Author: Tony Jones

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Music Music Features

End of an Era

When the Bar-Kays take the stage at the Cannon Center this Friday night, June 16th, their show will mark the closing chapter of lead singer Larry Dodson’s career: his last hometown performance.

“This is something my wife and I planned long ago, when we first got married,” says Dodson. “People don’t realize I’ve been in front of the microphone 47 years. That’s more time than a lot of our younger fans are old. I joined the band in March of 1970 and I got married to my wife Marie in August of 1970, and she’s worked all of her life. We said from the very beginning we weren’t going to work ourselves to death.”

So after this year’s schedule is wrapped, Dodson will be focusing his time on his wife and his daughter Precious, now 46, who was born with Down syndrome. “There are a lot of places that she wants to see, and we just want to be a loving family while we’re all healthy. My family had to play second fiddle to me, and I don’t like that.”

One would be hard-pressed to name a band exemplifying the Memphis music spirit more than the Bar-Kays. The original lineup began as teenagers hanging around the Stax studio and performing at Booker T. Washington High School, ultimately growing into a road band for Stax artists and having hits of their own. In 1967, the same year their “Soul Finger” single broke, a plane crash took the life of Otis Redding and every other member of the Bar-Kays aboard except trumpeter Ben Cauley. Bassist James Alexander, traveling on another flight, also survived. Ultimately, he and Cauley reformed and reinvented the band, leading them into funk stardom in the 1970s and beyond. Dodson, already a Stax artist with the Temprees, was recruited at that time.

Larry Dodson

They backed Isaac Hayes on his breakthrough “Hot Buttered Soul,” racked up more hit singles of their own, and wowed audiences at the label’s Wattstax extravaganza in 1972.

As the decade closed, the Bar-Kays sold out the Mid-South Coliseum in April 1979. As Dodson remembers it, “We broke Elvis’ record, Al Green broke ours, and Rick James broke them all, later.” He gives much credit for this early success to manager/producer Allen Jones. “A baaad man. So visionary. He turned me into the guy I am today.”

For his part, Alexander plans to soldier on after Dodson’s departure. There will be auditions for a new lead singer after this year’s confirmed dates are a wrap. “He says I’ll retire on stage, and he’ll expire on stage,” Dodson laughs. “I know it’s going to be hard on him not seeing me there.”

But the Bar-Kays are not limping into the twilight of their careers. Alexander’s son Phalon, a.k.a. “Jazze Pha,” a producer based in Atlanta, cut a 2012 hit for them, “Grown Folks.”

“We knew we had a good record, but we were surprised at how big the record was. Earth, Wind and Fire, the Commodores, Kool and the Gang, and a lot of the funk bands were putting out [new] records, but they couldn’t get arrested, and ‘Grown Folks’ went straight Top 10. And it wasn’t just our older fans, but younger ones outside of our fan base. He really produced the ‘shut yo’ mouth’ out of the record.

“The ironic part is that we did it in one day,” says Dodson. “We did not have one line written.”

The Bar-Kays play the Cannon Center on Friday, June 16th; ConFunkShun will open the show.

Categories
News

Elvis Presley Boulevard Project Moving Forward

City Councilman Harold Collins told several dozen Whitehaven residents at the Middle Baptist Church last Wednesday that plans to refurbish Elvis Presley Boulevard are on track and moving forward.

“We expect to start ground-breaking in November,” he said, to vocal approval from the attendees.

After Loeb Properties were awarded $16.5 million to redevelop Overton Square, Collins successfully spurred the council to allocate $16 million to redo Elvis Presley Boulevard, keyed by the fact that it is the second-most-visited street in America after Pennsylvania Avenue, where the White House sits.

With a target completion date sometime in 2015, state and federal funding have kicked the project budget above $40 million. Intersection improvement, traffic lighting, and aesthetics are to be improved from Brooks Road to Shelby Drive, with the Graceland section as the focal point. The city’s engineer’s office will be the controlling point for the plan.

Created by the Powers Hill Design firm, three plans were unveiled at the public meeting. Designed to accommodate tourist interest and traffic flow, the lanes are to be widened, and could include a center median incorporating pedestrian and bicycle lanes.

Attendees at the meeting were given a survey to choose the option they preferred. A follow-up meeting is planned for June, with the final blueprint to be presented in July. Residents were also directed to the project website.

