For Deanie Parker, Mark Crosby, and Morgan Neville,
with gratitude
For Tara McAdams, with love
We’re going to have to grapple with the problems
that men have been trying to grapple
with through history.
Rev. Martin Luther King
April 3, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee
What happened in this city is the result of oppression
and injustice, the inhumanity of man to man, and
we have come to you for leadership in ending the
situation. There are laws far greater than the laws of
Memphis and Tennessee, and these are the laws of God.
We fervently ask you not to hide any longer behind
legal technicalities and slogans, but to speak out at last
in favor of human dignity.
Rabbi James Wax to Memphis mayor Henry Loeb
April 5, 1968
Contents
Foreword by Booker T. Jones
Preface: City Streets
Part 1: Integration
1. Cutting Heads and Hair (1957–1959)
2. A New Planet (1960)
3. A Capitol Idea (1960)
4. The Satellite’s Orbit (1960–1962)
5. A Banker and a Gambler (1961–1962)
6. “Green Onions” (1962)
7. Walk Right In (1962–1963)
8. The Golden Glow (1963–1965)
9. Soul Men (1963–1966)
10. A Rocket in Wing Tips (1965–1966)
11. Kings and Queens of Soul (1965–1966)
12. Unusual Success (1966)
13. Fatback Cacciatore (1967)
14. White Carnations (1967–1968)
15. “Born Under a Bad Sign” (1968)
Part 2: Independence
16. “Soul Limbo” (1968)
17. A Step off the Curb (1968)
18. The Inspirer (1968–1969)
19. The Soul Explosion (1968–1969)
20. A Pot of Neckbones (1969–1970)
21. Shaft (1971–1972)
22. Balance Sheets and Balancing Acts (1971–1972)
23. Wattstax (1972)
24. The Spirit of Memphis (1972–1974)
25. A Vexation of the Spirit (1973–1974)
26. A Soul and a Hard Place (1975)
27. “I’ll Take You There” (Epilogue)
Acknowledgments
A Wrap-up of Other Key Players
A Note on Stax Recording Equipment by René Wu
A Note on the Interviews
Selected Bibliography
Turn It Up, Baby: Notes on Sources, Reading, and Listening
Plate Section
A Note on the Author
By the Same Author
Foreword
by Booker T. Jones
I walked through the door on David Porter’s heels, baritone sax in tow, not quite believing I had stepped into the studio. Before I knew it, I had my horn out and I was standing in the middle of a room of musicians. They played a short excerpt of the song, and asked if I could think of an intro. From out of the bell of my horn came the opening notes of “Cause I Love You,” and the rest of the band picked up the opening bars. Rufus and Carla Thomas, who were even further back in the room behind a baffle with a small window, began to sing.
The tape was rolling, and my career as a session musician had begun—in lieu of a morning algebra class at nearby Booker T. Washington High School. That song, “Cause I Love You,” put Stax on the map, and the place became my home away from home.
Years later, the song “Respect Yourself” galvanized a race of people that had tailspun across America in search of validation. A cry for healing, the song rivaled the “Negro National Anthem” for viability as an African-American theme and as a shove toward more self-esteem. The only place it could have been conceived was Stax Records.
“Respect Yourself” became an anthem on Chicago’s South Side, and every other black ghetto in America, like a ship come to save drowning dark-skinned sailors from self-loathing. It is a proper title for this vessel as well. A work of gargantuan proportions, this tome is a labor of love, just as were the efforts of many of the characters that helped create Stax Records. It is lyrical writing about a lyrical subject from a son of Memphis.
I found the book compelling . . . unable to put it down. Many of the mysteries of the company’s operations were clarified for me, its pages were that revealing. During those years, I often spent more time with Stax’s constituents than I did with my own family. My mother’s growing anger and distaste had always indicated there was something amiss in my alternate family. And, as you will discover, there were plenty of reasons to have situations obscured from a cloudy-headed young musical prodigy like me. When I reached the account of Otis Redding’s plane crash, I realized I had arrived at the belly of the book. Emotion brimming, I wanted to call Robert. Not that I had anything in particular to say, I just wanted to hear his voice. But, it was 10:30 P.M. on the West Coast; it would be after midnight in Memphis. So I didn’t call. But I thought he would understand what I was feeling—the sense of loss for the whole world, and for Stax and for Memphis.
