“I think we started at five grand for the night,” says Mickey. “When the cat called back it was seventy-five hundred, and next time it was, ‘Man, get me the string orchestra and about ten grand, pay all expenses and I might can get him to go.’ The album went buck fucking wild—first time a black artist sold a million dollars’ worth of albums—and after that it was on like a pot of neckbones.”
No longer crafting the performances of others, Isaac assumed the spotlight. And he got good at it, real quick. He moved his organ from the side to center stage, leading the group instead of flanking them, and he settled into what he began to term “rapping”—not rhyming so much as talking intimately with the audience. He began to dress the part, again with a visionary intensity. “How Isaac combined colors was unbelievable, and absolutely unique,” says Al, who could be describing Isaac’s music as easily as his attire. “I don’t know his rationale, his justification, but I have never seen anybody dressed like Isaac Hayes. He was out from the crowd by himself.”
Isaac had been infusing personality into his work since well before “Soul Man,” and he didn’t wait long to add to his stage character. A man of fashion, he was aware of how much the spotlight made him sweat. “One day I was wearing rawhide onstage,” he says. “Moccasins, my French rabbit bag—I’d been out to California and seen the hippies. But I was hot onstage all the time. And I would see James Brown and all those guys take their tie off and throw it back there and then the jacket. I thought, These guys come out sharp, so why do they want to get on stage and strip? I need something else. So this shop in Memphis gave me a chain outfit. It was a necklace and a belt. Then I saw Roy Cunningham, the drummer of the new Bar-Kays, he came out on stage with some tights on, being different. I thought, if Nureyev can do it, why can’t I? I put those chains around my neck and around my waist, I had those boots on, and I was air-conditioned. And that was the look. The chains at one time represented bondage to black men, and now it was a symbol of power and influence. The chains, the bald head, beard, and shades—the television networks was taking it as a militant look. Anybody that speaks out and acts upon being suppressed, you become militant. Well, I was militant.”
Militant was one reading. Carnal was another. Isaac unleashed a new male sexuality that made James Brown seem like a drag queen. Bare-chested, well muscled, skin-tight pants that bulged in all the right places, Isaac’s deep voice sang softly, slowly, fully, about passion. The women swooned at his seductive manner. “Isaac was a big draw wherever he appeared,” says Dino Woodard. “Big crowds. It wasn’t just the women. Men, too, really dug his arrangements and the lyrics. He won across both ways. But women, hey, they was just, wow, crazy about him. Boom, screaming all the time.”
Isaac spurned drugs and drunkenness, but he had a weak spot for women, and this role in the spotlight played to his vulnerabilities. “That was all he lived for,” says lifelong friend Mickey Gregory. “Women. Nothing was more important to Isaac than women being attracted to him.”
A Jet magazine cover story described his “physique like a Mandingo Daddy,” and wrote of his fashion sense: “He may appear in cranberry colored tights, striped fur Eskimo boots, a buckskin or suede vest with beaded thongs naked to the waist; a zebra-like cloak, or a Russian, military-appearing cape, bright colored scarf, heavy fur or a big floppy hat. The colors are as striking as the designs: purples, yellows, pinks . . . Like a strutting, virile peacock, he takes the stage, ceremoniously sweeps off his hat and, with the klieg lights bouncing whitely from his shining head, executes an exaggerated bow to an exploding audience.”
There was more to that explosion than the audience knew. In James Brown tradition, Isaac’s MC was also his valet onstage—Randy Stewart. When Isaac would bow for Randy to remove his hat, there was a quick conversation. “He’d say, ‘There’s a pretty girl right there in the front seat,’” says Randy. “I’d say, ‘What’s she got on?’ He’d tell me, and we’d send someone to get her, and she’d be backstage for him when he was done. Isaac was a woman freak. He had women all over Memphis. Get them a house, a car. Women, women, women.”
Stax bet that Isaac’s sensual image would sell on the West Coast, and they purchased a prominent corner billboard on a Hollywood stretch of Sunset Boulevard: Isaac’s bald pate gleaming to the setting sun. “Hot Buttered Soul hit,” says Bar-Kays drummer Willie Hall, “and we all started making money. The Bar-Kays opened the shows for Isaac, and then we backed him on his gigs.”
