Author: Preston Lauterbach

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Standing at the Crossroads

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

A longtime Memphis music insider calls the history of the Memphis and Shelby County Music Commission “labyrinthine.” The organization has existed under different names. It has changed agendas. The doors to the presidency and board of directors seem to revolve at a dizzying pace.

Public perception — insofar as Internet message boards and local-interest blogs can gauge — is that the commission has absorbed ample public funds and produced nothing enduring in return. Plenty of confusion remains, though, about what the commission is actually empowered and financed to do.

When asked how much money the music commission has cost, and to what results, Shelby County finance officer Jim Huntsiger reacts this way:

“That’s a good question,” he says.

Huntsiger explains that the county provided an annual grant in the $150,000 range for operating costs beginning in 2000 but that a scheduled, gradual reduction brought the county government funding to zero as of fiscal year 2008. The city continues to fund the jointly governed organization to the tune of $125,000 annually, while the county’s patience seems to have expired.

Last month, the Shelby County Board of Commissioners voted down a resolution to transfer $50,000 to the music commission for the purpose — in classic music-commission-style vagueness — of “enhancing the music industry.”

With government support waning and a suspicious public looking on, the embattled Memphis and Shelby County Music Commission is at a crossroads.

The music commission and the Memphis Music Foundation, the commission’s fund-raising arm since 2003, split earlier this year. The commission then voted former Motown Records producer Ralph Sutton — who came to the city three years ago to run House of Blues Studio D — its new chairman of the board.

Sutton hopes to adjust the music commission’s focus to the new rules of the music industry, empowering artists with business training and stressing independence — something his experience suits him for. “The most intriguing part of the challenge would be to put what I’ve learned from people like [Motown Records founder] Berry Gordy to work here,” he says.

Standing outside the House of Blues Studio D off Lamar Avenue, Sutton says he is so enamored of his new surroundings that he sometimes records the sounds of the Memphis night. Though Sutton has engineered and produced records by Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and other giants of the Motown sound, the chorus of cicadas that fills the air after dark in Memphis is new music to the Los Angeles native.

Though the county funds for the music commission have dried up, the city’s share is enough to pay a new executive director. Sutton will participate in that search — the executive director is jointly appointed by the city and county mayors, but the commission board will have some input in the decision — and some insiders say that he needs to look no further than the nearest mirror for the best candidate.

Sutton is game. When asked how he’d do things differently from former commission president Rey Flemings — whose self-interested leadership coupled with the organization’s inertia during his tenure symbolize the commission’s failures in the public mind — Sutton says, “I’ve already been validated.”

Sutton says that certain of the commission’s struggles are attributable to unqualified leadership, mistakes the commission should have learned from. “The press and the public have a right to wonder what the commission was doing,” Sutton says. “The [next] executive director would need to be a true music professional. The city has tried to use a marketing person and a fireman. It has to be someone who has industry connections and the understanding of the creativity and human characteristics of a musician, record producer, or songwriter. It’s important that we select someone who has a running knowledge of the industry.”

While Flemings left the commission for greener financial pastures, Sutton says he’s already been there. “I’m human, and I believe that we’re all striving toward more recognition and better opportunity. I could always go work for Lionel [Richie] or Stevie [Wonder]. But I don’t really have an interest in that. I would prefer to participate in the rebirth of something here.”

It’s simple enough for Sutton to claim greater commitment to the city than Flemings showed, but he views the tasks ahead of the commission with a pragmatism missing from Flemings’ plans, which included bringing the MTV Video Music Awards to Memphis.

“We’re not attractive to major companies right now,” Sutton says. “Sony’s not thinking about coming down here. Universal’s not going to open an office here until we can show them that we have some infrastructure. Industry professionals as a whole need to know this information.”

The rebirth Sutton envisions will require planning for sustained growth and ground-up music industry development built around knowledgeable artists. Sutton says that business-savvy artists enjoy a heightened opportunity to succeed in the independent-driven digital music age.

“People can’t expect us to be able to start doing things like an established city like Nashville,” explains Sutton. “The realistic thing is to recognize that we have things to learn. We need to start industry programs for musicians here. What is a publishing-rights organization [PRO]? What’s the difference between a PRO and a publishing company? They need to know those types of things to know how to make a living. We don’t know who’s going to be a star, but we can help people make a living. We’re in a digital world now, and we have to start with the little things and work our way up.”

Justin Fox Burks

Left: Dean Deyo; Right: Ralph Sutton

Rather than aiming for a one-time big splash like the MTV awards, Sutton defines the role of the new music commission as empowering artists through high-level industry connections.

“ASCAP and BMI would be down here in a heartbeat,” he says. “They wouldn’t open offices, but they’d send high-ranking people to do seminars and Q&A’s. A digital music company like iTunes would love to come and help us with the process of getting our songs on there. We need to learn from Concord and gain from the publicity they’re bringing Stax. They’re the biggest independent record label in the world, and they’re masters of repackaging. They’re showing us how we can do this.”

In the meantime, the commission can still help musicians out in a pinch. They’ve used money from the unused executive director’s salary to subsidize local events like Goner Fest and organizations such as the Center for Southern Folklore. They also administer a health-care program for 15 qualifying music professionals, and they could accommodate more.

Finally, Sutton stresses visibility and accountability for the commission in the local music community. Monthly music-commission meetings take place at the Central Library. “If you’ve got a complaint, come on and say it. If I can’t answer it, then it’s something we’ll have to work on. We need to put ourselves in a position where the musicians can come and access the commission,” he says.

When asked how the commission will be financed after losing its fund-raising apparatus, Sutton says, “That’s going to be another thing. We’ve got to get some real sponsors.”

The organizations — the music commission and the Memphis Music Foundation — have begun to coexist, according to their leaders. “We’re at the front end of getting our relationship back,” Sutton says. “There was some confusion on both sides, but with Dean Deyo’s leadership at the music foundation, it’s getting better. They’re into promoting Memphis music, fostering new artists, and preserving the music. So, if they can do those things, we’re always going to get along.”

“We expect to support things they do, and we expect them to support things we do,” Deyo says.

The Memphis Music Foundation, launched in 2003 as the fund-raising arm of the music commission, split from the commission shortly after Deyo assumed leadership on January 1st. The foundation represents the influence of Memphis Tomorrow, a behind-the-scenes coalition of corporate leaders from the city’s largest companies that encourages economic development here. In 2002, following a series of economic development surveys, the organization targeted three industries as crucial to economic growth in Memphis: logistics and distribution, biotechnology, and music. Memphis Tomorrow formed committees within its membership, focusing on each of the target industries. Phil Trenary, CEO of Pinnacle Airlines, for example, chairs the music-industry development committee.

