The greatest of Southern soul labels began with a country fiddle. 

Jim Stewart, the founder of Stax Records and the “St” in the now-iconic name, was a Memphis banker and hillbilly fiddle player when he first launched the little record label that would come to define an entire musical style. 

Stewart died Monday, at age 92, ending a long, often quiet life that sparked sounds that continue to be heard around the world. He died “peacefully surrounded by family,” according to a statement by the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, which confirmed his passing. 

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Stewart perhaps cut an unlikely figure for the founder of a label that became synonymous with Southern soul music, creating stars such as Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes amid releasing roughly 800 singles and 300 albums in an initial span of fewer than 20 years. Among these releases were more than 150 songs on the pop charts and nearly 250 on the R&B charts, including sounds and titles as familiar as one’s own reflection: “Soul Man,” “Dock of the Bay,” “Green Onions” and more. 

But as with Sam Phillips, whose preceding Sun Records was a direct influence, Stewart’s story is rooted in a rich mid-century American cultural moment, one where energies converged on Memphis, where cultures and preexisting styles clashed and blended to forge something new. 

When Stewart first launched what would become Stax Records in the late 1950s, he was working at Memphis’ Union Planters Bank by day and playing fiddle in a group called the Canyon Cowboys at night, performing in Memphis clubs such as the Eagle’s Nest, which had also hosted a young Elvis Presley. 

In 1957, Stewart started Satellite Records to release country and rockabilly records, one of many such Memphis indie labels following Phillips’ lead.

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Two years later, with older sister Estelle Axton mortgaging her home to invest in the enterprise, the brother-sister partnership gave the label, which started in a relative’s garage, first a permanent home and soon after a new moniker. The latter combined the first two letters of each’s last names to form “Stax.” 

The new home was a converted movie theater on South Memphis’ McLemore Avenue, with the auditorium becoming a studio and its stage morphing into a control room. (The theater’s concession area continued to be the Satellite Record Shop even after “Stax” was born.)

Stewart and Axton were inducted together into the inaugural class of the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2012. Stewart had earlier been inducted into the 2002 class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (Axton died in 2004.)

The South Memphis studio would soon become a beacon to musicians and aspiring musicians in the neighborhood, such as a teenage Booker T. Jones, the father-and-daughter duo Rufus and Carla Thomas and young songwriters such as Hayes and David Porter. 

And then, before long, it began to draw talent from around the region and country, such as Georgia’s Otis Redding, Florida’s Sam & Dave and Chicago’s Staple Singers. 

While the racial dynamics at Stax were complex, it was a place where Black and white creators worked together to forge what would be timeless art, and did so against the backdrop of a mostly segregated city. 

The Stax house band, Booker T. & the MGs — Black organist Jones, drummer Al Jackson Jr. and bassist Lewis Steinberg, alongside white guitarist Steve Cropper, with white bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn soon replacing Steinberg — became a kind of symbol of this interaction, and of the promise of integration. 

The first records Stewart released on his initial Satellite label were country, rockabilly and pop, but he found his first success with “Fool in Love,” a doo-wop-flavored song from a Black vocal group from West Memphis called the Vel-Tones. 

The label then had its first real hit with “’Cause I Love You,” a saucy duet from Rufus and Carla, which drew the attention of Atlantic Records executive Jerry Wexler. 

Stewart cut a distribution deal with Wexler, and Stax quickly emerged as a national hitmaker, the Southern rival to Detroit’s Motown.

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Where the latter proclaimed itself “Hitsville U.S.A.,” Stax answered with “Soulsville U.S.A.,” the name now synonymous with the label’s South Memphis neighborhood.

Stewart, also a recording engineer, was a hand’s-on part of the label’s creative process. But while Stax developed some flamboyant stars, Stewart kept a low profile, and only more so after the label’s bankruptcy in 1976. 

Stewart’s last significant public appearance in Memphis may have come in 2018, at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, rebuilt a generation earlier on the site of his studio and label. There, Stewart presented the museum with his original fiddle, which became part of the permanent collection. Stewart’s final public appearance in Memphis was also his first one at the museum, though he had made earlier private visits. 

Stewart did not appear at the 2002 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, where he was inducted by acolytes Cropper and Sam Moore (of Sam & Dave).

“The guys and I, we spent many hours looking through the glass watching Jim frown at us, waiting to see what we were going to come up with next,” Cropper said at the Rock Hall induction. “He sort of had a way of pulling the best out of everyone.”

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Cropper noted that Stewart used his banking and accounting acumen not to short-change his artists, a practice rampant in the early days of rock and soul, but instead to ensure they received what they’d earned, calling Stewart “the most honest and caring man” he’d met in the industry. 

Accepting his induction in his place that night was Stewart’s granddaughter, Jennifer, who read a short statement from the Stewart: 

“Everyone has dreams, And I was very fortunate in that I was able to live mine. To say ours is a high-risk business is an understatement, but when you’re surrounded by artists such as Booker T. & the MGs, Sam & Dave, Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes, you can’t lose. To be honored by your peers in the music industry, while gratifying, is accepted with the sincere feeling of humility. It can best be said in the words of the great one, Jackie Gleason, ‘How sweet it is.’ ” 

Stewart is preceded in death by his wife Evelyn Stewart and sisters Estelle Axton and Mary Lucille McAlpin. He is survived by three children — Lori Stewart, Shannon Stewart, and Jeff Stewart — and by grandchildren Alyssa Luibel and Jennifer Stewart.

Plans for a memorial are pending.