Time Is Tight

by Booker T. Jones

  I had left Memphis and moved to California when I learned of the burning of the Cossitt. Of all the acts committed in the battle to keep blacks down, this seemed the most vicious and desperate.

  In keeping with my family’s custom, those early trips to Cossitt whetted my appetite, and I never lost the craving for learning, even beyond my college years.

  Universities exist to fight poverty…poverty of thought. Life, and progress in life, as well as sustainability, are all constructed of ideas, which are born of thought.

  If there are no ideas, there will eventually be no life. To feed the body and not the mind is nearly an exercise in futility. Can affluence of mind be attained if it is never perceived?

  MEMPHIS—April 4, 1968—6

  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a man who believed in education. He understood that racism was an encumbrance on the entire human race. He came to Memphis to help the troubled garbage workers with their strike because he was disturbed by the lack of progress.

  Then, on April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel.

  Because our studio at Stax Records was a made-over movie theater, without so much as a conference room large enough to seat the staff, we convened at the Lorraine’s dining room, often during lunch. There was no lounge at Stax. We hung out in the small foyer, in the hall, or on the street. The Lorraine provided the only suitable location where black and white could congregate without intervention.

  When Dr. King was shot there, it was as if the act had been carried out on our own turf—a dreadful mockery of the harmonious racial mixing that went on at the Lorraine, and of our espousing of the motel.

  A man of inordinate strength and sensitivity, Dr. King has survived through his four children. There were very few African American preachers who had fewer than seven children in my day. It was a mark of pride and intelligence to be able to recite the names of your pastor’s children without hesitation, like being able to spell Mississippi or know the capital cities of the states.

  Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. There is one in every city. You won’t find it in the white neighborhoods. More often than not, it will take you to the airport. I’ve tried this; if you’re lost and need to catch a flight, just get directions to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

  His name drives my mind to the garbage workers of the world. My daddy used to always tell me, “Make sure to go back to the alley and say hello to Mr. Fletcher; the garbagemen are coming today.” Their fight was our fight, and they had no chance of winning against Mayor Henry Loeb or Mr. Crump’s long-implanted system of city government.

  That’s why Dr. King came to Memphis. He was their only hope. He was our only hope. There could be no mistake. No backing down from this one. No violence, no fear, no wavering. The time had come. When I’m driving to the airport, I think about it before every flight.

  I was struck by the same force that killed Dr. King. The shot killed him, but it impelled a new part of me to come alive. Now, I live with as much joy and humility as I can.

  Thank God, thank God, for my brown, African American skin and all that came with it. How can I tell you the pride I feel—the good fortune to come from the place I do? And as a result, to be who I am. All the oppression, the racial prejudice, the inequalities and inequities, the lack of privilege and opportunity—the lashes my forebearers endured on their backs, the rapes my grandmothers endured, even the fears my children suppressed, don’t dampen the feeling of privilege I harbor as a person of my race.

  I am a fighter, but I am not bitter. I know the value of love and forgiveness. I hold tight to the power of my conviction and faith in the ultimate victory of love. There is no doubt in my mind that the human race will succeed. It is no accident that we have not already destroyed ourselves. Even our own ignorance and stupidity are not strong enough to overcome the life force that brought us here. We may not come together of our own accord; however, our own genetic code will override somatic differences to the point where one’s race will not be discernible. It is just a matter of time.

  Dr. King’s spilled blood on the balcony at the Lorraine Motel in 1968 produced a resolute sense of purpose in me. As a result, I have always led with my heart, often violating long-standing rules in the process.

  MEMPHIS, Stax—1968—5

  My band was the “face” of racial harmony, literally and figuratively, from as far back as 1962. That has placed an inordinate amount of pressure on me to reassure the constituencies that it was indeed the case and confirm that the conception is accurate.

  What family is not dysfunctional to some degree? Am I supposed to believe I was not referred to in derogatory racial terms behind my back? Should I believe I was defended during racist dinner discussions in East Memphis? If so, I was never told.

  African Americans have long been aware of the terms racist whites used to refer to them, and only the strongest white protesters had the courage and gumption to stand up to their families regarding this. I would be surprised if any of my cohorts were included in that group. To be fair, there was no shortage of derogatory terms used to refer to whites in the general black community.

  We started out with a true and genuine love and respect for each other and the music. You don’t make music as glorious and original as we did without some kind of inspired purpose from all involved. The MGs did love each other. You don’t have white and black working closely together every day in close collaboration without developing some kind of family unit. That unit became an example of how the races could escape the plantation mentality, and with that also came a sense of comfort that failed to evolve into a sense of caring beyond the boundaries of our work space. As we were held up more and more as an example to the world of how integration could work, it became more and more a veneer.

  I began to feel a responsibility for voicing the needs of my people and the struggle we were involved in. It came to where the social issues demanded us to identify our allegiances. I wanted my bandmates to champion civil rights, not just be willing to play with blacks.

  It wasn’t easy. Dr. King’s murder exposed the fact that our group dynamics were more complicated than I realized.