The foundation came out of the need for fund-raising beyond the $300,000 or so initially approved from the city-county arrangement. Memphis Tomorrow initiated a strategic plan for the music commission, which, in light of personnel changes and the commission/foundation divorce, is the only document available to gauge the organizations’ effectiveness over time.

The plan was based in part on an extensive survey of local music-industry professionals called “Get Loud.” The programs outlined in the plan were to have provided tasks for the commission and foundation. It shows the challenges facing the industry at the time — the lack of professional development opportunities here was cited as the chief obstacle to overall industry growth — as well as a series of proposed solutions, including a Memphis music festival that featured Memphis acts from across generations and genres.

A proposed Sam Phillips Independent Music Center hung its fate on a network of music-industry service “providers” who would donate their time to the center and assist Memphis music professionals. No such providers were identified in the plan, and their recruitment doesn’t seem to have been accounted for.

A proposed Memphis Music Venture Fund never grew beyond the idea that it would include $10 million in assets to invest in worthy local music businesses. Neither did a “music business district” or a Memphis counterpart to the pioneering live-music TV program Austin City Limits. A Memphis “Grand Ole Opry”-style venue, featuring perfect acoustics and state-of-the-art technical infrastructure, located at the corner of Beale and Third, obviously failed to materialize. The plan called for “sponsorships from major electronics manufacturers,” not otherwise identified, to fund the venue.

The strategic plan’s priority schedule rated developing the now-defunct music commission Web site a 10, for highest priority. Likewise, a “global concert event,” a Memphis Music Conference, and something called the “digital distribution initiative” were given top-priority ratings without ever materializing.

Flemings, who was hired in 2003, made an annual salary of $129,950, not including benefits, as president of the combined music commission/foundation. His hiring, insiders say, reflected the will of Memphis Tomorrow and alienated music-oriented members of the commission/foundation board to please the business-minded members. The rift foreshadowed this year’s amicable divorce of the music commission and music foundation, which both organizations deem as mutually beneficial.

The Memphis Music Foundation can now operate privately to promote economic development in the Memphis music industry. “We create talent. It’s just that when we create talent, their attorney is in Atlanta, their studio is in Nashville, and their publicist is in L.A. We want those people here in Memphis,” Deyo says.

While the music commission focuses on connecting local artists to outside resources, the foundation will concentrate on bringing music business to Memphis. “We’re not a foundation to hand out money,” Deyo says. “But if there are things we can do to help with our resources, we’d like to do what we can to help.”

The foundation plans to move into new offices at 431 South Main on October 1st. Deyo says his group can function more effectively without having its books open, like the music commission must do as a public entity.

“If you’re a public body, everything you do can be discussed in public,” Deyo says. “You have to give information to anyone anytime they want it. When you’re negotiating a deal and there’s another city competing for that deal, we don’t want them to know what our deal is.”

Deyo has entered negotiations to bring an independent recording studio to Memphis. He bargains for tax breaks for the prospective business and entices them with other incentives. “We started out against six different cities, and now it’s down to us and New Orleans. I don’t want New Orleans to know what I’m offering, and that’s hard to do when you’re a public body,” Deyo explains.

The potential studio relocation is precisely the sort of project the foundation will focus on in its new incarnation. “Our goal is economic development,” explains Deyo. “In 1973, the music industry in Memphis was the third-largest employer. There were all these different pieces of it that we lost. We want to regain that.”

Deyo says that the foundation will open a musician resource center at its South Main facility to provide up and coming musicians with “knowledge, networks, and connections,” he says. “We’re not going to start a record label. We’re not going to do anything but provide them with a place where they develop a marketing brochure for a band, talk about legal needs, or ask any question about the music business. We’ll provide answers. We won’t tell them what to do, but we’re going to give musicians access to the knowledge of how other bands who have made it have done it.”

In order to establish the music business in Memphis, the foundation must first establish the legitimacy of music and the opportunity it represents to the business community at-large.

“Memphis music is well thought of outside Memphis,” Deyo says. “I couldn’t raise 50 bucks in Memphis today to fund a music business. The business community considers it risky and not for any particular reason. It’s just kind of an attitude. My background with Time Warner helped me build relationships with CEOs of companies here. Part of my job is to rebuild the credibility of the music industry in the eyes of the business community.

“There is a lot to do. I don’t know if we will ever get back to where we were in 1973. That’s pretty heady stuff. I see it as something we don’t have to build from scratch or reconfigure our education system for,” Deyo says. “It can be part of the city’s economic engine and provide jobs.”

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Photographic Memory

CREDIT: From Memphis World

Museum curators receive plenty of calls from people willing to sell art. Most don’t result in deals, but a parcel of old photographs that came to the attention of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art last year broke the trend.

“We told the owner to bring them in, and it turned out to be this group of photographs from the Memphis World,” says Marina Pacini, chief curator of the Brooks. “We decided we had to have them.”

The World — a member of the Scott Syndicate of African-American newspapers — published downtown from 1931 to 1973.

The Brooks bought 222 World photographs and plans to host an exhibit of the pictures and the stories behind them. First, however, they have some work to do.

The photographs were sold piecemeal at an estate sale without any identifying information. Pacini and David McCarthy, professor of art history at Rhodes College, seized the problem as an opportunity to create a community project combining the images with their sometimes obscure historical circumstances.

“These connect us with a moment in Memphis history that we all need to know about,” says McCarthy, whose students have joined the excavation for information about the photographs. “We’re hoping we can find people in the photographs and do oral histories with them.”

Most of the pictures in the Brooks collection depict events between 1949 and 1964, such as the 1953 Dairy Council Luncheon and the 1951 opening of the W.C. Handy Theatre — everyday activities excluded from the typical narrative of Memphis history.

McCarthy will lead a seminar this fall with students researching and writing entries on each of the images.

“The photographs go against what you think of as typical for Memphis in that time period,” says Amber James, a Rhodes student who has researched the photograph (shown above) of a Universal Life Insurance transaction as part of a larger project on black-owned businesses in Memphis.

McCarthy, Pacini, and students read through microfilm copies of the World at the Central Library. They have found about 160 of the photos in the Brooks collection in the paper and noted the photo captions and photographer credits as they originally ran.

Pacini and McCarthy also assembled an advisory committee to help identify the photographs and set up a computer kiosk in the Brooks’ lobby that displays each photograph in the collection. People are encouraged to view the kiosk and help identify subjects of the pictures. “We’re trying to find anyone and everyone who can help us with this,” McCarthy says.

