“We had a new producer to come,” says Carla. “Don Davis—that’s when I could tell a whole big difference in the music. He brought a Detroit style, and he was accustomed to that Detroit full sound, and he brought in different writers, which made a big difference.” Davis’s first record with Carla was “Pick Up the Pieces,” which he cowrote. The sound is decidedly different from what might be termed standard Stax fare, with its heavy strings and vibraphone; even the horn section sounds more like a pops symphony than a soul record. And it was recorded Detroit style, meaning Carla recorded her part to a finished musical track, not with a band. To sing to the track, she had to wear headphones, a new device at Stax but common at most major studios. The song became a top-twenty R&B hit, and set a sonic template for “Where Do I Go,” an even more fully realized production.
The experiment with Carla a success, Al gave Don Davis more duties. Al believed there was untapped appeal in Johnnie Taylor, and wanted Davis to expand his audience. “I knew Johnnie could be in that arena with Marvin Gaye,” says Al, “if he was produced in that fashion.” When Davis expressed an interest in Taylor, Al leapt at the notion; Hayes and Porter had been producing him, and so had Cropper and Al Jackson. Johnnie’s voice was warm and wistful, attractive enough to be steadily hovering just inside the R&B top forty, but unable to find that breakout song or style. Seeking material, Davis rummaged the discard stack and found “Who’s Making Love,” cowritten by new Stax writers Homer Banks (a longtime clerk in Estelle’s store), Raymond Jackson, and Bettye Crutcher, a song that had been pitched to and rejected by the producer’s pool.
“Everybody knew that Johnnie Taylor was a talent,” says Bettye Crutcher, whose first song, “Somebody’s Been Sleeping in My Bed,” had been recorded by Taylor the previous year. “But they just were not getting him right. So Homer Banks had started a song. He’s the kind of guy who would come up with a line. They’re looking at somebody’s girl, and Homer goes, ‘Well, who’s making love to your lady—while you’re out making love?’ And I said, ‘You really got to tell this story in a way that women are going to listen to it.’ And so the song gave the guy a thought that his girlfriend might be playing with somebody else while he’s out. And Don Davis recognized that. He said, ‘I want this to be an anthem for women.’ And I would have guys who would stop me and say, ‘Why did you write a song like that? You had me going back home, checking to see if my wife was leaving with somebody!’”
“Who’s Making Love” is a bold statement, more overtly sexual than anything Stax had done, and musically it fulfilled Al’s vision: Rooted in gospel—listen to this preacher of love shout ecstatically in the first few bars—it has a sophisticated sound that takes Stax into yet more new and fresh territory. In spirit, it captures the humor, the fun, the love that permeated so much Stax material, but its drive and modernity draw heavily from the northern polish. “We had a ball working with Don Davis,” says Steve Cropper. “‘Who’s Making Love’ is one of the most fun sessions I ever played on. In the old days, there was one guitar player because we couldn’t afford but one—or Jim didn’t think he could afford but one. That had three guitars on it. Raymond Jackson, one of the song’s writers, and Don Davis played and, at the end, Don knew it was a great take and he laughed so hard he fell backwards out of the chair.” Later, Isaac Hayes came in and helped with the song’s horn lines, an inside view of Memphis work that thrilled the Detroiter to witness.
“‘Who’s Making Love’ was a step off the curb for all of us,” says trumpeter Wayne Jackson, “because it was such a sexually charged song. It was perfect for Johnnie Taylor, because he’s so good looking. People started fighting when they heard him sing, ’cause their girlfriends started lifting that dress, and Johnny’d be on the stage and just destroy all of them.”
“The popular broadcast media was not ready to accept ‘Who’s Making Love’ at that point,” says Jim. “This was an ongoing battle all through the sixties and early seventies. Pop stations said, ‘It’s too funky,’ but we knew they meant, ‘It’s too black.’ They wouldn’t admit they didn’t play black records. They didn’t consider Motown black records, but Stax was black. ‘Who’s Making Love’ sold close to half a million copies before we could get it onto pop radio.”
