Packy died Sunday evening, January 20. The funeral was small, the day unseasonably warm. Johnny asked the funeral caravan to drive down McLemore Avenue, but a more direct route was taken. “He died, and everything changed,” says Johnny. “That was her heart. That was Miz Axton’s heart. They used to argue—my goodness they used to argue—so you know they loved each other. Yeah, that was her heart.”
Packy had brought the Mar-Keys to the studio. Steve, Duck, Don, Wayne, and so many others would not have been exposed to the opportunity that shaped their lives, to their work in shaping America’s soundtrack, had it not been for Packy. He’d linked them to his mother, to his uncle, and he’d set off a chain of reactions that was continuing long after his domino had fallen. In some ways, the world was only just catching up to Packy. The differences between the races had never bothered him, except for the close-minded attitude of his fellow Caucasians. Society was working to be more like Packy—in some ways. Despite all the connections he’d brought, he could never bridge the distance between his mother and his uncle. He was always the stick in his uncle’s craw, the embodiment of the tension between the siblings. Now Packy’s heart was stilled.
But on McLemore Avenue, in Stax’s corporate offices in the former church, at the Columbia Records offices in distant Manhattan, the heart of Stax was pumping madly.
25. A Vexation of the Spirit
1973–1974
Union Planters National Bank was not in the music business, but it had become one of Stax’s closest associates. “We had a great relationship with Union Planters,” says Al Bell. “Matter of fact, we would keep a million dollars on deposit in a checking account just to provide additional funds for the bank instead of putting it in a certificate of deposit. It was that kind of working relationship.”
The cash on hand must have been very helpful, assuming that the bank noticed. But they were a disorganized, improperly administrated institution. “Union Planters got very, very sloppy in its lending controls at the high, wide, and handsome age of the early seventies,” says Wynn Smith, an attorney retained by the bank. Their problems extended from several areas, all of which might have been prevented by better oversight within the bank. In 1971, the bank expanded heavily into real estate loans, though it did little preparation or research, nor did it monitor how its new clients actually disbursed its funds. Further, says attorney Smith, “Union Planters had a project in the early seventies called ‘Your Signature Is Your Collateral,’ and they started going crazy making installment loans on automobiles. It was so easy to get a loan that people were coming from all over the country to buy very expensive Cadillacs, and then taking off with the Cadillacs and not paying the installment loans.”
The inherent problems in the new ventures came to light when, in late 1973, interest rates began to rise nationally. At the same time, inflation was rising and so was unemployment, creating an economic recession that plagued the country until well into 1975. According to The Turnaround, a book written about the Union Planters fiasco (and its redemption), “The liability ledger of the bank was organized in such a manner that it was impossible to determine whether one loan was related to another. No employee of Union Planters knew what the bank’s total exposure was.” This description, the bank would soon find out, could also apply to Stax—not just regarding loans, but all bookkeeping.
The bank’s situation got so far out of control that federal authorities took notice. UP’s earnings dropped by half in the first nine months of 1973, with losses in the third quarter exceeding half a million dollars. By the end of 1973, UP’s investment division was under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The threatening sound of sabers rattling in Washington was more compelling than Stax’s nearby funk, and the bank focused on making a plan to save itself. Despite the frequent payoffs, Stax still owed UP close to $10 million, including an overdraft of nearly $1.7 million. Union Planters needed new collateral.
The record company was deep in hock, joined recently by the publishing company. There was no mistaking that the debts were high. But Stax’s outlook was promising. The European distribution deal would soon be up for renewal, and Stax intended to hike its license fee. Isaac’s Two Tough Guys soundtrack was imminent, sure to be a smash like all his albums were, maybe even bigger than Shaft, since he also starred in this movie. On its heels would be Isaac’s soundtrack to the blaxploitation film Truck Turner. In the past five years, Isaac had released five albums that each did more than $2 million worth of business. The patterns indicated another welcome influx of money.