They would likewise welcome the appearance of other World photographs. The estate sale where the Brooks collection was acquired sold other lots of World pictures separately. “We don’t know what happened to the rest,” McCarthy says.

The exhibit will be on display at the Brooks in the fall of 2008.

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The Second Greatest Dramatist

“Shelby could drink me under the table,” says Ken Burns, recalling his favorite Memphian, the storyteller and popular historian Shelby Foote.

But Burns, at the Germantown Performing Arts Centre last week, wasn’t here to share war stories, at least not his own. Burns previewed his latest film, The War, a 15-part World War II documentary airing in late September and early October on PBS. The saga features participants’ points of view on the three fronts — Europe, the Pacific, and home.

Foote inspired Burns to overlap these distinct but concurrent layers of action during the production of The Civil War. As Burns struggled with his depiction of that war’s multiple fronts, as well as powerful social and political ingredients, Foote reminded the filmmaker that “God is the greatest dramatist of all.”

Unlike past Burns films, The War takes a grass-roots perspective on the action and contrasts WWII films that focus on leaders and battle strategies. Burns also hopes to counter the prevalent assumption of WWII as a noble conflict. “We think we know it and we don’t,” he says. “We call it the ‘Good War’ when it was the worst war of all time. Nearly 60 million people lost their lives.”

These perceptions joined with a sense of historical urgency to push Burns through this latest project, which began filming in 2001.

“We’re at a point where we’re losing 1,000 WWII veterans a day,” Burns explains. “In a few years, it will be impossible to make this film. The Second World War will be the province of historians. No matter how good they are, they won’t be able to give you the first-person material that we’ve been able to get for this film.”

In addition to promoting the film, Burns encourages WWII veterans and families to record their war stories for posterity. The Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project, online at www.loc.gov/vets, provides instructions on how to record veteran interviews and submit them for cataloging in the library’s permanent collection.

The War revolves around these first-person accounts. “You won’t get every battle,” Burns says, “but you’ll have an intimate understanding of what it was like to be there.”

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Pork Product?

One side says “pork barrel legislation”; the other says “community enhancement grant.” Calling the whole thing off, however, is no option.

Democratic state senator Jim Kyle commenced a whistle-stop tour of a dozen libraries and community centers in the 28th District last week to inform his constituents about the $20 million budget surplus the state will disperse through community enhancement grants.

The program puts the onus on organizations to apply for the funds, rather than on politicians to choose among favorites. “We’ve never done it like this before,” explains Kyle. “This is the middle ground for [politicians] who don’t want to choose.”

In May, Republican representative Brian Kelsey of Memphis waved an envelope full of bacon at the legislature in Nashville in protest of the bill and charged that the program looks like pork and smells like pork, regardless of the new guidelines.

“This is a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans,” says Kyle. “They think there’s something wrong with it. We think this is what we’re supposed to do.”

Other Republicans, though, view the program as a compromise. Mark Norris, Republican senator from Germantown, says, “We opposed other measures that weren’t, shall we say, arm’s length fund disbursements. This lets the [neutral] secretary of state review applications and decide.”

The money is left over from franchise and excise taxes, which are imposed quarterly on for-profit businesses statewide.

“The issue came down to this, or making specific budget appropriations,” Kyle says. “We thought that the better course of action was to create a pool of funds.”

Applications are available on the Web site of the Tennessee Secretary of State. The grant program is open to community organizations, nonprofits, and those who can find a sponsoring organization. As of August 3rd, a variety of Shelby County organizations had applied.

LaSimba Gray, pastor of the New Sardis Baptist Church, applied for $1 million for the currently nonexistent African-American Museum. The application’s stated purpose explains simply that the “funds will be used.”

Other local organizations make slightly more modest requests with more specific justifications. Families of Incarcerated Individuals, a nonprofit founded in 1989 to “deter incarceration through family support,” requested $4,000, with the stated purpose to “expand the program to serve more youth affected by incarceration.”

Applicants have a 4 p.m. August 15th deadline. The money must be spent by next June 30th, or it will revert back to the state.

Here in the land of barbecue and weekend cookouts, “pork” and “community enhancement” now intersect in more ways than one.

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Blue Heaven

This is our year of musical remembrance. Stax is 50. The King’s been gone for 30 years. Forty years ago this December, Otis Redding and four harmonious young Memphians known as the Bar-Kays died in a plane crash.

This year also marks an anniversary for another giant of our city’s musical past — one that won’t draw legions of shrine-building visitors to Memphis or inspire reunion concerts or documentary films. Sixty years ago on July 12th, the swing orchestra leader Jimmie Lunceford died — either by a heart attack or poisoning depending on whom you believe — while signing autographs in a record store on a tour stop in Seaside, Oregon.

Despite the lack of recognition in the City of Good Abode, Jimmie Lunceford represents a legacy that has meant as much to Memphis music as more recent and celebrated figures. The man who once beat Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Fletcher Henderson, and others in a battle of the big bands now lies buried, mostly forgotten, in Elmwood Cemetery.

It can be difficult to quantify the success of an artist who died before Billboard charts began to define musical success. Sheet music outsold records for most of Lunceford’s career, spanning 1930-1947, and a musician made a name and a living on the road then.

“Lunceford had the best of all bands”

Lunceford’s peers and competitors, however, knew what they were up against. No less an authority than Glenn Miller — himself leader of a top-shelf swing outfit until his plane vanished crossing the Atlantic during WWII — summed it up: “Jimmie Lunceford has the best of all bands. Duke [Ellington] is great, [Count] Basie is remarkable, but Lunceford tops them both.”

He spent barely three years of his life here, from 1927 to 1930, but began a tradition of public school music education that pipelined talent to the Memphis scene for generations to come. Not only is Lunceford overlooked in our storied history, his legacy of education is absent from the civic discussion surrounding the revival of our once vital music industry.

“He had a very good effect on the students here”

The Memphis City Schools have churned out professional musicians like Penn State has linebackers. Players diverse in style and age, like former Ray Charles Orchestra music director Hank Crawford and renowned jazzmen Phineas Newborn Sr., his sons Calvin and Phineas Jr., cerebral horn-blowers Charles Lloyd and Frank Strozier, and soul men Booker T. Jones, Isaac Hayes, David Porter, the Bar-Kays, Earth, Wind and Fire vocalist Maurice White, and members of the vaunted Hi Rhythm section, among dozens of others, all came through Memphis public school music programs.

This legacy, unparalleled in any urban school system nationally, began in 1927 when Lunceford landed at Manassas High School, fresh from Fisk University in Nashville.

