Respect Yourself

by Robert Gordon

  “Johnny Baylor’s perspective,” says Dino, “was to see an African-American—boom—out there in the front. He wanted Al Bell to really be out there. And he would do anything that he had to to see that Al Bell would be all right.”

  There was a financial risk for Johnny—Al was not going to provide any immediate income. But money clung to Johnny. “The devil was with Johnny Baylor,” says Randy Stewart, “because he had money all kind of ways.” None of the ways were obvious, but the money was.

  Johnny Baylor became the face of Stax Records in the field. He’d follow behind James Douglass and the other promo men who paid visits to stations, the good cops who greased the turntables with money. Baylor’s team, the bad cops, would hit a town and you could almost hear his crew’s boots in lockstep as they fanned out to radio, retail, and distribution centers. Johnny Baylor would take a hotel room, and everyone his team came in contact with was told to reach him there. In a day, they’d make their presence known—word about Johnny would spread quickly. Retailers moved Stax product to the front of the store, gave it a big display; jocks played the newest Stax releases, giving them an extra spin. When one of Baylor’s team showed up, he’d be greeted with nervous smiles: “Hey f-f-fellas, you’re in town?”

  Now here’s the kicker: Baylor would keep the hotel room for several days, maybe a week. DJs and store managers would phone the Holiday Inn, ask for his room. “I’m sorry sir, he’s not answering.” Thinking he’s still in town, they’d keep on pushing the Stax product, figuring Baylor’s pushing the presets on his car radio, and he’s someone you want to keep finger-snapping happy. In fact, Baylor and the gang may have already moved on to the next town, taken another hotel room for a week, started intimidating another city’s DJs and distributors. The Stax product received the extra push until the desk clerk said he’s checked out. Baylor could keep a whole region on its toes, Stax product everywhere.

  “Other companies who had already established themselves in the recording industry were doing the same thing—getting airplay by any means necessary,” says Dino. “The top artists were selling millions of records, and some of that stuff is oopy-doopy stuff. But American music comes from gospel music, R&B, and jazz, so we felt that we deserved to be heard. We would meet the music directors and take up a little bit of their time to explain about R&B music. It was the way that we approached people, let them know that the African-American music needed to be heard.”

  “Dino was an ex-boxer and he promoted records,” says Seymour Rosenberg, the Stax attorney. “He would open a briefcase and inside it was mounted a revolver. He would say, ‘Boom!’ and close it back up and, miraculously, his records got played.”

  In addition to promoting at radio and retail, Baylor’s team collected on delinquent accounts, especially independent distributors who never wanted to let go of a dollar. “You gotta pay up,” says Dino. “Boom. There’s no getting around. A lot of distributors were holding back on the pay. And, well, we wanted to make sure that they paid now. There was some run-ins from time to time, and we got challenged a lot, so we had to really push our way through to those companies.”

  “They kept Stax floating,” says Randy Stewart. “They were going to bring some money back. If you owe somebody and you’re not paying, there’s another way of getting it.” Randy declined to give details, only to imply that fists and guns had a way of making distributors locate money they’d been unable to find earlier in the conversation.

  As Baylor settled into his work in the field, he suggested Al bring in another industry veteran, Hymie Weiss, whose experience and analytical eye would help them increase the sales numbers. “Hymie Weiss was a gentleman, a friend like no other,” says Al. “He’d had hits in the 1950s with Arthur Prysock. Hymie would fly from New York, stay at the Holiday Inn Central, run the sales department, and then fly back on the weekend.”

  “I was the payola king of New York,” Weiss later bragged. “Payola was the greatest thing in the world. You didn’t have to go out to dinner with someone and kiss their ass. Just pay them, here’s the money, play the record, fuck you.” One of his Stax associates remembered Weiss as the guy who could buy a million records for a million bucks. The distribution of them might not have been clean, the sales may not all be accounted for, but the money spent, the generator whirred, and the cash register went ka-ching. Jim wanted out, but to get top dollar he’d wait for Al to make sure the company was moving lots of product, generating lots of income, attracting top dollar.

