“Stax was definitely about community,” says Parker, “and our social consciousness was not just limited to the music or to Memphis alone, although that’s where it started. At first it wasn’t deliberate. Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton were doing what they thought was right in making good business decisions. They didn’t care if a musician was black or white. They wanted the best musicians. So in racially segregated Memphis, they were using integrated bands, and the white producer Chips Moman was making records with black artists. And when those artists played concerts and went on tour, black and white people came together in their audiences. So in that way Jim and Estelle affected the entire social fabric of Memphis.”

When Al Bell, a marketing and promotions executive, came to the company as a minority shareholder in 1965, he brought a more overt progressive social agenda with him. Stax donated money and held benefit concerts for a variety of poverty, hunger, and small-business initiatives. The most visible was 1972’s “Wattstax” concert, a benefit to help restore Los Angeles’s Watts section the year after it was devastated by fire and rioting. A 30th-anniversary edition of the “Wattstax” concert film was released on DVD in 2004, digitally enhancing the vibrant performances of Rufus and Carla Thomas, the Bar-Kays, Albert King, the Staple Singers, and Isaac Hayes.

But to the artists at Stax, the label’s deepest and closest community was their own. “When I would come to Memphis to record at Stax, it was like coming home to family,” says Mabel John, who cut the 1966 soul classic “Your Good Thing Is About To End” after leaving Motown. “It was all about caring and collaboration. The other artists were interested in what you were dong and how they could help, and not because they wanted anything from you. The producers worked with you as partners. You never felt like you were controlled by someone else. And all my business with Stax was fair. I’ve worked with many labels, and Stax was like no other.”