Ninety-two-year-old classical pianist Kathryn Perry Thomas — one of three living graduates of Manassas’ class of 1932 — is the last surviving Memphian to have played music with Lunceford. She recalls Lunceford’s presence on campus. “I was going to school when he was there,” she says. “He had a very good effect on the students there. He taught football, baseball, and music.”

The first Memphis city school orchestra

Orchestra leader Jimmie Lunceford

Lunceford had no budget for a music program. In fact, he wasn’t hired as a music teacher at all, but instead as an instructor of English and Spanish and coach of the Manassas football and baseball teams. The school had no instruments, no music curriculum, no idea what music education could do for the community. But like the football coach that he was, Lunceford brought a group of young men together, motivated them, equipped them — with help from community donors — and refined them as a unit. He named them like a football team too, drawing on local history: the Chickasaw Syncopators.

“Manassas had the first orchestra of any school in the city with Mr. Lunceford,” Thomas says. “He was a good disciplinarian, a good teacher, and the students just had a fit over him. Lunceford played sophisticated jazz. I used to practice with them.”

The Chickasaws included drummer Jimmy Crawford and bassist Moses Allen, Manassas students who continued playing with Lunceford’s orchestra longer than any other players. Two of Lunceford’s Fisk pals, pianist Ed Wilcox and saxophonist Willie Smith, also had joined up by 1928. These four comprised the nucleus of the Lunceford band through the early 1940s.

The orchestra had come to the attention of the press by early 1930. The Chicago Defender, a national African-American newspaper, wrote that Lunceford’s 11-piece band included musicians who sang and doubled on different instruments.

Chickasaws define new sound

The Chickasaws recorded a two-sider on their leader’s 28th birthday, June 6, 1930, at the Memphis and Shelby County Civic Auditorium (then located at Main and Poplar) for Victor Recording Company. Allen, the band’s bass player, preached with tongue firmly planted in cheek through “In Dat Mornin’.”

He goaded the trumpet solo:

“Oh, Gabriel, I want you to go down this mornin’, I want you to place one foot on the land and the other foot on the sea; I want you to blow that silver trumpet calm and easy … I imagine I can see him bust the bell of that trumpet wide open.”

The flipside, “Sweet Rhythm,” could have served as the Lunceford anthem, in both name and sound. (These early recordings can be heard at http://www.redhotjazz.com/chickasaw.html.)

The Lunceford sound distinguished itself in a crowded field of talented swing bands with its two-beat syncopation, a sonic ancestor of what came to be known as the “Memphis sound” heard in the 1960s and 1970s in Stax Records’ trademark echophonic rhythm and in the laid-back Willie Mitchell groove of Hi Records. Bertil Lyttkens Collection

Musicians Ed Wilcox, Jimmy Crawford, Moses Allen, and Al Norris, left to right, at the Cotton Club in Harlem in 1934

“When he left Manassas, those who had finished went with him. He became famous with that orchestra,” Thomas recalls.

More importantly for the city, orchestras became standard in public schools. Manassas hired a replacement for a position that hadn’t existed previously: band director.

Lunceford’s band officially turned pro in late 1930 and hit the road, changing their name to the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra because the Chickasaw Syncopators didn’t resonate with national audiences.

“Rhythm Is Our Business”

Though the band would gradually grow to 18 musicians at the time of Lunceford’s death, their double-duty as players and entertainers distinguished the orchestra throughout its existence. Lunceford biographer Eddy Determeyer states that the orchestra “pioneered the use of choreography in black music.”

Jack Bradley Collection

On stage, members of the Lunceford orchestra tossed their instruments in the air in unison, danced and sang interchangeably, as the leader — decked in white tails and his glowing grin — conducted. Their uptown vocals can be heard on recordings like “My Blue Heaven” and “Rhythm Is Our Business,” a Lunceford composition that later served as the title of his biography.

Between 1930 and 1947, Lunceford’s group challenged the giants of jazz, Ellington and Basie, for orchestral supremacy. They drew raves for their showmanship and instrumental ensemble work and returned to Memphis for one-nighters at Beale Avenue Auditorium at Church Park. Lunceford remained friendly with Memphis, wooing Crystal Tulli, a teacher at Booker T. Washington High School whom Lunceford had met at Fisk. They married in 1934, the year of Lunceford’s arrival at Harlem’s Cotton Club, known then as the greatest nightclub in the world.

Renewing personal remembrances

Local appearances stirred up the Bluff City. The African-American Memphis World newspaper reported that tickets to Lunceford’s August 1944 show sold out in hours. Visits usually included a reception at the home of a prominent citizen. One concert preview said that Lunceford looked forward to “renew[ing] personal remembrances.”

Among those remembrances renewed were the students at Manassas. “He would come over to the school each and every time he would play Memphis,” recalls Emerson Able Jr., who took Lunceford’s old job as Manassas band director in 1956. “His band would perform for the [Manassas] student body, and our band, the Little Rhythm Bombers, would play for him. This is where most of us, as students, saw him. He would bring the big band over to Manassas and perform.”

Forgetting Jimmie

Memphis music, if you believe what you read, is a story of iconoclasts, renegades, and visionaries whose disdain for rules and conformity forged original sounds. Lunceford doesn’t fit into the pantheon of gritty working-class heroes who embody the Memphis sound, though. The big-band Lunceford sound required discipline, education, polish, and a collective approach to performance. For this reason, it seems, he’s been overlooked in Memphis music history.

In Goin’ Back to Memphis, James Dickerson wrote of the period Lunceford spent in the city, “Throughout the twenties, Memphis music underwent significant changes. The sophisticated blues of the teens … were replaced on Beale Street by its long-neglected country cousin, the down-home blues.”

Lunceford bucked the more celebrated trend of unsophisticated down-home blues in Memphis, as he groomed a group of city school kids into a jazz orchestra later noted for its precision and technical ensemble work.

Dickerson suggests that the bandleader’s urbanity sacrificed his soul: “I am sure black activists would today consider Lunceford an Uncle Tom. He led his orchestra with a long, white baton and dressed elegantly but I don’t think he was being accommodating to white society so much as living out a fantasy of how society should conduct itself. Considering his disdain for any deviation from his strict Protestant behavior, it is not surprising Lunceford left Memphis at the first opportunity.”

Dickerson offers no facts upon which to base any of these observations, including the false understanding of Memphis as a city without religion. Nor does he account for Lunceford’s choice to be buried in a city the bandleader supposedly couldn’t wait to leave. Ultimately, Dickerson prefers to tell the Memphis music story in a way that doesn’t grasp the complete picture.

