Respect Yourself

by Robert Gordon

  Al took that verse to Muscle Shoals, where Mavis ad-libbed with the group as they jammed on a riff. Muscle Shoals guitarist Jimmy Johnson had just returned from Jamaica and had a single of the reggae instrumental “The Liquidator” by the Harry J All Stars; bassist David Hood and drummer Roger Hawkins had recently completed a tour with the British rock band Traffic and had been listening to Bob Marley. Funky rhythms were in the air, and the band locked into a groove that sent Mavis improvising a call-and-response with the instruments. “Respect Yourself,” released in latter 1971, went to number-two R&B and number-twelve pop, and “I’ll Take You There,” which wasn’t released until the spring of 1972, went to number one on both charts. Baylor’s troops on the street—promoting, enforcing, collecting—had no shortage of strong material to work with.

  And then there was Isaac Hayes’s Black Moses album, his second double album of the year, released while “Theme from Shaft” was still number one in the nation. The rare artist can churn out copious work at a rapid rate and maintain a high level of innovation. But Isaac Hayes was putting out music faster than the Beatles in their prime. Black Moses is not a bad record, but it doesn’t move Hayes’s career forward, and with the glut of his material in the marketplace, this album came off as stale.

  The name “Black Moses” had first come from Dino Woodard. “Isaac was a great leader,” he says, “And one time at the Apollo Theater their MC was late, and I introduced him as Black Moses. The audience was just overwhelmed.”

  Isaac initially found the name sacrilegious, but a Jet writer picked up on it, as did other MCs in their introductions. Stax capitalized on a growing trend. Larry Shaw, Stax’s advertising and packaging chief (whose Stax work had already won several national awards), didn’t like the record at all, and told writer Rob Bowman, “The music in there was of such poor quality, we had to sell the box it came in. We put an inordinate amount of money into that album jacket. It was to capture fully all the things about him that were not in the record. The record was the box.” Shaw created a gatefold that unfurled in four directions, shaping into a cross four feet tall and three feet wide, with Isaac in an Egyptian-looking tunic, his arms outstretched, an all-enfolding embrace of his tribe.

  Concurrent with the album’s release was an antipiracy publicity storm. Having lost much profit to pirates with Shaft, Stax made its stance known through press releases, press conferences in New York, and filmed announcements for television. The label would be “utilizing ex-FBI operatives . . . [They] will institute close surveillance tactics at the fabricating plants, pressing operations, and known bootlegging operations throughout the U.S. FBI methods will be utilized in detecting and apprehending pirates.”

  Expecting big sales for Black Moses, Stax spared no expense. To its most influential people—DJs, radio station directors, owners of the largest distributors—Stax sent a space-age telephone, equal parts James Bond sleek and Daddy Mack pimpin’: The size of a small tabletop, the device featured a clear plastic dome through which the phone’s electronics were visible; the rotary-dial face protruded like a breast offering itself. The handset extended from the left side of the fine wood-grain box. It was sure to win favors, and likely helped important Stax supporters impress their dates.

  Stax’s excesses were growing. Another promotional phone came in a wood-and-leather case; lift the lid to reveal the phone ringing within. Elegant, futuristic. Stax gave away beautiful Bulova watches; a crystal desk set that evoked a lofty religious ceremony but was actually a sword-and-stone letter opener; a fine leather shoulder satchel embossed with the finger-snapping logo; a silver tea set. In addition, Shaw designed no end of everyday giveaways: a package of playing cards, two decks side by side, one with the Stax logo on the back, the other with the Volt logo. Both also promote the Hip and Enterprise subsidiary labels (Hip was oriented toward white pop, and Enterprise was home to Isaac Hayes); the cards bear the motto: THE SOUND CENTER OF THE SOULAR SYSTEM MEMPHIS TN. There were Stax oven mitts, keychains, refrigerator magnets, and posters of all kinds.

