Respect Yourself

by Robert Gordon

  On July 15, in the summer of “The Hustle,” Isaac Hayes did the electric slide to the left and released his first album on ABC Records. Disco was his groove, but with a quicker tempo. Chocolate Chip was certified gold. The artists still clinging to Stax were reminded, ah, yes, that’s how a functioning company works. But Isaac remained plagued by Stax’s plights. He’d not been paid his royalties or his settlement money, and was deluged with lawsuits large and small, including seven thousand dollars in unpaid alimony. After his split with Johnny Baylor, Isaac built his own recording studio near where he’d lived as a child in North Memphis, and far from Baylor in South Memphis. Creating a state-of-the-art studio from scratch was an expensive endeavor, and the bills were piling up.

  By early September, Stax’s phones were disconnected and the workforce had dropped almost 95 percent, to about fifteen people. David Porter paid some salaries out of his pocket, because the loyal few kept coming to work. “It had been so big, a multimillion-dollar company, you didn’t think it could possibly go under,” says Larry Nix. “Now five or six of us would go into Isaac’s old office, sit on that long red leather couch, and David Porter would go along to each of us, say, ‘What do you need to get by this week?’ By that time, you’re hiding your car in your neighbor’s garage to keep it from being repo’d.”

  “Everybody started having problems, divorces and all,” says drummer Willie Hall. “Things got rough. Slowly, they’d come on the lot and start pulling cars, and foreclosing homes, and man, we knew it was on. The IRS came at us with back taxes, audits. Hell, I don’t think there was one son of a bitch there that paid his taxes on time, or paid his taxes period. We started watching the demise of everybody.” Willie then describes his middle-class life slipping away: “I lost two homes—one that Isaac had helped me acquire for my mother, and then my first wife and I, we lost our home. The IRS—I didn’t owe them much, less than ten grand, but I didn’t have any money. Some guy in the black suit with the black hat and the tie and a gun, he nailed this notice up on my door, told me that from this point on, this property belongs to the Internal Revenue.” Guitarist Skip Pitts, vocalist and engineer William Brown, Al’s secretary Earlie Biles—the list of people who lost their homes goes on and on, an evisceration of the Memphis Sound.

  Big news broke on September 9, 1975, a front-page story in the evening paper announcing a twenty-six-page, fourteen-count federal grand jury indictment against Al Bell, charging that he conspired with Harwell to fraudulently obtain loans, loan extensions, and loan renewals totaling $18,877,983 between December 17, 1969, and May 30, 1974, plus overdrafts totaling nearly $700,000. Harwell was further charged with another $150,000 in fictitious loans, using Bell to guarantee payment. Harwell was said to have received up to $700,000 in kickbacks, and various other bribes including an expense-paid trip to Los Angeles for the 1973 Wattstax movie premiere. This indictment was separate from, and independent of, the IRS investigation against Stax and its employees into possible payola. Two weeks later, more than fifty supporters, including Dr. Ralph Abernathy, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and Congressman (and unreleased Stax recording artist) Walter Fauntroy of Washington, DC, packed the Memphis courtroom to hear Al declare his innocence before the judge. Al was represented by James F. Neal, the Nashville attorney who had recently served as a special prosecutor in the Watergate trials of presidential assistants Robert Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and former US attorney general John Mitchell. Neal—Al continued to go “blue chip” all the way—had received $50,000 up front, and the same had been placed in escrow; it was paid by the Chicago ad agency International Public Relations. (Harwell, accused as Al’s coconspirator, was transferred for a few nights from Illinois to the Shelby County Jail; at the hearing, he asked for immediate return to federal prison because the local lockup was “crawling with rats and roaches” and, with no cots available, he was sleeping on a cell floor.)

  “Alleging that we had conspired to defraud eighteen million dollars from the bank is laughable,” says Al. “To assume, in that period of time, that a black man in Memphis, Tennessee, could conspire with anybody in a bank to defraud it of twenty-five dollars, let alone all these millions of dollars—but they were able to do that. My understanding was that, from a legal standpoint, the bank reflected this $18.9 million on their financial statements to the government’s Comptroller of Currency as a contingent receivable, and if they could have gotten the convictions then they would have been able to follow through on what they had represented in their financial statements.” In other words, bringing Al down would also prop up the bank and help circumvent its closure.

