MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Jim Stewart, the white Tennessee farm boy and fiddle player who co-founded the influential Stax Records with his sister in a Black, inner-city Memphis neighborhood and helped build the soulful “Memphis sound,” has died at age 92.
The Stax Museum of American Soul Music says Stewart died peacefully and surrounded by his family Monday. A cause of death was not disclosed.
Stewart was co-founder of Stax Records in Memphis.
During an era of racial strife, white musicians and producers worked there alongside Black singers, songwriters and instrumentalists to create the “Memphis sound” embodied by Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Carla Thomas, The Staple Singers, and many others.