Jim Stewart, co-founder of Stax Records in Memphis, dies
Jim Stewart, the white Tennessee farm boy and fiddle player who co-founded the influential Stax Records with his sister in a Black, inner-city Memphis neighborhood and helped build the soulful “Memphis sound,” has died at age 92
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Jim Stewart, the white Tennessee farm boy and fiddle player who co-founded the influential Stax Records with his sister in a Black, inner-city Memphis neighborhood and helped build the soulful “Memphis sound,” has died at age 92.
Stewart died peacefully and surrounded by his family on Monday, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music said in a news release. A cause of death was not disclosed and funeral plans were pending.
Stewart was co-founder of Stax Records in Memphis, where, during an era of racial strife, white musicians and producers worked alongside Black singers, songwriters and instrumentalists to create the “Memphis sound” embodied by Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Booker T. and the M.G.s, Carla and Rufus Thomas, The Staple Singers, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave and many others.
Stax and its affiliated record labels released 300 albums and 800 singles between 1959 and 1975, according to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Stax fostered a raw sound born from Black church music, the blues and rock ‘n’ roll. It featured strong rhythm sections, powerful horn players, and singers who could be sexy and soulful in one tune, and loud and forceful in another.