  While Stax was going down, longtime drummer Al Jackson had resumed his friendship with former bandleader Willie Mitchell, who since 1970 had been an executive at Hi Records, around the corner from Stax. Al Jackson began collaborating on songs with Willie and Hi’s new artist, Al Green. Beginning with “Let’s Stay Together” in 1972, Jackson wrote several huge hits at Hi (“I’m Still in Love with You” and “Call Me” among them), even while he produced and worked at Stax. Al Green’s sound was smoother and more lush than Stax’s, but with an underlying funk. Green’s huge success made Hi Records a major player, and their roster included Ann Peebles, Syl Johnson, Otis Clay, and others who regularly made the charts. Jackson was collecting writer’s royalties at Hi and making some session pay (most sessions featured Al’s protégé, Howard Grimes, who’d drummed on Carla’s “Gee Whiz” and other early Stax hits); Al Jackson Sr. had opened a gas station and Al Jr. had invested in oil wells. He seemed like the one Stax staffer who was surviving the sinking ship.

  While driving in his car on September 30, 1975, what would become his last day on earth, Al Jackson Jr. heard the disc jockey discussing that evening’s boxing match between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali, dubbed “the Thrilla in Manila.” Locally, it was being shown on a giant-screen closed-circuit TV at a downtown theater; Jackson was supposed to fly that evening to Detroit to produce a session for Major Lance, a former Volt artist trying to rejuvenate his career. Al rearranged his flight so he could see the fight.

  The bout went long, with first Ali and then Frazier ahead. Not until the tenth round did Ali begin to regain the upper hand, then pummeling Frazier’s right eye in the eleventh so the onetime world heavyweight champion was increasingly blinded. Ali, who’d been visibly tiring as the fight wore on, took advantage of Frazier’s blind spot and attacked from the right. Twelfth round, thirteenth—the intense beatings a torturous endurance test. During the fourteenth round, Frazier staggered like he wore cinderblock shoes. Before the fighters returned for the final meeting, Frazier’s trainer signaled the referee to terminate the match. Frazier protested, but to no avail; following the fight, Ali stated, “It was like death. Closest thing to dyin’ that I know of.”

  Afterward, Jackson drove to his house on Central Avenue. He’d been having marital trouble for over a year. Two months earlier, on July 31, a domestic dispute had put him in the hospital and landed his wife at the police station. During that argument, she’d stormed outside and he followed. When she wouldn’t say where she was going, Jackson pushed her first onto the hood of his car, then hit her several times, dragged her by the hair, and threw her into the yard. She went inside and pulled a .22 rifle on him; her first shot was a warning, the second one hit him in the chest. She didn’t deny the facts, but he decided not to press charges. They filed for divorce.

  As that part of his life was falling apart, an MG’s reunion was coming together. Steve Cropper remembers the four of them discussing circumstances past, present, and future, and all agreeing they’d clear their various schedules and reconvene in about three months with the intention of devoting three years to the group, recording and touring, to make a new go of it.

  It was after midnight when Jackson got home from the fights. Al’s wife later explained that she’d come home and been accosted by a robber who tied her up while he ransacked the house. She explained that the robber freed
her to answer the door when Al rang the bell, then retied her and made Al lie on the floor. Mrs. Jackson heard the murderous shots ring out.

  “I remember getting out of my car at my dad’s house in LA and his TV was situated so that you could see it through the screen door as you approached,” says Booker T. Jones. “I saw ‘Booker T. & the MG’s’ on the screen, which was eerie, seeing your name on TV as you’re walking into your father’s household. It was the five o’clock news and that’s how I learned that Al had been killed. To this moment, I still can’t get over it.”

  The house had been hardly ransacked, and Al’s wallet was not taken. “Al was shot five times in the back,” says Duck, “first while standing, then they laid him on a carpet and shot him some more. The bullets went through him, point-blank. It was just, oh, I still have dreams about it.”

