Respect Yourself

by Robert Gordon

  The tour ran from March 17 to April 9, 1967, beginning and ending in London, with stops throughout England and in Paris, Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, and the Netherlands. The executives at Stax, wanting to make the most out of the trip, decided to record several of the shows; Atlantic liked that, and Tom Dowd was enlisted—he and Jim had developed a solid working relationship in the studio. The bands flew over first, allowing them to recuperate before the gigs began. “I flew with the bands,” says Tom, “and then I flew back to escort Jim Stewart and Al Bell to Europe because they’d never flown across the ocean and they were skittish about it.” The night of his return, Tom recorded the first London show. “They had their chops and it didn’t matter where they were in the world.”

  (Earlie Biles Collection)

  (Earlie Biles Collection)

  Before the first public show at the Finsbury Park Astoria, there was a private show for invited guests at the Bag O’Nails, a small London club. “Paul McCartney was there,” Carla says. The Beatles were working on Sgt. Pepper, and he’d taken a break to come hear his colleagues live. “He stayed through the whole night. It was a real intimate place. He came back and introduced himself. And we all sat at a table and talked to him. It was a mutual admiration society.”

  The entourage traveled on a bus, playing packed concerts to enthusiastic response, and sightseeing informally. Wayne Jackson and Duck Dunn acquired home movie cameras and began rolling film as soon as the plane got above the clouds; there were lots of things they’d never seen before. “When I was a little bitty girl,” Carla continues, “it was almost as if the Lord spoke to me and said, ‘You’re going to be doing a lot of traveling.’ I thought I would be in the air force or something. I had no idea that I would be traveling as a singer.” The downside to traveling, like Otis had warned, was that the food in Europe was not what they were accustomed to. “All I could eat was boiled eggs and baked potatoes,” says Duck. “The rest of it was just horrible. The lettuce was like wet newspapers. It was a great time, but it was also the longest weeks of my life.” At an English lunch one day, Duck summoned all the foreign words he could muster from the fancier menus he’d seen in Memphis restaurants and told the waiter that he’d like an order of “fatback cacciatore.” Communication gap, soul style.

  “I always compare it to what happened when the Beatles first came to the States and they had all these screaming teenagers rushing them,” says Steve. “That’s what happened for us.”

  “The barriers, the people standing outside the theaters waiting to see the show,” affirms Eddie Floyd. “And we were nervous, didn’t know whether the Europeans are going to like the show. But we know the music and so we put the music on, and they liked the music.”

  In fact, they loved the music. Prior to their arrival, radio stations had Stax in heavy rotation—the latest music, and the already classic songs like “Green Onions” and “Last Night.” The band would hit nightclubs when they had the chance, and Steve immediately noticed that the records’ bass sounds hit harder—the European mastering and pressing drew out more bottom, making them more danceable.

  And at the shows, the audiences couldn’t be held in their seats. Carla had them dancing to “B-A-B-Y” and won their hearts with her version of the Beatles’ “Yesterday.” Arthur Conley became the new artist to watch, his “Sweet Soul Music” an irresistible battle cry. Eddie Floyd, Sam and Dave, and Otis Redding presented the problems that every promoter embraces—each one is dynamic enough to close the show, so what order should they go in? The artists hadn’t toured as a group and most had not seen how the others performed. The results were eye-opening to everyone. Otis, having been to Europe, had to climax, and Eddie preceded the duet because they were double dynamite. They were so explosive that they became a problem for Otis Redding. “We came on and we broke out,” says Sam Moore. “Whoa! We were like mad animals. We went at them, singing and sweating and twisting and turning and spinning and—and the European people went crazy. They just went crazy.”

  Sam and Dave ended their set with “Hold On, I’m Coming,” and the energy that song drew from the audience could never be anticipated. “Sam and Dave got these people going,” says Steve, “got them dancing and they’d run through the aisles.”