  After Dr. King was shot and killed at the Lorraine Motel, Steve made these remarks to an interviewer:

  You know, Memphis was a refuge for black people, it really was. Blacks were blacks and whites were whites, and everybody was cool. We all loved each other. The black people were perfectly happy with what was going on. I don’t think anywhere in the universe was as racially cool as Memphis was until Martin Luther King showed up. That just set it off for the world, basically. What a shame. There must be something political about that. Let’s go to the one place in the South where everybody is getting along and blow that fuse. That’s the only way I can see it.

  I just happened to be reading Charles Hughes’s Country Soul when I saw this. It hit me hard. This was the guitar player in my band speaking! How could I continue to knowingly collaborate with anyone who supported the mind-set that made Dr. King’s murder possible?

  In my opinion, all forward-thinking whites needed to play a significant role in the fight for racial progress—especially the whites in my band, whom I’d spoken up for in the face of black radicals.

  ATLANTA, GA—1968—4

  Once, I was sitting with friends in the open-air lobby of the Peachtree Plaza Hotel. Three black men with large Afros approached our table. They were wearing the long wide-legged jeans and bright-colored shirts with exaggerated collars characteristic of the times. My friends, Dick “Cane” Cole and Joan “Golden Girl” Golden, both of WLOK in Memphis, were intimidated by the glowering presence of the men. I looked each of them in the eye; they glared back.

  It would be my guess that under their vests all three men were packing. This would be the second time this group had let it be known to me their disapproval of my playing with white musicians. Similar to Fillmore Street in San Francisco, just before a performance at the Fillmore Ballroom, a ma
n expressing his displeasure with my choice of bandmates had engaged me. He told me it was not their nature to love me.

  The San Francisco man may have been accurate in that respect, but I had a right to choose who was not going to love me—and the menacing demeanor of his Atlanta comrades was not oozing with sweetness. I don’t know the identity of the San Francisco man, but the conference in Atlanta took on a siege mentality when the Oakland cadre made its grand entrance.

  I was an early target because I was the most visible. Booker T. & the MGs were the first interracial band on the black music scene. Other whites were involved in less conspicuous ownership and management roles. In general, they did not attend the conferences. The meeting at my table was the last of its kind, and it ended on a contentious note at best, when my new “friends” simply walked away.

  MEMPHIS—1968—5

  Injustice, such as having to work in dangerous, life-threatening conditions, were a very real fact in the world I inhabited and grew up in. People who lived in privilege and plenty knew nothing of the resolve needed just to subsist under those conditions, much less the courage required to fight for any betterment. Every knowledgeable, able-bodied person needed to make his or her case for equality in any way they could, else more life or limb was lost. Additionally, as black garbagemen were not being paid the same as their white coworkers, identical injustices in the economic sphere existed at my own work.

  The fact that I, as a principle songwriter at Stax, was not invited, or permitted, to participate in the publishing of my own music contributed to my need to turn away.

  The only band member allowed to participate, Steve Cropper, advanced unabashedly in the company, and knowledge of his holdings and interests in publishing the music was withheld. Had those kinds of facts been declared or revealed, a feeling of trust would have prevailed. My own intuition was the only indication that something was amiss.

  Just that gut feeling that as writers we were the rightful owners of our songs. However, no one wanted to rock the boat. Even so, we were chagrined, and there was an underlying sense of humiliation that none of us would cop to, as is necessary when a large working group is subjected to this kind of concealed theft.

  And, of course, there was anger in the ranks, abated on a daily basis by the joy of being involved with such awesome music. The amazing music came about as a result of the work of writing the songs and developing them. Magic doesn’t happen by accident. And so, fortunately, the anger never grew into rage.

  The unsung hero of Stax was its resourceful neighborhood that kept it supplied with talent born right under its nose. Regrettably, that same resource provided thuggish, pugnacious figures that were anxious to use coercion and take charge of the street after Martin Luther King Jr.’s death.

  B. W. “Chicken” Bowen harassed me from my early days in the band at Booker T. Washington High School. A baritone horn player, he was a tall, thin boy with a large Adam’s apple and teeth and facial and body features that made him resemble a tall chicken.

  When he showed up on the corner of College and McLemore, it was the dread of seeing an old adversary that you hoped was in your past, but it was surely just your luck that he would find you once you had found some measure of fame, fortune, or security. So Chicken gave me a friendly greeting and promptly offered to sell me an old rickety handgun, which I was obliged to purchase from him.

  The gun was useless as a weapon. Even at my tender age, I knew firearms. I had been trained in their use and nomenclature for years at the armory under the stadium at BTW. I was the National Defense Cadet Corps–appointed leader—battle group commander—having been promoted from corporal to lieutenant to captain to colonel and finally to the top rank a student could hold. I passed the exam of breaking down and reassembling an M1 rifle (as used against the Vietcong) blindfolded in the allotted time period.

  In high school, Captains Powell and Johnson taught us handguns and the tactics of insurgency—as though we would be officers. In reality, with our dark skin, we would enter combat areas as second lieutenants, commissioned ranks but with less authority on the battlefield than an experienced sergeant.

  As fate would have it, while I was at Indiana University with a scholastic deferment studying music, my second-in-command was sent to Vietnam. I can’t count the times I have seen his face in my mind since I got word in Indiana that he had been killed in active duty. No doubt I would have been at his side.

