Aretha Franklin was almost a Stax Records artist

Aretha Franklin almost joined fellow soul legends Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes at Stax Records in Memphis, Tennessee, but label bosses couldn’t afford her.
Stax founder Jim Stewart was offered the chance to sign Aretha to his stable of artists by Atlantic Records boss Jerry Wexler, as part of a deal that tied the larger company’s acts to the Memphis label, but he had to say no.
Longtime Stax employee and historian Deanie Parker recalls the moment her boss had to turn down the Queen of Soul.
“Jerry had introduced the notion to Jim, but at the time, we did not have the cash liquidity to give her the advance that she wanted, to sign,” Deanie tells WENN.
“I’ve spoken to Jim about this and he said, ‘I didn’t want to turn down Aretha; I knew she was a powerhouse’. We already had Sam & Dave and Wilson Pickett, who were Atlantic artists, but we couldn’t add Aretha to the roster.”
Franklin went on to cut her hits at FAME Studios in Alabama, and Parker still wishes Stax had been more established at that time to recruit bigger names.
“We weren’t in business long enough to attract the best entertainers,” she says. “If we had been in business longer who’s to say how far we could have gone.”
Stax later lost its deal with Atlantic and the company fell apart in the early 1970s, but still enjoyed a stellar year in 1968 as Jim, Deanie and their co-workers fought on with business following the December, 1967 plane crash death of their number one act, Otis Redding.
All the singles and B-sides released by Stax in 1968 have been compiled for a new box set, Stax ’68: A Memphis Story, which is released later this month (Oct18).