Remembering that Sunday morning at the airport with the MGs, the scene at the bar—no one else really able to relate to what we were going through—and reading this account forty-six years later makes me think what a thin veil time can be, because the weight is just as heavy now . . . especially remembering the Bar-Kays or, as we used to call them, “the kids.” But, the older, wiser Booker knows to be thankful for the time spent with them all, and to minimize regrets as much as possible by thinking of happy times, such as when I played harmonica with “the kids” on “Knucklehead”—or when I laughed with Otis in the hall of a Paris hotel late one night.
I know Respect Yourself will mean much to others who may read it, and I must say it has meant a great deal to me—for more reasons than I can list. So much of my life was given to the events in its pages, and I feel the author has been a careful, conscientious caretaker of the story. As a reader, I was transported back—given another view in many instances—of golden years I shared with a professional family, flourishing, toiling, suffering, and eventually graduating from the School of Stax Records in Memphis. It was a precious time for me that defined my life.
The Stax legend is fortunate to have been entrusted to my friend and fellow Memphian, Robert Gordon.
Enjoy,
Booker T. Jones
Preface: City Streets
When I was a kid in 1970s Memphis, limousines were a rare sight. Used exclusively by the very wealthy, two would occasionally appear in traffic. From the backseat of our family station wagon, we’d scream for Mother to pull up closer. We’d know whose it was by the license plate. Elvis Presley’s was not customized. Isaac Hayes’s read MOSES, referring to his nickname, Black Moses. He was leading a people to the Promised Land.
I didn’t appreciate it then, but Memphis is a place where people come to realize their dreams. In the vast rural area that surrounds us, where the light of opportunity glows dimly if at all, Memphis is the radiant destination. It is hope on the horizon. The disenfranchised, the hungry, the hopeful are drawn here, where a lone voice in the Delta multiplies, can gain mass and volume to become a political and economic force. Memphis is the crossroads, the grand intersection of information, commerce, and diverse citizenry. Dirt and gravel roads, train tracks, creeks and rivers—all paths lead to Memphis.
And the plantation prejudices still prevailed here. This is where the train out of the country discharges its passengers. Had there been another train depot beyond us, Memphis would have been like any of the racist, peckerwood towns around it. It became, instead, a racist, peckerwood
big city. Publicly, as a civic enterprise, racism was embraced and enacted. From segregation to gerrymandering, from financial chicanery to murder, rape, and abuses physical and mental, African-Americans were beneath lower-class; one blues song reminded that if you shot a rabbit out of season, you’d wind up in jail, but “the season was always open on me / Nobody needed no bail.” White farmhands shrugged at the brutality, saying, “Kill a mule, buy another. Kill a nigger, hire another.” Memphis was one of those small towns, metastasized.
Contrary to its intentions, the oppression inspired great art, desperate art, lifesaving storytelling art. The blues that came from Memphis and Mississippi are a cry in the night for freedom, for justice, and at their foundation, for recognition. Dismiss me no more, I am a man. (The church and religious music fostered a similar narrative—I am a creature of God.) Despair and hope imbued the plea with immense beauty, extending beyond generations, beyond geography, beyond creed and race. The rule that intended to silence instead fostered a voice that outlives that of the tyrants. The blues, rock and roll, and soul music—all indigenous to Memphis and Mississippi—are expressions of the heart and soul in response to, in defiance of, the oppression. To be heard, the oppressed had to find entrance to the world of their oppressors. Ask Medgar Evers. Or the Memphis sanitation workers. Or Dr. King.
