Author: Joe Boone

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Venerable Studio Changes Hands

CREDIT: Joe Boone

“It’s got this vibe to it,” Cris Brown says. “It was a no-brainer for us. Some of our favorite records were made here. We had a chance to take it over, and we jumped on it.”

Brown and business partner John Falls are the new owners of the studio on Rayner Street that since the late 1960s has been known as Sound of Memphis, Kiva, and House of Blues. The newest owners are proprietors the of production company Tattooed Millionaire Entertainment.

“If you look at it, and you look at the history of it from back when it was Kiva through House of Blues, there have been legendary records made here. Legends who ran the place.”

Music publisher Linda Lucchesi recalls the original legends who built this unique studio. Her father Gene Lucchesi Sr. built the studio with his earnings as producer for Sam the Sham & the Pharoahs’ “Woolly Bully.”

“There were three men who worked together. There was my dad, Stan Kessler, and Paul Bomarito,” Linda Lucchesi says. “My dad got so gung-ho when ‘Woolly Bully’ became a hit that he wanted to build a studio. They had been doing everything over at Sam Phillips’. So he built it, and Stan didn’t like renting the studio out to make money, because he really is a creative person. Dad had to work over at Delta. That was the real bread and butter other than the hits they got on Sam. ‘Li’l Red Riding Hood’ was right behind it.”

In the 1970s, Lucchesi caught a break when he met modern country super producer and Velvet Underground nemesis Mike Curb.

“Dad struck a deal with Mike Curb, and it became a joint venture, which was Mike Curb and Sounds of Memphis. That was the logo on the front of the building. It was a brick building. The deal between MGM and Sounds of Memphis was the first huge deal in Memphis. Then right behind that came Atlantic. They used it as an in-house production company. Mike Curb brought all of his people in. Tons of people.”

Solomon Burke, Martha Reeves, Gloria Gaynor, and Rufus Thomas are just some of the artists who worked at Sound of Memphis.

“The Bar-Kays bought the place,” Lucchesi adds. “A lot of people do not know that. But I have all the paperwork on it. I was involved back when that happened. The Bar-Kays weren’t able to pay the bills, so it went back into my father’s lap, and we got involved again. What I wanted to do was get it stable where I didn’t have to rent it out, because that is just so hard, I’m not going to lie about it. Then Gary came into the picture next.”

Gary Belz bought the building in the late 1980s with James Gang guitarist Joe Walsh and had the tracking room redesigned by legendary acoustic designer Tom Hidley, a man responsible for what we think of when we think recording studio. Hidley designed rooms to have a neutral response (neither bassy nor trebley sounding) so projects could be worked on in multiple locations and not have the problems associated with rooms that had conflicting acoustic responses. John Meredith, a specialty contractor who worked on Abbey Road Studio in London and is based in Memphis, did the construction in 1987 and 1989 on what would become Kiva Studios.

Kiva Studios eventually became House of Blues when Belz partnered with Isaac Tigrett in the 1990s. House of Blues recently moved operations to Nashville. A Mix magazine interview with Belz described his decision to abandon Memphis. It’s terribly depressing. I suggest you don’t read it.

The studio’s new owners are aware of what they are getting into.

“It’s a huge part of the history of Memphis music,” Falls says. “Isaac Tigrett was involved, one of the founders and creatives behind the Hard Rock Cafe and the House of Blues brand. From conception, you have Tom Hidley and John Meredith working together to build this tracking room. That is an incredible combination.”

Brown and Falls have done well for themselves and look forward to taking up the mantle of this historic place. Brown signed with Universal in 2004 as the singer for One Less Reason. Falls signed with Atlantic and Warner Music Group as the singer for Egypt Central.

“I signed two major label deals, and John had major label deals,” Brown says. “We never felt that as artists we were represented correctly. They soaked up all the money. Then independently, once we broke free from the labels, we were able to make a really good living playing music and selling records. Now, we want to take that expertise and push it. There’s so much talent in this area, Memphis being the birthplace of rock-and-roll. There’s a band here called Empire City that we signed. It’s one of those things: We’re going to be an artist-friendly label. It’s about everybody making a living moreso than an entity taking all the money and starving out the artists.”

Given the industry’s issues over the past decade, the two will need more than a recording studio to make things work.

“If you’re going to use it as a rental facility in Memphis, you’re really up a creek,” Lucchesi says.

Fortunately, Falls and Brown have a wider outlook on the business.

“Multiple people who work at the label — as well as Cris and myself —either engineered or produced,” Falls says. “We have that in-house. But on this particular project, Tom Lord-Alge (U2, Simple Minds, Dave Matthews, Avril Lavigne) is going to be mixing. So we will do some things outside. We can make any record for any artist that we sign. We have a production company in-house, so we can do videos, documentaries, behind-the-scenes, and live footage. We’re really trying to build a one-stop shop and base it out of Memphis.”

“That’s why it’s called Tattooed Millionaire Entertainment,” Brown adds.

Brown and Falls are currently in the middle of their own renovations. But that hasn’t slowed them down or diminished interest from people who have worked there in the past.