Jim contemplated the company’s position from his fifty-six acres. It was very quiet there. He’d come from the country, and the dense trees on his estate reminded him of his childhood in Middleton. But the house did not. He could have fit perhaps every house from his hometown into the vast complex that was now the Stewart home. The old Capitol Theater would fit inside, and all the McLemore block he’d worked so hard to purchase. Jim, his wife, their three kids—it was like their own private country club. And it was quiet.
Jim would turn forty-three in a few months. He’d been mostly away from Stax the past year and a quarter. The pressures had greatly diminished, the constant thrumming of the business in his ears and eyes and brain had finally quelled. He’d missed much of his children’s childhoods, and soon they’d be off on their own. This opulently feathered nest he’d finally built was soon to be empty. And quiet.
Music had made him independently wealthy. He’d collected, finally, on the years of long hours and hard work. He’d enriched Atlantic, he’d enriched Gulf & Western and Deutsche Grammophon. He’d stayed three more years after his sister left, and the company had mushroomed in size and success. His break with Stax came when they were thriving, and it made both them and him wealthy. Al wanted total control of the total record company, and he’d gotten it, and he’d received a swollen bank account courtesy of Columbia Records, who’d also swelled Jim’s account. Whatever shape the company was now in, Jim was not responsible for it. He did not need to help.
Since retiring, when not in Florida, Jim mostly spent his days at home. He didn’t use the tennis court much. The big pool’s high diving board rarely rattled. Jim didn’t often swim in any of the four pools. It was nice when the kids did, but even that was infrequent. He’d thrown big parties at the house, but that period had passed; big parties never really excited him. Living the dream was different from yearning for it. He could look at his many amenities on his many acres and say he had it all. Or he could consider how little these amenities meant to him and, soaking in everything around him, he could say he’d lost it all. Where was the challenge? Where was the grit that made the pearl?
Jim spent his money and time, both too plentiful, on jigsaw puzzles. Since leaving Stax, he was often at the family’s expansive dining room table, alone. He’d open a thousand-piece jigsaw-puzzle box, turn the pieces faceup, separate the border pieces. Step by step, he’d assemble an image—a landscape, perhaps, pastoral and distant that he’d never visit. Completing it, he’d throw the pieces back into the box and open a new one. He was a builder, a producer, and what the hell was he supposed to produce by himself as he sat in the quiet and looked at the long, hushed second half of his life? Forty-three wasn’t old. He had energy, he had ideas, vitality. And money.
In February 1974, unable to let go of the one great change he’d wrought upon the city and world, Jim pledged more than everything he had to the bank. He gave Union Planters a personal guaranty against the company’s loans, putting up all he held, including the millions he’d recently collected, and all he was to receive. That is, if ever there were a problem, the bank would know that Jim’s personal wealth was available to make up any financial insufficiency. (Though it’s odd that the payments to cover the faltering company would come from the faltering company, Jim already held substantial assets. If Stax paid him no more money, he’d still be wealthy.) Jim was a family man, and one of his children was Stax. And even the child who grows up to
spurn you, the baby you shaped and raised who morphs into something you don’t like—you are forever attached. If that child needs you, you give your all for that child.
“I reacted with my heart instead of my head,” he told writer Rob Bowman. “It was an emotional [decision], not a prudent, sensible one.” After making the pledge, Jim promptly put nearly half a million dollars of his personal money into the company to help cover the operating costs. He was affirming his belief in the company’s mission: with his heart, his soul, his wallet, and his children’s future.
It was an epic move. Jim was a quiet man, conservative, and yet he’d been the one to alter the course of history, to create in a racist and stratified society a space both inclusive and collaborative. Like Superman, Jim turned society’s tracks. A white country music fiddle player making his name in African-American soul music? If he’d asked anyone, they’d have said it was a stupid idea, it can’t be done. If he’d reacted with his head, he’d have backed away. Stax grew despite logic and circumstances. Stax was not a “prudent, sensible” decision.
He placed all his chips on a single bet. He held nothing behind, no fail-safe, no extra feathers, no spare million bucks. Jim could help, and he did.
