Respect Yourself

by Robert Gordon

  The event—Jesse Jackson called it a public policy statement—was a grand success. “After the Watts riots, any time two black people got together, white America figured there was going to be a problem,” says Al. “So it was a joyful, beautiful moment to see 112,000 of our people—from gang members sitting side by side to multiple generations of families—having a great time.” For Stax, the West seemed about to be won: “An agreement has been reached between Stax and the Watts Summer Festival that will give us a three-to-five-year relationship with one another,” explained a Watts Festival spokesperson. “So we’re planning for the future even now.”

  Finishing the concert marked the beginning of Al’s plans to commercially exploit the concert. However good the vibes on that August day, Al knew the impact would come from the event’s documentation. He grasped the ephemeral nature of the present, and the permanence of a recording. Concert reviewers may have griped about the succession of acts and long set changes—but the album is fantastic and the movie is thrilling, and the crowd heard and seen is cheering, participatory, and wildly enthused. Integrated into the movie are some of the missed acts: Little Milton performing his hit “Walking the Backstreets and Crying,” set evocatively at the Watts Towers; Johnnie Taylor in a swanky Hollywood club; and Luther Ingram on a soundstage made to look as if he were at the concert. When the first edit was done, director Mel Stuart was dissatisfied, describing the result as “a big newsreel of a concert.” Absorbing Larry Shaw’s idea of the film as a mirror, he suggested some verité shooting on the streets—real-life images and commentary. The risk was deemed too high, and instead he found unknown actors who would be comfortable with the camera, and paid them to express their minds in various environments. The people are actors and the subjects are predetermined, but the situations are real, the lines impromptu, and it works splendidly.

  Another edit was screened, and Stuart again expressed dissatisfaction. “We need somebody like the chorus in Henry V, and we need a comic person to do this, to express the feelings of the people in one person,” he remembers telling the team. They sent him to see a young comic in Watts. He says, “I knew within three or four minutes that I was in the presence of a comic genius.” Richard Pryor had yet to record his ground-breaking Stax album That Nigger’s Crazy, but the film would prime his audience. Stuart set Pryor in a club environment, then pitched him words to riff from; his interludes are intimate, personal, universal, and hilarious. It was the perfect glue to hold the weaves together and to keep an edge on the film.

  The movie was readied for release, but there was a last and surprising problem: MGM Films blocked the climax of Isaac performing “Theme from Shaft” and sued, citing “interference with contractual relationship, unfair competition, and misappropriation of rights.” Meaning: Stax had used “Theme from Shaft” without asking MGM’s permission, and now they were being held accountable. The footage was excised; Hayes and his band were flown to a Hollywood soundstage where the Wattstax look and feel were re-created, and they performed the new finale, “Rollin’ Down the Mountainside,” a song Isaac anticipated becoming his next hit. The cheat can’t be noticed by most viewers, though as a climactic moment, the song pales against “Shaft.” (In recent years, the original scene has been restored.)

  The soundtrack—a double album—followed its own sequencing instead of mimicking the film—which itself was presented differently from the concert. The Staple Singers open with “Oh La De Da,” a song that invites listeners to sing and dance along. Their second track encourages black self-esteem by rejecting that most insidious weapon of racism—self-hatred. “I Like the Things About Me (That I Used to Despise)” opens with these lyrics:

  There was a time I wished my hair was fine

  And I do remember when I wished my lips were thin.

  Now, I wonder should I be surprised,

  I like the things about me that I once despised.

  Pops delivers the message that Isaac, in his chains and with his awards, emblematizes. Al, with these songs at the start of a four-sided journey, immediately establishes a “we,” a unified group. “I Like the Things” is a call to self-reflection, an invitation to see how black people in America in 1972 on their march toward freedom are celebrating their culture. Creating this multimedia experience, Al is reformulating Americans as a larger, more inclusive, and certainly better-entertained civilization.

