Respect Yourself

by Robert Gordon

  Chicago was not a random choice. The Great Migration had moved a huge population of southern black people to Chicago since the early 1900s; blues had begun in the Mississippi Delta (all roads there lead to Memphis) and become electric in Chicago. The cultures were related. As well, Chicago was home to Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH, and since their meeting soon after Dr. King’s assassination, Al and Rev. Jackson had grown increasingly close, a vision shared. The previous year, Al even initiated a new subsidiary, the Respect label, to release Rev. Jackson’s first album, I Am Somebody, which included his outstanding title-track sermon and incantation Respect would soon add other spoken-word-oriented releases. The Chicago ties were many. “As it turned out,” Al says, “one of my homeboys, E. Rodney Jones, born in Arkansas like me, was at Chicago radio station WVON. I had a deep relationship with several other great personality jocks there, and it dawned on me, instead of us going all over the place trying to get things done, let’s build a base in Chicago. Let’s get more involved with Johnson Publications [Ebony, Jet] and Operation PUSH—deal with Chicago like we’re in Chicago.”

  Stax began sending talent—Isaac Hayes, the Staple Singers, and seven others—to the Operation PUSH Chicago Black Expo, a trade show and convention. Their performances were filmed, and thus able to be exploited long after the applause died down. “Al Bell never was just the record guy,” says Rev. Jackson. “Al saw the vision. Many people see our artists through a keyhole, Al saw them through a door.”

  Al understood the moment—any moment—as a piece in an ever-expanding puzzle; the more assiduously he tried to see the limits, the bigger he knew the puzzle could get. While the success of Stax Sound in Chi-Town would prove the broad commercial potential of his label and result in increased sales, its long-term use would be through its repurposing. He hired an agency to professionally document the program and its results, creating an elaborately bound presentation. Was this a beautiful package to lie on the coffee table for guests waiting in his office? No. The images became slides accompanying his speech entitled “Black Is Beautiful . . . Business.” He would soon present the speech at the 1972 National Association of Recording Merchandisers convention, where it became a powerful statement about the drive and success of an independent company.

  Stax in Chicago. L–R: Jim Stewart, Jesse Jackson, Lydia Bell, Al Bell, Emily Hayes, Isaac Hayes. (Stax Museum of American Soul Music)

  After Al fit Chicago onto his expanding puzzle, he looked for more pieces. “We were able to move out from Chicago toward New York and Los Angeles and surrounding geographic areas,” Al waxes. “We were looking toward getting into the state of New York—actually that triangle of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. We’d captured the mid-Atlantic, which was Washington, DC, Virginia, and Maryland. We knew Rocky G and Frankie Crocker at WWRL in New York, and if we could get our artists into the Apollo, we could capture New York, meaning not just radio, but the consumers in New York. It was generally known in the industry that Los Angeles is gonna be the last place where you can get your product exposed.” No worries: Al was cooking up a blockbuster-sized idea for Los Angeles.

  On the home front, a new problem had arisen. Deutsche Grammophon, which owned a piece of Stax, was so enjoying its taste of popular music that it wanted more. In mid-1971, the label purchased James Brown’s recording contract and back catalog. Between James Brown and Stax, all they saw was hits and high sales, so they instigated an expansion of their own label, Polydor. “They began to want to exercise some influence on us and on our business decisions,” says Al. “And the discussions arose once again about us consolidating our distribution.” Stax had an interconnected web of independent distributors that Deutsche Grammophon saw as a peculiar and clunky arrangement. Despite the setup’s obvious success, Deutsche Grammophon wanted to align Stax with a corporate distributor. While a corporate distributor might help Al get into the chains he sought, he feared losing the control he currently had; putting Deutsche Grammophon between himself and the product delivery created too great a distance. “The relationship,” says Al, “grew uncomfortable.”

  “I told them that we wanted out of the deal,” Al continues, “and they were irritated by that. The audacity! ‘You little old fella from Memphis backwater Tennessee’—Philips, which owned Deutsche Grammophon, controlled the sockets that the light bulbs went in, and the energy throughout your home, so—‘who do you think you are?’” Extended conversations ensued—“Somewhere in there I may have become an irritant, because of my persistence”—and finally Al was given a number: It would cost $4.8 million to buy back Deutsche Grammophon’s equity in Stax. “Nearly half of that came from cash that we had in the bank, and the other came from a $2.5 million loan from Union Planters Bank,” says Al. Union Planters National Bank had helped them buy back their stock from Gulf & Western; payoff had gone very smoothly—ahead of schedule, even—so acquiring the new loan was easy.