Similarly, the over-quoted music producer Jim Dickinson explains the upward thrust of Memphis music history in terms of “racial collision.” Robert Gordon wrote in the influential It Came From Memphis, “The forces of cultural collision struck thrice in the Memphis area, first with the Delta blues, then with Sun [Records], then with Stax,” thus excluding Lunceford, who was no Delta bluesman and had died before Sun or Stax came into being, from the discussion.

“My Blue Heaven”

Today, barely a trace of Lunceford remains in the city. Imagine the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown without Willie Mays or the courtyard of Graumann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood without the imprints of Jimmy Durante’s nose or Marilyn Monroe’s hands. Our own walk of fame down on Beale Street feels just as empty thanks to the omission of Lunceford.

A historical marker in front of Manassas High School commemorates alumnus Isaac Hayes, but there’s no public display of affection for Lunceford, the onetime king of swing.

Finally, locals trying to learn about the life of Lunceford would be hard-pressed: The acclaimed biography Rhythm Is Our Business isn’t available at local bookstores or any public or college library.

Coda

Jimmie Lunceford, a healthy, teetotaling, non-smoker, dropped dead at a personal appearance in Seaside, Oregon, on July 12, 1947. The official cause of death was a heart attack, though his bandmembers claimed that the owner of the café where the band lunched had taken exception to serving the group of African Americans. Several of them complained of illness after their lunch and speculated that they had been poisoned.

Lunceford’s Memphis funeral procession traveled up Wellington Street (now Danny Thomas Boulevard) to Mississippi Boulevard. You could have seen it pass from the front porch of Lunceford’s last Memphis residence at 678 E. Iowa Avenue (now E.H. Crump Boulevard), as it crossed that street and turned up Walker toward Elmwood Cemetery. Fans lined the streets along the route.

After a star-studded New York funeral service attended by top black entertainers Pearl Bailey, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, and Noble Sissle, the Memphis ceremony brought out his inner circle. Fisk classmates served as pallbearers, while Lunceford’s father, brothers, widow, and in-laws stood out among the reported thousands who stacked the mahogany casket with flowers.

Nationally syndicated columnist Nat D. Williams, himself an educator in the Memphis City Schools at Booker T. Washington High, eulogized Lunceford in his weekly “Down on Beale Avenue” column, offering still poignant views on the man’s meaning to Memphis:

“Jimmy Lunceford was buried here in Memphis. The spot he occupies should have something of a special significance. … He took a group of relatively unsophisticated Memphis colored boys and welded them into an organization which scaled the heights of musical eminence. … He presented something new in the way of musical presentations by Negro orchestras.”

Williams praised Lunceford’s commitment to his race. While other great African Americans abandoned their people, so Williams wrote, “Lunceford and many others like him chose to remain at home, and with their people. [His death] should have meaning in inspiration and guidance to others. If we permit it, Lunceford’s burial in Memphis can mean this.”

Very special thanks to Eddy Determeyer, author of the Lunceford biography Rhythm Is Our Business, who supplied key facts and photographs for this story.

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Q&A: Karanja Ajanaku

The Memphis Tri-State Defender has gone through a lot of changes recently. In June, former Commercial Appeal reporter and editor Karanja Ajanaku assumed the executive editorship. Ajanaku avoids disparaging remarks about either his previous employer or Tri-State predecessors, though he acknowledges that he brings much-needed energy to his new job.

The Tri-State also recently moved into a new office overlooking W.C. Handy Park on Beale Street, where its first office opened in 1951. — Preston Lauterbach

Flyer: Tell us about your experience in local media.

Ajanaku: I spent 14 years as a reporter, starting out general assignment. I got to see the world and find out who I was. I covered City Hall in the late ’70s and early ’80s.

How did you view the Tri-State defender when you worked for The Commercial Appeal?

My interest in the Tri-State is longstanding. I came down here to volunteer. I wanted to help. That editor, for whatever reason, wasn’t able to have that conversation with me but later claimed that the African-American reporters in town didn’t find any way to contribute to the Tri-State. I thought, These two points aren’t hooking up.

What do you see as the role of black media in Memphis?

I see myself as an agent of change. Part of the job of being an executive editor of this paper is to effect change in the community. I intend to do that. We have to eliminate ethnic hatred. That’s the number-one thing that we have to do in this town.

How does the tri-state deal with the issues facing print media with declining circulations?

It’s no secret that the Tri-State has to increase its circulation. But if you’re delivering a relevant product — as it was in the past — you will serve the community and be profitable, and that’s what I intend to do.

We have to be able to communicate, to advertisers first of all, that we can penetrate the African-American community deeper and on a broader level than [other media] in this town. Real Times Media is interested in doing what it can for us to be relevant today — to pick up from the glory days of the African-American newspaper.

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News The Fly-By

From the Back of the Bus

CREDIT: AP Photo/Khue Bui

In the mid ’60s, Coby Smith and Charles Cabbage helped organize the Invaders, a civil rights group founded in Memphis. Now roughly four decades later, the proposed “Rosa Parks” law — currently awaiting Phil Bredesen’s signature — clears the names of people who were targeted by police for anti-discrimination activities.

The law would expunge the “records of persons charged with a misdemeanor or felony while challenging a law designed to maintain racial segregation.”

Cabbage and Smith recognize the symbolic spirit of the law but insist that it’s too late to offer any practical benefit to thousands of civil rights activists. “Is this only for people who were involved in non-violent civil rights activity?” Cabbage asks. “There are some people who went to the penitentiary and have been vilified their whole lives [due to their civil rights movement activities], and some who’ve had bronze statues made of them.”

Former Invaders count themselves in the first group. Therein lies the rub for the past militants. Their view of the movement and strategies for achieving its goals diverged from the non-violent activities that Martin Luther King Jr. advocated.

“The Black Invaders were defined as a gang and treated as criminals,” Smith says.

It’s one thing to expunge a criminal record, but another to undo the difficulties that arise in one’s life from carrying a record. “Our [criminal] records influence whether or not we have good employment, which we could not get because of our record,” Cabbage says. “How do you address this issue?”

The two men are wary of legislation designed to generate positive press for government officials while forsaking the citizens that the law could help. “This will allow Fred Thompson to run for president with a clear conscience,” Smith quips.

Bredesen has until June 8th to take action on the bill.

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News News Feature

Invasion of the Asian Catfish

CREDIT: Ghubonamin | dreamstime.com

Paul Dees’ grandfather got into catfish farming in the 1960s during the industry’s infancy, realizing that his land’s heavy clay soil wouldn’t grow a stitch of cotton.