“We have a lot of people calling about House of Blues because of the historical value of the building. People who recorded here years ago are trying to get back in. We’re renovating at this moment. So we’re actually using Young Avenue Sound right now until we have all the wiring redone. We’re really redoing this building and bringing it up to date.”

Those lucky enough to have worked there may recall the freaky oxygen-depleting fire suppression system or the exponentially freakier (like getting into crystal skull freaky) holographic angel that decorated the main tracking room.

“The Halon is gone,” Brown says of the Star Trekkish fire suppressant. “The holographic angel is gone. But the reverb tanks are still here.”

What did the angel look like when they pulled her out of the wall?

“It was a huge chunk of glass,” Falls says. “We still have the spotlight for the hologram. We’re in the process of figuring out what we’re going to put in there.”

It better be weird.

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Music Music Blog

Weekend Music Know-It-All

Well, aren’t you Mr. Busy? You’re not going to stay home write sad entries in your diary; at least not with this much music going down. You have no choice but to go out, get bananas, and dance your bad self straight into the jailhouse. Don’t call me.

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Friday:

Amy LaVere and Will Sexton are back at Bar DKDC.

Songstress Faith Evans Ruch will celebrate the vinyl release of her latest album, After It’s Said and Done!, tonight at Co-Motion Studio in Crosstown.

Songsterer Graham Winchester is holding a competing album-release party over to the Buccaneer Lounge.

May the best act win.

Think I’m through? Son, don’t kid yourself. 

Paul Collins Beat returns to Memphis after a laurel-garnering set at this year’s Gonerfest. He’s at Murphy’s tonight with Talbot Adams, and the Subtractions. Let us pray a prayer of thanksgiving for the Subtractions and anyone, really, who is photographed in an El Camino.

Saturday

Just keep your disguise on, and all of this will blow over. You didn’t mastermind the jailbreak. Worry about that after hearing more good music.

Justice Naczycz, Mark Akin, and Karl Creech at Otherlands.

We mentioned Arkaics at the Bucc in the paper, so you are up to speed on that. RIGHT? Aquarian Blood joins in the melee. DJs Hoppe and Madfarm shake the foundations in-between the bands.

Need to sit down and take a breather? Forget it. That’s for the weak.

Gringos, Powers That Be, and IV are at the Murphy’s.

Remember, don’t call me. 

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Music Music Features

Graham Winchester’s New Record

CREDIT: Andrew Fleming

If you go out to hear music, chances are you’ve heard Graham Winchester play drums. He’s played for Copper Possum, Mojo Possum, Jack Oblivian, the Sheiks, and the Booker T. & the MGs cover band the Maitre Ds. One wonders how in the world he found the time to make his self-titled solo record. But he did, and the album is evidence of a talent that goes beyond beatkeeping.

“I sit at the piano, and I hear a melody,” Winchester says about his songwriting process. “Sometimes, the usual chord that would go there doesn’t really bring out the emotion of the lyric I’m trying to write. So I definitely try to transpose the key wherever I can, depending on how I want the feeling to be.”

Those key changes, also known as modulations, are what separate great songwriters like Elvis Costello, David Bowie, and the greats of the early 20th century from, say, Grand Funk Railroad. Winchester is on the favorable side of that continuum. His mother plays classical piano and Jesse Winchester was a first cousin once removed. So he naturally comes by his chords.

“The Beatles are obviously a huge influence. I’ve been listening to a lot of Jesse Winchester, who I dedicated the record to. He’s got a lot of key changes. I definitely listen to a lot of Bowie, later Beach Boys stuff. I’ve been obsessing over Big Star and Dan Penn. Old Memphis stuff and all the Booker T stuff.”

While there are some smarts to the harmonies, Winchester kept an earthy vibe to the record by inviting bandmates Clint Wagner (fiddle), Randal Morton (National Bluegrass Banjo Champion), Bill Mard, and Daniel McKee (bass). There is an acoustic feel throughout, even to the electrified instruments.

“I think it’s more important when you’re using piano and fiddle and instruments like that. I’m into doing lo-fi stuff and all that, but when you’re using these stringed instruments, those don’t cut through so well when you are chunking it up. You don’t want to hear a great grand piano sound distorted or anything like that. I’m a pretty big fan of the Band and of Jeff Tweedy and Wilco. In the way that the Band had the Big Pink, and Wilco has their loft in Chicago, I really liked working at High/Low. I really felt nestled down in this nook with these vintage intruments and keyboards. It felt organic.”

Like with many initial solo projects, the songs span Winchester’s creative life from high school through the present.

“I wrote the fifth song, ‘Saenger Creek,’ when I was 17. Then ‘Walk on the Shore,’ the Booker T-ish one, was written a few weeks before we started the recording process in May. That was after we had the Maitre Ds, and it was directly influenced. I wanted, after all these lyrics and all these changes, to just have something kind of soothing and instrumental that speaks for itself to close out the album.”

After playing in groups and as a sideman, Winchester was more than ready to take responsibility for the songs and arrangements.

