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Behind the scenes of legendary Stax Records

For years, a vacant lot in Memphis, Tenn., reflected cascades of music history.

That lot now houses the Stax Museum of American Soul Music and the Stax Music Academy, built in 2003.

For a time, however, after the original building was torn down in 1989, the spot was vacant and abandoned.

“It broke my heart to see that there was no symbol that represented what we were all about,” says Al Bell, the former owner of Stax Records.

Now fresh symbols are growing. There’s the museum, the academy, the revival of the label itself. There’s also a dynamic special, under PBS’ “Great Performances” banner.

Stax was one of two black-run labels that transformed popular music.

In the North was Detroit and Motown with a fairly sweet, slick sound. In the South was Memphis and Stax.

“It’s a trend in Memphis, actually, to go for the overall feel over the perfect recording,” says Robert Gordon, a music author who directed the PBS film.

This was the music that Stax founder Jim Stewart savored.

“Jim had been a country fiddle player, and ... he started finding out about something called rhythm and blues,” Bell says. “And it took over his spirit and his heart and his soul.”

In 1957, Stewart, a bank clerk, started the label as Satellite Records with his sister, Estelle Axton. (Eventually they squeezed their last names together to form “Stax.”) They moved it into a South Memphis theater in 1960. They soon brought in blacks as managers, co-owners and, eventually owner.

It was a collective experience.

“We worked together, ate together, laughed together,” Isaac Hayes says.

Otis Redding arrived as a roadie for Johnny Jenkins, Bell recalls.

“He was really sort of like a helper, a handyman and carried the clothing. ... Otis had stayed around all day long and had been bugging everybody for an opportunity to be heard.

“And Jim Stewart says, ‘OK, you know, we gotta listen to this guy.’ ... When Otis started singing, ‘These Arms of Mine,’ the rest is history.”

Then there was Hayes, who had moved to Memphis as a teenager. He played with bands, became the keyboardist for the Stax house band then was teamed with David Porter to write.

They wrote more than 200 songs, including the classic “Soul Man,” plus “B-A-B-Y” and “Hold On I’m Coming.” Deanie Parker — once a Stax performer, now president of the Soulsville Foundation — says Hayes, Porter, Booker T. & the MGs and especially Redding molded the Stax sound.

“Those horn lines that we hear today on all of those Stax records ... can be attributed to Otis Redding,” Parker says.

At first, people assumed Stax would be limited to a black audience. Then came a historic tour.

“We had standing room only throughout the continent of Europe,” Bell says. “Nothing but white people, appreciating Booker T. & the MGs, appreciating Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas and Eddie Floyd.”

Stax was soaring. Then everything went wrong.

In 1967 its star, Otis Redding, died at 26 in a plane crash. Its distributor, Atlantic Records, exercised a clause Stewart hadn’t noticed; now it owned the Stax hits.

That could have brought an early end to Stax. Instead, Bell made a gutsy decision in 1969 to release about 27 albums. That brought a second chance for Hayes, whose previous album had gone nowhere.

His “Hot Buttered Soul” drew raves. Hayes had the music and — it turned out — the look.

“A barber shop was next door to Stax,” Hayes recalls. “I said, ‘I want you to cut it all off.’ “

The bald-is-beautiful look worked, and Hayes drew attention. When Stax made the 1971 movie “Shaft,” it hired legendary photographer Gordon Parks to direct and Hayes to write the score.

The “Shaft” theme became another classic, and Hayes won an Academy Award.

At its peak, Stax was turning out “Midnight Hour,” “Respect Yourself” and “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay.” At its low point, it would crumble in 1975, amid court cases, criminal and civil. Both extremes are elaborately described in the PBS film.

Now Stax has re-emerged with Hayes as one of its performers. At 64, new generations know him as the former Chef on the “South Park” cartoon series.

On the tube:

What: “Great Performances: Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story”

When: 9 p.m. Wednesday on most PBS stations (check local listings).

Did you know? After changing hands a few times, the Stax name and library were bought by Concord Music Group in 2004, which is reviving the label. It has mainly been doing re-releases, compilations and DVDs, some of them aimed at the 50th anniversary of Stax. Some new recordings are coming out, though. The first was from Soulive; coming are Angie Stone, Lalah Hathaway and Isaac Hayes.