Dees took over the family business near Leland, Mississippi — about 200 miles south of Memphis — in 2000. His grandfather had grown the farm into one of the largest catfish producers in the state, which produces the most catfish in the country.

Today Dees’ livelihood hangs in the balance, as Mississippi aquaculture faces a foe mightier than drought or the boll weevil. “As an individual producer, there’s nothing more I can do,” he explains. “We can’t compete against the People’s Republic of China.”

But on May 3rd, state commissioner of agriculture and commerce Lester Spell ordered catfish imported from China off of the shelves of several grocery stores statewide after samples of the fish tested positive for ciprofloxacin and enrofloxacin, broad-spectrum antibiotics that are banned by the FDA for use in human food.

Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana have since banned the sale of Chinese catfish statewide. Wal-Mart stores have pulled the Chinese fish nationwide. Tennessee has planned no such action, nor have any shipments of Chinese catfish to the state been inspected. Though the removal actions have been criticized as political, and the specific health risks these contaminated fish pose dismissed by some as inconsequential, the incident provokes questions about how globalization impacts everything in our lives, from regional industries to the food we put on our tables.

Catfish Fever

While catfish farming hasn’t taken in Tennessee, Memphis is a big consumer of the crop. Witness the packed parking lot during the lunch rush at the Cooper-Young restaurant Soul Fish.

The eatery opened last year, and its owner — Raymond Williams, who’s committed to Mississippi farm-raised catfish — sees plenty of his peers hooked by the lure of cheap Chinese product. As Chinese catfish take a larger share of the American market, prices of domestic filets increase to offset the losses. Domestic catfish jumped nearly 20 percent in price shortly after Soul Fish opened its doors.

Not all catfish restaurants in the city are as committed to buying local, however. That crispy-fried filet you enjoy at your favorite joint may not be catfish at all but Vietnamese tra or basa. “You’d be surprised at the number of places that claim to be a catfish restaurant that don’t even sell true catfish,” says Kenneth Mitchell of Sysco, a wholesale food distributor.

Farmers in the region are battling to force restaurants to include “country of origin” labeling on their menus. They won a modest victory when the FDA barred Vietnamese fish distributors from calling tra catfish in 2001. Vietnam accounted for 84 percent of “catfish” imports prior to that ruling, but now the amount of Vietnamese imported fish has fallen off considerably. The hope is that “country of origin” labeling will have the same effect on Chinese imports.

Mitchell says that he sells 900 cases of Chinese catfish to restaurants in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi every week.

Domestic fish costs about $55 per case, while Chinese fish runs $45 per case; cases average 45 pieces of fish. It’s the marginal buyers who keep the imports coming. “There’ll always be those people who try to find the cheapest price on anything they can call a catfish,” Mitchell notes.

“We’ve been trying to get a labeling law passed, ” Dees says. “As far as the catfish industry being able to go down to Jackson and shove that through, we can’t. In the scheme of things, we’re small potatoes.”

Farmers are urging the USDA to inspect and grade catfish as it does beef to establish industry-wide quality control. “We think it may help put the difference between us and the Chinese fish,” Dees says.

Big business

Aquaculture is a booming business in China. The government took an active role in rebuilding the industry after inland development, dam construction, and industrial pollution stunted China’s inland fisheries in the 1970s. It stocked rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. The annual output of China’s inland fisheries jumped from 300,000 tons in 1978 to 1.76 billion tons in 1996.

Chinese catfish exports scarcely existed 10 years ago, but their prominence in the American market is expanding rapidly. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. has imported 10 million pounds of Chinese catfish so far this year, against four million for this time last year. The situation does not bode well for producers in the region. Arkansas catfish farmer Carl Jeffers explains: “That volume translates into a reduced processing volume for the U.S. industry. It’s only a matter of time before the price declines because of the amount of imports.”

War Eagle

Though American farmers find themselves fighting Asian imports today, the U.S. has helped enable the growth of the Chinese catfish industry. Alabama is both the second leading producer of farm-raised catfish and also home to one of the world’s preeminent fishery-science departments at Auburn University.

The Auburn fishery department transfers scientific data and know-how to developing countries. It assists in installing fishery infrastructure and works on sustainability of aquaculture crops in a variety of settings. It also brings foreign agriculture officials to the South to show them how it’s done.

“Auburn hosted a Chinese delegation in 1996 that visited my farm,” Jeffers recalls. “They took notes and were very interested in what it took to raise catfish. You might say, in a roundabout way, I facilitated the Chinese invasion.”

Neither Auburn nor Jeffers is likely to have touted the use of antibiotics in fish. The Chinese have developed their own aquaculture methods. While American-farmed catfish swim in ponds, Chinese fish are grown in pens. Water quality may be an issue. “They’re growing their fish in polluted waters,” Dees says. “That’s part of why they have to give them antibiotics, to keep them alive.”

David Rouse, chair of the Auburn fishery department notes, “We have hosted some Chinese groups, but we’ve been very careful on that, particularly in the past 10 years.”

Rouse adds that anyone who wants to start a catfish farm in China can find the needed information from a variety of sources. There are no trade secrets, he says. “All of that information is on the Internet. Anybody who wants to farm or set up a processing plant, it’s out there.”

Banned by the FDA

The substances found in Chinese catfish samples in Mississippi and Alabama, ciprofloxacin and enrofloxacin, are used to treat potentially life-threatening infections in humans. The problem is that by ingesting them in food we may promote the evolution of pathogens resistant to these medicines, rendering them useless as treatment — though one would have to eat an awful lot of catfish for a long time to develop antibiotic resistance.

According to FDA records, ciprofloxacin and enrofloxacin have been found in shipments of catfish and basa bound for the U.S. from China and Vietnam. Shrimp from Vietnam, Venezuela, Thailand, and Malaysia have tested positive for the antibiotic chloramphenicol. Gentian violet and malachite green, anti-fungal or anti-bacterial agents applied to fish grown in tight quarters, have been found in shrimp from Mexico, eel from Taiwan, Vietnamese basa, and Chinese eel, tilapia, and catfish.

These substances pose a variety of health risks to humans. Chloramphenicol holds a slight risk for aplastic anemia, and gentian violet has been linked to mouth cancer. A Canadian study in 1992 determined that people who eat fish contaminated with malachite green are at risk for liver tumors.

“They aren’t approved for use in human food,” an FDA spokesperson told the Flyer. “They should not be present in food in any amount.”

Outlook: Murky

Scientists and farmers see the future of the Southern catfish industry differently. “I think China’s water quality is such that they won’t be able to produce catfish very long,” Rouse says. “They have to use antibiotics just to keep the fish healthy. It’s a fish that has expensive feed, so they’re going to tend to grow cheaper, easier fish. The [Chinese] catfish are probably going to go away in a year.”

