Soul Series: In the Beginning - The Genesis of Stax II
- by Joe Nolan
The Mar-Keys
“A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold. And when he had said these things, he cried, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” - Luke 8:5-8
With their new recording equipment, Satellite records moved out of the Memphis garage to an abandoned grocery store in Brunswick, Tenn., about 30 miles east of the city. The building was being used as a storage space by Mr. Mitchell, a barber friend of Stewart’s. As far as Mitchell was concerned, if Stewart and Axton were willing to do the clean-up necessary to make the space workable, they were welcome to it.
The siblings got busy: hauling and cleaning, sweeping and dusting, installing soundproofing materials and nailing up acoustic tiles to maximize the sound quality they hoped to capture on the new tape recorder. Soon the space was spic-and-span and looked altogether like a real recording studio. There was only one thing missing - talent.
No sooner had Satellite set up shop than Axton and Stewart discovered that Brunswick wasn’t Memphis. For all of its small town charm, the rural community wasn’t brimming with would-be pop stars and - aside from recording Mr. Mitchell’s teenage daughter - they realized that the talent they needed was still back in Memphis. Their first big discovery was a group of stars-in-their-eyes high school boys who would play a big part in the future of the label: The Royal Spades.
Every Saturday, after a long week of working and taking care of her family, Axton would pick up the individual ‘Spades along with their gear, and the little group would head out to the country. With the fiery, red-haired Axton behind the wheel and a carload of gangly, pimpled boys hugging amplifiers in their laps, their guitar necks sticking out the windows, they made quite a sight bouncing over the railroad tracks into Brunswick, listening to the latest parade of hits on the radio, dreaming what it would be like to hear themselves on the air one day. It was during these Saturday excursions that the creative backbone of Stax was built, and Axton - the practical investor - was becoming an important catalyst in the chemistry that was taking place in the loud, little grocery store.
The roster of the young musicians that made up the Royal Spades reads like a Who’s Who of soul music history: Steve Cropper (guitar), Charlie Freeman (guitar), Terry Johnson (drummer), Donald Dunn (bass) and Estelle’s son, Packy Axton, who abandoned the guitar to concentrate on tenor saxophone. Eventually, the players in this first early experiment at Satellite would form the Mar-Keys, the Memphis Horns and one of the best studio-session bands popular music has ever seen. It was in working with the Royal Spades that Axton became a competent recording engineer in her own right. More importantly, it is when her talent and training as a teacher began to shine through, and she found that she had the important ability to listen critically and offer constructive advice to the young musicians. Eventually, some of Stax’s most prodigious talents would credit Axton’s motherly guidance with helping them find their musical voices. However, in her early days with the boys in Brunswick, Axton the bank teller was flying blind and making discoveries of her own:
“I never thought of it (music) till I got in it, and then I lived it, twenty-four hours a day. When I wasn’t working, I was dreaming about it.” - Estelle Axton, from Sweet Soul Music by Peter Guralnick
Sources: Peter Guralnick’s Sweet Soul Music, Harper and Row, 1986
James Dickerson’s Goin’ Back to Memphis, Simon and Schuster Macmillan, 1996
Michael Haralambos’ Right on: From Blues to Soul in Black America, Drake Publishers, 1975
The History of Rock website entry about the Mar-Keys
The AMG biography of Charlie Freeman
Joe Nolan is a poet, musician and freelance journalist in Nashville, TN. Nolan writes about visual art for the journal, Number, published by the University of Memphis. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.