“One thing I like about the record is that usually somebody besides the drummer writes the songs. If it’s a record where you start with the drums and then piece on, usually, it’s not the drummer who wrote the songs. So I could play by myself on drums envisioning the energies that would be there and the dynamics. It’s kind of hard to tell that the record was layered on like that because there are some organic explosive moments.”

For those instrumental parts that he didn’t do himself, he relied on trusted collaborators who go back even further than do the songs.

“I had friends like Bill Mard, who came and played a majority of the guitar stuff. Then Daniel McKee played bass on everything. They both did a great job. Bill did ukelele, acoustic guitar. Bill was a former bandmate in Copper Possum and Mojo Possum. He’s a friend since childhood. Daniel and I also met in fourth grade at Lausanne. We go back to middle school playing in bands together. He was going to play on four or five tunes on bass. I was going to do the rest on a Moog synthesizer bass. But there was a point halfway through the session when Toby Vest looked at me and was like, ‘Man this guy is so good, you’d be a fool not to just let him play the album through.’ I was totally in agreement. He really just slayed it on this album.”

Winchester developed his network of players and his chops with many local bands. But the soul-revival project with the Maitre Ds finds him studying the masters in fine detail and playing with some of the city’s finest instrumentalists. Playing a set of Booker T & the MGs material is a pretty bold move in Memphis.

“It’s been a real challenge. With me, and with so many other drummers in town, we definitely sing Al Jackson’s praises. And touching his body of work — in the same way I’m sure it is for someone doing Cropper or Booker T or Duck Dunn —it’s intimidating. Not only are the beats and grooves he’s coming up with unique, it’s as much about how they are played as what they are. So you get a simple groove like ‘Green Onions.’ I’ve heard so many bands cover that song and do this bar-rock shuffle thing. But it’s really a specific groove that Al Jackson is doing. Even more specifically, the feel of that simplicity makes the song believable and is that Memphis sound.”

In undertaking such a task, Winchester, along with organist Adam Woodard, guitarist Restivo, and bassist Frank McLallen, demonstrates an easy-going confidence and affability that underlie his success. He also works harder than most musicians in town.

“I know there are plenty of drummers in town who are probably more worthy of taking on the project. But, like a lot of things in Memphis, it’s kind of down to whoever starts it. Eventually, you’ve got to have somebody get a band together and rehearse and start playing live shows. I feel like that’s the case with every instrument in the band. It seems like a band that a lot of Memphis music nuts would love to start. We finally just did it. It was really cool, right after we started it, getting to play at the mayor’s office. He did a speech downtown, and I think John Miller set that up. That’s the kind of group we want it to be. We want to be that band for when people are having a very Memphis party. We’d love to be the band that plays that kind of music that nobody really plays. We heard about another band in Austin that’s a Booker T tribute band. But they use seven-piece drums sets and a Nord [electronic] keyboard. That’s what’s really cool is that Adam has actually found a Hammond [organ of the type] that Booker T used on the first two albums. He’s got an M organ sawed down in half, so it’s portable. So there’s definitely a dedication in the band to get the tones right.”

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Music Music Features

Memphian Launches Beatles Calendar

CREDIT: Courtesy of Robert Johnson

When Robert Johnson — not that Robert Johnson, but stick with me — sent over a Beatles tribute project, I put it with all of the other Beatles projects that I don’t want to think ever existed. That was a mistake. Johnson has one of Memphis’ most colorful musical resumes, and his colorful 2014-2015 calendar features the work of Alan Aldridge, the illustrator of the Beatles’ 1969 illustrated lyric book and other iconic images, including the original Hard Rock Café logo. The package comes with a 45-rpm record of Beatles tunes produced by Johnson. You can order the calendar here.

Johnson’s background in Memphis music is something to behold in itself.

“I grew up with David Cartwright, whose son is Greg,” Johnson says of his remarkably musical childhood neighborhood on the west side of Frayser. “When I was about 13 or so, I had a band called the Castels at Westside High School. In summer and spring, we used to cut [Elvis’ bass player] Bill Black’s grass. He had Lyn-Lou Studio. But we had two or three years as kids just hanging out over at Bill Black’s house. His kids were my age. Then we had Roland Janes as a neighbor. He had Sonic Studio. We got started with him back in ’63 or something. It was next door to Audiomania.”

Westside High School was another fountain of musical culture.

“Near Westside’s ballpark in the back of the school there was a cotton patch and then an old house, and that’s where Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland lived,” Johnson says. “Ronny Scaife, who became a well-known songwriter in Nashville and wrote songs for Garth Brooks, Mongtomery-Gentry. Ronny was in the 1960s bands with us. It was a unique neighborhood.”

By the time John Fry opened Ardent Studios on National in 1966, Johnson was still a kid, but also a seasoned guitarist, who had already worked at Lin-Lou, Sonic, and Phillips Recording.

