up to that.
His ability to assimilate into an environment that was predominantly Black was because he respected the fact that all of us have something that we can bring to the table. That’s part of what made Stax great. So was the fact that perhaps it was the only place in Memphis that was totally integrated — another lesson. Forget all the BS about why we shouldn’t get along or not like each other. If you find something that you can enjoy together, that makes you happy and you could make a living from it? Then throw away everything else and run to that something. The artists may not have been polished but they were authentic. Jim accepted them in all of their rawness. He appreciated, respected and loved them for allowing him to record what they had because he knew what they had was infectious.
What Jim looked and listened for with an artist was his big secret. Watching him trying to keep time to the beat was embarrassing [laughs]. Yet Jim had impeccable hearing and precise timing. When he got behind that console, he knew exactly what he was trying to hear and what he was trying to feel. It was innate; something that God placed in him when he was born. You couldn’t touch it. He could look through the control rooms’ glass window at Booker T. & the M.G.’s on the floor and he knew if you weren’t in the right tempo or out of key. The one thing you could see about Jim was that he was in his element being outside of his element. The test of time shows that he had a freaking secret formula that nobody has been able to emulate. Even today the music just blows you away.
When Atlantic threw him a curve [a contractual stipulation that Atlantic owned the masters to the Stax albums being distributed], I don’t know if he kicked the dog when he got home or not. You know what I’m saying? But in my presence, he never cursed about it. He was a soft-spoken person; reserved. I just know that he was unhappy. I’m sure that he was miserable; that his level of confidence in people, especially in the music business, was crushed. And I’m sure that he blamed himself in some ways for not having been more attentive and less trusting. There’s no way on God’s earth that you can make me believe that Atlantic’s legal department and Jerry Wexler didn’t know what they were doing. Jim was a handshake-on-the-deal kind of man. It was a bitter lesson.
However, if Jim hadn’t been a do-right man, the good Lord would not have introduced him to Al Bell. There wouldn’t have been a solution to the dilemma. Jim could have saved his own behind and forgotten about us but that’s not what he did. His attitude was that we were all in the boat together. And his solution was to get up, dust himself off, learn from it and find a plan. That’s when we moved away from Atlantic and began building a catalog. We turned Stax into a factory, working day and night to release the soul explosion of singles and albums that became the rebirth of Stax.
My most touching memory of Jim happened after my stepfather’s mother died in Chicago. He and my mother had just moved to Memphis and didn’t have the money to transport his mother’s body to Memphis for burial. So I asked Jim if Stax could loan me $300-$400 to transport her body. And he made it happen, which he didn’t have to do. I wasn’t making enough with my writer royalties or anything else for him to feel secure that I’d pay it back. But I did. He trusted me and I’ll never forget it.
Jim Stewart, the Father of Stax, is dead. The ship has lost its captain, and our hearts are lost at sea. As eternal as he seemed to a young boy like me, I thought this day would never come as he pulled me into his dream of making music for the world.
There was an intense fire burning in Jim’s chest, born of the love of music, and that fire quickly spread to those around him. What was Jim’s thought process, putting his country music studio smack dab in the middle of South Memphis? The young neighborhood musicians found Stax on their own. They biked to the studio; they worked at the market across the street from the studio; they ditched high school to record at the studio. Stax became a haven, an outlet for the young songwriters in the neighborhood to express themselves.
Jim never admitted that he believed in me. What if your boss was a small, reclusive lion who never told you exactly what he expected — or what he wanted of you besides showing up for work on time? I would have preferred the lion’s roar to the slightly turned head and his look of feigned disinterest. In hindsight, though, I realize it was often that look of disappointment that spurred me to try to make better music.
After Booker T. & The M.G.’s recorded “Behave Yourself,” Jim liked it so much that he wanted to put the song out as a single. Jim pushed the band on the spur of the moment, to come up with a B-side for “Behave Yourself.” Lucky for me I had been working on a bluesy musical sequence, I taught it to the band, and it became “Green Onions.” So Jim gets the credit for pushing us to record the song which became the iconic “Green Onions”.
Such was the nature of Jim Stewart, the driving force behind the great Stax Records of Memphis, Tennessee. For me, he was the source of countless hours of musical joy, as well as the privilege of making music in a studio less than two blocks from my childhood home.
Jim fought for Stax Records to the bitter end, sacrificing house, home and well-being. For his gifts to me, the Stax Family, and the world, may he rest in God’s peace.
Farewell to a King.
Steve Greenberg, founder/CEO of S-Curve Records, produced “The Complete Stax/Volt Singles 1959-1968,” and box sets devoted to Stax artists Otis Redding and Sam & Dave. He wrote album notes for “Stax ’68: A Memphis Story.” Below, he reflects on a 30-year friendship with Stax co-founder Jim Stewart, who died Dec. 5.
I first met Jim Stewart when I was producing the 9-CD Complete Stax/Volt Singles:1959-1968 box, which came out in 1991. While consulting with him over the phone about the project, he mentioned that legendary Stax songstress Carla Thomas still lived in Memphis, and that he’d really love a chance to work with her again on a record—something he hadn’t done in over 20 years. Almost immediately, I flew down to Memphis, meeting Jim and Carla at the stately Peabody Hotel to discuss the possibility of making a record together. The record never materialized, but a bond began to form between Jim and me.
