Genre: TV Series
Grade: A
Notable People: Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, Carla Thomas, Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, Isaac Hayes, Jim Stewart, Al Bell; Created and Directed by: Jamila Wignot
Title: Stax: Soulsville, USA
Review: n 1960s Memphis, an audacious set of interracial collaborators dared to make their own music on their own terms, forming Stax Records, one of America’s most influential creators of Black music. This amazing four-part documentary follows the arc and ultimate fizzle of Stax; its fight to represent true American Black music, made for Black people and to be different than Motown in its quest for white audience. We see the underbelly of its ultimate demise in its failure to overcome the challenge of the giant white American music hierarchy: ultimately run over by Columbia records and burnt to the ground. But along the way, this extraordinary small town record label founded by bet brother Jim Stewart and sister Estelle Axton (ergo ST-AX) became the holy ground of soul music with Sam and Dave, Otis, Rufus and Carla Thomas, the Staples, the Bar-Kays and finally, their savior, the Black Messiah- Isaac Hayes. Told by the surviving principles in blunt and no-holds bard fashion, it is a compelling story of race, extraordinary creativity and the most unusual of integrated companies in southern America. And, it hovers around the enormously prescient Booker T. and the MG’S- America’s greatest interracial band. Eye opening.