Courtesy of Robert Johnson

Robert Johnson

“We started hearing about Ardent,” Johnson says. “The first time I went, I met Terry Manning, probably about 1969. Terry Manning heard my band play at the Overton Park Shell and wanted to sign us to Ardent Productions. We started making an album there with a band called Country Funk. Then we opened up for Steppenwolf and the Byrds at the Coliseum. It was a sold-out place. After that, we were on Ardent’s roster. That’s where we got started working at Ardent. I went from there to a band called Alamo with Larry Raspberry, Richard Rosebrough and Ken Woodley. That’s where the whole pack started with [Alex] Chilton and Woodley. That’s kind of like the original little clique over there.”

Johnson also worked in the Stax mailroom alongside William Brown of the Mad Lads. That led to his recruitment to Isaac Hayes’ first band supporting the skyrocketing album Hot Buttered Soul.

“Hot Buttered Soul sold a million copies in 30 days,” Johnson says. “Then in six weeks it had gone platinum. He had a songwriting obligation, so he had to show up to write songs. So we could only go out and play on the weekends, which was good for me because I was still in high school.”

Hayes eventually formed the Isaac Hayes Movement, and the core of the old band — Johnson, bassist Roland Robinson, and drummer Jerry Norris — became Steel. After bouncing around for a spell and backing Ann Peebles with Alex Chilton, Johnson ended up in England, where he caught the attention of John Entwistle and became a member of John Entwistle’s Ox, the Who bassist’s solo project following Tommy. During that time, he recorded a record with the improbable personnel of Bill Bruford from Yes and King Crimson on drums, Entwistle on bass, and Stones pianist Nicky Hopkins on piano.

“Nicky came up to me at the sessions at Wessex Studios and said, ‘Hey, I was at the Rolling Stones office today. Mick Taylor quit the band.’ I actually learned about that the day it happened,” Johnsons says. “Around the fall of 1974. He said, ‘I’ll give your number to Mick Jagger if you want me to.’ Of course, I never thought a thing about it. A couple of weeks later, Jagger called my house in London. He asked me to come over to Rotterdam Holland to ‘have a play,’ as he said. So I went over there and spent four days with them and the mobile studio and Glynn Johns and everybody.”

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Music Music Features

Acoustic Sunday Live at Beth Sholom

CREDIT: David McClister

It’s back. Acoustic Sunday Live returns to Beth Sholom Synagogue for another round of folk heavyweights. This time, Rodney Crowell, Eliza Gilkyson, and Gretchen Peters will perform on Sunday, December 7th, at 7 p.m.

Rodney Crowell, a native of Houston, has written for a star or two. How about Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, the Oak Ridge Boys, Emmylou Harris, Jerry Reed, Crystal Gayle, and Bob Seger? That was before he crumpled up the country competition in 1988 with his Diamonds & Dirt, an album that ran the charts with five #1 singles in a row.

David McClister

Rodney Crowell

Crowell was married to Memphian Roseanne Cash from 1979 until 1992. They are still cool. His album Street Language was produced by Booker T. Jones. He later wrote for the titans of modern country such as Alan Jackson, Keith Urban, Lee Ann Womack, and Tim McGraw.

His previous album, Old Yellow Moon, won the 2014 Grammy for Best Americana Album. Crowell’s latest is Tarpaper Sky.

Peters has written songs for Etta James, Neil Diamond, and Anne Murray. But the Country Music Association ranked her biggest hit, “Independence Day,” a song she wrote for Martina McBride, ninth in a list of the 15 songs that changed country music. Peters has released nine albums and was just inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Austinite Gilkyson came from a musical family. Her dad sang as a guest vocalist on the Weavers’ “On Top of Old Smokey” and wrote and sang songs for the Disney films of the 1960s. Her brother was a member of X. Gilkyson earned her own Grammy nomination and is a member of the Austin Music Awards’ Hall of Fame.

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Music Music Features

Clay Otis and Shadow Brother at the Hi-Tone

CREDIT: Josh Breeden

They’ve been busy at High/Low Recording.

“This year has been really neat,” Clay Hardee, who uses the nom du mic Clay Otis, says. He and collaborator Toby Vest are gearing up to release a heap of music recorded at Vest’s studio over the past year. Otis and Shadow Brother celebrate the release of their single “Adderall Girls” b/w “Lauren Bacall” on Friday, December 5th, at the Hi-Tone.

The new music represents another stylistic shift for Otis, one toward a more synth-driven sound.

“It was super fun to Kanye out and just be intense and get into it,” Hardee says. “It was a really intense process in terms of how we worked on it.”

Josh Breeden

Clay Otis and Shadow Brother

Last March, he released Citizen Clay.

“That was the record with the Dream Sheiks,” Hardee says. “We made that record in three days, and it was a real rock record. Then we finished that and Toby and I started this latest project.”

Variety is a key component to their collaboration.

“I think [the new direction] is Clay’s curiosity,” Vest says. “If you look back at all the things he’s done, they’ve all been different. A lot of it has to do with the people he has around him. That’s one reason my brother and I always liked working with him. If he comes in and says, ‘I want this to sound like Brian Eno meets Bobby Brown,’ we’re like, ‘Okay, how do we do that? Let’s try.'”