“After they had recorded it,” Al remembers, “they were saying, ‘Well, we can’t release that. That’s a little too risqué.’ What are you talking about, ‘too risqué’? This is an automatic record here. It sells itself.” Indeed, “Who’s Making Love” became the biggest-selling song yet in the company’s history, hitting two million in sales (the first million within six weeks of its release), rising to the top of the R&B charts and the top five of the pop charts—a thrilling finish to a year full of turmoil.
On the tails of “Who’s Making Love,” Davis released another Taylor hit, “Take Care of Your Homework,” calling again on writers Crutcher, Jackson, and Banks, shooting to R&B number two and entering the pop top twenty. Davis had Johnnie singing from his hips, and they had a groove on: Taylor went on to have eleven singles in a row produced by Davis, none of which placed lower than number thirteen on the R&B chart (most were in the top five), and all of which hit the pop Hot 100 (most within the top forty). Johnnie Taylor became a bona fide R&B triumph, steadily selling hundreds of thousands of records, generating considerable cash flow for the company. His success was emblematic of the new Stax approach. Instead of being grounded in a core group in a single place, Davis would record different parts of a song in several cities—basic tracks might be Memphis, strings might be Detroit, horns could be Muscle Shoals; then he’d bring the tape to Dallas, where Johnny lived, to overdub his vocals. The final mix could be yet elsewhere. Don Davis took the Mad Lads to Philadelphia, and the new girl group the Goodees to Detroit. And when Davis worked next with Carla Thomas, he returned her to the R&B top ten after a long absence with a title that was true to its word, “I Like What You’re Doing to Me.”
1968. L–R: Yoko Ono, John Lennon, and Bettye Crutcher. “I was receiving a BMI Award in New York and John Lennon was receiving one too [for ‘Hey Jude’],” says Bettye, cowriter of Johnnie Taylor’s “Who’s Making Love.” “I wanted so much to meet him, but I found that he wanted to meet me. I bet I was ten feet tall when I left that presentation. It said that somebody was listening to what I wrote.” (Stax Museum of American Soul Music)
Al Bell, left, and Johnnie Taylor, with Johnnie’s gold record for “Who’s Making Love.” “The finger snap signaled a change,” says Al. “Pow. This was the company that’s moving.” (Bettye Crutcher Collection)
Davis’s success was exactly the blend of new and old, of Memphis and Detroit, that Al had envisioned, and its phenomenal sales affirmed his sense of the future. Production duties at Stax had been changing as Jim found himself with less time to spend in the studio and more demands to run the business. Hiring and firing. Corporate and conglomerate paperwork. Overseeing the growing staff. At one time, a single’s release could be anticipated by the way Jim danced in the control room when it was being recorded, but now Jim was rarely in the control room and the dancing he did was from meeting to meeting. Don Davis was given more authority over production at Stax—even though his own studio was in Detroit, as was his permanent residence.
“Hits are not made by one person,” Don Davis told a reporter. “Every step is part of a critical process, and sometimes you need some outside help. That’s why Stax is great. Everybody helps everybody else. Togetherness is happening.”
This togetherness, however, was a bit of an illusion. Before Gulf & Western, it was a Memphis-centric company. Producers, writers, artists, and staff—with the notable exceptions of Otis Redding and Sam and Dave, everyone at Stax was from Memphis, and most of the stars had risen with the company. Instead of promoting from within, in a classic corporate-style move the expert was brought in from outside. Don Davis had his own way of doing things, resulting in creations decidedly different from the Stax hits. And he’d manufactured this new success
without relying on the studio’s A-team musicians—the MG’s—nor the A-team writers, Hayes and Porter. “The fact that Don hadn’t been there long, and was from Detroit,” says Bettye Crutcher, “this made Don look like he was catching up to Hayes and Porter.” The old order—the Big Six—felt assaulted. They’d been the core of hits at Stax until now.
