Respect Yourself

by Robert Gordon

  Larry Shaw used national media to lock Stax deeper into the American consciousness. Applying the same techniques that had worked with Afro Sheen and also with his Newport cigarettes campaign, he grabbed the simplest of Al’s mottos, “The Memphis Sound,” and emblazoned it atop full-page album ads for the world to see—not only in industry magazines like Billboard, but in lifestyle magazines such as Jet, a weekly that was prominent in African-American households, and Essence, a fashion magazine launched in 1970 that quickly reached the burgeoning African-American middle class. Shaw understood that Al’s vision needed more than indiscriminate immersion, and he placed ads in embattled and struggling publications, because he recognized that minor magazines buttressed the major ones. As Shaw explained to author Rob Bowman, they sought titles not just directed at African-Americans but also owned by African-Americans. “Soul magazine was a struggling publication,” Shaw said. “We financed it on many occasions . . . We helped Essence. I would fly to any fledgling magazine that we thought would give us some value.” Stax was building a community, a large-scale, national community that would operate alongside, but not be contingent upon, the established white corporate world.

  Offices were built for the new hires, the studio was upgraded to sixteen tracks, and walls came and went like the set of a grand opera. Stax had eased, oozed, and broken into adjoining stores it had formerly frequented until, by late 1969, it had outgrown the entire building. McLemore, its spiritual home, was abuzz with activity, sometimes nonstop for days on end. To accommodate the growth, Stax rented office space nearer to the center of town, 98 N. Avalon, atop TJ’s, Memphis’s hippest nightclub. Jim, Al, the administrative offices, accounting, promotions—everything but the creative staff, Deanie’s publicity department, and the publishing company—departed McLemore. Stax was expanding, Stax was atomizing, and the family unit was splintering.

  As Stax shed its old skin, it had trouble fitting into its new one. In mid-March 1970, Jim Stewart gathered the entire company for a speech, articulating the issues before them and attempting to inject familial DNA into the increasingly corporate body. “The year 1970 will be a year of truth,” Jim read from his prepared remarks. “We may perhaps be put to the most crucial of all tests . . . SURVIVAL. [The capital letters are Jim’s.] As I look back at the year 1969, I see a measure of success, and I see failure. The sales last year were greater than any period in the history of your company. Employees increased from 20 to over 60 in number, and we achieved our first gold album. We expanded our studio facilities. It was a year of many improvements and accomplishments . . . and yet, we failed. We failed to overcome our immaturities, we failed to overcome our jealousies, our prejudice, our mistrusts.

  “WHO IS IT TO BLAME? Every day I hear this word ‘BLAME’ almost as much as the four-letter words. The Producers blame the Company for interfering with their creative efforts. The Promotion Department blames Producers for poor product. Producers blame Promotions for ‘lack of air play.’ The Sales Departments blame both Promotions and Product, while the Executives listened, nodded approval, and blamed each other . . . AND ALL THE WHILE THE RUMORS ROLL ON . . . . . . . . . . . The M.G.S. were kicked out of the studio; the Blacks are taking over; the Whites are taking over; Al Bell is getting rid of Jim Stewart; Jim Stewart is taking power away from Al Bell.”

  Jim’s candor underscores the dire state of the company’s morale. He wasn’t opposed to change—Jim was Al’s champion; Jim recognized Al’s capacity for vision, and Al relied on Jim’s background in banking as well as his support and his musical ear. They were a team; Stax Fax described them as Mr. Inside (Jim, the more introverted) and Mr. Outside (Al, the extrovert)—ready to take the company into the future. But the instant catalog and the breakneck growth had cost the corps its old esprit. Jim’s solution was a new workflow. He announced the promotion of four people to vice presidential rank—Don Davis, Ed Pollack, Junius Griffin, and Larry Shaw. Additionally, this “Board of Advisors” will “organize, plan, and direct the day to day operation of your company,” Jim read. “They will initiate policy and procedure from the top echelon down through the departmental level and enforce same at all levels.”

