STAX Records is critical to American music history as one of the most popular soul music record labels of all time. In 15 years, STAX placed more than 167 hit songs in the Top 100 on the pop charts and a staggering 243 hits in the Top 100 R&B charts. It launched the careers of legendary artists such as Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Rufus & Carla Thomas and Booker T. & the M.G.’s, Isaac Hayes among numerous others.
The HBO Original four-part documentary series STAX: Soulsville, U.S.A., an official selection of the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival and winner of the TV Premiere Audience Award, is directed by Brooklyn-based filmmaker Jamila Wignot.
Wignot told WBGO's Doug Doyle that she's thrilled the doc series about the Memphis-based label (streaming on MAX) has now been nominated for two Emmy Awards.
"I'm just really excited to have this series out in the world. I knew what we had was an incredible story with some of the most important and amazing music that contributed to this culture and if we did our jobs right I thought we would have a fighting chance of having this series recognized as it has been."
Wignot was first introduced to the project through legendary documentarian Ezra Edelman.
"I'm great friends with Ezra Edelman, renowned and Academy Award-winning documentarian. He called me up one day and grab lunch. So I put my Spotify on and put my airbuds in and started listening to Otis Redding and walked to the restaurant we were going to meet at because were both Brooklynites. I sit down at the table and he says what do you think about making a documentary series about STAX Records. I told him look what's on my phone right now. So that's how it started."
The series is a production of Laylow Pictures and White Horse Pictures in association with Concord Originals, Polygram Entertainment, and Warner Music Entertainment.
STAX: Soulsville, U.S.A. is stacked with archival footage and interviews along with current interviews from those directly involved with the legendary label founded by Jim Stewart and his sister Estelle Axton.
"Fortunately, the label has been of interest to people since it closed and so there have been other projects that have done some interviews with some of the key players, significantly Isaac Hayes in particular, I wish that he was still alive so I could have interviewed him myself. He was such a famous person. I think for anybody who knew him as the voice of "Chef" on South Park this is going to be mind-blowing."
Jamila Wignot's body of work includes AILEY (Sundance '21); the Peabody, Emmy, and duPont-Columbia award-winning THE AFRICAN AMERICANS: MANY RIVERS TO CROSS; TOWN HALL a feature-length co-production with ITVS about the Tea Party movement; and for AMERICAN EXPERIENCE the Peabody Award-winning "Triangle Fire" and Emmy-nominated "Walt Whitman".
You can SEE Doug Doyle's entire interview with Jamila Wignot here.