  “The subtitle of Wattstax is ‘The Living Word,’” says Al. “The Old Testament up and through the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, is called ‘the living word’ by many people. We were presenting what I considered ‘the living word’ of African-American culture expressed through songs, our culture and our communication from slavery to the present.” A coincident press release ties these efforts to Stax’s grassroots intentions, quoting Al: “We work for the community, with the community. We see what is going on and we build to a position of strength to help out. Then we go work with every resource we can muster.” The release continued, “For Al Bell, his own song ‘I’ll Take You There’ is more than a lyric, it is a way of life, unwavering belief in the obligation of one man for his fellows—that’s the way he has built the Stax Organization, and that is the way he intends to build upon it.”

  The backdrop of the planning and execution of Wattstax was Memphis’s reaction to plans for school integration. Busing, the nation’s lead plan to bring white and black kids together, was complicated and divisive. Opposition arose not only between the races but also within each neighborhood community. Whites were afraid of their communities being infected by blacks, and the black communities—poorer, more fragile—were afraid of losing their children, their future.

  Busing had been discussed as a plan for several years, but as it became more apparent that Memphis courts would force its implementation, the uproar against it increased. Taking a cue from the NAACP, the white group Citizens Against Busing planned a school boycott. The recently elected mayor, Wyeth Chandler, came to the rally and told an overflow audience of two thousand, “It is up to every citizen and certainly every parent whether or not your child is to be bused and whether it is this year or next, to stand together and stand together now.” Of the schools’ 145,000 students, nearly 53,000 were absent on the first day of the boycott—approximately 80 percent of the whites. The response was so successful that CAB called for the county schools to join the boycott the second day, and they did.

  Despite the overwhelming community protest, the federal district judge held to the orders of the Supreme Court above him and, after assigning community panels and outside experts to convene, adopted a plan for busing in Memphis and set its implementation for January 1973, when school resumed after the winter break. In effect, this was the city finally complying with the Supreme Court’s ruling two decades earlier in Brown v. Board of Education. Outraged whites held a massive rally, a funeral for busing where they actually buried a school bus in a grave; despite organizers’ pleas, few stayed to help disinter the bus, as per city ordinance, and the photo in the newspaper of the remaining few struggling with the massive problem by lantern light became widely circulated and an evocative portrait of the struggles and myopia rapidly infecting the city.

  This attempt to create equality in education was rife with problems. Busing removed the children from their communities, damaging their broader sense of home by placing them, for the better part of each school day, in a place far from, and quite unlike, home. For the black kids going to the white schools, this new location was often hostile, even dangerous; whatever teachers and school officials might do to create a smooth situation, the print and televised press were making it widely evident that new seeds planted there would find only arid conditions. Black students in white neighborhoods would have to learn survival techniques before they could learn the three R’s.

  When busing was implemented, tens of thousands of white Memphians did not do unto others as they would do unto themselves, and instead fled to the embrace of a pop-up school system where thei
r children would not have to interact with blacks. Private schools boomed. Two years earlier, in 1971, there’d been 14,738 students in 54 private schools. In 1973, there were more than 33,000 in 90 private schools, and both of those numbers would grow. A new sports league was formed, the Memphis Christian Athletic Association. CAB ran from Baptist church to Baptist church, asking for the donation of Sunday-school buildings for the creation of a new CAB school system called Neighborhood Schools of Memphis. They opened with more than four thousand students. The public school population dropped from over 145,000 in 1971 to 119,000 in 1973, and it would drop further. The Board of Education’s state and federal funding diminished with each student. The student racial balance shifted radically, reflecting the white flight, with the percentage of whites dropping from 46 percent to 32 percent, and it would continue further down.

