STAX RECORDS had barely begun in the summer of 1962. Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton had bought the Capitol Theater on 926 East McLemore Avenue, Memphis, in 1960, roughly partitioning the former cinema into a record shop and studio. The South Memphis location swiftly gained what Southern soul historian Peter Guralnick calls a “transitional, almost bebop atmosphere”, as often school-age black and white musicians mingled in a strictly segregated city.
Three early national hits included “Last Night” by studio musicians the Mar-Keys, who morphed into a new live outfit including guitarist Steve Cropper. The prodigious multi-instrumentalist Booker T Jones, just 17
