Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Stax: Soulsville U.S.A.’ on Max, A Docuseries History of the Pioneering Record Label And Its Stirring Sound

Stax: Soulsville U.S.A., a four-part docuseries now streaming on Max, tells the story of the record label that integrated its business practices and personnel in the recording studio when its hometown of Memphis, TN was still segregated, the civil rights movement was growing all across America, and the sound of Black music was changing how people listened to music in the US and throughout the world. Directed and produced by filmmaker Jamila Wignot (Ailey), Soulsville U.S.A. features interviews with Stax founder Jim Stewart, Booker T. Jones of the Booker T & the MGs, musicians like Carla Thomas, Steve Cropper, and David Porter, former Stax employees, and context from music historians and other observers.

STAX: SOULSVILLE U.S.A: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: In a piece of old footage, Stax Records appears, the marquee of its headquarters in a former movie theater extending over the sidewalk on McLemore Avenue in Memphis. Somebody places a 45rpm record on the platter. “I’m sittin’ on the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away…”

The Gist: With smash 1960s hits like “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” and his fiery, song-defining version of “Try a Little Tenderness,” the music of Otis Redding, often created with the label’s in-house musicians like keyboardist Booker T. Jones and guitarist Steve Cropper, helped define the Stax Records sound, and the label’s status as a source for soul music influenced by the people and musical pathways of the American South. Which is a little crazy, because as Stax: Soulsville U.S.A. explores, Stax was founded by fiddle player Jim Stewart and his sister Estelle Axton, white people whose relaxed style of collaboration – white and Black musicians working together in the studio, with white and Black people helping to run things on the business side – was completely unheard of in Memphis at that time, let alone in America in general. 

“Music brought us together on a real level,” Jones says in Soulville of those sessions at Stax. “There was a feeling, a permission, for that music to happen.” With hits from Redding, Rufus and Carla Thomas (“‘Cause I Love You”), and Sam & Dave (“Hold On, I’m Comin’”), Stax’s status grew, and a national distribution deal with Atlantic Records was another significant booster. But while the organic nature of writing and recording at Stax was integral to the sound it developed – it’s all right there, the grooves and soul between the notes in the Booker T. & the MGs single “Green Onions” – there was still an exposure gap when it came to marketing. Black artists were being played on Black radio. But Stax, together with its new promotions director Al Bell, needed its music to cross over to white radio. For marketing purposes, and increased revenue sources, sure. But also because the stuff coming out of Stax’s studio in Memphis was some of the most important and indelible music of the twentieth century.

Soulsville U.S.A. features that Stax sound in plenty of archival studio recordings, and live footage captured before raucous 1960s crowds. But the docuseries also tracks the difficulties Stax and its stable of artists encountered as the label and sound grew, from the untimely death of Otis Redding and the continued racial tensions of the era, to business deals that went sideways and later decisions that would force the pioneering label into a period of bankruptcy.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The documentary Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story, produced for PBS in 2007, included interviews with many of the notables featured in Soulsville U.S.A. And back in the 1960s, while Stax Records was holding it down in “Soulsville,” Memphis, TN, there was also “Hitsville” in Detroit, MI, where the stars of Motown recorded. The 2019 documentary Hitsville: The Making of Motown is a deep and detailed dive into the origins of that label and scene, which often acted as a stylistic and economic counterweight to Stax’s influence.

Our Take: Booker T. Jones is sitting at a piano. “Hm, that sounds kinda odd” – he’s explaining a bit of music theory, and the traditional chord progression of twelve-bar blues – “but it sounds kinda cool, though,” and in Jones’ hands, his idle noodling instantly transforms into the weighty and irresistible rhythmic backbone of the 1962 Stax hit “Green Onions.” It’s a fantastic little segment in Stax: Soulsville U.S.A., and revealing in structure for anyone who’s a fan of the soul and R&B that flowed out of the label at that time. But it’s also illustrative of the creative spirit that made Stax so important. Black and white musicians brought influences both shared and unique to their personal experience into a studio, which afforded them space to collectively write and produce songs that were then transmitted via radio, and the wild hearts and dancing feet of Black and white people – mostly kids – were able to encourage the sound further with their voices and pocketbooks.

It’s just as important that Soulsville, as a docuseries, does not shy away from the acrimonious relationships and succession of business deals that fed into the strife of Stax’s later history. That stuff is as big a part of its legacy as the magic of those sound and era-defining singles. But Soulsville elevates that material, too, with access to many of the key figures who made it, and a particular reverence for Otis Redding, whose influence as a successful Black recording artist in a country riven with racial tension is felt on a national level and inside the environs of Stax. It’s Redding who captivates in another tremendous piece of old footage, as he sings “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)” while calling out cues to the horn players and other musicians who surround him.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: It was a major stir when artists of the Stax-Volt touring revue hit the stages of London in 1966 and ‘67. “At each performance, I keep seeing all these white people jumping up and down, singing the songs,” Al Bell recalls. It was a key reaction, because it informed Bell’s further promotion of Stax artists. “I see that these people don’t have a problem with our music. That’s it. I’m going after white America.” 

Sleeper Star: Booker T. Jones, now in his late 70s, is a perceptive and thoughtful interview in Soulsville U.S.A. on how the vibe that came to define the Stax Records sound was organically determined. In the label’s earliest days, Jones himself was still a high schooler, cutting class to record sessions for songs that would go on to become stone cold classics. 

Most Pilot-y Line: “Stax had developed this astonishing sound,” historian and author Rob Bowman says in Soulsville U.S.A. “It’s Black culture. But it’s being made by interracial group, with elements of white pop and country.” And defined by songs like “Green Onions,” that fusion of a sound “established Stax as a place to make great R&B.” 

Our Call: STREAM IT. Stax: Soulsville U.S.A. explores the important story of an innovative record label that operated during a time when America really needed the songs and sounds it created. Which is not to say that the US couldn’t still benefit from being swept up in the soul and sweat and fervor and Otis Redding singing “Try a Little Tenderness.” In short, there’s nothing little about the influence of Stax Records. 

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.