What initially struck me about Jim was his humility: Here was a man who’d co-founded one of the greatest R&B record labels of all time—who, in addition to running the label, was in the studio producing such classic recordings as Otis Redding’s “Try A Little Tenderness” and Rufus Thomas’ “Walking the Dog.” Perhaps even more impressively, he created an environment at Stax where Black and white musicians could work together in complete equality, all the while situated in the heart of the segregated South during the most tumultuous years of the civil rights movement. Yet, Jim possessed none of the hubris or self-regard typical of many who have achieved greatness or attained legendary status.
Nor did he express an ounce of bitterness, even though his career could be described as a rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-riches-to-rags story: From a modest upbringing in rural Tennessee, he started a record label in 1957 with his sister Estelle Axton originally called Satellite before rebranding as Stax (St+ Ax) in 1961. A string of hits by the likes of Sam & Dave, Booker T. & the MGs, Redding and many more artists brought worldwide fame to Stax, and the label was flying high. But in 1968 Stewart learned that a distribution contract he’d signed with Atlantic’s president Jerry Wexler a few years earlier—without consulting an attorney—had somewhere in the fine print given Atlantic permanent rights to the entire Stax catalog. This calamity occurred nearly simultaneously with the death of Stax’s biggest star, Redding, in a plane crash, and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, just a short distance from the Stax studio, causing parts of that city to go up in flames and hastening the demise of the air of racial harmony at the label.
Taken together, these tragedies would have been enough to cause most record companies to shutter. But, together with his new partner, the civil rights activist turned record promo man Al Bell, Jim started Stax Records again from scratch, with the label achieving even greater commercial and critical success in its second incarnation. As the ‘70s dawned, Stax, under Bell’s leadership, became deeply identified with the cause of Black empowerment, and Jim decided it was time to exit, selling his interest to his partner. Now a wealthy man, Jim could have ridden off into the sunset, but a few years later, when Stax began to experience serious financial difficulties, Jim reinvested most of his assets in the label, not being able to bear the idea of his baby’s demise. By 1976, the label declared bankruptcy and closed. Stewart lost nearly everything; his home and possessions were sold at auction in 1981.
When I first met Jim that night at the Peabody, I imagined he harbored no small amount of ill will towards Atlantic Records, the label that had taken away his catalog and was now putting out the box set I’d produced. But no, he said, he didn’t hold any sort of grudge, and when I invited him to come to New York for the launch party celebrating the release of the box set, he was only too happy to do so. The New York event featured a concert by legendary Stax performers and was attended by Atlantic Records veterans who’d been around during Stax’s Atlantic period, including label founder Ahmet Ertegun. Jim offered some remarks from the podium—his first public appearance in nearly two decades—and spoke of what a pleasure it was to see old friends, and what an honor it had been to get to work with such great artists and to have been in business with Atlantic. He even referred to Jerry Wexler as “my hero.” He was the embodiment of grace.
Even after Stax closed, Jim continued in the music business. In the late ‘70s he opened a recording studio in Memphis with former Stax guitarist Bobby Manuel. Eventually, they started the Houston Connection record label, scoring a top 15 Billboard R&B hit in 1982 with former Stax artist Margie Joseph’s “Knockout!” They never had another national hit, but Jim kept at it, producing records locally.
The release of the Stax box brought Jim back into the music industry’s field of vision, and he began to make regular visits to New York, always stopping by to have lunch and to pitch me his newest discoveries. I remember he had a fun record called “Mud Ducks” by Memphis rapper Yan-C which we almost signed when I was head of A&R at Big Beat Records, but in the end the only record I ever worked on with Jim was Lea’Netta Nelson’s “That’s the Way,” a great slow R&B jam that I signed in 1994 when I was an A&R guy at, of all places, Atlantic Records. I had high hopes for that record, but looking back, I think Atlantic only let me sign it as a token gesture to Jim, and it received no attention, only seeing release as a radio promo single. I spoke to Jim shortly after that record disappeared without a trace, and he told me he was retiring from the music business.
Eventually, Jim received his due as one of the great label chiefs of the 20th century. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2002 and made one final public appearance at Memphis’ Stax Museum of American Soul Music in 2019, where he was feted by such Stax legends as Carla Thomas and Al Bell in a special salute.
The last time I spoke to Jim was a phone interview with him for the liner notes of 2019’s “Stax’68” box set, a collection chronicling Stax’s annus horribilus and its aftermath, produced by A&R man/music historian Joe McEwen. Jim was in good spirits, with a sharp recollection of events that happened more than 50 years earlier. He was better off financially, partially due to producer royalty payments for the Stax singles he produced, which began to be paid in the 1990s. Even looking back on that trying year of 1968, he remembered it with fondness. “Most importantly,” he told me, “We still loved what we were doing. We believed it was going to be okay.”
This world will miss you, Jim Stewart. You were a great label executive, a producer of classic records and you believed in the dignity of all people. And you really appreciated that you got to do it at all.
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