  The deal was settled that cool November of 1971 in the back bungalows of the Beverly Hills Hotel. “I walked rather proudly through the Polo Lounge,” says Al, “and on back to the bungalows. And I politely put that cashier’s check on the table and closed that deal with the gentleman, freeing us from the international distribution as well as purchasing back their equity interest in the company.” Stax’s 1971 gross income, according to court documents, was just short of $17 million. That’s a heap of sales accumulated at wholesale rates of about fifty cents per single and $2.50 for albums. Stax was, for the first time since it had become a national concern, entirely independent, able to determine its destiny, keep its profits, set its own course.

  22. Balance Sheets and Balancing Acts

  1971–1972

  Isaac Hayes, with his fourth hit album in a row, was fueling the Stax inferno. That November of 1971 when Stax paid off Deutsche Grammophon, the “Shaft” single hit number one on the pop charts. Shaft raged across the US—in theaters, on turntables, as a cultural phenomenon. Isaac was on daytime TV, nighttime TV—fashion talk, movie talk, music. His clothes, his chains, his bald head, his female dancer’s bald head, the traveling orchestra: He was a phenomenon.

  In Isaac’s camp, in Isaac’s glow, was his penumbra, Johnny Baylor. A heat radiated between them until that heat became a fever, a fever dream, and then a nightmare. “It got kind of rough around there,” says Willie Hall. “There was pistol play, there were shots being fired in the building.” At Stax, Baylor was running Isaac’s camp, his words always in Isaac’s ear. Baylor’s artist, Luther Ingram, was opening for Isaac’s concerts, using Isaac’s band and singing in a style not dissimilar; Johnny even signed Isaac’s shaved-headed female dancer, Helen Washington, to his Koko label. Johnny’s key responsibility was handling Isaac’s money, and when an important week of gigs at the Apollo came up short, there was nearly a bloodbath in the halls of Stax.

  “When Shaft was coming out,” Randy Stewart explains, “I went to New York, made a deal at the Apollo Theater. The money would be split seventy-thirty for us, because they couldn’t have guaranteed us what we needed. While I was there, I had another meeting. We took ten thousand dollars and put it somewhere so Shaft would be number one when we got to New York City.” They bought airplay and ratings, he’s saying, so they’d be able to sell out all of their shows. It wasn’t legal, but it was par for the day, industry-wide, and it worked. It was how you got records played.

  “At the Apollo, we filled every seat in there every day for a week, several times a day,” Randy continues. “Isaac was looking for big money.” But when Dino brought the Apollo payment to Isaac, it seemed light. Trouble had been brewing anyway—Johnny was intense company and Isaac wanted some air. He accused Johnny of bringing him short pay. “I know they hadn’t stolen the money,” says Randy. “We paid Luther nine thousand dollars as opening act, ten thousand went for the number one at the radio station. I had papers to show Isaac.” But this split, once begun, couldn’t be stopped. “When we got back home,” says Randy, “Isaac said that Johnny had stolen his
money.”

  Dino remembers the incident, and believes Isaac was misled. “Some of Isaac’s friends had misquoted some figures to Isaac,” says Dino, “and he felt that something was going wrong with the financing. But certain people wanted Johnny out, because they wanted that position that Johnny had with Isaac. And to get that position next to Isaac, they had to, boom, come up with something that wasn’t really true. And that put a space between Johnny and Isaac.” Baylor didn’t take such accusations well, and neither did he intend to simply walk away, or be pushed, from a star he felt he’d created. Baylor was top gun, and he was angry.