The following month, March, Stax took another sucker punch from Columbia. Due to the high number of records that Stax had delivered to Columbia, and with no discernable market need for more product, Columbia announced it would begin withholding 40 percent of what it owed Stax to help cover the costs of returned product. Returns? The howl in Memphis could be heard in New York: Get the records to market! There won’t be returns, and there will be more money for everybody, if you’ll just do the one thing you are supposed to be good at: Get—the—product—on—the—shelves.
Though their relationship was really about one thing—distribution—Stax and Columbia could never get on the same page. “From the beginning of the argument over who would control the branch distributors, record sales started dropping.” Jim says. They couldn’t agree on the basics of getting records to stores. “So many hours and days were spent trying to straighten these matters out, trying to get the philosophy and the people working together in concert.” Jim sighs. “It could never be accomplished. When the principals are involved in something extraneous of producing and marketing and promoting and selling records, which is your business, the inevitable occurs. Records sales start dropping. I’m not talking about a month or two months. This became continuous and it got worse and worse and a dichotomy was struck between the personalities involved—between our people and CBS’s people. The problems became monumental—and then the financial problems resulted from that.”
The tough times were becoming increasingly evident to Stax’s staff. Polydor did not renew its European distribution, and though new deals were made, they were smaller. “There were some speeches that Al gave that were designed to keep the situation together,” says Deanie Parker. “None of us was oblivious to what was happening with CBS, and we knew Union Planters was beginning to stink. We could feel it. Several of us had a travel card—could go to an airport and charge a ticket to anywhere we wanted to go. When we got a memo saying to discontinue using them, you knew.”
In a late 1973 speech, Al was already acknowledging the company’s problems, but attributing their causes to outside sources: “The energy crisis is severely affecting industries which depend upon petroleum and its by-products for its operation . . . Unless the Stax Family can pull together to achieve these [cost-saving] objectives, management will be forced to consider extreme measures, resulting in employee layoffs, possible reductions in salaries, or both . . . Although on occasions in the past the company has given Christmas bonuses during the holiday season, we are unable to do so this year . . .”
The energy crisis was raging, and while the resulting higher costs contributed to the problem, including a hike in prices of the raw materials from which records are made, not to mention the cost of shipping them, the Stax crisis also involved a different kind of energy. Al’s speech was thirty-one pages long, and it ground over corporate structure and attitude. “Our people didn’t have the background or experience in training and management and departmentalization,” says Deanie, “but there were some on the staff who’d have held up their copy of that speech and exclaimed, ‘Ah, yes! This will solve the problem!’” Deanie shakes her head. “Those speeches went on and on and on. It was like a vexation of the spirit.”
The cash flow that Stax had so enjoyed began to evaporate while expenses rose. “It just grew too fast,” says Earlie Biles, “and we didn’t have enough sales to support all the people. We were hiring executives right and left, attorneys, CPAs, marketing and advertising execs.” The company’s annual payroll rose from $900,000 at the end of 1972 to over $1.4 million in mid-1973.
Stax never stopped producing good music; the releases just became harder for buyers to find. Disco was taking dance music in a new direction, further from the church influence. But Stax’s soul music still found an audience. The Staple Singers continued to work with Al Bell, having a solid hit at the start of 1974 with “Touch a Hand, Make a Friend,” top-five R&B and nearly top-twenty pop; not as gritty as their previous hits, nor as their next one, “City in the Sky,” which went to number-four R&B. They would have four more releases on Stax, staying on the company roster to the end. The Dramatics hit the soul charts, as did William Bell, Eddie Floyd, Veda Brown, the Emotions, and Inez Foxx. Albert King’s “Crosscut Saw,” a staple of blues bands worldwide, has enjoyed a long life since its October 1974 release. Johnnie Taylor hit number thirteen and broke the Hot 100 with “I’ve Been Born Again.” He almost broke the R&B top twenty that fall with “It’s September,” and he became Stax’s last charting artist with “Try Me Tonight.” His final single, “Keep on Loving Me” could have been a pop hit, but it got no real distribution.