  The success of the Shaft soundtrack would not seem to be a source of complaint. Yet Baylor quickly noticed a funny thing happening in distribution: Sometimes stores returned more copies than they’d ordered. He brought the news to Al. An ironic by-product to success: “We were growing so large, until it allowed for people to commit white-collar crimes,” Al explains. “You don’t have that happening in small, nothing companies.”

  Pirating. That’s different from bootlegging (bootlegs are unofficial recordings released through unofficial means), different from forgeries (attempts to copy album art and musical content). Pirating requires insiders to cheat, insiders at the label, at the pressing plant, or on a delivery truck—someone who could access or create great quantities of the genuine article. Industry-wide, pirating was estimated to account for 10 percent of product on the market—the equivalent of what is often a small company’s profit margin. “We estimate that some 800,000 pirated copies of Shaft found their way onto the market in the States,” Stax corporate management consultant Adam Oliphant told an industry publication. “That’s something like 40 per cent [of the product accounted for].” Oliphant explained the pirate’s methods: “There is the straight-forward theft of legitimate product. This can occur within a pressing plant, the press operative working on the principle of ‘one for the company, one for me’ and then getting the records out of the factory and onto the market with the collusion of a shipping clerk, a security guard and a trucker or, where independent pressing plants are employed, the management themselves may fiddle their clients by over-pressing. Once these records get into the shops they are virtually impossible to detect.”

  Stax was ready to pay high dollars to solve this high-dollar problem, and their New York law office led them to Norman Jaspan & Associates, an investigative firm that also advised Ford Motors. Al liked keeping such company. Jaspan sent in undercover operatives, and Stax bought infrared detection for shipping supervision, marking their boxes so that their representatives in the field could carry a special device to authenticate their product. “On a weekly basis I would get the reports,” says Al, “not at the office but at home.” Jaspan beefed up the studio’s security, creating a guard station and adding a vault that required two keys.

  In November 1971, while Shaft was massive, two Stax executives who’d been at the company barely two years were fired. Ewell Roussell, vice president of sales, and Herbert Kole, vice president of merchandising and marketing, were accused of piracy. Both had access to the master tapes and connections at the pressing plants for records and art, and Stax alleged that they’d manufactured illegal albums and sold them for profit—about $380,000 profit. They’d also forced a kickback from local and national photographers hired for album covers and promotional shots—another $26,000. “Jim and I decided not to prosecute them,” says Al. “‘Go your way, we don’t want to send you through these kind of problems. You got family, kids.’ We were supposed to turn them in to the bonding company, the bonding company would have given us our money back, and then the bonding company could have caused them to be prosecuted. We let them go, and several other people, at that point in time.” Stax settled with the insurance for a tenth of what they’d lost.

  (For his part, Ewell Roussell claimed not only innocence but also vindication, saying, “I lost my sales position at Stax Records because of something somebody else did, completely without my knowledge. Stax, through Jim Stewart, acknowledged by letter to me that pressure from its fidelity bond company caused my release and n
ot any implication of me by the investigations. I still have that letter. The newspaper quotes have said that I received money from alleged kickbacks. I did not receive one cent and did not know of any such scheme until after my release. The bond company settled its claim with Herbert Kolesky [Kole], who had been my superior at Stax. They never even approached me about any claim because it was clear to them that they had no claim against me.”)

  “Al was too compassionate,” says his assistant Earlie Biles. “A lot of people he brought in took advantage of him and the situation, because we grew so fast. He was bringing people in who had expertise in certain areas, but these people brought their own people in, their own ideas. We didn’t have policies and procedures in place, so they would all run to Al Bell for whatever they wanted. When they couldn’t get through me to see him, they would wait in the parking lot. They missed him there, they’d go to his house.” Earlie and her husband, living next to Al’s house, chased down the people who tried to get to Al by throwing pebbles at his window during the night. “The chain of command was broken.”