  This corporate restructuring would prove to be the first of frequent changes in the ongoing effort to maintain a working flowchart for the growing company. Employee turnover was high—people didn’t have the same allegiance to a corporation as they did to a family.

  Allegiances were being tested outside Stax as well. Much like the sanitation workers two years earlier, the NAACP finally got tired of trying to reason with city officials. They submitted to the Memphis Board of Education a list of fifteen demands, of which the most important were the resignation of two board members to be replaced by blacks; the hiring of more black teachers and supervisors; and an improved school lunch program. To make sure they were heard, the NAACP proceeded with a school boycott. In early October 1969, on the protest’s first day, one third of the nearly 135,000 students were absent (slightly over half the total student body was black), with disturbances reported at several schools and a march on the education office. On the second day, a Monday, more than 65,000 students were absent. The board heeded its pockets and agreed to meet with the NAACP on Wednesday. There, they submitted a typed response to their demands. The NAACP stormed out of the meeting, its president telling the newspaper, “The answers that the board has given to our demands are vague, negative, utterly ridiculous and an insult to the intelligence of anyone concerned with education.”

  The NAACP representatives then took a meeting with Jesse Epps, the leader of AFSCME who’d taken up a new battle on behalf of about one thousand “non-supervisory” employees (orderlies, janitors, some nursing staff) at St. Joseph’s Hospital, a private facility. Though the hospital had willingly entered into talks with its employees and then the union, Epps was threatening and berating hospital officials in the press. St. Joseph’s, feeling abused, broke off negotiations with Epps, and he responded with a picket line. The NAACP approached him about the school board; both saw strength in merging the issues. The newspaper headline read, NEW COALITION OF NEGRO GROUPS PLAN MASS MARCH AS FIRST STEP, and the article listed about ten groups who revealed their intention to “fight cooperatively against white racism wherever it is found,” including by economic boycott. “The coalition,” stated the article, “may represent the most potent expression of ‘black power’ in the civil rights movement in Memphis since the marches and sit-ins in 1959 and 1960 and the sanitation strike last year.” One leader was quoted, “This is an all-out war in terms of keeping our money in our pockets,” and another said, “We can no longer talk about separate issues in racial problems. All issues overlap—politics, unemployment, housing, poverty, education.”

  The call for missing school was formalized as Black Mondays, and the second week, nearly half of the city’s student body was absent. Hospital employees and students marched down Main Street to a city council meeting but were denied a platform to speak. Epps announced plans for more “spread the misery” campaigns, but the hospital board remained adamant, and the school board was unyielding. The following Monday, nearly two thousand city workers joined the Black Monday picket, crippling garbage collection among other city services.

  A month into the Black Mondays, and a month into the hospital picket, a march turned violent, or the police did—each side blamed the other—and tear gas was used to disperse the crowd. Many leaders were arrested, including Epps, the SCLC’s Rev. Ralph Abernathy, and Rev. Ezekiel Bell, president of the Memphis branch of the NAACP. In a sign that nerves were wearing thin, a group of seventeen religious, service, and educational organizations released a statement that they were “weary of existing from crisis to crisis that are never truly resolved” and pleaded with the city to settle the grievances with justice. In fact, there were signs that the AFSCME hospital strike was weakening, as the hospital reported about 85 percent of its staff at work, and pointed out that its wages and employee benefits exceeded those of any ins
titution represented by AFSCME in the city. When the school board conceded to implementing changes, including the appointment of two interim black advisers “who will have the privilege of attending all private and public meetings of the board,” half of the NAACP leaders supported the decision and half decried it, resulting in the resignation of the local president and a public split among its members. Nonetheless, the highest number yet missed school when the Black Mondays were continued.