  Al’s murder cast a deep pall as the winter of ’75 came on. “Oh, it was very grim,” says the usually buoyant Eddie Floyd. “We knew by that time that the company was really in trouble, but we still hoped and recorded records. Everybody still believed in the music, and Al Bell was fighting real hard to keep all of that going.”

  “There was a hope,” says Earlie. “A couple of times the administrators went to Europe to talk over new deals for the company. I never saw Mr. Bell not upbeat. I saw him looking weary towards the end, but he was still fighting, and still positive. He kept saying, ‘Keep the faith,’ and, ‘It’s gonna be okay.’ And he was trying to rally people. He never did give up.”

  “Every time I looked around, another process server was knocking on the door,” says Al. “We must have had about forty or fifty lawsuits going at one time. It paralyzed the company.” Al’s father had built a successful landscaping company; Al turned to him. “When my capital was zero and I needed money desperately, I was able to call my father—I needed fifty thousand dollars at that time—and tell him I needed it. I was still trying to do what they said couldn’t be done and didn’t believe that the inevitable was inevitable.”

  Stax’s new corporate offices had been remodeled, but the church sanctuary had remained untouched. The company held assemblies there, where Al could report to the workforce en masse, where he could inspire the congregated, breathe life into the weary. Before embarking on his music industry career, Al had spent time preparing for the ministry, and in this room, all his interests merged. In this room, he called on all his available resources to uplift his diminishing staff, alternating plain-speech assessments with biblical metaphors of the wicked and the oppressed, of truth seekers and evildoers.

  “I hated those meetings,” says Deanie Parker. “They went on forever and most of the people sitting there were scratching their heads or their butts.” As the size of the company dwindled, the duration of the meetings extended. “It was very weird in there,” says Larry Nix. The room hadn’t felt full when a hundred people showed up to a meeting. Now it was cavernous. “Big church,” Larry continues, “and people thumping cigarettes in the hymn book racks, Al Bell in the pulpit preaching to the employees. I’d look around thinking, C’mon, this is a record company.”

  On the fifth of December, 1975, the publishing company East/Memphis Music was auctioned on the courthouse steps. There was only one bidder, Union Planters, which got the company in exchange for the balance of their loan. They had assumed control a year earlier, and now they owned it and all the mechanical royalties that the compositions would generate.

  Jim’s first real lesson in the music business had been about the value of the publishing company. Ellis the barber had explained its importance, and the East Publishing Company is what Jim began with. East reverberated to Stax’s inner core, to Jim’s very essence. If Jim heard any snip now, it was the severing of ties, of the Stax company ship being set adrift without its ballast.

  In mid-December, three creditors filed a petition sending Stax into involuntary bankruptcy. The total claim of the three, combined, was $1,910.13—less than two thousand dollars. One creditor supplied toilet paper, one was a photography lab, and one supplied electronic parts. Three creditors is the minimum necessary to commence another company’s involuntary bankruptcy, and because each of these was in a different city, it’s difficult to imagine they’d have joined together had they not been assisted by a larger creditor. Union Planters National Bank stated that the bank had played “direct role” in coordinating this action.

  On December 19, 1975, an enforcer who worked for Matthews barged into Stax. “He jumped up on the receptionist’s desk and said, ‘You’ve got fifteen minutes to get out of the building,’” Al, ready to defuse a situation, remembers. “I said to the federal marshal, a black guy, ‘What is this all about?’ He said, ‘It’s involuntary bankruptcy.’ I said, ‘How much?’ He said, ‘Nineteen hundred dollars.’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve got that much money in my pocket.’” But the process had begun. Al was told to lead the way to the master tapes. “My blood went to my head,” Al continues, “but I started on through the building. By this time, as I’m going back to the tape vault trying to make a decision as to whether or not I’m going to go off on these people, because it was really nasty, really nasty—I stopped and went into the bathroom near studio A and washed my face in cold water just to cool down. As I came out, the black federal marshal had positioned himself by the door so when I opened it, he said, ‘Hey man, be cool. They’re trying to off you.’ I said, ‘Oh, that kind of party.’ The guys from the bank wanted to kill me that day.