  One casualty of that broken chain was Don Davis. In the various shufflings, he bounced from head of A&R back to staff producer and, despite all the Johnnie Taylor hits, wound up out the door. “Don came in my office a few months after he’d hired me,” says Tim Whitsett, “and said, ‘I’ve just been canned and I’m on my way back to Detroit.’”

  To the consumer—to anyone on the outside—Stax appeared to be thriving. Despite Booker T. Jones and Steve Cropper having left the Stax payroll, the MG’s were still recording together, and their single “Melting Pot,” in early 1971, from the album of the same name, had fared well on both the R&B and the pop charts. However, the tensions between the group and the Stax staff were so high that the band recorded in New York, far from their McLemore home. A new direction, “Melting Pot” is more jazz-influenced than the band’s prior work, looser within its defined structure, a greater sense of impromptu jamming. (It remains a favorite for contemporary samplers.) This single and album would prove to be their last work on Stax—Duck and Al Jackson would release an album and single in late 1973 as the MG’s, with no mention of Booker T., and without much success.

  But Stax’s original star was back on top: Rufus Thomas was enjoying hit after hit. In a slump since the mid-1960s, he’d teamed with newcomer Tom Nixon, a Detroit producer, and things clicked. “The Funky Chicken” went top ten in 1970, “(Do the) Push and Pull (Part 1)” went to number-one R&B and number-twenty-five pop, and “The Breakdown,” released in July of 1971, was on its way to top-forty pop and number two on the R&B charts, with “Do the Funky Penguin” to chart before the year was out.

  Stax continued to aggressively license material from outside sources. Jean Knight’s hit “Mr. Big Stuff” had taken off in the middle of 1971. The song had come to the attention of Tim Whitsett when it arrived on a four-song tape from Malaco Studios in Jackson, Mississippi; they wanted Stax to license it and get it to the masses. Don Davis had rejected all the songs, but Tim thought three of them were really strong. After Stax declined their songs, the tiny struggling Malaco label released one itself. “Groove Me” hit the top of the soul charts and top-ten pop. With Davis gone, Whitsett had Stax reconsider the others. “We were being blessed and fortunate,” says Al Bell. “I’m sitting in my office one day on Avalon, right across from Jim, and I’m hearing this bass slam through a wall. I said, ‘Jesus Christ what a bass line. Poignant, poignant.” He went to Jim’s office, found out it was the relatively unknown Jean Knight doing a song called “Mr. Big Stuff.” “I said, ‘Man, we got to go to the street with this as fast as we possibly can.’” It went to number-one R&B and number-two pop. “It was,” Al says, “like manna from heaven.”

  The Dramatics also hit big. They’d come to Stax through Don Davis in 1968, but departed after having no significant success. In 1971, they were re-signed on the strength of “Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get,” made with Davis in Detroit. Stax leapt on the song, taking it to the top ten in both pop and R&B, and earning a gold record for a million sales before the year was out. Albert King was also on the make, with “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven” from his Lovejoy album, a career highlight produced by onetime Mar-Key Don Nix. The Emotions, the gospel band brought from Chicago and given the pop patina, charted with “Show Me Now.”

  The Rance Allen Group was a gospel outfit that did not want to cross over, and Stax liked them so much, they created a new imprint, the Gospel Truth, just so they could sign them. “We tried to go to Motown, but Motown didn’t do gospel at all,” recalls Rance Allen. “The next step was Stax Records, and they didn’t do gospel either. But Jim Stewart and Al Bell liked what they heard, and so they called my manager to tell him they were interested.” No folly, Gospel Truth released three albums in 1971, and many more over the coming years.