  Mickey Gregory, who’d grown up with Isaac and, in addition to playing trumpet for him, had always been a trusted player in Isaac’s organization, was looking out for his old friend. “I was never one of Dr. King’s nonviolent Negroes,” says Mickey. “I was the only one with the exception of Isaac that the sheriff’s department would give a permit to tote a pistol—though I wasn’t the only one toting a pistol.” Mickey was tipped off by a woman friend whom Isaac had dated, now keeping company with Johnny, that Johnny was going to come to Stax with guns and that he intended to keep his job. “She gave me a vague warning that something was going to go down at the studio,” says Mickey. “I didn’t know if Johnny was supposed to kill Isaac, kidnap him, whup him, or whatever. But I did know that he was coming to the studio to do something, and I had that situation covered. I was in a beauty shop across McLemore from his office with an AR-15 [semi-automatic rifle]. I had the guards positioned. Everybody was doing whatever the fuck I said to. Wasn’t nothing going to happen—to Isaac.”

  Isaac Hayes’s trumpet player and childhood friend Mickey Gregory, right, early 1970s, with a Houston concert promoter. (Mickey Gregory Collection)

  “The night before,” says engineer Larry Nix, “I was working late in the copy room, making a little overtime. It was very unusual because there was nobody in the building. Every hour the guard would come through. Just me and him. The next morning I’m in studio A and everybody’s talking to each other, asking, ‘What went on?’ It turned out that nobody worked because they’d heard the Johnny Baylor confrontation with Isaac was supposed to go down then. I didn’t know because I always steered waaay clear of Johnny Baylor.” Just as people were sighing with relief, the security guard rushed into the studio and told them to lock the door, that Baylor was on the lot. “I took off to tell my wife, who was working in the publishing office,” Larry continues. “When I crossed the hall, I looked down and there’s Isaac’s guys on one side of the wall, Johnny’s guys on the other, staring at each other. You could hear Isaac and Johnny going at it in Isaac’s office. Johnny’s saying, ‘You can’t fire me!’ And it was loud, you could hear them all over the building. I closed the door in the publishing office and I’m thinking how the walls are so temporary, if someone shoots, it’ll go from one end of the building to the other.”

  In more than one account, each camp had guns drawn on the other, or at the ready, and the mess about to be made would require more than just the night janitors to clean up. The confrontation in Isaac’s office got so bad, the threats so loud and so harsh, that someone, elsewhere in the building, called the police. Isaac’s office had a door that opened onto McLemore, and that’s where the police came. “The cops arrived outside,” Larry continues, “and all at once Isaac’s hallway door flies open. There were sawed-off shotguns, pistols, and these guys were stuffing them everywhere.” Isaac didn’t invite the cops in, but he came to the door, showed that he was all right, and admitted that there was indeed an argument going on but that it was a “family discussion.” He put the cops at their ease, and they left. Isaac could have ratted out Baylor then and there; if he’d let the cops in, they’d have found guns, they might have found other illegalities—but Isaac protected Baylor, defused the situation.

  “They stuck them pistols up there in different places before talking to the police,” says Randy Stewart. “Police came, Isaac lied, said ain’t nothing wrong. The police left. Johnny took a records box, put the pistols in there, sealed it up like a box of records, had me take it to Johnny’s girl’s house. I walked right on by the police with that records box. That was the end of that, and that was the end of Johnny and Isaac. It was all over between them.”

  While Johnny Baylor was very effective in increasing Stax’s debt collection, and thereby its cash flow, every victory was also a loss of power from elsewhere, from Al or Jim. Was Johnny Baylor good to have around? Did the benefits outweigh the detriments? The showdown in Isaac’s office, the threat of guns so close to—pointed at—the company’s biggest star, one might conclude this is an opportunity for reassessment, for termination of the relationship. A threat to slay the company’s star moneymaker should be the last threat before an employee is shown the door.

  Not strongman Johnny Baylor. In 1972 in Memphis, Tennessee, at Stax Records, following an armed in-office showdown, Johnny Baylor was promoted. Instead of dismissing him, Al Bell assigned him to the promotions department, to the job of raising the company’s profile through more radio play and more prominent display at retail locations. Al needed the company looking its best on paper because he was once again about to seek an investor: Jim had informed Al that he was ready to cash out.