Isaac’s entourage increased with his popularity. Soon there were four female backup singers, and Dale Warren was rehearsing string sections hired in each city. He had someone to sell programs (Randy Stewart), someone to run lights (Johnny Keyes) and sound (Henry “Creeper” Bush), someone to manage the band, someone else to manage Isaac. More musicians, more instruments. “All of a sudden, we were the shit,” says Willie Hall. “I was about eighteen years old, fresh out of high school, and it was wonderful. We went from groupies to hired hookers. Everything was gorgeous.”
Isaac Hayes at a party. (Stax Museum of American Soul Music)
The move to performing immersed Isaac in the world of scumbag promoters, people who would book the show with certain promises but were nowhere to be found when the show was over and it was their turn to deliver. Promoting shows and running clubs was a cash business and always attracted gangsters. You toughened up to play, hiring men mean enough to scare promoters, or you got eaten. “A lot of times we wouldn’t get our money,” says Johnny Keyes, Packy’s friend who would eventually become Isaac’s stage manager. “Guys would say, ‘Man, we sorry, man. We got some of your money, but the Man got us again.’” After a few incidents of feeling helpless in his tights and chains, Isaac saw that other performers had brawn in their entourage and realized he needed a muscle man to enforce the deal. Money, girls, the spotlight? Johnny Baylor was up for that.
“Isaac did the show in Chicago at McCormick Hall,” says Randy Stewart, who’d come from Sugar Ray’s boxing camp to run Isaac’s concessions. “When the show was over, the guy didn’t have the money. Isaac would have to pay everything anyway. Johnny Baylor said, ‘I’ll get your money.’ He went and kidnapped the guy, told the house, ‘If you don’t come up with the money, we’ll kill the guy.’ So the next time we went to Chicago, when we went to the dressing room, there was a wreath welcoming Isaac on his door.”
“We tried to make sure that Isaac got his due,” says Dino, Baylor’s partner, “that he was promoted properly before we went into a city, and we tried to see that he received his pay. That there was no cheating, which promoters do.”
Having Baylor was fighting fire with gunfire and would certainly protect Isaac. But Baylor’s presence changed the tenor of the traveling cavalcade. “Johnny’s whole deal was intimidation,” says Marvell Thomas, who was playing keyboards in Isaac’s band. “If he could whip everybody into line, then he could have control. He threatened me with a gun one day, onstage, at a rehearsal in Chicago. I told him to either shoot me or go to hell and get away from me. Half of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was in that pit. I called his bluff in front of enough witnesses to where he didn’t feel comfortable blowing my brains out. But as a result of that little incident and Johnny’s relationship with Isaac, Johnny spent a lot of time lobbying Isaac real hard to get me fired. And eventually, he did.”
Isaac Hayes’s road show in Hawaii. Isaac in rear with sunglasses and bald head. Johnny Baylor is next to him in the white hat. Johnny Keyes is next to Baylor. Dino Woodard toward the left, with handlebar mustache and lei. Randy Stewart, with sunglasses, next to Hayes. (Johnny Keyes Collection)
Guns were becoming commonplace. “You’d see Isaac and his entourage and they all wore these tight Italian suits, real sharp,” says Joe Mulherin, a trumpet player who worked in Stax’s publicity department, “but all of them had bulges coming out of the rear or side, depending on where they kept their pieces. A tailor could have resolved the issue, but no one seemed to mind.”
Baylor was a bruta
l enforcer. Willie Hall remembers how Baylor dealt with one of his own team: “This guy had been stealing money from Isaac. He was supposed to pay the hotel bills and things like that, but it had been proven that he was buying his girlfriend things with the money and skimming off the top. They confronted him, and an argument broke out. I saw them drag him out of the room and take him to the hospital. The side of his face was closed up and, actually, they had to remove his eye. He wore a black patch after that.” One beating or one firing of a weapon goes a long way toward cementing someone’s reputation.
During one Christmas season, Isaac was asked by Jane Fonda to do a benefit performance in New York. The band was at the Holiday Inn on Fifty-seventh Street, and Isaac was at a fancy hotel not far away; Johnny and Dino were with him. The weather turned bad and after the gig, they were stuck in New York for a few days. The band was told to go easy on the room service and expenses at the hotel—there was no income from the gig. Word was duly disbursed. But a night without income was different for the star than it was for the crew, and some were dissatisfied with the mandated frugality. “About seven or eight of us were in a hotel room,” says Willie Hall, “and Johnny Keyes decides to order steak for everybody, wine, and chocolate cake, everything. They brought it, and Johnny [Keyes] signed for it.”