  The Stax Revue was taking the Europeans to church, or as near as most of the audience would get to a Mississippi Baptist congregation. “They had to get a mop out there to wipe some of Sam and Dave’s blood and guts off the stage,” recounts Wayne Jackson, mostly figuratively. “They were just slopping in their own sweat. Their clothes were wringing wet. We were wringing wet. One of them would just faint, fall out, they’d drag him offstage. And then Sam would say good night . . . and here they come, back out and starting again. They had everybody just in pandemonium. And Otis would stand over there on the side, watching.” More than once, the crowds got so out of control that security interrupted Sam and Dave’s set to restore calm, threatening to forbid their return to the stage—for the safety of all concerned.

  The problem for Otis Redding was that he had to follow them and, unless he wanted to be upstaged, he had to outdo them. Otis was a recording artist who understood the dynamics of a song, but as a performer, he was just learning about stage movement. “Up to this point, Otis had been like Sam Cooke and Jesse Velvet,” says Al Bell, “a great balladeer, standing at the microphone, and he’d sing and move the audience, ’cause he had that passion and that tear in his voice.” Otis didn’t dance like James Brown. From his place at the center microphone, he’d sing with feeling, make eye contact with the audience, twist his upper body, and stomp his feet—but he rarely left that center stage. Watching Sam and Dave from behind the curtain, he knew he’d have to add extra oomph.

  “Otis is standing in the wings and he’s nervous,” Al Jackson told an interviewer in the early 1970s. “From the time we started, from the Mar-Keys to Arthur Conley on down, that whole show didn’t lighten up. He’s seeing that reception that Sam and Dave is getting and he ain’t digging this at all. And so he got ready to get out there. The cat introducing him says ‘O-T—’ I’m sitting there just as ready as he is and when the host says, ‘Otis Redding’ I go ‘One, two, three—’ and Otis transformed. I didn’t believe it. When he hit that stage he had a smile on his face and he was there, all man. ‘Here I am.’ He’d grab that mike and that’s all he’d do for that whole forty-five minutes was prowl that stage. I used to sit there and wonder how he did it. That son of a bitch was all man.”

  Al Bell saw the same transformation. “He was just like a thoroughbred racehorse waiting for the bell,” he says. “When Sam and Dave finished, Otis Redding broke from behind that stage and grabbed the microphone, and he started going from one end of the stage to the other. I couldn’t believe what was going on—the energy that I had never seen before!” Once, after following Sam and Dave, Otis was heard to mutter, “I never want to have to follow those motherfuckers again.”

  In addition to the battles on the stage, there was some in-fighting off the stage. To everyone’s surprise, Otis got better lodging than they did; some of the shows were even billed as the Otis Redding Show instead of the Stax-Volt Revue. Another simmering tension came to a head, this one between Steve and Al Bell—once so close they’d written songs together. Steve, who had wielded authority at Stax long before Al arrived, saw that Al was exuding a new confidence. Indeed, Stax’s sales had risen dramatically since his arrival, and their prominence—now on two continents—was largely attributable to his promotional work. A showdown seemed inevitable. It occurred in Al Bell’s hotel room, where a tour meeting had been called. “Some things were said,” says Steve. “There were bad feelings that I never, ever got over.” Al coveted the clout that Steve had as the label’s A&R director, the ability to sign new artists. The sensitivities of what transpired behind closed doors remain raw decades later, and details are not discussed. “All of a sudden, I wasn’t A&R director anymore,” says Steve. “I was still a member of the band. I was still making t
he same money. But I had no stick. My stick was taken away and given to Al Bell.”

  That summer, Al was promoted to executive vice president. Other changes transpired after they got home. Wayne and Andrew were finally put on salary; if the rhythm section was getting proper treatment, why not the horns? But the biggest changes were in self-perception. Having been exposed to the wider world, they realized the impact of the place they’d carved in it. “Europe changed everybody’s perception of themselves,” says Steve. “That Stax-Volt tour gave us a new insight to what the world really thought of us, ’cause we didn’t think outside the block we lived on. But all of a sudden, we got a sense that the whole world is listening to what we’re doing.”