  The resistance to integration spread to real estate values, property taxes, and government income. Germantown, the wealthy white suburb to the east of Memphis, increased in population almost 500 percent over the next decade. Bartlett, another suburb with less money though also largely white, grew by 1,000 percent, with the black population of 248 representing less than 1.5 percent of the area’s population. Over that same period of time, the black population in Memphis would increase by 27 percent in number, while the white population decreased by 12 percent. The white students who did participate in busing encountered little enmity upon their arrival in black neighborhoods. Much like black social venues that were always more welcoming to “others” than white ones were, black schools had smooth transitions with their new, but small, population of transplants.

  Jim Stewart, his fiddle gathering dust on his desk, sits in his Stax office. That fiddle—it’s just wood and horsehair, but it’s also the possibility of music, man’s manipulation of his environment to create crystalline, pleasing beauty. It’s within his grasp, but he never touches it. A reporter calls it “a memento to the past,” but it is more than that, it’s a living memory. One look at it and he’s transported to a small smoky club, playing rags and breakdowns behind a steel-guitar player, couples on the dance floor with big smiles. He looks at it and Carla’s “Gee Whiz” session comes to life, unlikely circumstances creating everlasting artistry. A glance and Jim escapes the soulless executive office. Running a company—whether it makes music, underwear, appliances, or is a bank like he’d fled from—is fundamentally the same exercise. Making music is different each time, different every day. Jim keeps the fiddle within reach, but he does not touch it, for fear the past, too, might shatter.

  The white founder of the label, the co-owner, was absent from the Wattstax frenzy, absent from the film, soundtrack, and concert productions. “Stax being politically active was due to the times that we were in and Al’s commitment to the black community,” says Jim. “He felt like he should give something back to the community, and that the company would be rewarded, not necessarily financially. We were taking an active role to show that we were trying to do the right thing and we were concerned with civil rights. Wattstax was a project that he put together and I understood that he felt he needed to do that.”

  “Jim Stewart was still the president, and we all knew he was the president,” says Earlie, Al’s assistant. “He just let Al Bell do all the operations type of work, and also the creative side of it. I guess he saw how Stax was growing, and saw that Al Bell was the cause of it.”

  “Wattstax made me feel like I was on my way out,” says Duck Dunn. “But I didn’t particularly give a damn. Booker T. & the MG’s had no clout—wasn’t even there anymore, I wasn’t invited to go. Let’s just put it that way: I wasn’t invited to go to Wattstax.”

  In the big picture, Wattstax proved the perfect component to complete the Stax groundswell. Isaac Hayes and the Staple Singers were pop music phenomena. Johnnie Taylor, Little Milton, Albert King—the whole roster just about—were black culture icons. Their strength in the marketplace had, like a raging forest fire, just jumped the canyon from music to movies. Jim wanted out, Al wanted to get further in. The success of Wattstax on so many levels finally made the company ripe for the sale Al and Jim wanted, for the premium price they wanted. A Stax press release at the time declared, “Bell is a diplomat without portfolio logging more air mileage than the most seasoned pilot.”

  “Al Bell was bigger than the label,” says promo man James Douglass. “I’m saying, How big can this man be? You walk into a radio station, say ‘Stax,’ they say, ‘Tell Al Bell I said hello.’ It was a fever across the country.”

  In the autumn of 1972, the fever would spike.

  24. The Spirit of Memphis

  1972–1974

  A strangeness settled, like when the air turns green before a tornado. It’s not something visible—air has no color—yet it’s something that cannot be denied: Look outside and the air is green. Stax entered a period when the company seemed unbound by the laws of physics, freed from the material realm and alighting into the febrile ether. Construction and destruction skipped along together like twins at a park, lushness and desiccation, the concurrent growth and demise of the same organism.