Jeffers has seen the experts proven incorrect before. “We always felt that shipping expenses would be prohibitive for going outside the U.S. and assumed that other countries were the same,” Jeffers says. “Obviously we were wrong.”

“The catfish industry has already atrophied in the last five years — there’s not much fat left to trim,” Dees adds.

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News

Chinese Catfish Pollute Mississippi Shelves

File this one away under “Globalization, Horrors of.” While no one should be particularly shocked to learn that a foreign-produced food had to be removed from American grocery store shelves, this story should raise eyebrows because of the food involved and the location of the grocery stores.

The food? Catfish. The location? Mississippi.

Lester Spell, Mississippi Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce announced that samples of Chinese catfish taken from stores in Clarksdale, Starkville, Gulfport, and Meridian tested positive for banned antibiotics ciprofloxacin and enrofloxacin.

The irony here, of course, is that catfish is one of Mississippi’s prime cash crops, ranking behind only cotton. Delta Pride, an Indianola, Mississippi-based catfish co-op is the largest processor of freshwater fish in the world.

It’s a good thing that those Kool-Aid pickles are available, or it’d be hard to find anything edible down there.

Pictured here is 2007 Miss Catfish, Erin Virginia Legg, crowned at the World Catfish Festival in Belzoni, Mississippi. They don’t make ‘em like that in China.

—Preston Lauterbach

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Cover Feature News

B-side Players

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

This isn’t another story about Isaac Hayes. Or Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, and Booker T. & the MGs. While their voices and faces sold millions of Stax records during the company’s heyday, dozens of lesser-known musicians contributed their talents to the little label that did. Stax drew from Memphis’ deep reservoirs of talent — from its beginning in a garage on Orchi Road in the late 1950s to its bitter forced bankruptcy in 1975 — for its featured artists and for its supporting cast. Most of the studio musicians Stax employed for recording sessions lived in the city, and many have stayed. Memphis must have more residents who’ve played on Top 10 records than any city outside New York, L.A., and Nashville.

In honor of Stax’s 50th anniversary, we’ve dug up a few hidden treasures. The recognition these artists have received falls well short of the significance of their contributions to the Memphis sound. They have witnessed and participated in pivotal moments in Stax history and now share their stories.

In the beginning … a fan club and a pompadour

Charles Heinz goes back to the garage-studio beginnings of what was then Satellite Records. He recorded four sides for the label that would be Stax — including the local hit “Destiny” — in 1959, a time in the label’s evolution that predates its foray into rhythm and blues (the soul genre as such didn’t yet exist, either) and is, subsequently, overlooked in Stax history. It’s hard to find any mention of Heinz, a lifelong Memphian, beyond the wall of records in the Stax Museum, and his tracks were not included in the “complete” Stax singles box set released in 1991 or the Stax 50th-anniversary double disc released this year.

The artists whose records Satellite released before Heinz are dead or unaccounted for.

Justin Fox Burks

Heinz had a fan club and a pompadour back then. He sang in nightclubs with the Bill Black Combo and other bands. After his brief stint as a local pop star, he devoted his career to church music. He retired as music director of Central Church and helped found Redeemer Evangelical, where he conducts the choir and orchestra today. Here is his story in his own words:

“My influences were Mahalia Jackson and Mario Lanza. He was a tenor for the Metropolitan Opera. I would study things that they’d sing at the Metropolitan and then go out and sing rock on the weekends. It was an interesting combination. The soul that Mahalia Jackson put into songs connected with the instruction of how to sing correctly. It’s like a baseball player. Fundamentally, he’s got to know how to hit, but he’ll use his own style.

“I went to White Station and was singing with a group there that included Jim Dickinson on piano. I was introduced to the people at Stax, Satellite at that time, and they wanted me to record. In about ’59, Jim Stewart was looking for artists. Chips Moman and I wrote ‘Destiny.’ It was on the charts here in Memphis for about 10 weeks.

“We recorded at Pepper [also known as Pepper Tanner studio, formerly located at 2076 Union Avenue]. Stewart rented that studio to record, and they later did some overdubbing on McLemore. Bill Black played bass — I really enjoyed him.

“At that time, Satellite was not going in a rhythm-and-blues direction. With Carla and Rufus [Thomas] coming on, that changed things quickly. [Satellite] was going in a pop direction, but when they bought the studio on McLemore, it brought a lot of African-American people in [from the surrounding neighborhood], and they went in a rhythm-and-blues direction.”

The other Jerry Lee

Justin Fox Burks

Jerry Lee ‘Smoochy’ Smith

Ask fans of early rock-and-roll to name their favorite piano-thumping Jerry Lee, and they’re guaranteed to say Lewis. But another ivory-tickler named Jerry Lee from Memphis has made his own mark on American music: Jerry Lee “Smoochy” Smith. Like his better-known namesake, Smith began his music career in the studios of Sun Records, where Smith played on recording sessions from 1957 to 1959. Smith wrote a riff that launched Satellite’s first million-seller and helped the company make a name for itself. Literally.

“I was playing in a band, and my guitar player was Chips Moman. Chips was the engineer at Satellite. We were playing one night at the Hi-Hat Club. In one of the songs, I throwed in a little groovy piano sound. Chips, having the ear for music he has, turned around and said, ‘Where did you get that?’ I said, ‘I made it up. It’s a rhythm-and-blues-type riff.’ He said, ‘Come on by the studio, and let’s put that down.’

“Chips called me one night and said, ‘I’ve got a group over here [at the McLemore Avenue studio], and we’re working on that riff you put out.’ He had added the horns in there. They were blowing two notes against my rhythm pattern. I said that sounds pretty good. I forgot about the song for a while. It stayed on the shelf maybe six months.

“Meanwhile, Jim Stewart had gotten in touch with Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records. Wexler came down to listen to some of the songs that had been recorded to see if he liked any of them. Chips played every song that they did. Wexler told him he didn’t hear anything that knocked him out. He was fixin’ to leave, and Chips said, ‘I’ve got one more song. This is an instrumental.’ He played it, and Mr. Wexler said, ‘Now that’s what I’m looking for. Only thing, I’d like for you to put a saxophone ride in it.’

“Chips called a session, and we went and recorded it. He added two horns, Gilbert Caple and Floyd Newman. Gilbert played the saxophone ride. Floyd, he’s the one that said, ‘Awww, last night.’ He came up with that.