  “The tour was certainly enlightening for all of us,” Jim Stewart understates, “a watershed moment. We were no longer the funky little company on McLemore Avenue. What can we do to enhance our position in this world market? We began to become more business oriented, looking for larger margins. It was like the light flashed on and now we were dealing with a different level. It’s mind-boggling.”

  “The world to me at that time was the United States of America,” says Booker. “The European tour was like the Indians meeting Columbus, a huge eye-opener.”

  “It was amazing to have all-white audiences, standing room only, and to be treated by the bellhops or attendants at the hotels and other people like stars,” says Al Bell. “We hadn’t felt that or experienced that before.” This sense of respect that he felt proved transformative, both on a personal level and on his goals for the company. Coming from a land where his skin color often obscured his worth, Al was recalibrated by strangers treating him as a whole man, a citizen of value. “Although the music came from an integrated group of people, Europeans viewed it as blacks’s music, as a music that came from a culture. I realized, The world says this is a legitimate, authentic music, and it should be respected and appreciated as a music of that black peoples’ culture. That’s what I felt and received and understood in Europe. And that caused me to move to another level in my thinking of how we would promote and market our product in America.

  His determination as a record promoter was rejuvenated, fortified. “We hadn’t been getting our records into many of the larger stores that catered primarily to whites. But I became very aggressive and demanding with respect to that. Europe let me know that the sales potential is out there. And that sales potential justifies us making that kind of investment into our product, even though, at that point, the industry was not enthusiastically positioning our product. I didn’t stop. I mean, I just didn’t stop. Don’t tell me, ‘No, it can’t be done.’ I see it. I was on the kill to take Stax and those artists to that level of appreciation in this country.”

  Their horizons widened, deepened. They’d flown on a plane now, and their thoughts, goals, and visions soared like never before. They had experienced their own power, seen and felt the response they summoned. Otis was undeniable as a superstar in the making, Sam and Dave too. The potential everyone felt was unbounded, the possibilities overwhelming.

  14. White Carnations

  1967–1968

  This was a prolific period for Stax, the success fueling the fires of creativity. There were hits from house regulars: William Bell—“Never Like This Before,” “Everybody Loves a Winner,” and “Eloise, Hang On In There”; from Booker T. & the MG’s—“My Sweet Potato,” “Booker Loo,” “Hip Hug Her,” “Slim Jenkins’ Place,” and “Groovin’” (released by the MG’s before the original by the Rascals, because Tom Dowd shared an Atlantic test pressing with them, and they cut it on the spot); Carla recorded one of her career highlights, “B-A-B-Y,” and also hit with her Otis duet, “Tramp,” a session that proved so much fun they recorded a whole album together, The King and Queen of Soul.

  Otis’s hits included “My Lover’s Prayer,” “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song),” and his innovative take on “Try a Little Tenderness,” transforming a standard into a truly personal vision. “Tenderness” dates to the 1930s, and had been covered by Bing Crosby and Nina Simone, among many. Phil Walden suggested the song, and before Otis played Phil his version, he told Phil, “It’s a brand-new song now.” Sam and Dave’s “I Can’t Stand Up,” a less shouted, more nuanced vocal, was another in their run (a bigger hit abroad than in the USA), this one written by Stax’s Homer Banks and Allen Jones, a break from the duo’s Hayes and Porter hits.

  Newly arrived Albert King, after making his presence known with “Laundromat Blues,” released classics “Crosscut Saw” and “Born Under a Bad Sign.” Eddie Floyd hit again with “Raise Your Hand,” Mable John announced her arrival with “Your Good Thing (Is About to End)” and “Same Time, Same Place,” and Johnnie Taylor got comfortable, hitting with “I Got to Love Somebody’s Baby,” “Little Bluebird,” and “Ain’t That Lovin’ You (for More Reasons Than One).”

  Stax expanded its publishing offices, taking over the neighboring bay to the west after the TV-repair service closed. David Porter was growing a team, and now they had a place with their own piano, where the business of writing and publishing could be managed. The glory spread beyond the artists. Record World magazine named Jim Stewart its outstanding record producer of 1967, and in early 1968, Jim announced an expansion into St. Louis, taking over office space and a studio there. He told Billboard that Stax was eyeing studio space in Atlanta too.

