Chips Moman

Memphis producer Chips Moman has been behind the control board of the most successful studios in music, cutting hits by everyone from Carla Thomas to Elvis Presley. Aside from his studio contributions, Moman has also been a successful songwriter, writing hits for James Carr, The Gentrys, and Aretha Franklin, among others.



Born in Georgia, Moman began his professional music career in California as a session guitarist at the Gold Star Studio in Los Angeles. After touring with rockabilly star Gene Vincent, the young guitarist drifted to Memphis in the late '50s where he met Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton, two siblings who were in the infancy stage of creating their own label, Satellite. Moman went to work for Stewart and Axton, engineering sessions at their small studio in Brunswick, Tennessee. The first few releases on the label made little waves and it was not until a change in location (Moman had found an old vacated movie theatre on East Mclemore), a change in format (from country to R&B), and a change in name (from Satellite to Stax) that the label first began to achieve its monumental success. The first hit came from the Moman-produced song "Gee Whiz" by Carla Thomas and the success sparked a situation where, for the next several years, Moman became Stax's main man behind the control board, producing hits by Rufus Thomas, The Mar-keys, William Bell and Booker T. And The Mgs.

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