  Promotional telephone for the Isaac Hayes album Black Moses. (Photograph by David Leonard)

  Black Moses spent nearly two months at the top of the R&B album charts. Hayes’s edited version of “Never Can Say Goodbye” reached number twenty-two on the pop charts, and the top five on the R&B. At the start of 1972, he was nominated for seven Grammy Awards and numerous other accolades. He seemed invincible, and it was a perfect time to negotiate a new contract. For several years there’d been talk about giving Isaac equity in the company, and while Al couldn’t promise that at a time when he was trying to find a new partner, Al knew he’d never have a partner if Isaac got away. If this new contract were clothing, it would have fit only Isaac. Among numerous lavish perks, his new deal included a $26,000 gold-plated Cadillac, a leased house in a canyon near Hollywood, a very sweet royalty deal, and annual salaries totaling $55,000 for the administering of his publishing company and for himself as a producer—despite his production work having fallen off dramatically since he’d become an artist. Other than Billy Eckstine, Isaac had mostly just finished prior commitments with David Porter. Such outlandish payments were the price of keeping the Isaac Hayes generator humming.

  Much like Hayes’s contracts and his album, Stax had become outsize. The company’s early-1970s phone directory had an intimidating two hundred names, many with multiple extensions. In the new Stax Organization, employees wandered the halls not knowing each other’s names, even what their jobs were. Since the chain of operations had been initially revised in March 1970 by Jim Stewart, it had changed time and again. Problems were solved by hiring—a fixer, a specialist, a new department. “How are you gonna put a song on the turntable and statistically analyze it?” Deanie Parker asks of the department of statistical analysis. “It was getting crazy, just crazy.” The magic wand is waved. A new department is created. Middle-class wage is granted. Plus five. The tally of Al’s upwardly mobile employees rises.

  “There was a lot of head games going on, political games as the company got bigger,” says Jim, who was working on his exit. “I didn’t like that, but there was no way I could stop it. You got a hundred and fifty, two hundred people, it’s not like it’s six people you can talk to every day. We were getting too big, the overhead was getting out of hand. At some point I felt that it was growing into a monster that could devour itself.”

  23. Wattstax

  1972

  Stax issued employee badges “like you worked at the Pentagon,” says Duck Dunn. It was January 1972. “Good morning, Jim,” and “What’s up, Eddie?” were gone. A guard in uniform whom no one knew sat at the back door demanding proof that the person entering the building had reason to be there. When Duck forgot his badge and was refused entrance to the studio he’d helped build, he turned on his heels and went home.

  “They was keeping me and Al Jackson there as a favor, or loyalty—that was the feeling,” says Duck. “It wasn’t because they really wanted us. I had an office there and about forty psychedelic San Francisco posters on the wall from when we played the Fillmore. I decorated it with some psychedelic curtains and I’d light incense.” But Duck rarely went there. “I’d be there a few hours and I’d think, What in the hell am I doing here? If I’m not in there playing bass, why ain’t I out on the golf course? But if you left, someone might stab you in the back and say, ‘Duck ain’t here.’ And I didn’t have the guts to walk out and say, ‘Hey, do you need me to play bass? That’s what I do. I don’t talk on the phone to no damn radio station, I’m here to play bass.’ Finally, somebody says to me, ‘Hey, can we use your space?’” Duck was glad to relinquish it.

  Engineer Larry Nix was struck by the ever-increasing surveillance and safety measures. Notably, it wasn’t that they were afraid of being robbed, but rather fear they’d be framed so they could be taken down. They’d grown so large and were employing so many African-Americans that they knew resentment, hostility, and fear were roiling among Memphis business elite. “
There was a paranoia,” Larry says. “They were afraid someone would hide drugs in Stax, then try to bust them. My office had a special lock, and it had a motion detector. There was a lot of security.”

  The alienation grew. Men in suits appeared, carrying clipboards. “M.B.W.,” says publishing head Tim Whitsett, explaining “management by walking around. You walk by somebody’s office at ten o’clock in the morning and see if they’re working. You come by at random times, then you begin to have some circumstantial evidence. So that becomes M.B.T.: management by terror. We should have had M.B.O.: management by objectives. We didn’t have a real, structured management system.”

  A stack of beautiful, black leatherette notebooks arrived with the new year. The Stax logo was embossed in gold on the front, as was the title: Field Representative’s Policy Manual. At last—a codified plan. But upon inspection, this hefty manual the length of a novella was more a description of intense corporate culture than a plan to organize the Stax Organization. It’s like teaching teenagers to drive by giving them a NASCAR rule book. There are categories covering everything—payments, lunch time, inclement weather. Consider the statement in the category “Wage and Salary” under the subject “Salary Administration-Exempt cont’d,” section number V-6.00, subsection (f), step (3), subsection (b) (in a book of approximately fifty unnumbered pages): “Dollars given midpoint amounts for performance as described in (4) and (5) are also uneconomical in that it retards motivation, lowers morale and increases turnover costs.” Yes, that and having to read this manual.