Vest is at work on his first solo record as Shadow Brother. He and his brother Jake have played in bands with Hardee and others, including Tiger High, Augustine, and Bullet Proof Vests.

“I had done all of the recording and played and sang,” Vest says of the earlier work. “But mostly it was Jake and Brent Stabbs writing the songs with Clay.”

Hardee is glad to hear more of Toby’s creative input.

“I really like his aesthetic,” Hardee says. “So I asked him if he wanted to work on some songs that were totally different from Citizen Clay. We cut about 15 songs. We’ve got these two singles [“Adderall Girls”/”Lauren Bacall”]. We’ve got another 10 that we’ll release this spring on an album called Vagabond Hearts. Toby played 80 percent of the instruments, wrote the songs with me, produced it, and recorded it himself,” Hardee says. “Musically, it’s pretty well Toby. Then lyrically and atmospherically and the ideas, it’s pretty well me.”

Hardee, who day gigs as a wine broker, keeps his creative self moving.

“I just wrote some songs with Brad Postlethwaite of Snowglobe,” Hardee says. “I’m singing with <mancontrol> in January. I’m thrilled about that. It’s my favorite thing going on. They are super creative and their noggins are wild for as down-to-earth as they are in everyday life.”

Vest recently partnered with engineer Pete Matthews.

“I like the vibe of it,” Hardee says. “I like to think that Pete’s technical know-how and years of experience are matching up with Toby’s kind of do-it-yourself ethos. Toby knows how to match bands in the modern music environment. He can match bands’ budgets and bands’ enthusiasm and go as fast as the band can go. But Pete has worked on Paul Simon records. So Pete’s from the old school. A little more deliberate. He can make things sound perfect. I think he needed a little of Toby’s kick in the butt to meet the new market. I think Toby needed a little bit of mentorship. As long as the place keeps the kick-your-shoes-off, feel-at-home creative vibe, then it can’t be anything but awesome.”

As for touring? Not so much.

“Being in a van with a bunch of dudes?” Vest asks. “I can make a better living here at home. It would be a definite strain on everybody to tour. But I don’t think that’s necessarily the point of it. The point is to make these cool things and let Clay do these live shows. We’ve never played a show with less than 100 people there. Clay is this charmer, this snake oil salesman who can just preach. That has a lot to do with people knowing Clay. He’s an energetic and awesome performer and a guy nobody knew had musical aspirations until three or four years ago. To me, they are studio records. They are records that I dive into, and we do a release show or something. But really, the main part for me is the recordings. I really take pride in them and enjoy doing it.”

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Music Music Blog

Wishing on Stars at Otherlands on Sunday

Producer and label honcho David Less has seen a lot in the course of running Memphis International Records. Some of what he’s seen was through a lens. “When You Wish Upon a Star” an exhibition of photos taken from sessions that he produced, will be on display at Otherlands, and he is kicking things off with an opening on Sunday that features his musical subjects doing their thing in real-live 3-D.

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“The thing is, we never allowed pictures in our sessions,” Less says. “We didn’t allow photographers. But our designer wanted snapshots so she could make collages for the art if we needed them. So I would take pictures, but I never told anyone I was taking pictures. This was only on sessions I produced. But you have time when people are listening and playing. A lot of them are pictures that people didn’t know were being taken, in fact, most of them are. So it’s kind of unguarded moments in the studio in that respect. It’s not a posed photo session.”

“There are picures of Jim, of course. I did a lot of records with Dickinson,” Less says.

Alvin Youngblood Hart, Louise Hoffsten, Steve Selvidge, Sam Shoup, Amy LaVere are among other subjects. And they won’t just be stuck to the wall.

“A lot them will be there,” Less says.

The Dickinson Boys, aka Luther and Cody, will perform the first set.

“In the second set, we’re going to let the people who are in the exhibit sit in,” Less says. “I know Amy will be there. And Jim Spake and Sam Shoup.”

What else ya need? It’s a perfect stop before Lafayettte’s. 

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Music Music Blog

Mighty Souls at Lafayette’s

Memphis’ Mighty Souls Brass Band‘s new record comes out next month. But guess what, you can hear new tracks below and buy the record at their show on Sunday, December 7th at Lafayette’s. Caleb Sweazey opens, and it’s all ages.

“It will be an interesting show for us,” band leader Sean Murphy says. “We usually play with five to seven players. We had 13 people playing on the record. We’re going to have all 13 people there. It’s going to be this huge wall of sound.”

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Mighty Souls at Lafayette’s

“It’s 10 originals and two covers: “Memphis Train,” the Rufus Thomas tune, and “I’ll Fly Away.” Everything else is original stuff, songs from seven different band members.

People may not think of brass band music as a medium for contemporary composition. That would be wrong.

“It’s interesting that people have that conception about it being mostly a traditional-song kind of genre, the brass band genre” Murphy says. “You go down to New Orleans and listen to those brass bands — especially those young guys — they’re always composing and writing new stuff. I think they’ve figured out that that’s how you can make some money: getting stuff placed [in television and film].”

