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With this week's premiere of the PBS documentary "Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story on Great Performances," one of the great chapters in popular American music is reopened and set before the public -- a public that, 50 years on, may never have known how deeply the chords of promise and denial struck during the civil rights movement reverberated through the now-classic records that poured out of the little soul label's studio in an old movie theater on East McLemore Avenue in a run-down section of Memphis, Tenn. Just as intriguing, this year augers a new chapter in the Stax saga: The airing of "Respect Yourself" coincides with an ambitious relaunch of the label that pairs classic gems from its vaults with new releases.

Begun in 1957 by the brother-and-sister team of Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton, who combined the first two letters of their last names to come up with "Stax," the label was initially like hundreds of other small, regional outfits, recording a little country, a little pop, and whatever else caught their attention. That all changed when Memphis R&B disk jockey Rufus Thomas wandered in and convinced Stewart and Axton to let him cut "Cause I Love You," an original duet with his 17-year-old daughter, Carla.

A regional hit, the record led to a national distribution deal with Atlantic Records and Carla's follow-up, "Gee Whiz," became a top 10 hit. Before long, Stax was churning out monster hits by artists such as Otis Redding, the Staple Singers, Eddie Floyd, William Bell and Albert King, and Atlantic was sending some of its biggest soul stars including Sam & Dave, Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin to Memphis to work with Stax's songwriters, producers and musicians.

At the core of the Memphis magic was a crew and spirit that defied the tenor of the times: Stax was a tight and completely integrated shop, from its key core of studio musicians such as Booker T. & the MGs, the Mar-Keys and the Memphis Horns; songwriters Isaac Hayes, David Porter and Steve Cropper; and all the way up to its executives. With an unfailingly funky, rock-steady sound, the Stax crew created extraordinary recordings such as "Hold On (I'm Coming)," "In the Midnight Hour," "Knock on Wood," "Try a Little Tenderness," "I'll Take You There," "Green Onions," "Soul Man" and "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay."

But if Stax seemed a harbinger of both a new music business and a new America, 1967 was the year it all went sour. First and foremost was the death of Otis Redding in a plane crash -- an event that Memphis music historian Robert Gordon, the co-director/producer of "Respect Yourself," says left the company and its staff reeling. The following year, Jim Stewart discovered he'd done more than sign a distribution agreement with Atlantic -- he'd signed away all the rights to the company's biggest hits. And then the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. -- who was in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers and staying at the nearby Lorraine Hotel where the Stax staff frequently snuck off to cool down in the swimming pool or play cards -- shattered the comity that had defined the label.

"Looking back, I never got over the trauma," Deanie Parker says of the King assassination and the subsequent shattering of Stax. Briefly signed to the label as a singer, Parker stuck around Stax as a publicist, and became a driving force behind the launching of the Stax Museum and the music academy for local kids now housed at the former studio. "I have really grieved that abrupt interruption. I always wonder: What would we have achieved if we'd been embraced by a city rather than viewed suspiciously as people who were promoting integration?"

Though Stax soldiered on into the '70s, scoring big sellers with Isaac Hayes, Jean Knight and Richard Pryor and mounting and filming the "Wattstax" festival in Los Angeles, the label never regained its financial footing. Succumbing to bankruptcy, its hits stayed with Atlantic while the rest of its catalog was sold to Fantasy Records, where it largely languished. But with the sale of Fantasy to Concord Records, Stax now has the chance for a renaissance: Along with mounting recent 50th anniversary "Stax Revue" concerts at the Hollywood Bowl, Antone's in Austin, Texas, and the Memphis Orpheum featuring Stax veterans such as Booker T. & the MGs, Eddie Floyd, Mable John, William Bell and Isaac Hayes (who has signed to the reactivated label), Concord has been releasing expanded versions of classic Stax albums by Johnnie Taylor and Carla Thomas. The label will also soon add a three-CD complete soundtrack to Wattstax as well as a new series of DVDs including a 1967 Norwegian performance of the Stax/Volt tour featuring Sam & Dave and Otis Redding, an expanded version of "Respect Yourself," and an original documentary including previously unseen performances and interviews entitled "The Dream Is Over: The Legend of Otis Redding," to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the singer's death.

Perhaps even more enticing than seeing the great catalog reintroduced is the idea that Stax will once again be an active soul label. Concord A&R executive Robert Smith says the label's new signings, including singers Angie Stone, Lalah Hathaway and N'dambi and the funk-jazz band Soulive, signal its determination to carry the Stax legacy forward. "You can't recreate the past," Smith says, "but you can recreate an artistic context. Stax stood for a kind of artist- and song-based soul: It was raw and funky, but the craft was high and more about a feeling than a definition. The intent isn't to find artists in the Stax mold but artists who demonstrate what soul is today and what it will become."

For lovers of Stax, the music and the promise are its legacy and lasting meaning. Filmmaker Gordon, who grew up in Memphis, says there was always a lot of lore attached to the label. "When I was a kid, if I saw a limo in traffic, I knew it was either Elvis or Isaac Hayes," he says. "Stax had that glamour. But it also came to mean this long-lasting music with integrity that was part of a culture of open-mindedness at a time when society was closed."

Fred Goodman is the author of "The Mansion on the Hill: Dylan, Young, Geffen, Springsteen and the Head-on Collision of Rock and Commerce" (Vintage). A former editor of Rolling Stone and Billboard, his work has appeared in many major publications.