  “At that time we were trying to put in policies and procedures, and trying to get some control over who reported to whom, and who could do what,” says Al’s assistant, Earlie Biles. Among the departments created: Systems and Efficiency.

  Earlie took time off from her work that summer to marry James Douglass (Isaac Hayes was his best man). They held their wedding in Rome, and Al had the company underwrite a number of round-trip flights so the couple could be married among friends—a trip, a treat, a dream, for everyone. A photo from the reception appeared in Jet magazine. “We shopped over there and everything,” says Earlie, “came back and had our American Express bills due.” She solved that pinch by a quick call to Joe Harwell at Union Planters National Bank.

  Despite the rampant disorganization characterized—or caused—by continued reorganization, the hits couldn’t be stopped, nor could the cash flow. Jean Knight had a top-twenty follow-up to “Mr. Big Stuff” with “You Think You’re Hot Stuff.” The Dramatics had another top-twenty hit, “Get Up and Get Down.” The Bar-Kays and Little Milton each reached the top ten—with “Son of Shaft” and “That’s What Love Will Make You Do”—and Johnnie Taylor came in at number twelve with “Standing In for Jody.” Isaac kept his Shaft album moving with another single, the number-three hit “Do Your Thing.” Albert King hit the top fifty with “Angel of Mercy.” Don Davis sent Stax another Dramatics hit, “In the Rain,” which shot to the tip-top of the soul charts for four weeks in a row and to number-five pop, and was followed two weeks later by the Staple Singers’ “I’ll Take You There,” also spending a month at number one. Tim Whitsett developed a relationship with Frederick Knight, who was sending unsolicited song demos to various companies. Whitsett encouraged and coached him, urging him toward creating something more individual—all his material sounded like a modification of other hits. “He wrote ‘I’ve Been Lonely for So Long,’ where he sings in this pitiful little falsetto,” says Tim. “He also sings in a low bass voice. He sent that to me, and I fell out of my chair because it just made you feel so good.” The public agreed: R&B number eight, pop number twenty-seven. Seven of Stax’s first eight singles in 1972 hit the top fifty; thirteen of the first eighteen singles; nearly half of their thirty-nine releases in the first half of 1972 were chart hits. Johnny Baylor’s team was very good at what it did. The company purchased their longtime McLemore base on April 6, 1972, for $85,000. The mortgage was held by Union Planters National Bank, Joe Harwell, trustee.

  Al Bell hadn’t forgotten that Jim Stewart wanted out. But he was still raising the profile, enhancing the company’s value. In 1972, Johnny Baylor found the song that would skyrocket his artist Luther Ingram to fame, and generate a heap of income for Stax. Luther was a songwriter and aspiring singer from near Jackson, Tennessee, about eighty miles east of Memphis. A tawny black man, Luther’s complexion was bronzed by his Blackfoot Indian heritage. He was thin and lithe, with hair that konked close to his head. His face was angular and sharp, his eyes were stunningly amber, his smile revealed the disarming gap between his front teeth. He’d been raised in the Baptist church and sang with a gospel group that, after auditioning for Cincinnati’s King Records (home to James Brown), went pop and was assigned Ike Turner as producer. Luther had made several recordings before he moved to New York, where he met Baylor in the mid-1960s. “When Johnny found Luther Ingram,” says Dino, “he was really able to see that there was some extra talent there, extra voice, so he really strove to promote Luther.”

  Luther Ingram was what Baylor had been looking for. Johnny himself had the look and feel of a star. He saw nightclub singers in Sugar Ray’s barbershop, and he felt the ladies and the men responding to them off the stage and on, and Johnny could almost taste the spotlight. But he wasn’t a singer. “He wanted most of his life to sing,” says Luther Ingram, “and he tried to do that through me.”

