Now, 50 years after its birth and some 30 years after it went belly up, Stax is back. Concord Records has resurrected the label, and its first release by a major new artist in decades, Angie Stone’s “The Art of Love and War,” just hit stores. “I finally feel comfortable, like I’m in a place where people get it,” says Stone, a throaty crooner who’s been on at least five different record labels in the last seven years. Her old labels “all said they got it, but they always wanted to put a twist on the songs for sales. I wanted it raw, and Stax got that.” Hayes, meanwhile, plans to release his first Stax album in ages next spring. “It sure feels good,” he told NEWSWEEK at a recent reunion show in Memphis. “We’re back together again.”
It’s a remarkable turnaround, considering the label’s dilapidated studio was reduced to a pile of rubble in 1989. Now there’s a Stax museum on the spot. “Look at the Stax catalog and you can basically chart the history of African-Americans at the time,” says Lalah Hathaway, daughter of the late Stax artist Donny Hathaway and now a respected soul singer herself who’s signed to … Stax. Where will the storied label go from here? Isaac Hayes has the answer: “Up, man. Up.”
