Estelle Axton
Co-owner of Stax Records, Estelle Axton mortgaged her home to help her brother, Jim Stewart, build a recording business that drew on neighborhood talent to develop a new genre of music.

Farm Girl
Estelle Axton
(September 11, 1918-February 25, 2004)
Axton reminisced about her childhood in an interview with the Commercial Appeal published July 23, 1972. “I was just a farm girl. In fact, I was born in a log cabin. I mean a real log cabin..... That was just outside Middleton, Tennessee.... We had about 115 acres.” Axton graduated high school in 1935, earned a teaching certificate from Memphis State, and married in 1940.

Entrepreneur
After working in a bank for a decade, Axton’s brother Jim Stewart offered an exciting alternative: the record business. “When my husband asked me how I thought we were going to raise money for the music business, I said we could mortgage the house. He told me I was out of my mind. He said if we did that we’d soon be living in a tent,” she recalled. Axton convinced her husband to gamble on the music business and mortgage the house. “I was 40 years old. I remember the day we signed the papers. It was February 14, 1958, St. Valentine’s Day.” The $2500 from that mortgage bought the first recording equipment for the company and launched Satellite Records. Another re-financing of the Axton home brought in $4000 used to move the Satellite operation to the Capitol Theatre building at 926 E. McLemore Avenue.

Lady A
Everything clicked at the new studio, and the company took off after a hit by local girl Carla Thomas. Axton converted the old Capitol candy counter into a record shop, and became the first point of contact for many aspiring artists who came to browse the records. “The kids called me ‘Lady A’ while I was there. I never knew whether the ‘A’ was for Axton or Advice. It could have been both,” she said. Axton stayed behind the scenes at Stax. Most of the youngsters who helped build Stax from a mom and pop company into a major independent record company, however, credit the presence of Lady A. One of those youngsters, early Satellite recording artist Charles Heinz summed it up. “Most of that had to do with Ms. Axton,” he said. She encouraged the development of songwriters David Porter and Homer Bush, among others. She pushed for the signing of Albert King, another walk-in to the record shop. He became one of Stax's most popular and enduring artists.

Heart & Soul of Stax
Many participants in Stax history identify the late sixties as a period of change in the atmosphere at 926 E. McLemore. As Axton recalled, “The record business was fun while we were building it into something. But after it was built, it was just business.” In 1969, after the sale of Stax to Gulf & Western, Estelle left the shop to run the company’s mailroom. A short time later, Estelle sold her stake in Stax Records to her brother Jim Stewart, and Al Bell. She went on to found Fretone Records, where her many successes included the production and release of mega-hit "Disco Duck," but her presence at Stax was missed. “She was the heart and soul of that whole place,” Steve Cropper said. Lady A died February 24, 2004, and was laid to rest in Forrest Hill Cemetery in Memphis.

Well-Deserved Honor
In December, 2006, The Recording Academy announced that late Stax co-founder Estelle Axton will be honored with a Trustee's Award, along with Stax stalwarts Booker T. & the MGs, who will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award, as part of the upcoming Grammys. In receiving this honor, Axton joins legendary New Orleans engineer-producer Cosimo Matassa and composer Stephen Sondheim.