“Johnny Keyes had a room right down from mine,” says Randy Stewart. “He’s down there partying, got a big table, eating big steaks, drinking. Johnny Baylor had told the hotel if there’s an issue to get in touch with them at the other hotel. So the hotel told [Baylor] they’re ordering all this stuff, so Johnny called me.” Randy explained the situation, and Baylor asked for Johnny Keyes to come to the phone. Randy set down the receiver. “I told Johnny Keyes, ‘Johnny Baylor and Isaac want to talk to you.’ He come over to my room, phone still laying there, he said, ‘What they talking about?’ I said, ‘They’re talking about you ordering all that food and wine and whiskey.’ Johnny Keyes said, ‘Motherfuck Johnny Baylor.’ He left. When Johnny Baylor heard that, he got pissed. And I heard this on the phone plain as day. [Baylor] said, ‘Isaac, what do you think I should do?’ Isaac said, ‘Go kick his ass.’” Isaac was fully under Baylor’s spell, reveling in the power. Baylor, the boxer, went to whip a skinny musician.
“They come over there and damn near killed him,” Randy continues. “I was in my room watching TV. Willie Hall run in and jumped in the bed in the corner. I said, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ He said, ‘Man, they’re down there killing him.’ I went down there, Johnny Keyes was slumped in the chair, they were crushing him, crushing him. Benny Mabone, Isaac’s valet, was standing in the door trembling. Johnny Baylor had those pistols raised over his head, said, ‘Did he do anything to you? Go on over there and kick his ass too.’ I got between Dino and Johnny Keyes, said, ‘Don’t hit this man no more.’ Blood was everywhere.”
“I thought they might kill him,” says Willie. “I looked back and there were some guys in the band dragging Johnny Keyes down the hall, taking him to the hospital. This part of his jaw was way over here, and everybody was crying and upset. I ran like a little scared puppy. I’m like, Oh, my God, what have I gotten into? And Johnny called me and said, ‘Hall, don’t be afraid. We’re not gonna hurt you. You’re Skull’s boy.’ [They called Isaac ‘Skull.’] And that became the order. From that point on, all the years that I knew Johnny Baylor, I could do no wrong in his eyesight.”
Baylor next turned his attention to David Porter, who, witnessing the success of his longtime partner’s performing career, was recording his own debut album and forming a band, the Soul Spacemen, with keyboardist Ronnie Williams. Isaac had agreed to produce it, but the time it took to agree and to actually be in the studio were proving two different commitments. Isaac put a good front on it all when asked about it by a reporter in 1970, saying, “It’s true that we are getting apart because we have both evolved so much that we now must do our own things. But David and I are both very much together. We work together and we still compare ideas a lot to make each of us more aware of what is happening. I think that it is equally important to David and myself that we concentrate on both things. Being an artist is something that is in both of us—we were both singers before we got involved in these other things. But you can be sure that David and I will be together for a long while to come.”
Such, however, was not Johnny Baylor’s plan. “I think Johnny did pull a gun on David Porter,” says Dino, “but he did it to let him know, to frighten him. Jealousies existed, because Johnny had become the mouthpiece for Isaac. So he and David got into an argument.”
The partnership eroded. Isaac’s name went on David’s debut album as producer—which would help his old friend. But Isaac slipped into his own universe, and David assumed responsibility for the Emotions and the Soul Children, whom the two had been producing. After a couple years of missed appointments, Isaac did make time to squeeze out a single with David, a duet on both sides, each a love song of longing and reunion. The A-side was a propulsive take on the Homer Banks and Allen Jones song “Ain’t That Lovin’ You (for More Reasons Than One),” featuring a big Isaac Hayes horn arrangement; the flip was a version of the recent Bread hit “Baby I’m-a Want You.” “I didn’t like what was happening,” says Jim. “I was looking at it from a business standpoint. We lost a great writing team. Why do we have to break up the writing team just because an artist is breaking? If you’ve got something successful going, it’s okay to experiment, but why break up the success? Once those egos get that big, you can’t control them.”