There are some heavy player and writers among those 13 souls. The compositions take the sound in new directions.

“We’ll do some stuff that is just a lead sheet,” Murphy says. “Other things — beside the solos — are through-composed. Tom Clary in particular. His compositions are extremely complicated. I jokingly make the Steely Dan Brass Band reference. It ends up being super funky and cool. His tune “Love Button” is my favorite tune on the record.”

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Cover Feature News

R&B Royalty

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Elmo Lee Thomas has worked his band, Elmo and the Shades, around Memphis for more than 30 years. You’ve seen the name a million times in weekly music listings and probably thought, “Ah, another bar band.” What you likely don’t know is that this band has a musical pedigree that will blow your mind. Elmo and the Shades features musicians who changed the way we listen to music and buy records.

Ben Cauley, the original Bar-Kays trumpeter and a survivor of the plane crash that killed Otis Redding, is a regular. Other members played with Isaac Hayes, Jimi Hendrix, Little Richard, and George Clinton’s Funkadelic. The drummer played for James Brown. They played parties for Elvis. The trumpet player helped Hayes negotiate with Mayor Henry Loeb following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Most were part of the legendary later years at Stax Records. They have more great stories than you have time to listen to.

Justin Fox Burks

Elmo and the Shades

Some bar band.

You may be surprised to learn that you can see this band for no cover charge at least once a week. Welcome to Memphis.

Let’s introduce the band.

Justin Fox Burks

Harold Beane

Harold Beane

“I went to Hamilton [High School],” says guitarist Harold Beane. “I ended up on guitar from my neighbor Larry Lee, who played with Jimi Hendrix [at Woodstock]. So that’s my mentor. This was 1963, because he went off to college to Tennessee State. I couldn’t wait until he got back from college to show him that I could play a barre chord. That’s how it all started.”

Beane’s band auditioned to record at Stax, but the label didn’t want the guitarist.

“They said, ‘We like your group, but we don’t need a guitar player. We’ve got Steve Cropper.’ So I ended up working in the Satellite record shop. Ms. Axton hired me. I sold 45 records. I eventually ended up learning three or four chords, and William Bell came and took me on the road. I was just out of high school.”

Beane, like the others in this story, was part of a later generation of musicians at Stax. When early bands like the Mar-Keys or the MGs began to tour, younger musicians — notably the Bar-Kays — filled in during the arc of Stax’s success that preceded the Redding plane crash in December of 1967. The label’s next phase brought Hayes’ hits and the second coming of Rufus Thomas in the early 1970s. These musicians not only backed the hits of that era, they played with some of the most important talents of their time.

“I came to the recording studio one day, and Pat Lewis of Hot Buttered Soul, which was Isaac Hayes’ background singers, asked me if I wanted to play guitar for George Clinton,” Beane says. “They had done background for Isaac, George Clinton, Jackie Wilson, Aretha Franklin … I can go on and on. So she called George. I met George in Cincinnati, and the rest is history.”

Beane spent five years in Clinton’s Funkadelic and played on America Eats Its Young in 1972. He also played for Little Richard. Eventually, he had a son and settled in Atlanta, working with longtime collaborator William Bell. Beane went to work for IBM and stayed in Atlanta until three years ago. When he would come home to Memphis to visit his mother, he looked for Larry Lee, who was playing with Elmo and the Shades.

Justin Fox Burks

Tommy Lee Williams

Tommy Lee Williams

“Harold [Beane] was playing with us in the first band I was in,” saxophonist Tommy Lee Wiliams says. “Willie Mitchell started us rehearsing at his house. But my first big thing was in college at Tennessee State in Nashville. I was playing with Jimi Hendrix — me and another older guy playing saxophone. It was wild. We were playing at the Del Morocco to lots of Tennessee State students. He stayed upstairs over the club.”

Hendrix left the Army in 1963 and moved to Clarkesville, Tennessee, before moving to Nashville. Those years in Hendrix’s life are often glazed over as the “chitlin-circuit years,” but the scene around the club was part of Nashville’s unheralded African-American music scene of the 1960s. Hendrix lived with lifelong friend Billy Cox, who allegedly owned, and did not get along with, a pet monkey, according to Steven Roby’s Becoming Jimi Hendrix: From Southern Crossroads to Psychedelic London, the Untold Story of a Musical Genius. That band, the King Kasuals was the launching pad for Hendrix’s work with Little Richard, Don Covay, and the Isley Brothers. Later, after his Experience years, Hendrix returned to this group of people, building Band of Gypsies around Cox and Buddy Miles, who met Hendrix during this time. Larry Lee joined Hendrix onstage at Woodstock, trading solos like they had done back in Nashville.

Williams’ involvement with Willie Mitchell led to gigs at some of the most legendary parties in Memphis history. Elvis hosted a string of New Year’s Eve parties at the Manhattan Club throughout the early 1960s. Although in those days, it was not a welcoming experience for everybody.