Stax Records was a little side project that became massive, an opening in the wall of subjugation, an accidental refuge that flourished, nourished by a sense of decency. Rays of hope, beams of trust, and the warmth of friendship cultured relationships that have become the legacy of the era and of the area. Stax songs are burned into our consciousness by their funky grooves and enduring appeal and are also resurrected time and again simply because of their good feeling. Stax is what we hear today on the radio, what we dance to at weddings, what brings a smile even when diluted as elevator music; it’s an inspiration for hip-hop, a reliable source for sampling because the vibe of the music has meaning—of togetherness and of independence, of the conflict between the two and of their unification. The music made at Stax Records became the soundtrack for liberation, the song of triumph, the sound of the path toward freedom. In the country, you could dream big. But in Memphis, you could ride in a big limousine.
On his first day of work, smack in the middle of the 1960s, Al Bell stepped into Jim Stewart’s office. It was small for two people. There was one desk and there were two chairs, one on either side of the desk. And there was one telephone.
Al Bell, left, and Jim Stewart in 1967. (API Photographers Collection)
Jim was white, Al was black. Jim owned Stax Records, Al was joining the staff to promote the records: get ’em played, get ’em sold.
It was 1965 in Memphis, Tennessee, the heart of the American South. Throughout this wide region, race mixing was nothing short of an assault on the social realm. Inside Stax Records, whites and blacks had worked side by side for half a decade. People who couldn’t publicly dine together were making beautiful music that the public—black and white—loved to hear. Many times, however, they’d step outside the studio and white cops would stop to check on the whites’ safety, to hassle the blacks.
On Al’s first day, Jim Stewart gestured him to his seat at the desk. Stax had scored several hits, but money was tight. Stax could make the hits, but they needed Al’s promotional whizbang to get more out of their success. His job would involve contacting disc jockeys across the country. Jim showed Al the stationery drawer. Stamps were inexpensive. There wasn’t much of a long-distance budget, but calls would be necessary.
One telephone and one desk. While Al situated himself, Jim made a call. When he hung up, Al watched as Jim slid that phone across the desk, toward him.
Al Bell made his call. When done, like his boss, he slid the phone back across the desk. It was such a quotidian act, yet revolutionary in 1965. Marchers in support of African-American voting rights were being beaten by police in Montgomery, Alabama. Malcolm X had recently been assassinated. Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner—three Freedom Riders—had the previous year been delivered to the Ku Klux Klan for murder by Mississippi police. In Memphis, thirty-three African-American men had been recently fired from the sanitation department for fomenting strike talk, seeking better wages and union recognition. Downtown, while sit-ins broke barriers at banks and businesses, the City of Memphis defied integration orders by closing its public swimming pools—for two consecutive hot summers—rather than having blacks and whites share the same water.
The expanse of the desk was either a great divide or a cultural bridge. Jim may have looked at Al or not. His heart was beating fast, or it wasn’t. Al’s was. But no handkerchief came out of Jim’s pocket to wipe clean the phone, no sanitizing spray. Jim had another call to make. He picked up the phone and he placed the call, sharing the earpiece, sharing the mouthpiece, sharing responsibility for the company.
“I was amazed to sit in the same room with this white guy who had been a country fiddle player,” says Al. “We had separate water fountains in Memphis and throughout the South. And if we wanted to go to a restaurant, we had to go to the back door—but to sit in that office with this white man, sharing the same telephone, sharing the same thoughts, and being treated like an equal human being—was really a phenomenon during that period of time. The spirit that came from Jim and his sister Estelle Axton allowed all of us, black and white, to come off the streets, where you had segregation and the negative attitude, and come into the doors of Stax, where you had freedom, you had harmony, you had people working together. It grew into what became really an oasis for all of us.”