  Since tenth grade, guns had been commonplace in my life, most usually the five-pound M1 carbine I carried during the cadet drills at school. That gun dwarfed the one I was forced to buy from Chicken. I began to scoff at the little pistols the corner gangsters brandished.

  I put the shell of Chicken’s gun in a drawer and continued to walk past him and into Stax every day, no longer intimidated. I had stood up to street thugs before and gotten beat up, but I always felt better, even though I had bruises. In most cases the thugs would later come and try to befriend me. Sometimes even years later as adults.

  Before I left Memphis in 1968, I heard stories of Stax family members being beaten and threatened by Johnny and Dino at the behest of a prominent artist on the label. What had Stax come to? What had I given my all to help create? Where was the feeling of ease? Where was the future?

  Both inside and outside the company, there seemed no bounds to the upheaval and disorder.

  MEMPHIS, Lauderdale and Wellington—1968—5

  “Send five thousand dollars if you value your son’s life,” the caller said to my parents. The drop-off location was designated as the corner of Lauderdale and Wellington, seven blocks away. At two o’clock, Dad was to come alone and leave the money on the sidewalk in a paper bag below the storefront window at Waltham’s Grocery. The call rattled my folks beyond belief. Who would do something like this? I was their only son, barely twenty-four years old. My parents called the police.

  I knew the location well. It was the east boundary of my paper route, right in the middle of a route I had turned down because of the Wellington Street gangs. Above Waltham’s Grocery was also where my girlfriend Marie stayed in her friend’s apartment when she lied to me about being in Nashville in the summer of 1962.

  A plan was devised to pay the money and deliver it to the drop-off point while I would be safely ensconced in my living room as police cars surrounded the house on side streets.

  Dad went to the bank.

  The bank provided Dad $5,000, which he carried in a brown paper bag.

  I took a chair in my living room by the door. My mother sat on the couch. We waited. My wife, Gigi, came in and sat down on another chair. She was nicely dressed, with high heels and makeup. Dad’s car pulled out of the driveway, and we waited, looking through the curtains at the street.

  While we were waiting, Mama informed me that the police had advised the money be paid in marked bills. I hadn’t known that previously. Mama also told me that unmarked police cars were waiting, hidden, near the drop-off point. Not long after, Gigi went into the bedroom and made a phone call.

  After an excruciatingly long time, Dad’s Buick pulled into the driveway. He left the bag at the corner and saw no one. We were just glad he got back safely. I was surprised and gratified by the help and cooperation of the Memphis Police Department. My mother went home to wait with my father.

  Finally, the phone rang. It was the police. No one ever turned up to pick up the money. The brown sack remained on the sidewalk on the street. It was 6:00 p.m. We had waited four hours. The officers confiscated the bag and called off the watch.

  I was rattled at the core but kept my composure. I didn’t want to lose my young life, but the event was so odd, I couldn’t imagine where the threat had come from. During the whole episode, Gigi sat quietly in a pleasant mood. She listened and observed but offered no comfort to me. The night and the following days passed without incident.

  STAX, New Order—1968—4

  Meanwhile, a New York parking lot attendant was working hard and setting a course tha
t would intersect our lives. His name was Charles Bludhorn. He saved and borrowed enough to buy the parking lot and dozens of others in New York.

  I never met Charles Bludhorn. Never spoke with him. No direct correspondence. Ever. But we communicated as clearly as two people ever have. The Austrian-born New Yorker exerted his strong will and authority as far as Hollywood and Memphis before the Securities and Exchange Commission finally caught up with him and his vast conglomerate, Gulf & Western Industries. But not before he bought Paramount Pictures, which bought Stax Records, which owned me.

  Described as volatile, Napoleonic, and ruthless, Mr. Bludhorn’s company began sending memos directly to the staff at 926 East McLemore.

  One advised us we were to have three shifts of sessions—3:00 p.m.–11:00 p.m., 11:00 p.m.–7:00 a.m., and 7:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m.—in order to up our music production. Under Al Bell’s direction, the directive was activated, and I was forced onto the 3:00 p.m.–11:00 p.m. shift. The old Capital Theater recording studio became a 45-record/song-production conveyor belt, quite different from the little studio of years before where I carried my baritone sax and haphazardly played an intro to a twelve-bar blues by Rufus and Carla Thomas.

  MEMPHIS—1968—7

  A few weeks into the new configuration, just after we showed up for our shift, Al Jackson pulled me up to the record shop. He wanted me to listen to something and stood there while the song played, assessing my reaction. The music was different from anything I’d ever heard. The instruments—a steel drum, marimbas, and guitars—danced to a gentle, persistent conga rhythm that brought swaying palm trees to mind. Immediately I connected to it emotionally.

  Soon after listening to the island songs, Al was the impetus for the creation of “Soul Limbo.” He came up with the unique idea of starting the phrase with a tom-tom on beat 1, and I wrote the organ melody and bass line to his rhythm. Duck covered the organ bass line, Steve played a calypso rhythm, and we had a happy, refreshing lilt—different from, but inspired by, Jamaican beats.