  “I walked them all through the place, very diplomatic, and explained every bit so they would understand that I wouldn’t be intimidated. I asked them if I could get some things out of my office and all they would let me take was a little leather attaché case and a little legal pad and my phone book. Nothing else. So we come to the back of the building, toward the guard station. On the outside they had all these black guys with guns—they had recruited them from all the security firms so they’d be all black guys out there. They had an industrial camera crew outside filming the whole darn thing. They were masterful—I have to say they were masterful in what they were doing.”

  It’s telling that even in this moment of Stax’s demise, Al can admire the promotional aspect of his expulsion. It harks back to those grim days in Arkansas, cleaning out dog cages, and enduring the disdainful comments about how blacks “can’t do nothing but sing and dance.” Life had been pelting southern blacks with lemons for hundreds of years, and Al had been making sweet lemonade for most of his life. He’d taken the insult and built a place of real opportunity, a place that rewarded talent and hard work, not white skin and cotton money. It was an oasis, and a fragile one, vulnerable to the economic and social climate surrounding it. Al’s eyes were on the heights, the dreams to be made, and the vulnerabilities eluded him, an oversight that would reach into the lives of everyone who worked at Stax, whose family depended on Stax for its milk and bread.

  Some would call it hubris, but that is the pat analysis of those looking backward, after the crash. That sort of glibness is like bad music. It is safe, the notes are predictable, and it ignores both the risks and the goals. Al Bell was reaching toward that which was yet to be invented. He was shifting the paradigm, breaking the covenant, pursuing the dream. He was riffing, an economic jam session, a socioeconomic symphony. Determined to reach the next eight bars, and the next and the next, he was lost on the melody and missed the notes.

  Standing at the Stax back door, the sunlight jolted him from the reverie, the oversights exploding all around him. Behind him was the achievement of middle-class elevation, of maintenance men becoming recording engineers, of automobile drivers becoming department managers, fan club members inspired to be lawyers. Before him was a frenzied spectacle of police cars, sirens, lights, cameras, weapons, women and men screaming and hollering and crying. This dreaded moment had been barreling toward these stalwart few for months, weeks, and days despite their disbelief, their faith in the forces that averted past disaster.

  Al was escorted from the bui
lding at gunpoint.

  “On one side of me is the federal marshal, on the other side is the guy that’s over these security people that are all out here, and on both sides of them there’s more security people,” Al continues. “We’re walking, I see the camera crew filming and the employees across the street and there’s this guy that’s standing in front of me so if you’re on the street you can’t see him and he commands me, ‘Stop! Open that attaché case and let me see what you have in there.’ I thought, God dawg, this is the moment.” The man was asking Al to put his hand into the bag, to take his visible hand and put it where its actions would be concealed. “I instinctively dropped the attaché case and grabbed the fence and just held up on the fence. I said to myself, If he kills me, they’ll see that I’ll be on this fence, because I knew he wanted me to open up that attaché case so he could say I was reaching for a gun.”

  Al Bell, six and a half feet of black pride and impeccable taste, searched and seized, led on a perp walk, positioned on the wrong end of many guns, clutched the fence for protection. That fence at once offered safety, but also represented a very ugly resolution to his quest for black autonomy. He’d dealt in the seamy side of business, just as his white peers in New York and Los Angeles had. If his hands weren’t clean, they were no dirtier than any other executive’s in the record business. But to many people, and certainly in Memphis, a black man with money induced almost as much fear as a black man with a gun. African-Americans, for centuries, had their belongings and achievements wrested from their possession—without recourse of law, with no sense of justice. Black people could not get too high up without being taken down. Okay, Memphis grudgingly acknowledged, sanitation workers were people. Okay, white society finally conceded, blacks could have new textbooks instead of outdated white-school hand-me-downs. But our kids sit with your kids in school together? Slow down, slow down. A multimillion-dollar corporation representing Memphis run by an African-American? No way. The bank had Al where it wanted him, in the glare of fear and misplaced guilt that is inevitably part of a confrontation with the law, when even the innocent are tainted by the accusatory muzzle of a gun pointed their way—a humiliation to bookend this side of his life.