Promoting Davis may have suited Bell’s vision of the future, but in this present tense, it was met with considerable dubiousness and resistance. “I was troubled like hell when they brought in Don Davis,” says the usually unflappable Deanie Parker. “If you have a house and you want to redecorate, would you hold on to some valuable pieces or throw everything out and start all over? Would I throw out your favorite chair? How would that make you feel? People were pissed off. I understood that Al Bell was trying to diversify, but I also know there is a way to go about diversification. You don’t throw out the gold for this new material that’s not tested, that’s uniquely different from our primary product.”
Steve Cropper was also among those rankled by Don Davis’s ascension, exacerbating his already strained relationship with Al. “By [the 1967 tour in] Europe, things were building up between Steve and Al,” says Jim. “I had to step in between, be the mediator. Steve had been my right-hand man, I took everything to him—all my conversations and lunches would be with Steve. When Bell came in, it was Bell and Stewart. We worked at the same desk for a long time. We had our disagreements, but Al and I were a good team. I did what I thought was best for the company. I was running no popularity contest. It didn’t occur to me if it would make Steve mad.”
“Don Davis made more money in two years than I’ve made in all my life probably,” says Duck Dunn, getting directly to the core of the issue. “That’s not his fault. That’s my fault.” The burgeoning discontent was about the money: The production pool allowed the core six players to share in each other’s successes. Davis had been invited to Stax, offered the use of the studio’s key players from the pool, but unlike everyone else, his royalties were his own. “When Al Bell or Isaac and David or myself go to Muscle Shoals or Detroit or Chicago and record other sessions, that’s one thing,” says Steve. “But when you come in-house and use the same players in the same format and the same everything that we’ve always done, and walk away and not share—well, that’s where the business difficulty came from. We’re not just gonna give something away that we sat here for years building.”
Don Davis was promoted to head the company’s A&R department—to sign artists and determine the musical direction, and the production pool was disbanded; royalties would go to the song’s producer and no longer be shared. Stax was gaining strength, but the configuration, the mood, and the feeling were different. “We could have had the best of both,” says Deanie, “what we had and then also Don. What was wrong was we were not given an opportunity to buy in to the need for diversification.”
“I had Gulf & Western and all these details,” says Jim. “Sales people, promotion people. The company had grown. I couldn’t go to the studio every day and solve these people’s problems like I had before. Six guys, eight people—you can do that. The company had grown beyond them. They didn’t grow with it.” Community and communion gave way to the individual and a cold efficiency. If this guy wasn’t going to share, that one wasn’t either. Producers still worked as individuals and in pairs, the MG’s continued to record together—for themselves and behind others—but the family illusion fell away, exposing a hierarchy of individuals, a business.
18. The Inspirer
1968–1969
The whir of activity sounded like a resurrection, but deep within, there was an insurrection. Al Bell’s influence had grown with his vision. Since his arrival three short years earlier, his thermometer had sparked sales, his enthusiasm had boosted morale, his energy had lit fires beneath everyone.
Almost everyone.
Al Bell’s ascent was directly related to Estelle Axton’s descent. The relationship had begun amicably. Indeed, Estelle was a fervent supporter of bringing Al into the fold. Estelle and Jim had never seen eye to eye, and that had clearly served the company well; her hunches had proven correct time and again, and the differences between her and Jim had established dual creative spaces—the studio and the record shop—and given the artists plenty of room. Al Bell brought a bigger vision for the company, and gradually he’d won more and more of Jim’s attention, and his trust.
Al Bell wanted to build a “total record company.” He wanted to continue to cultivate artists as Stax had always done, but also to become a major force in distribution. He knew that the wider and deeper a company’s penetration into the market, the greater the sales potential. By signing smaller labels for distribution, he would add heft to his enterprise, raise the company’s chances for being involved in hits, and help those labels that wouldn’t otherwise have access—empowering a middle class for small record labels. He believed in more and bigger, establishing Birdees Music, another publishing company, another Stax arm that might catch a hit. His total record company could, someday, have its own pressing plant, be a promotions giant, employ a major sales force. He could see this conglomerate age, connecting the music industry with film and television: Once Stax was distributing records, it could easily distribute other products—films, and especially videocassettes, in formats just appearing on the trade’s horizon. It could finance those shows, pay itself by including songs from its own publishing companies, and usher its stars to the silver screen. Columbia Records, an example of a total record company, had once been a small label itself, gradually enlarging its web to become the industry’s giant, with powers and interests across many media platforms. So Al signed Arch Records out of St. Louis for distribution, followed soon by Weis Records out of Chicago; he established new distribution for Stax in Canada, England, and France. He sought labels the way he sought talent.