“I wasn’t but 21 years old when we recorded that. It took us four weeks to get it where we wanted it to be. I played organ and piano on it. I didn’t have much faith in the song. It started climbing the charts. We went on the road, and finally it hit #1. It turned out to be a great song. We recorded it in 1961, and I’m still drawing royalties on it.

Justin Fox Burks

Howard Grimes

“The song has been put in movies, and a lot of different people have recorded it. One year, the NBA used it as their theme song. Every now and then something happens with that song, and I’m making more money off of that song than I did when it first came out. It has kept me going over the years.”

Smith’s song, “Last Night,” recorded by the Mar-Keys, was the first million-seller for Satellite Records. It came to the attention of a California record company, also named Satellite Records. The California Satellite offered Jim Stewart the name outright for a hefty fee. Rather than pay or risk legal action from the California company, Stewart opted to rename his company. By combining the first two letters of Stewart’s last name with the first two letters of his sister Estelle Axton’s married name (she had bought into the company a couple of years earlier), a new brand was born: Stax.

“That was my shot, and I missed it.”

The lazy, laid-back beat that drove Al Green to the top of the charts in the late 1960s and early ’70s is one of the distinctive elements of the Memphis sound. Hi Records producer Willie Mitchell cultivated that groove at his Royal studio located one mile from Stax’s McLemore Avenue site. A different drummer, though, would have turned out different tunes. Name a hit from the Hi Records heyday and chances are Howard Grimes played drums on it. Though he made his mark at Hi, he got his start at Stax as a child prodigy.

Grimes lives a block away from the Stax Museum, yet, he says, he’s never been asked to participate in events there. “They don’t acknowledge me,” he says. “I don’t let it bother me, though I used to.

“I was self-taught on the drums. My mother had them big old 78 records of Big Joe Turner and Ray Charles. I’d play on the pots and pans. My granddaddy used to listen to the Grand Ole Opry. I’d sit and listen to it with him.

“I could hear the drums from the school over there on Smith Street where I lived in North Memphis. I came to Manassas in ninth grade. That’s when I took an interest in band — Mr. Able was the band teacher there. Mr. Able and them were into jazz, listening to Max Roach, Art Blakey, and these drummers. They started tuning me in.

Justin Fox Burks

Charles Heinz

“Mr. Able singled me out as a drummer that he felt would be successful. He used to let me out of school — I got an opportunity to record up there at Satellite. Rufus Thomas decided to cut a record one day, and it was suggested that I play on it. I was excited ’cause I had never recorded before and didn’t know whether I could do it. I was 12.

“I went up there and met Ms. Axton and Mr. Stewart. Chips Moman was the engineer. He was the most kindhearted man I’d ever met. He believed in me for some reason. It was Bob Talley’s band: Alfred Rudd, Wilbur Steinburg, Talley — he was a piano player but played trumpet on that session — Booker T. Jones, long before he became the MGs … Me and Booker were the youngest ones up there. The record was called ‘Cause I Love You.’ [Released in 1960 between Charles Heinz’ only two singles.]

“After that, they brought me back, and I cut Carla Thomas’ ‘Gee Whiz.’ [Released in late 1960, it was Satellite’s first national hit.] Something went wrong with the machine, so we did the session at Hi [Willie Mitchell’s studio at 1320 Lauderdale]. Marvell Thomas played piano, I played drums, and they had the Memphis Symphony, Noel Gilbert and his two kids. Sam Jones and the Veltones were the back-up singers.

“They called me back for William Bell. I also cut with Wendy Rene, Prince Conley. And I did a lot of instrumentals with the Mar-Keys. I never got any royalties. I got statements but never any money.

“A lot of [rumors] have come out over the years. Someone said that Al Jackson [Jr.] tutored me. Al Jackson never tutored me — I was before Al Jackson.

“[Stax] gave Booker T. an opportunity to record one day. I don’t know where I was, usually I was at home, but that day I left home. When I got back, my mother told me [Stax] had called. I was the staff drummer, but I called them back, and they said they had got someone else. I found out it was Al Jackson. Steve Cropper had recommended him. He called [Jackson] in that day for ‘Green Onions,’ and the rest is history. That was my shot, and I missed it.”

The man who kicked Isaac Hayes out ofthe high school band

High school bandleaders have had an influence on Memphis music that is huge and overlooked. To name just two, the great jazz orchestra leader Jimmie Lunceford taught at Manassas in the 1920s, and Harry Winfield tutored future Stax luminaries at Porter Junior High.

Emerson Able started teaching music at Manassas in 1956 and instructed many, including Grimes, who became prominent musicians. The most famous of his former pupils is the one who got away.

While a student at Manassas, Isaac Hayes couldn’t decide between Able’s band class or voice class. “I told him, ‘Go on,'” recalls Able. Hayes didn’t hold it against Able and later hired his old teacher to join the Isaac Hayes Movement. “Hayes introduced me on stage as the man who kicked him out of the school band,” Able says.

“I was not one of the musicians that hung around Stax. I had a job. They had been doing a lot of ‘head’ tunes at Stax [i.e., a song played from memory or verbal instruction rather than sheet music], and that can be very time consuming. A head tune is like ‘Last Night,’ a simple tune that they can pick up on. Basically, that was the Stax sound.

“Musicians didn’t always get credit for what they had recorded at Stax. They were doing what they called demos. You’d go down, record a demo, and they’d pay you 12 bucks. They have you to believe that it was only a demo, and they’d have you back to cut it [i.e., record for the purpose of releasing the material rather than practicing on a demo]. Then they’d [release] it and have you believe you’re not on there. Some of us could identify our errors, and we knew it was us.

“Another game they’d run, they’d make a demo, then play it on WLOK for a while. If [African Americans] in Memphis like a record, we’ll like it anywhere. So they’d test it on black listeners here, and if it got a lot of requests, they’d make a record out of it.

“Onzie Horne [Hayes’ arranger] brought me into Hayes’ band. That’s when we hit the road. We had charts, he had accomplished musicians, and we never would have gotten through all of that shit had it been a ‘head’ thing.

“We lost the music [traveling] between San Francisco and Los Angeles for Wattstax. We didn’t know it was missing until it got there. We assumed the airlines lost it. We had to write the music from memory before Wattstax.

“The other thing that happened, the tune we originally did for Wattstax was a Burt Bacharach tune [probably “Walk On By”]. After we recorded it at the Coliseum in L.A. and got back to Memphis, we had to go back out there. Bacharach would not give permission to use the tune [in the Wattstax film]. They fixed up the Coliseum, and we shot again.

“We’re supposed to be getting monies off of that, but we ain’t getting shit.”