  The City of Memphis proceeded on two fronts: First, it passed an ordinance restricting “parades” as a way to control the protest marches; one of the three black city councilmen said, “I think it is bad wisdom along with bad timing. The necessity for this type of ordinance was only spawned out of the city’s reaction to the Negro protest movement.” Second, feeling the economic pain of school boycotts, the school board filed a $10 million suit against several of the groups and their leaders; their suit alleged that the “dominant purpose” of the school boycotts “was to aid and abet the union in its controversy with St. Joseph Hospital.” The suit brought a close to the school boycotts, with the NAACP having gains to show; Epps felt abandoned by them, and the hospital protest limped along until the day after Christmas, when employees returned to work, having gained nothing. Asked if the union had lost the strike, Epps declared they’d lost nothing, adding, “When you are poor, you have nothing to start with.” It was, however, a blow to the union, which had seemed all-powerful. In a few months, Epps would be terminated altogether when T.O. Jones led a group that asked for an accounting of the additional dollar the men were donating to help the poor. No program had ever been initiated, and an audit revealed about $100,000 in misused funds, including payment of closing costs on Epps’s private home. Epps retired from AFSCME. Jones was not brought back, but stable leadership arrived, and AFSCME remains the major force in Memphis labor to this day. Conflicts in the school system, however, were far from over. The pursuit of justice and equality was going to make national headlines, and result in renewed civic disorder.

  In April of 1970, Tim Whitsett began working at Stax. From Jackson, Mississippi, Whitsett was a young bandleader who’d sent demos to various production companies, including the Robert Stigwood Organization in New York. Stigwood managed Eric Clapton’s Cream and the Bee Gees. Stax’s Don Davis heard Tim Whitsett’s demos in Stigwood’s New York office and invited Whitsett to bring his band to Memphis. At that point, there was no longer any band to bring, so Whitsett arrived as a songwriter. While settling in, he mentioned his interest in copyright law and publishing, a shuffling of papers that can lead to longtime and significant income. “I’d been there about two days,” Whitsett says, “and Don said, ‘You look like an executive, how’d you like to run our publishing house?’ So I wound up running East/Memphis Music. You walk down the McLemore hall on that green carpet that makes you not walk straight, then open my office where the carpet was bright Christmas red. Then we decided to build a demo studio there and move me down an office, and I wound up with the green carpet like everyone else. But it was still plush enough, and people would come in and say, ‘Wow,’ and then ask me for some money as a publishing advance.”

  Whitsett had cut his chops listening to the Stax hits and playing them at dances with his band. He was surprised that recent employees didn’t know what he knew: The names, faces, and histories of the Stax artists. The heart of Stax may have been the old-school players—Eddie Floyd, William Bell, Deanie Parker, Steve, Duck, Al, Booker, and others—but the new influx had no idea who the old school was. A generation had moved in, with different ideas and new goals. “There was a point,” says Tim, “when you looked around the hallways and wondered, Who are these people? And you would hear whispers: Do you know how much he’s being paid? Some guy you never saw before. And you didn’t know what he did.” That point—when the newbies don’t know the forebears and everyone’s wondering who everyone else is—is perhaps the full realization of the corporation: A mind with no memory in a body with no soul. Al was giving more people more paychecks, and they were able to leave their jobs with their time cards at the—ka-toonk—time clock. They didn’t bring home the worry, or dwell upon problem solving while preparing dinner. Al, however, left at the end of each long day with two briefcases, papers overflowing. Earlie, who soon moved next door to Al’s family, would see his office light on until the wee hours of the morning. The burden had shifted, from many shoulders to just a few.

  Tim Whitsett, East/Memphis Publishing. (Phillip Rauls collection)

  With all the success they’d had at Stax, the MG’s had become known for their work as producers as well as backing musicians, and they were regularly sought by non-Stax artists. Simon and Garfunkel, after hearing the MG’s interpretation of their “Mrs. Robinson,” invited the quartet to back them on their next recording. “We did get the offer to do ‘Bridge over Troubled Water,’” says Steve. “Booker told me they had already sent him a demo to prepare for the session. And when whoever was handling the Stax business got a hold of the whole idea, they didn’t feel like the percentages were right and they said, ‘You can’t use our band unless we get so-and-so.’ And Simon’s people said, ‘We’re not gonna pay so-and-so so we’ll just do it otherwise.’” It didn’t end there. “I was getting offers from big artists,” Steve continues. “And I was getting offers to do movie scores, and Booker was getting offered all these artists. And we were told that we couldn’t do it as long as we were salaried at Stax.”