  The thrill of the European tour was still hanging like a garland around the musicians when another call came, this time from the West. Promoters in California were planning the first rock and roll festival, modeled on successful jazz and folk festivals. Organizers in Monterey wanted Otis to help round out a lineup that included established artists performing alongside relatively unknown British rock acts, upcoming psychedelic artists, and blues, jazz, and country artists. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and the Who are among those who jump-started their careers at the Monterey Pop Festival. Otis was the only southern soul act invited, but one of the festival organizers, Andrew Oldham, who managed the Rolling Stones, was intent on exposing the Haight-Ashbury hipsters to this artist who had so strongly influenced his group. Any doubts about the show’s potential were assuaged by the adamant endorsement of Jerry Wexler. Otis was still without a band and the MG’s were committed to the studio, but they—and Jim Stewart—knew the West Coast exposure could be really helpful, so they happily obliged; the horns too. Everyone got their tour suits dry-cleaned and prepared to go West for the June 17, 1967, appearance. They were given the honor of closing the Saturday night of the festival.

  Otis met the MG’s and Mar-Keys there a day early, time enough to get refreshed and to review their show. “We had an afternoon rehearsal without amplifiers in a hotel room,” says Duck, “just trying to remember what we’d done in Europe.” The festival was in full swing, and Monterey was like a rainbow commune, an eye-opening, mind-blowing experience from the moment they arrived. “I stepped on the street in Monterey and it changed my life,” Booker says, describing the place that won his heart and would eventually draw him West to settle. “It was our first announcement that something new was happening in the United States. I had never seen people dress like that. For the first time I saw restaurants giving food for free. People were sharing hotel rooms and disregarding money. No police in the streets. Coming out of Memphis, it was a shock. History was changing at that moment, and we knew it.”

  “We’d seen hippies on television,” says Wayne, “but we hadn’t been around them, with the babies and flowers and headbands and doing all that love, dove, peace thing.”

  “The aroma,” says Steve, referring to the prevalence of marijuana, “we weren’t exposed to any of that yet. We were just little choirboys from Memphis.” The cherubs found themselves at the dawning of the age of Aquarius. More than two years before Woodstock, this was the loudest announcement yet to mainstream America that there was more to rock and soul than girls screaming at the Beatles. Duck would promptly adopt the fashion, letting his hair and sideburns grow, getti
ng a wide-brimmed hat and bell-bottoms. “There were fifty thousand people there,” says Wayne. “The biggest crowd we’d ever seen—three times bigger than my hometown. And they were all hippies.”

  On show day, the choirboys watched and waited. The Electric Flag, Moby Grape, Hugh Masekela—California was even further from Memphis than they imagined. Their set was to begin after the Jefferson Airplane, who were hot with the recent singles “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit.” By then, the show’s schedule had fallen behind, and a light rain was beginning. The plan had been to give the hippies a proper soul revue, with the MG’s warming up the crowd, then the horns joining them for a couple songs; a ramp-up to star time with Otis Redding. Festival organizers got in Otis’s manager’s ear, suggesting they cut the warm-up and go directly to the main event; Phil Walden didn’t want to lose the crowd, and he bore down hard on the band to give up their set. When the Airplane finished, the rain caused a fifteen-minute delay and the tension backstage thickened. The audience, meanwhile, found the drizzle refreshing; the original plan held.

  The MG’s walked out wearing green mohair suits and Beatle boots, and in that audience at that time, they were the freaks: No one else looked like that. “We were doing our steps,” says Wayne, “and we must have looked like a lounge act.” Nothing may have looked right, but something was definitely working.

  “Booker T. & the MG’s took the stage with their little amps,” says Jerry Wexler. “All day there’d been wild uninhibited rock and roll and volume with twenty-foot Marshall amps—all the wrong things about rock and roll. And when the audience heard the real thing, they made the right responses. Next thing you know, you could hear the band and the groove. I found out one thing that night: When you got a loud crowd, play soft.”