  Al Bell had taken over production of the Staple Singers from Steve Cropper well before Cropper’s departure. He’d produced a couple records and enjoyed some success—“Heavy Makes You Happy (Sha-Na-Boom Boom)” from The Staple Swingers had gone top-forty pop and top-ten R&B—but for his third album with them, Al took the family to Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Muscle Shoals had become a notable recording center in 1961 when Rick Hall produced Arthur Alexander, whose songs were then cut by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones; Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” was recorded in Muscle Shoals, Wilson Pickett found more success there after leaving Stax, and the studios had developed top-notch house bands (on the Stax model). While preparing for the soul explosion, Stax developed a satellite relationship with the Muscle Shoals studios. By taking the Staples there, Al would be far from the office and not constantly distracted by phone calls. Plus, he says, producing at Stax was intimidating. “I don’t know flat from sharp,” he says. “I’m the other stuff.” To the staff, he was the marketing guy, and he felt his lack of musical knowledge would lower their opinion of him; outside Stax, he could be just another client. Just another hit-making, star-making client. With the Staples in Muscle Shoals, he cut “Respect Yourself” and “I’ll Take You There.” To ensure he’d get the best efforts from the musicians, he made the unusual arrangement of paying them a royalty on sales.

  1973, backstage at the Mid-South Coliseum. L–R: Eddie Floyd, Rance Allen, Johnnie Taylor, Rufus Thomas. (University of Memphis Libraries/Special Collections)

  “Respect Yourself” grew from a conversation between songwriter Mack Rice, who’d written Wilson Pickett’s hit “Mustang Sally,” and Luther Ingram, Johnny Baylor’s artist. “When the administration moved out of the McLemore offices, they let everyone who was staying [the creative team] pick their offices,” says Rice. “I picked Jim Stewart’s office, man. It was plush, with long couches and zebra all over the floor. I felt like I was somebody then. So one day Luther Ingram and I was up there talking. One of us said, ‘A guy got to respect himself out here to get anyplace.’ It hit us the same time—that’s a good title, ‘Respect Yourself.’ Luther went downstairs to see Isaac about something. I’m messing with my guitar and Luther—what are they doing so long? I started writing. It was like God just give me the words. About thirty minutes, I had the whole song wrote and Luther never came back.

  “The next day I turned in the song to the publishing department, told the girl down there, ‘When you see Luther, tell him to sign this contract.’ Luther told her, ‘I ain’t did no song with Mack Rice.’ She said, ‘I had to almost beg him to sign it.’ The song starts climbing the charts, Luther came to me and said, ‘Hey, man, didn’t I write some of that?’ I said, ‘No sir. I’m giving you ten percent of the song, though, ’cause one of us come up with the title.’”

  The song jibed perfectly with the Staple Singers. “Pops would tell the songwriters,” says Mavis about her father, “‘If you want to write for the Staples, read the headlines—we want to sing about what’s happening in the world today.’ So Mack said, ‘Pops, I got one for you.’ Pops heard it, said, ‘Shoot, man, we could put that down.’”
And they sure did.

  Al, who’d been more occupied with business than songwriting, wrote “I’ll Take You There.” “My fourth oldest brother was murdered in North Little Rock, just as I was getting ready to go in the studio with the Staple Singers,” he told a reporter. “I had nothing but deaths among my brothers. Paul, the one after me, was shot down and killed in Memphis. My youngest brother, Darnell, was murdered in North Little Rock. I couldn’t come to grips with death.” After leaving the Arkansas graveyard, his family broke bread at his parents’ house. But Al got up and went outside, found himself pacing uncontrollably, the song welling up inside him, the sun heating him in his jacket as he walked. “My father had the relic of an old school bus under two oak trees,” says Al. “He used that bus to haul cotton pickers, and it was a reminder to him how he moved from an eighth-grade education to being one of the leading landscaping contractors in Arkansas. I sat on the hood of that school bus and tried to deal with all the emotions I was feeling. All of a sudden—I cannot sing, I cannot dance, I cannot carry a tune in a vacuum-packed can—but I can feel and I can hear. Then I started singing the lyrics:

  I know a place

  Ain’t nobody worried

  Ain’t nobody crying

  And ain’t no smiling faces

  Lying to the races.

  I’ll take you there.

  It wouldn’t leave, it stayed there. I kept trying to write other verses, but I couldn’t. Nothing worked. There was nothing left to say.”