Indeed, control seemed lost. “They put a gun up to David Porter’s head and told him to stay away from Isaac,” says Wayne Jackson. “Well, there went all those magical songs—gone. And that was the day that [saxophone partner] Andrew [Love] and I went to Jim and told him we’d like to be off the payroll if he didn’t mind, so we could go on down the road.” The two incorporated by the name everyone was calling them—the Memphis Horns—then doubled their prices and missed not a beat, freelancing for Stax and picking up sessions all over Memphis, Muscle Shoals, and elsewhere. “When we started, it was about family, and genius and Otis and the fun we were having—and now Paramount wants to know where we are every hour and there’s guys walking around in the halls with guns? They had to search my horn case, me and Andrew both, going in the door and coming out. They weren’t searching for fried chicken.”
“I guess it was an explosion,” says Steve Cropper. “Could have been an implosion, too.”
Change was the status quo. A new promotion team was hired, including several guys who had been with Motown. They fanned out across the US, city to city, radio station to station, to see that Stax artists got quality airtime. Larry Shaw, a Chicago advertising man who’d made Afro Sheen a household name, was lured to Stax by both Al Bell’s philosophy of creating an African-American economic base and a very lucrative offer. A former speechwriter for Dr. King and onetime Motown employee, Junius Griffin, joined the staff—but didn’t stay long, repulsed by the depth of Memphis’s racism. Motown’s comptroller Ed Pollack was brought from Detroit to Memphis. “I’d always heard that Stax artists were treated fairly and Motown artists were screwed,” says Duck. “And what did Stax do? They go out and get Motown’s comptroller. I told myself, ‘Well, I’m about to get fucked.’” Changes occurred so fast, Stax couldn’t even decide on a motto. With equal fanfare and sincerity it boasted that its mission was “Tell the truth with truthful music.” And “Look what we have done together.” Or was it “The Memphis Sound”? Or “The soul label for your swinging turntable”? One that lasted a while was “Where everything is everything.”
Herb Kole, director of merchandising and marketing, announced the sale of one million albums just seven weeks after the 1969 sales meeting. Ewell Roussell, national sales manager for Stax, announced that during its first year with Gulf & Western, June 1, 1968, to June 1, 1969, Stax sold ten million singles through the thirty-two national distributors it worked with. Its business plan had called for sell
ing 7.5 million singles by the third year of the merger. “We were challenging Atlantic right away with album sales,” says Jim. “I don’t think we were competition with Motown for singles, but we were outselling them for albums. We sold a million Hot Buttered Soul albums to a pure black audience, and that was unheard of.”
“Profits increased greatly, which did what?” asks Steve, then answers himself: “It allowed us to have accountants, lawyers, more secretaries for everybody.” There were upsides for artists too: “Better offices. Better distribution. Better promotion guys, because you could afford to pay the better guys.”
“It was a gradual increase in personnel,” says Earlie Biles, Al’s secretary who was becoming his de facto traffic cop. The more people he hired, the more who sought his attention. “The staff was about ten people when I started, and then more people started coming in. It seemed like one day you looked up and there are all these people here. Like, you know, what are we doing?”
Al was hiring experts, working toward his vision of a total record company, his own Columbia, with involvement in multiple media, producing, promoting, and distributing. The breadth of the company grew so much that Al changed its name from the parochial Stax Records to the panoramic Stax Organization.
The Motown alumni brought a practical know-how for operating on a national, not regional, level. And Larry Shaw brought a pragmatism to Al’s vision. “Larry Shaw kicked it up another level,” says Joe Mulherin, from the publicity department. “His understanding of the practicalities meshed perfectly with Al’s sense of vision and hype. Al could see the mansion on the hill, and Larry could see the path that led to it.”
“Larry was an exceptionally bright man,” says Rev. Jesse Jackson; Larry helped him establish Operation Breadbasket. “He had creative skills, but he was also a very socially conscious guy, an intellectual. Larry could put ideas on paper. He had this commitment and genius locked up and no place to go, trying to make his way in the white corporate world, which kept closing doors in his face. And Al spotted that talent and their spirits combined. Larry became the creative director and really much of the mental strength behind Stax as well. And Stax became an international platform for Larry to display his talents and skills.”
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