Stax Horns Into the Pop Market for Sound Success

MEMPHIS — A run-down movie theater in a threadbare black neighborhood is the home of Stax Records, a label whose 40 employees and 10 or 15 major acts are individualistic enough to compete with Nashville, Detroit and San Francisco as a dominant geographic sound in the pop music market. Memphis, in fact, is challenging Nashville as the currently voguish place for rootless pop acts to record. Dusty Springfield, white and English, found a nice new sound for herself in this nest of rhythm and blues and Elvis Presley, whose first recordings were made in Memphis for Sun Records, returned there to record his last album.