The Bar-Kays continued to evolve and grow. Though heavily influenced by Isaac, while he went deeper into the lava lamp, the Bar-Kays moved toward the strobe light. They reworked classic soul sounds with “You’re Still My Brother,” a tune rife with social message. “It Ain’t Easy” is as spare as “Brother” is full, a vocal atop a keyboard riff, and sometimes little more than hand clapping. “Coldblooded,” largely instrumental, sounds like they’re fishing for a movie soundtrack. The appropriately titled “Holy Ghost” was their last release on Stax and Stax’s very last single (November 1975, though it may not have actually reached stores). It’s a bridge to the future, proof positive that despite all the business distractions in which the office was mired, good music was still being made.
Quality, however, was giving way to quantity. Between the start of 1973 and the end of 1974’s first quarter, Stax placed nine singles in the R&B top ten, and one in the pop top ten. The label released, however, seventy-four singles. The output was multiplying the expenses, and the hits were diminishing. “We had less than a hundred, and all of a sudden we had two hundred on the payroll,” says Jim, who was not the kind of boss to return and fire whole departments, even though his wealth was at stake. “Apartments in New York, houses in LA, a quarter-of-a-million-dollar Billy Eckstine contract. Bell needed that conservative bastard saying, ‘You can’t do these ridiculous deals.’ It’s high rolling.” Jim also believes the music suffered, refusing to blame the lack of sales on Columbia. “We had seventeen promotion men ourselves. We’d been promoting records before and selling them, so why couldn’t these same seventeen men go out and make hit records? Simply because we didn’t have hit records.” Being under federal scrutiny—for taxes, for payola—didn’t help either.
Columbia’s lack of distribution was not, however, a figment of Stax’s imagination. Stax’s distributor in Memphis, Hot Line Records, was unable to get Stax product “almost from the day the Columbia deal began,” remembers one prominent employee. “We couldn’t buy the records to distribute them. It was clear Columbia was trying to put Stax out of business.”
“You’d hear the horror stories from the
promotions guys about the inability to get Stax product into the marketplace,” says Deanie, “and we’d see our records sliding from the charts.” Stax addressed the problem by expanding its promotion team, ramping up for a batch of albums geared toward the white market. Joe Mulherin, the trumpet-playing publicist, was on the road with Larry Raspberry and the Highsteppers, a white rock and roll group signed to Enterprise. They had a raucous, traveling-minstrel vibe (à la Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs & Englishmen) that included Don Nix (who was also coheadlining the tour), British blues sensation John Mayall, vocalist Claudia Lennear (who’d performed with the Rolling Stones), and drummer Tarp Tarrant (from Jerry Lee Lewis’s band, then a free man between felonies). The band had played both American Bandstand and Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert. They were subjects of a forthcoming documentary, Jive Assp. Many of their shows were sold-out and simulcast on radio. Larry Raspberry and the Highsteppers were hot. But touring the West Coast in the spring of 1974, they couldn’t find their record in stores. “Fans were complaining they couldn’t get the recently released Highstepping and Fancy Dancing,” says Mulherin. “Members of the band canvassed record stores and couldn’t find a single copy. People loved that band but couldn’t turn their friends on to the album. The shipping had simply stopped.” The band did not take the matter lying down. “Our manager addressed this with the Columbia people and was told he was full of shit.” Columbia was so powerful that empirical facts could be dismissed.
As the distribution giant unilaterally revamped the deal, Johnny Baylor stepped from his own morass to help. If Columbia’s Jim Tyrell was in charge of getting records into the stores—as he indeed was—then surely he’d recognize a demand from Johnny Baylor that Mr. Tyrell do his job. “We had become very close to Al,” says Dino. “Johnny was angry that CBS Records was ripping Stax off. They wasn’t putting the records out properly. I really felt that they wanted to kill Stax Records, because of the challenge to them. I thought that CBS just did the thing on them.”
Respect Yourself Page 40
