TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Stacey Shrader Joslin on May 20, 2024

A new documentary "STAX: Soulsville U.S.A." tells the story of the rise and fall of the iconic Memphis record label. The four-part series, which will air on HBO and stream on Max, is a “story of groundbreaking music, hard truths and unhappy endings,” according to the Commercial Appeal. Spoiler alert: the series concludes — not with the launch of the Stax Museum (the site of a past TBA Convention event) or the success of the Stax Music Academy or Soulsville Charter School — but with the original studio razed, an empty lot serving as a painful reminder of what once thrived in the heart of South Memphis. “I wanted us to wrestle with two truths,” says the documentary’s director, Jamila Wignot. “There’s the beauty and the legacy of the music, and there’s the fact that it wasn’t allowed to live on. To me, it was important to hold both of those, because that’s the honest story.”