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A TAV Essential Listening Album.

15 classics from legendary Stax label out of Memphis, featuring tracks by Otis Redding, Issac Hayes, Booker T, and Shirley Brown amongst others.

“All have become classics in one way or another, including Booker T. & the MG's’ “Green Onions” from 1962, Sam & Dave’s “Hold On! I’m Comin'” from 1966 and “Soul Man” from 1967, Eddie Floyd’s “Knock on Wood” from 1966, Isaac Hayes’ cinematic epic “Theme from Shaft” from 1971, and Johnnie Taylor’s “Jody’s Got Your Girl and Gone,” also from 1971, and sort of Stax/Volt’s answer to Marvin Gaye and Motown Records’ “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” in that it featured the same kind of ominous, relentless rhythm, although it was good deal more lyrically specific -- Taylor actually named names. It’s a very impressive run over that dozen years, and Stax left a huge and soulful footprint on the pop music of the 20th century and beyond -- it’s impossible to imagine the world without Memphis soul.” - AllMusic

About Stax Records:

Stax Records is an American record label, originally based in Memphis, Tennessee.

Founded in 1957 as Satellite Records, the label changed its name to Stax Records in 1961. It was a major factor in the creation of Southern soul and Memphis soul music. Stax also released gospel, funk, jazz, and blues recordings. While renowned for its output of African-American music, the label was founded by two white siblings and business partners, Jim Stewart and his sister Estelle Axton (STewart/AXton = Stax).  It featured several popular ethnically integrated bands (including the label's house band, Booker T. & the M.G.'s) and a racially integrated team of staff and artists unprecedented in that time of racial strife and tension in Memphis and the South.

Following the death of Stax's biggest star, Otis Redding, in 1967, and the severance of the label's distribution deal with Atlantic Records in 1968, Stax continued primarily under the supervision of a new co-owner, Al Bell. Over the next five years, Bell expanded the label's operations significantly, in order to compete with Stax's main rival, Motown Records in Detroit. During the mid-1970s, a number of factors, including a problematic distribution deal with CBS Records, caused the label to slide into insolvency, resulting in its forced closure in late 1975.

In 1977, Fantasy Records acquired the post-1968 Stax catalogue and selected pre-1968 recordings. Beginning in 1978, Stax (now owned by Fantasy) began signing new acts and issuing new material, as well as reissuing previously recorded Stax material. However, by the early 1980s no new material was being issued on the label, and for the next two decades, Stax was strictly a reissue label.

After Concord Records acquired Fantasy in 2004, the Stax label was reactivated, and is today used to issue both the 1968–1975 catalog material and new recordings by current R&B and soul performers. Atlantic Records continues to hold the rights to the vast majority of the 1959–1968 Stax material.

Source: Wiki

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