  Jim was looking at the business and it just didn’t look like fun. Gargantuan corporate power struggles, absentee overlords mandating minor internal procedures, the threat of Wild West shoot-’em-ups in the hallways—this was a long way from, gee whiz, the good old days of 1957 or even 1967. He could grow his hair long and wear wide lapels, but now people were smoking marijuana in the building, there was talk of cocaine. The conglomerate world was ever consolidating. Instead of big labels nipping at smaller ones, unrelated companies were gathered under big umbrellas. Wexler sold out to Warner Bros., but the following year Warner was bought by the Kinney Parking Company. Wasn’t Gulf & Western originally an auto parts manufacturer? The business was less and less about “record men,” people with ears who could pick or create hits. How long since Jim had been transformed like when he’d first heard Ray Charles? He looked admiringly at his sister’s exit. Riding out to his estate, Jim would pass near her apartment complex, and it must have given him pause. Having crossed into his early forties, he was newly aware of time ticking. He was hearing his exit cue.

  The company was in a good place. Al had just broken the barrier with Sears. He was riding Shaft; his eyes were nationwide. He could put Isaac Hayes, Johnnie Taylor, the Staple Singers inside Camelot, Hastings, Peaches—the new world of record chains inside every mall being built coast to coast. Jim, however, was a fighter growing weary. His career in music was resembling his banking tenure. “I spent two years doing nothing but negotiating, back and forth from New York to California,” he says. “I hardly went to the studio. It drained me, mentally. I spent one whole summer in New York trying to get out of Gulf & Western and get the money to pay them off. We gave them a profit. Then we borrowed money from Deutsche Grammophon and the bank. The bank was paid back three million dollars in six months’ time, that’s how much money we made. Deutsche Grammophon, we had to pay them back plus about a million dollars profit. A lot of bad decisions were made. All the profits were going to other companies. And the company was being neglected because Bell and I were tending to these deals. I decided I wanted to get out once and for all. I wanted to go back to the studio and have some fun again. I told Bell, ‘I want to sell the company but I don’t want stock, I don’t want paper, I want cash.’”

  “Jim said to me, ‘I want to get some money out of this operation,’” Al recalls. “So I had the responsibility, once again, of trying to sell the company.” He met with ready interest from RCA. “Elvis was alive at that time. I’m meeting with Rocco Laginestra, president of RCA Records. They offered us fifteen million dollars in RCA stock and I went back and told Jim about this great deal.” Al laughs as he remembers Jim’s response. “And Jim said, ‘Oh yeah?’ He said, ‘Man, I don’t want no more stock
. I want cash money.’ I said, ‘But RCA is a blue-chip company.’ He says, ‘I don’t care who it is, Al. I don’t want anybody’s stock: I want cash money.’”

  Generating an offer that would let Al buy out Jim with cash would take time and require assistance. There was really only one person Al could enlist to make that happen. So Al leaned on the lean-on man: Johnny Baylor. While traveling with Isaac Hayes, Baylor’s team had visited radio stations to take advantage of promotional opportunities. “They used to walk in the radio station, they’d lift the arm off that record while it’s playing, put theirs on,” says Randy Stewart, from Isaac’s entourage. “Wasn’t nobody going to argue with them.”

  “We were on tour and Johnny Baylor had sent some of his guys out to pay some disc jockeys in Birmingham,” says Isaac’s drummer Willie Hall. “These guys were no fools. They stayed around in Birmingham the rest of that day to make sure that the jocks lived up to their agreement. These disc jockeys man, some of them were dogs, money-hungry clowns. They were gangsters themselves. But that was the order of the day then—disc jockeys getting their arms broken and their face beat in for taking payola and not playing records.”

  Al and Johnny struck a deal that, in short, had them both betting on the future: I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hit record today. Al wanted a strong cash flow so he could command the best price for Jim’s buyout. To push the company’s earnings higher, “I went to my dear friend Johnny Baylor,” says Al, “and explained, ‘I need you to take your team and go out and promote the Stax product.’ I said, ‘I can’t pay you for that. But what I’ll do is, I’ll take on the distribution of your label, and the manufacturing part of it, and that gives you compensation.’” That is, Al explains, “I didn’t want to create any additional expense for the company while I’m out trying to sell it.” In return for Baylor doing this promotions work, and for fronting the pay and expenses to his team, Al would assume the costs of Baylor’s record label and would agree to pay him later if their work paid off. Al and Baylor shared an economic philosophy, even if their means were different. “Those guys were on top of taking Isaac Hayes’s product to another level,” Al says. “And their motivation was different. The others were salaried employees, but in this particular case, there was a lot of black pride involved in what we were doing.”