Racism has long been the grit that produces musical pearls in Memphis. When Stax Records settled into its South Memphis home, it had only to open its doors and the warm, welcoming air attracted those who’d received society’s cold shoulder. It quickly—accidentally—unleashed a torrent of talent. People who wanted to be heard, to contribute, gravitated to Stax’s embrace. Stax would release eight hundred singles and three hundred albums between 1960 and 1975, becoming a national business entity on a scale that no other Memphis label ever did. Stax had 167 top-100 pop songs, nearly 250 top-100 R&B songs. Stax established the careers of Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, the Staple Singers, Sam and Dave, Booker T. & the MG’s, and Wilson Pickett. Isaac Hayes became the first black American to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song (“Theme from Shaft”). Stax created the Wattstax concert in 1972, dubbed “the Black Woodstock,” which spun off into a movie and two best-selling double albums. Many of the company’s achievements are notable for their cross-cultural appeal. Previously, even twenty years prior, the go-to civic response to such expressions of African-American pride would have been lynching. Through the 1960s and into the ’70s, when every step toward equality seemed to bring two back steps of repression and retraction, a small group of people in Memphis quietly reveled in racial harmony.
Beale Street, late March 1968, after Dr. King’s march supporting the striking sanitation workers turned violent. (University of Memphis Libraries/Special Collections)
The story of Stax is more than a record-label history. It is an American story, part Horatio Alger, part Alexis De Tocqueville—where the shoeshine boy becomes a star, the country hayseed an international magnate. It’s the story of individuals against society, of small business competing with large, of the disenfranchised seeking their own tile in the American mosaic. In Stax and its miraculous and foolhardy struggle for success, both the better and worse angels of our nature are interlocked, engaged in a righteous battle that, even now, remains undecided.
In its time, Stax was the rare place where everyone had a chance. The sound of the street could walk in the door. Regardless of age, background, and race, inside Stax you could get someone’s ear. In the city where segregation reigned, where the civic laws screamed “No!” Stax Records sang, jubilantly and simply, “Yes.”
Part 1
Integration
1. Cutting Heads and Hair
1957–1959
Jim Stewart sat in his barber’s chair. Jim’s hair was short, his face boyish and scrubbed clean. He wore thick-rimmed glasses and a necktie, his jacket on the barber’s coat hook. It was 1957 and Jim was twenty-seven years old, working in a bank and taking business classes at night on the GI Bill, with an eye toward becoming a lawyer. He played fiddle in a country swing band on weekends.
Within ten years, this man would be responsible for some of the most soulful, swinging, and hip music ever made. Black people—of which he presently knew approximately none—would be his closest associates. The Beatles, to be unleashed in just a few years, would reach the height of their popularity, and in the thick of Beatlemania, the Beatles would phone Jim Stewart and ask if they could record at his studio. In ten years, Jim would have a hep goatee and his hair would be much longer than it was before he sat down for this trim. But in this barber’s chair, 1957, there was no indication any of that would, or could, happen.
Jim had always inclined toward music. In his rural west Tennessee home, not only did he play country fiddle, but also his sisters, father, and uncle were a gospel quartet. The church music was staid but powerful—big broad notes that moved up and down like ballast on heavy machinery; it wasn’t rafter-shaking, but with enough voices this style of “shape note” singing could, like Samson, tear this building down.
Jim Stewart in Middleton, Tennessee. “I used to tease him that he played the fiddle,” says his sister Estelle. “Then he went to college and played the violin.” (Stax Museum of American Soul Music)
Where Jim had been raised, about seventy miles east of Memphis in rural Middleton, Tennessee, his sister Estelle, twelve years his senior, had been his schoolteacher in the one-room schoolhouse. She soon moved to Memphis, the middle sister followed, and then Jim arrived after finishing high school in 1948. He worked a couple years as a stock clerk, finished his military service in February 1953 (his fiddle got him into Special Services), and went to college. With his degree in business, he took a job in the bond department at Memphis’s First National Bank. He’d finish the desk job, attend law school at night, and still find time to play fiddle in the Canyon Cowboys—“My love in music was Bob Wills, Leon McAuliffe, Spade Cooley—Texas western swing,” Jim says. “If I could only fiddle like Johnny Gimble . . .”
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