  At the same time their outside production work was being constrained, the MG’s felt insecure about their in-house work. During the sales convention preparation, Stax had relied ever more on the new Bar-Kays. Younger, and with fewer family obligations, the kids were open to the myriad opportunities. “I could see us very soon being benched and having to move over for somebody else,” Steve says, “and we weren’t very happy with that.”

  The opportunities, the Bar-Kays were finding out (like the MG’s already knew), were a mixed blessing. “Stax never intended for the Bar-Kays to be an act,” says bassist James Alexander, echoing a sentiment previously expressed by Booker. “In the back of the company’s mind, they wanted us to be the second string to Booker T. & the MG’s. The company started using different producers who used our rhythm section. We were young, and fearless, so we weren’t afraid to try stuff. But when we’re backing up Albert King, the Emotions, Johnnie Taylor, Isaac Hayes, and everything that Duck doesn’t play on, there’s no time to concentrate on our own thing.” When there wasn’t time to conentrate on Isaac’s thing either, Michael Toles, Ben Cauley, and Willie Hall left the Bar-Kays for the road with Isaac and his new band, the Movement.

  For Booker, as much as the studio constraints and the in-house politics were an issue, he was most upset about the business, specifically the band’s royalty arrangement. Everyone had been innocent when “Green Onions” had become a hit, and the agreement they’d made then was outmoded. Otis’s agreement had been renegotiated, new artists being signed were given a better, more modern royalty deal, but the company would not budge from its deal with the MG’s. “I wanted the studio to update our business arrangement and I wanted them to support us creatively,” says Booker. “But they never did meet my terms. Instead of getting together with the guys and suggesting that we all get out of there together, I took off for California. I was very young. I didn’t do it the way it should’ve been done.” He’d never forgotten the way California felt when he’d arrived in Monterey; cooperative, respectful feelings that Memphis had never come close to replicating. Booker picked up work promptly upon his Los Angeles arrival, recording on Stephen Stills’s first solo album, then employing Stills to play lead guitar on recordings Booker was producing for a new artist, Bill Withers. Booker’s work led to a gold record and a Grammy Award for Withers’s song “Ain’t No Sunshine.” California was going to be okay.

  Booker left in the summer of 1969, followed by Steve in the fall of 1970. The band didn’t break up, and in fact they would continue to re
cord for the label, but the departure of these two players shook the company’s foundation. Jim attributes the disenchantment from longtime Stax employees to the company’s growing pains. “Al was executive vice president and you had to come up through the channels to get to me,” he says. “I guess Steve and the guys felt like I’d put a stumbling block between them and me. They felt alienated. And I felt really bad about losing that group. Bell and I disagreed about the value of that particular production team. Bell and Al Jackson didn’t get along. Bell and Cropper didn’t get along. So the stage was set for a split as Bell became more in charge of productions. The MG’s had splintered, Isaac became an artist, and that took him away from production for other acts. It’s part of the problems of growth.”

  Early in 1970, Booker flew back to Memphis to record with the MG’s. He arrived with the idea for McLemore Avenue, their reinterpretation of the Beatles’ Abbey Road (including an album cover homage). Steve, however, was in a New York studio producing the Detroit-based Dramatics for Stax’s California parent, Paramount; he made a later trip to California to record his guitar parts. “It was a tenacious struggle to get that music recorded,” says Booker. “Stax had become more corporate and they didn’t see the need, but I thought the Beatles had made an album that would change the face of music.” McLemore Avenue is an exciting rearrangement of Abbey Road, mostly instrumental, deeply soulful.