Stax Records

CTL-E-6033 · Institution · label · 1957–1976 (original company)

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07258 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6033.

Stax Records was the Memphis label that built Southern soul. Jim Stewart, a country fiddle player and banker, founded the company as Satellite Records in Memphis in 1957; his sister Estelle Axton mortgaged her home to invest, and in 1961 the label took the name Stax — from the first two letters of Stewart and Axton — after another label proved to hold the Satellite name. Working from a converted movie theater on East McLemore Avenue, with Axton's record shop testing records on neighborhood youth, Stax developed an integrated house-band sound behind Booker T. and the M.G.'s and the Memphis Horns. Its roster defined 1960s soul: Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Carla and Rufus Thomas, and later Isaac Hayes and the Staple Singers. Redding's death in a 1967 plane crash closed the label's first era; a second, Al Bell-led era peaked with the 1972 Wattstax concert. Forced into bankruptcy, the original company was closed by court order in the mid-1970s. The catalog later passed to Concord, which revived the imprint, and the Memphis site is now home to the Stax Museum and the Stax Music Academy, founded in 2000.

The record

• Also known as: Satellite Records (original name), Stax

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 3 — 747 Program, Wave 10; third Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Stax Records entity in the live graph at 3,683 entities (exact / normalized / alias + token containment); ID CTL-E-6033 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 — corpus scan tail tranche, ranks #1401–#2050 (corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked clean survivor #1500). The scan supplied the NAME STRING ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — Memphis soul anchor in the graph's label line: the Southern counterpart to the homed Chicago labels (Chess CTL-E-0165) and Motown (CTL-E-1639), with homed artists Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes recording for it. Vital status: n/a (Institution). Original company defunct (bankruptcy closure, 1970s); the Stax name survives as a revived imprint and through the Soulsville Foundation's museum and academy in Memphis. STATISTICS (sourced, dated): CONFLICT SHOWN, NOT BLENDED: founding year 1957 (Smithsonian Folklife; Wikipedia) vs. 1959 (Congressional Record account, which appears to date the company's Memphis operation) — the packet follows 1957 for the founding and 1961 for the Stax name, both Smithsonian-supported. Axton's founding investment: $2,500 (Wikipedia). MEDIA: photo HELD (The converted Capitol Theatre studio at 926 East McLemore Avenue, Memphis (the “Soulsville U.S.A.” marquee) — CTL-PHOTO-001 — candidate named; no image verified at file-page level in this pass, so the photo slot is HELD, not cleared. named as candidate; no file-page verification in this pass); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-6033-stax-records.svg); video HELD (no matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged); map HELD (address-based spec, pending the map build). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = HELD (Memphis, Tennessee — 926 East McLemore Avenue studio site (address as reported in secondary coverage; verify a) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced facts) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map catalog (checked by name and variants, 2026-10-15 map), an) | audio = HELD (No audiobook excerpt or author recording with a CTL rights basis was staged in this pass.)

Referenced by

• Isaac Hayes — recorded for → this record
• Otis Redding — recorded for → this record

Sources

• Smithsonian Folklife Festival (Smithsonian Institution), "'Just Grab the Rope and I'll Pull You In': Stax Records' Youth Legacy" (accessed 2026-10-16) — Satellite Records founded in Memphis in 1957 by Jim Stewart; sister Estelle Axton's investment; Stax name from their surnames; Stax Records born September 1961 in a rented former movie theater; Stax Music Academy founded 2000 — https://festival.si.edu/blog/stax-records-youth-legacy (primary source · build store)
• Congressional Record, U.S. House, via Congress.gov / Library of Congress (accessed 2026-10-16) — Satellite Records begun in Memphis (dated 1959 in this account), first top-10 hit “Gee Whiz” by Carla Thomas in 1961, Booker T. and the M.G.'s and Memphis Horns house sound, Otis Redding and Sam and Dave, Isaac Hayes era, August 20, 1972 Wattstax pinnacle — https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/volume-153/issue-98/house-section/article/H6583-2 (primary source · build store)
• Wikipedia, "Stax Records" (accessed 2026-10-16) — founded 1957 as Satellite; Axton's $2,500 mortgage investment in 1958; Atlantic Records rights to most 1959–1968 material — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stax_Records (build store)

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Record CTL-E-6033 · Combined Graph record U-07258 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources · 2 mapped relationships.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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