Motown Records had its first million-selling single in 1960 with The Miracles ' " Shop Around ", and in 1961, Stax Records had its first hit with Carla Thomas ' " Gee Whiz!

The Stax Museum is a museum located at 926 McLemore Avenue, the former location of Stax Records.

The search committee considered several cities, including Memphis ( home of Sun Studios and Stax Records ), Detroit ( home of Motown Records ), Cincinnati ( home of King Records ), New York City, and Cleveland.

The song's success brought Cannon himself back into the Stax Records studios in Memphis for his last recording that same year at age 79.

Fame Studios ( often referred to as Muscle Shoals after a nearby town ) enjoyed a close relationship with the Memphis label Stax Records, and many of the musicians and producers who worked in Memphis contributed to recordings in Alabama.

Mitchell's Hi Records continued the Stax tradition in that decade, releasing many hits by Green, Ann Peebles, Otis Clay, O. V.

Memphis, Tennessee label Stax Records nurtured a distinctive sound, which included putting vocals further back in the mix than most contemporary R & B records, using vibrant horn parts in place of background vocals, and a focus on the low end of the frequency spectrum.

Memphis soul is a shimmering, sultry style of soul music produced in the 1960s and 1970s at Stax Records and Hi Records in Memphis, Tennessee.

Originally the term was associated with mid-1960s white artists who performed soul and R & B that was similar to the music released by Motown Records and Stax Records.

The album, entitled Soulsville, is a Stax Records tribute album recorded at the legendary Ardent Studios.

* Mildred Pulliam Whitehorn, singer who recorded for Stax Records in the 1970s under the name Veda Brown

Estelle Axton, the co-founder of Stax Records, was born in Middleton, before moving to Memphis.

These tracks bridged the gap between the more mannered mainstream rhythm and blues of the Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller songwriting team of the 1950s, as exemplified by the Coasters and Drifters, and the gruffer Southern styles of the later ' 60s, as heard on the Stax Records sides of Otis Redding and Sam & Dave.

After failing to crack the top ten for a couple of years, by the beginning of 1968 Burke was no longer a major artist at Atlantic Records, who were producing hit records for other performers on their label including Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin, and were also reaping the rewards of their distribution deal with Stax on artists like Otis Redding and Eddie Floyd.

Atlantic Records was happy to let them fade away, while sucking up the back-catalogues and talents of regional hit factories such as Stax.

It was released on DVD as Soul Comes Home: A Celebration of Stax Records and Memphis Soul Music by Shout!

In 1968, the Staple Singers signed to Stax Records and released two albums with Steve Cropper and Booker T & the MG's — Soul Folk in Action and We'll Get Over.

In the 1960s, as members of the house band of Stax Records, they played on hundreds of recordings by artists such as Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Bill Withers, Sam & Dave, Carla and Rufus Thomas and Johnnie Taylor.

Sam & Dave's Stax recordings through 1967 were engineered by Stax founder Jim Stewart, who created the Memphis Sound by recording live in a single take.

To circumvent this, Stax, like many other record companies, created a number of subsidiary labels.

's were the label's backing band for most of the classic hits that came out of Stax, by Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and many more.

More recently, Pitts ' guitar playing was introduced to a new generation, when the hip-hop community began sampling classic Stax recordings.

Anthems like the title track " Everyone Deserves Music ", " Yes I Will " and " Bomb The World " are constructed with a nod to the 1980s rock of The Clash and U2, as well as to classic soul from Stax and Motown.

Stax's next major hit, the Mar-Keys ' instrumental " Last Night " ( also released in 1961 ) introduced the rawer Memphis soul sound for which Stax became known.

In the late 1960s, Stax artists such as Redding, Eddie Floyd, Wilson Pickett, and Johnnie Taylor made significant contributions to soul music.

They covered blues, R & B, soul, country and rock ' n ' roll songs, but with their own particular, fresh and raw style of interpretation, a successful blend of the Memphis Stax sound provided by MGs band members Steve Cropper and Donald " Duck " Dunn, and the New York City sound from the horn section ( Alan Rubin and Lou Marini, for example ).

He was exposed to the soul music of Motown, Stax, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Al Green, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, Gladys Knight, The Isley Brothers and Gamble and Huff growing up who were key influences on his musical style.

Individual session credits notwithstanding, what's indisputable is that the Stax house band ( Cropper, Jackson, Jones, and Steinberg, along with Cropper's Mar-Keys bandmate, bassist Donald “ Duck ” Dunn ; keyboardist Isaac Hayes ; and various horn players, most frequently Floyd Newman, Wayne Jackson and Andrew Love ) would set a standard for soul music.

Other than Aretha Franklin, no soul act during Sam & Dave's Stax years ( 1965 – 1968 ) had more consistent R & B chart success, including 10 consecutive top 20 singles and 3 consecutive top 10 LPs.

's, and the Stax horn section, the Mar-Keys had world-class musicians who co-wrote ( often without credit ) and contributed to recordings — the same musicians who recorded with Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Carla Thomas and other soul artists.

Stax author Rob Bowman called this " One of the most sublime records in soul music's history ", and Mar-Keys trumpet player Wayne Jackson called it the greatest song he has ever heard.

Similarly, the Sly and the Family Stone sound was a melting pot, or stew, of many influences and cultures, including James Brown proto-funk, Motown pop, Stax soul, Broadway showtunes, and psychedelic rock music.

Pure soul was popularized by Otis Redding and the other artists of Stax Records in Memphis, Tennessee.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the city was home to Stax Records, a soul music record label.

Stax put out funky, distinctly Southern records by artists like Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, and Wilson Pickett that stood in sharp contrast to the smoother, more pop records coming out of Detroit's Motown ( see Memphis soul ).

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 / soul performers.

" From 1961 on, virtually all of the output of Satellite Records ( and successor labels Stax and Volt ) would be in the R & B / southern soul style.

Soul music historian Rob Bowman notes that because of the distinctive sound, soul music fans can tell often within the first few notes if a song was recorded at Stax.

A replica of the original building, the Stax Museum features exhibits on the history of Stax and soul music in general, and hosts various music-related community programs and events.

The prime of Rufus ' recording career came in the 1960s and early 1970s, when he was on the roster of Memphis label, Stax, having one of the first hit sides at the historic soul and blues label, " Walking the Dog ", (# 5 R & B, # 10 Pop ) in 1963.

In the 1960s, Atlanta native Gladys Knight proved one of the most popular Motown recording artists, while Otis Redding, born in the small town of Dawson but raised in Macon, defined the grittier Southern soul sound of Memphis-based Stax Records. R & B singer Ray Charles was born in Albany, GA.

The term was first used in the mid-1960s to describe white artists who performed soul and R & B that was similar to the music of the Motown and Stax record labels.

Other notable UK exponents of blue-eyed soul included The Spencer Davis Group ( featuring singer-organist-guitarist Steve Winwood ) and archetypal mod band The Small Faces, whose sound was heavily influenced by the Stax label's house band Booker T & the MGs.