  Baylor could produce a flattened nose faster than a flattened note, and it was with a mixture of intimidation and aspiration for the spotlight that he would draw out his protégé in the recording studio. After Luther found his soul balladeer groove, Baylor tapped his Isaac Hayes connections, bringing Isaac’s arrangers Dale Warren and Johnny Allen to write Luther’s arrangements, and also using Isaac’s backing vocalists. Even as Luther’s hits began to mount, Baylor held off releasing an album on Luther until 1971’s I’ve Been Here All the Time. “Johnny wanted to challenge Marvin Gaye,” says Luther, “so he just waited until Marvin had released a lot of records.” Luther’s chart action improved (Willie Hall cowrote and coproduced some of his hits), but it wasn’t until he stumbled onto an older Stax demo that his career was made. In 1970, Homer Banks and Raymond Jackson had cowritten a song with Carl Hampton for the Emotions. They recorded the song about infidelity and desire, but it was deemed too risqué for them and wasn’t released. Another Stax artist (Veda Brown) had tried it, but it still didn’t see the light of day.

  “One day Luther Ingram was outside our office and heard the demo with me on it,” says Homer Banks. “Next thing we knew, he’d cut it himself.” Al Bell told Baylor he’d give him the publishing rights to the song: “Just stay on top of my product out here.”

  Baylor took Luther to Muscle Shoals to record in April 1972. It was the first time Luther met the musicians, but they synced quickly. The guitar sound is sinuous, like lovers sneaking to their secret hideaway. The organ, strings, and horns meld—lovers conjoined. It’s not the classic church-based soul song, but neither is it a completely modern statement; the instruments are spare enough to let the emotion intensify, supporting Luther’s plaintive perplexity: “If loving you is wrong,” he pleads, “I don’t want to be right.”

  Luther’s song was cut in about half an hour, which is also how long Banks says it took to write. Baylor brought the tape back to Stax to have it mastered for release. “I was in the mastering room one day at lunch-time,” says engineer Larry Nix, “and Johnny Baylor came in with Luther Ingram. Johnny was waving a German Luger and he walked up to me very quickly and pulled a reference disc [of ‘If Loving You Is Wrong’] out of a sleeve and said, ‘Did you do this?’ My boss, had done it. He was at lunch. Johnny threw the record against the wall, pointed at the lathe, and said, ‘Do you know how to do this?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ Luther convinced Johnny to leave, and I went and got the master tape, started working on it. My boss came back, looked at my EQ settings, and says, ‘You can’t use that much EQ on there.’ Luther stepped up and told him what ha
d happened, said, ‘Johnny Baylor is looking for you.’ Not only did my boss turn and leave the building, he quit the company. I took the reference disc to WDIA [the city’s leading black music radio station]. They’d play our tests on the air so we could hear how it’d sound. Jim would go to his Lincoln Continental and listen, someone else would go home with their hi-fi. On my ride back to Stax, I heard the DJ play it four times in a row. Johnny loved what I did, and from then on I was cutting masters at Stax.”

  “It would be scary to some people because Johnny felt that he would have to really put some force in there to push for products,” says Dino. “He would sit in on different sessions sometimes that wasn’t his artist, and then he would discuss things with Al Bell, what he felt was wrong and what was right, arrangements, and whatnot. He would push people to really do certain things to make sure that records were sold, and recorded right.”

  “One day, Johnny Baylor came into my office and shut the door,” says Tim Whitsett, then executive vice president of the publishing companies. “He started cussing me out that all of Luther Ingram’s songs were published by East/Memphis Music, Stax’s publishing company, when they should be split with his company, Klondike. He wanted me to right then draw up the contracts giving fifty percent of all those copyrights to Klondike. I said, ‘Johnny, I certainly can’t do that without being asked by Mr. Bell or Mr. Stewart.’ Johnny Baylor leaned back on my nice white leather sofa and opened his jacket. It seemed to me there were seven or eight guns and some bandoleers, but I think it was just one pearl-handled pistol. He said, ‘I know where you live down in Jackson, Mississippi. I know where you live here in Memphis. I’m gonna leave you, and when I come back, I want those contracts.’ I called Al Bell and he told me, ‘Better go ahead and draw up those contracts.’” “If Loving You Is Wrong,” promoted by Johnny Baylor, hit number one on the R&B charts and stayed at the top for four consecutive weeks. Within a few months, it sold so many copies that the master at the pressing plant wore out and a new one had to be made.