As Al grew the company, he eyed the record store’s real estate. The cash flow it had once provided continued to trickle in with the neighborhood purchases of seventy-nine -and ninety-nine-cent singles. But Al was interested in sales beyond the neighborhood and in purchases greater than a buck. He could read the national trend toward album sales and could count the difference it would make in the company’s bottom line. In 1967, the Beatles had released Sgt. Pepper, and artists began to conceive the LP not as a collection of singles but as a new form of artistic statement. So Al wanted to put teams in place that would help generate more albums, more labels, more hits. He could build a lot of offices where the record store tallied its ninety-nine-cent sales.
When Estelle was asked to relinquish her domain, she could read the writing on the wall. “They wanted the space,” she says. “I had a woman’s intuition. I could feel things before they did happen. They didn’t want me around.” Estelle had become something as radical as the racial activists: a female executive wielding power in a world perceived as not her own. She did not have the same authority as her brother but she exerted the same influence. She got records released, she made decisions about cash flow and salaries and affected the course of business. She held her head high and moved the Satellite Record Shop from the Stax complex to a building across the street. “My shop had become one of the biggest in this part of the country. I had the R&B market sewed up. I reported sales to Billboard for their charts, and Billboard never knew that the Satellite Record Shop was the front end of Stax Records. Every week they called me for my [top sales] list. There was always a Stax record [in my report] that was busting out.” Despite her store’s contributions beyond finances—as a training ground, as a research facility, as a lounge, and as an escape from the studio—her achievements were now considered quaint. This was the cusp of a new decade—new technologies, new horizons. Recorders with sixteen tracks were coming on the market. Televisions were broadcasting in color. Man was about to walk on the moon! Her notions of research were outmoded; real research was going to be done by a new hire, John Smith, an Arkansas native and cousin of Al Bell�
��s. To pinpoint which songs would be hits, he would helm the company’s Department of Statistics and Market Analysis.
Jim did not support his sister. He’d always be the little brother, and they both would always be strong-willed. Al had a dominant personality too, but there was not the sibling hierarchy, the life history between them. “We kept the record shop open until it became a nuisance factor,” Jim says, referring to the valuable space it occupied that could be offices. “We had to close it.” (Some employees recall her space being replaced by a decorative fountain.) Soon after relocating, she sold the store to Packy’s good friend Johnny Keyes. Johnny kept his day job at a record distributor and Packy managed the store. It quickly went out of business.
Estelle was given an office in the back near Jim’s, though if it was presented as a promotion or sign of respect, she knew better. She’d been assigned publicity duties, but Stax already had a director of publicity in her protégé Deanie Parker. Besides, Estelle didn’t want an executive office, she wanted to keep her hands dirty with hard work. “I couldn’t sit in that office and do nothing,” she says, so she looked for practical ways to help. “I straightened out the mail room because it was a mess. They were getting half the records back because they hadn’t kept the addresses up to date.” Undeterred, she dove into what needed doing.
Before signing the Gulf & Western deal, Jim approached Estelle about fulfilling a lingering obligation they’d discussed in 1965. “Jim and I owned fifty-fifty stock for the publishing and record company,” says Estelle. “Just before this deal went down, Jim came to me and said, I think we should give Al Bell twenty percent off the top. I said, ‘That’s not right. The only way I will sign anything to give away twenty percent is for you to give Steve ten percent and Al ten percent.’ I knew that Steve had worked there longer than Al had, and had helped develop that company to where we’d gotten.”
Respect Yourself Page 25