“We had uniforms. Willie Mitchell mostly played for it. But this one time, Willie had to go out of town, and he put us in there. We had to come in the back door. Because [the front] was for high-class folks. The bandstand had a door. We’d go out that door and stand outside,” Williams says. “Anyway, [Elvis] would have these parties, and he’d have all these women. Man, I’m talking about some of the most gorgeous women you’d ever want to see. He’s sitting there like at the end of the table like he was the chairman of the board. Nothing but women, all the way down on both sides. He’s sitting up there cooling. I said, ‘Damn, this cat here is something else.'”

Williams and Beane were also members of the Isaac Hayes Movement, the band that toured and recorded with the enigmatic singer through his rise to greatness. Hayes’ greatness took several forms, all witnessed by Hayes’ lifelong friend and Shades trumpeter Mickey Gregory.

Justin Fox Burks

Mickey Gregory

Mickey Gregory

“I took Isaac on his first gig, when he was 18 years old,” Mickey Gregory said last week at the Shades’ weekly Wednesday night gig at Neil’s Music Room.

“We were both in the same shape,” Gregory says. “Sometimes, we would make a gig outside of the city. Dude would run off with the money. Sometimes you’d make a dollar. Buy a bottle of corn whiskey and a hamburger. Sleep on the food table of the counter ’til daytime, before you tried to get back to Memphis. [He stops to silently emphasize that it was a very dangerous time for black traveling musicians.] We went through some hard times. There is a Penthouse interview from 1972. [Isaac] explains a lot of that stuff. If you ever come by the house, I’ll let you see that magazine where he says that.”

On Friday, photographer Justin Fox Burks and I ring the doorbell and are greeted by Gregory, smoking a cigarette and wearing an electric red and black-trimmed bathrobe. My Southern Protestant upbringing had not prepared me for this. But no one I know has ever answered a door in such a badass way. In we go, and Gregory shows us the interview in which Hayes talks of himself and Gregory and sleeping on craps tables after gigs. The photo spread is strange enough to defy description, until …

“We called that ‘FFO,'” Gregory says, “for Far Fucking Out.”

“I think the bathrobe is awesome,” Burks says. “Do you want to put a shirt on for some pictures?”

“I’m Kool and the Gang,” Gregory says, meaning no.

Gregory’s friendship with the man he calls “Bubba Hayes” is the subject of a book he is writing. He reads the first chapter aloud and leaves us mesmerized with the story of driving to Hayes’ first gig.

I’ll leave that story and a trove of off-the-record delights for Gregory’s book.

Gregory was a source for Robert Gordon’s Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion. Reading Gordon’s book before going to see Elmo and the Shades turns the night into an immersive experience, perhaps akin to experiencing the National Civil Rights museum after reading Hampton Sides’ Hellhound On My Trail.

These musicians changed music: They broke the hold of the 45 single and kicked off long-play music that led the way for the expansive remix and electronic dance forms of the 1980s and 90s. Hayes and Gregory formed a symbiotic relationship, with Gregory assuming more responsibility and more favor as Hayes rose to power. He helped Hayes assemble the bands that would tour with him, record with him, and endure the mayhem of life at Stax in the late 1970s.

“We were hoping for a hit record with Isaac’s Hot Buttered Soul,” Gregory says. “In the interim, I was putting together a band, really for David Porter. Isaac began to break out real quick. Porter didn’t like it, and I don’t blame him. But he didn’t realize that I had a history with Isaac since he was about 12 or 13 years old. So I had to go. I had had some hard times, and he would more or less support me and my family. So I had to follow that thing. I took the guys from the band that I was putting together for David, The Soul Spacemen. He had bought uniforms and everything. But I had to do what I had to do. That was the first Isaac Hayes Movement.”

Gregory was with Hayes when he was part of a negotiation with Mayor Henry Loeb in 1971, as tensions rose over a city-imposed curfew and a crucial benefit for a sick member of the African-American community. Rob Bowman, in his Soulsville, U.S.A.: The Story of Stax Records, outlines the event, as Hayes is called to represent the black community with the legendarily recalcitrant mayor following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“Henry was … we all know what he was,” Gregory says. “He used a lot of savoir-faire while talking to us. But he just started, and it was an exercise in futility. This one city councilman [Jerry Blanchard] — and I don’t have to say white because there were no blacks on the city council then. He had balls enough to go out with us. It was just me and Isaac and him. We went through the neighborhoods and quelled those riots. Our last trip was to Binghamton, and he got out of the limousine with us then. He had balls. But nobody was interested in anything but Isaac.”

Gregory and Williams were both in The Isaac Hayes Movement for the 1972 Watts Summer Festival concert that drew more than 100,000 people and became the film Wattstax. Williams, who played on Rufus Thomas’ hits from the early 1970s, including “Push & Pull” and “The Breakdown,” recalls the old man of Stax calming what might have been a volatile situation.