  After Wattstax, the Stax Organization was primed for buyers. The concert made Stax a household name, and the event’s anticipated spin-offs were full of potential. The company’s record sales were soaring—the Staple Singers, Isaac Hayes, Luther Ingram, Mel & Tim. The community efforts continued. Isaac Hayes, who’d formed his own charitable foundation in 1972, funded the Lorraine Village public housing for 250 low-income families in the US Virgin Islands (and hired a guitar player from there in the process). Beyond the philanthropy, there was opportunity: The Virgin Islands were selected because Stax’s advertising director Larry Shaw was angling to gain the territory’s public relations and tourism account. Why not? Stax’s art department had all the facilities of an advertising agency, and it was the kind of diversification that innately appealed to Al. Ike’s housing project—an $8 million enterprise that, according to newspaper accounts, he alone funded—put Stax squarely on the territory’s map. The advertising deal fell through, but Stax recognized the gift in giving, and after Wattstax, the Isaac Hayes Foundation announced plans, in association with Al Bell and Stax-Volt Records, for “the construction and development of garden apartment communities in various parts of the United States [that] will house more than 20,000 people within the next five years.” The cost of the plan was anticipated at $100 million. They were spending money outside of Memphis to build credibility on a national basis.

  Who could resist such a package? Stax was a successful company, a culturally proactive generous organization. An appealing blend of art, philanthropy, and business: They created hit records, consistently introduced new stars, were able to create and execute events on a grand scale, and were adroit in a variety of media—they would enhance any team.

  In March 1972, Clive Davis had been at the industry convention when Al Bell unveiled his multimedia presentation built from the Stax Sound in Chi-Town promotion. Clive Davis was the president of Columbia Records, which he’d made into the most successful record company in the world. (Columbia Records was a subsidiary of CBS, Inc., the industry giant with dominating television and radio divisions as well. Stax made its deal with Columbia Records, but the terms “Columbia” and “CBS” are used interchangeably by those quoted here.) Columbia Records had grown under Clive Davis to have twice the market share of RCA Records, its nearest competitor. Under Clive’s stewardship since 1967, when he embraced rock and roll at the Monterey Pop Festival, his company’s record sales rose from $170 million to $340 million. Their regional distribution system was fine-tuned, able to move millions of records in days—from nonexistent to fully packaged and spread across store shelves. Columbia ruled the pop world—Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Barbra Streisand, Janis Joplin. Their classical division included Glenn Gould. Country—Johnny Cash, Tammy Wynette, Ray Price. Even jazz—Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus. They were dominant in every category of music excep
t for one: They could not crack the world of black pop.

  In soul, R&B, and blues, even when Columbia had the talent, they didn’t have the know-how. Aretha Franklin released nine albums and many singles during her seven years on Columbia, and she barely made waves. The moment she hit Atlantic, she went directly to the top of the charts. The Staple Singers had been on the label and Earth, Wind & Fire still were, and Columbia couldn’t get traction. So Clive Davis listened intently to the well-dressed, articulate, commanding Al Bell, and was duly impressed by his visionary take on marketing, his aggressive ideas, and his success.

  Recently, Davis had made inroads into the African-American music market. He’d signed a production deal with Philadelphia International Records, the newly formed label run by two hit-making producers, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. For much of 1971, he’d been negotiating with marketing whiz Logan Westbrooks, hiring him from his post of national R&B promotion director with Mercury Records in Chicago to join Columbia in New York as director of special markets (“special markets” being a euphemism for African-American music). Westbrooks, born and raised in Memphis (Dino Woodard was a classmate at Booker T. Washington High School), joined Columbia in November of 1971, by which time the label and Philadelphia International had enjoyed initial chart success with the Ebonys and Billy Paul; Westbrooks was charged with securing more and bigger hits. “Clive Davis, along with his VP of marketing Bruce Lundvall—they had the desire to dominate it all,” says Logan. “They knew that there was green in the black marketplace.”

  Stax was making that green through their indie distribution patchwork. No longer with Gulf & Western, no longer with Deutsche Grammophon, Stax distribution was like a pieced-together jalopy that its mechanic—Al Bell—could drive like no one else; he had the knowledge of its nuances, knew how to get the most out of it.