“What happened was, they were trying to get the people not to come out on the grass,” Williams says. “Rufus Thomas was already out, getting ready to do his show. He was trying to tell them, to talk to them real nice and not make them mad. I know he talked 30 minutes or more. Sure enough, everybody started walking up, going on back. We had ran out and got back on the bus and shit, we were scared. All them people, man? Dang. I just knew it was going to be a riot. Anyway, it wasn’t. Everything turned out all right. We did the show. Smart dude. That man was smart and kept it together.”

The fall of Stax engendered a lot of enmity among some of the participants, and the transition from world stage to normal life and the “golden years” has not always been easy.

“We had a ball out there. We were making money,” Williams says, noting the diminishing opportunities in today’s music industry. “The people have changed. It’s not like it was back in the day, when we were coming up. Everybody was more together. It’s kind of distant now. It’s not as tight as it used to be.”

Gregory holds a special enmity for Johnny Baylor, an alleged gangster from the north who cultivated his own locus of power in an increasingly dangerous and destructive way. You should read Gordon’s book if only for the whole story on Baylor and Gregory’s involvement in it.

“Those were some great days,” Gregory says. “But they turned into some bitter days. I mean bitter, bitter, bitter days. … I sat and watched that thing unravel under the hands of one person. I was just as crazy as he was. My pistol was just as big as his was. He knew that. We never had words. He whipped a lot of people at Stax. Pistol whipped a lot of people. A monster.”

Some people still don’t want to talk about Baylor.

“Nobody else ever had the balls to do it,” Gregory says. “Because, one, I’m still alive. So I don’t give a damn. Read my book.”

There’s a lot more history going on in Elmo and the Shades: Drummer Hubert Crawford Jr. played with James Brown and has been an essential element to the Eric Gales Band. Ben Cauley, the original Bar-Kay and survivor of the plane crash that took the life of Otis Redding, is a regular on trumpet and sings a few numbers. Drummer Brian Wells (John Paul Keith) also plays regularly.

“I knew Elmo from coming to Memphis and looking for Larry Lee,” Beane says. “That would be the first thing I would do while living in Atlanta. I’d come visit my mother, visit Memphis, and I’d look for Larry. Elmo had Mickey Gregory and Tommy Lee [Williams]. They knew me and said, ‘Why don’t you hire Harold?’ I went out and met him and have been playing with him for about two and a half years. I’ve enjoyed picking my guitar back up.”

“Cats come out here I hadn’t seen [in years],” Williams says. The goodwill among the old soulsters is something to behold. “Once they come out and see we’re out here, they come back and sit in with us. But we got a bad drummer man. Them other guys can’t touch our drummer. We let them play. But to go up behind him? He played with James Brown. You’ve got to be a bad drummer to play with James Brown.”

The members of Elmo and the Shades have impressive histories, but in a town with the kind of music legacy that Memphis has, they are not all that unusual. “Earl the Pearl” Banks plays weekly on Beale Street at Blues City Cafe and frequently at Huey’s. Banks was in early bands with Teenie and Leroy Hodges of the Hi Rhythm Section. Leroy Hodges and Hi-Rhythm keyboardist Archie Turner back him up every Tuesday at Blues City Cafe. Eddie Harrison and Tommy Burroughs are other examples of musicians with bands that have jaw-dropping back-stories.

Elmo Lee Thomas has been running his show since the first blues revival that followed the Blues Brothers and the rise of Beale Street in the early 1980s. Williams has been with the Shades for almost 20 years. Michael Toles of Bar-Kays 2.0 and Skip Pitts (also of the Isaac Hayes Movement and the Bo-Keys) are past members. Larry Lee was a member of the Shades, until his death in 2007.

“It just started one musician at a time,” Thomas says of his amazing band. “We all come together and try to put the sound down.”

And that they do.

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Ori Naftaly Band at Lafayette’s

Ori Naftaly sees his experience in the United States through the greasy, smoky, and possibly cracked lens of Memphis.

“When we came to Memphis, we were very surprised. For me, it was the first time to be in America. And to be in Memphis is kind of a miracle,” Naftaly says.

The Israeli blues guitarist had a pretty dang fortuitous adventure in getting here.

“I grew up near Tel Aviv, next to the beach,” Naftaly says. “Pretty normal. I started playing when I was 5. My dad being a big jazz and blues fan, I listened to a lot of those records. I didn’t know pop or any other kind of music until I got into high school. Just jazz, blues, and soul: A lot of Memphis music, but I wasn’t aware of it.”

Ori Naftaly Band

Naftaly met singer Eleanor Tsaig when they were in middle school together.

“She grew up right next to me,” Naftaly says. “We knew each other since middle school, went to high school together, and we went to music class together. She’s been singing all of her life and plays guitar and cello. She writes most of our songs. She is a brilliant songwriter.”

After a romp through the 2013 International Blues Challenge to the semifinals, the band felt at home in Memphis and decided to stay. Their sound is evolving as they wrap up their third album.

“We were never strictly blues, you know,” Naftaly adds. “But it doesn’t matter what I play. I work with other musicians and bands. Whatever I play is just bluesy. All of our new songs are soulful and funky and our version of R&B. But it’s bluesy, and I can’t get away from that.”