An alternate meeting is being planned for area business owners in May.

Two additional factors were discussed: the aerotropolis urban design plan underway, and the sensitivity of assuring some allocation of work to minority owned firms.

Collins explained, “We will be in discussion with the aerotropolis folks, but we’re not linking this into that plan. As one of the main entry points to Whitehaven, as well as a destination point to the airport, we will of course keep informed because this is a crucial part of the overall vision, but just their planning process will take at least two years or more. We will be almost finished by then. Also, you cannot sit on government money that long. The need has been identified, the funding allocated, and we are moving forward.?”

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Thank You, Mr. Hayes

CREDIT: BMI

I was watching the Olympic swimming trials, when the news flashed that Isaac Hayes had died. Getting to see him as his career skyrocketed has always been a cherished childhood memory for many kids like me, who grew up in south Memphis. He was our attainable icon, a living, breathing example of life’s possibilities.

Recently, I produced a play entitled Ride On! How Stax Records Influenced Our Dreams, that uses many of these memories. Built around a teenage cast, the most gratifying aspect of doing it was watching the teenagers in the cast and crew learn about the importance of the city’s music culture. I’ll never forget the afternoon we all went to the Stax museum. These kids had no idea that Memphis had been “so poppin’!”

I was a bit luckier than most. My mother worked in a beauty shop called Ethel’s that was on the same block as Stax. There was Jack’s grocery store, the beauty shop, Stax Recording, and the Satellite all lined up, making one safe, beautiful world for the kids in the neighborhood.

Back then, Isaac was just one of the many guys filtering through, trying to meet one of the ladies getting pretty or bumming change to go get a hot dog at the Satellite Cafe. Except for Rufus Thomas — whom no one who spent more than 30 seconds with him could ever forget — I was too young to remember all of the stars first-hand, but the stories have been part of my family’s folklore around the dinner table since I was a small child.

One day, Isaac’s writing partner, David Porter, came in and grabbed a couple of customers, my sister Carolyn among them, to come and sing on a record they were making. The song was the Bar Kays hit, “Soulfinger.”

Not long after, Stax bought out the whole block. Miss Ethel moved her shop to Glenview, so Moms and her best friend bought their own shop across the street at McLemore and College.

A lot of the Stax guys still came in and got their hair done, bringing over new records, and sometimes even tickets to shows. I remember my mother calling home on the day Otis Redding’s plane crashed. My sister Linda didn’t go to school that day; probably like a lot of kids across the city.

And then the coolest thing in the world happened: Isaac’s release of the album Hot, Buttered Soul made him a superstar. Then he wrote the soundtrack for the movie Shaft and won an Academy Award!

Right after that, he bought his solid gold Cadillac Eldorado. But even after becoming the biggest thing in Memphis since Elvis, Hayes bought a house in Longview Heights at Frank and Lauderdale Street. Even cooler for us kids, he kept about half-a-dozen of the latest cars parked on the street in front, and we’d see them every morning on the way to school.

After school, it was a regular deal to see him out in his yard playing with his kids or throwing the football around with some of the older fellas — while dressed in rainbow pants, leather outfits, and monkey-fur boots. It was the best thing in the world. And seeing him on such a regular basis in our neighborhood let us know that whatever we dreamed of, we could achieve.

Godspeed, Mr. Hayes. We’ll miss you. And thanks.

— Tony Jones

Categories
News The Fly-By

Little G’s

Sergeant Steve Harris is a shift commander with the county’s Street Crimes Task Force. Recently, he arrested a 15-year-old gang member from what he calls “a nice home.”

“They weren’t rich, but you could tell the kid didn’t want for anything,” Harris says. “You should have seen his mother’s face when we showed her the gang handbook we found beneath his mattress.”

In the wake of two high school shootings within the past month, politicians and police are encouraging parents to get involved with prevention.

“It’s disproportionately a black problem, and it’s time for us to come together and address it,” says former school board member and current City Council member Wanda Halbert. “The system has to allow a collaborative effort, including listening more to parents, and that’s not happening.”

Harris agrees that parents need to be involved. “It doesn’t matter what type of neighborhood you live in. These kids see it as some type of macho game,” he says. “The gangs are pushing harder and harder to get young members.”

Memphis police director Larry Godwin pulled his department out of the joint city/county Metro Gang Unit two years ago, and Godwin says Operation Blue Crush has put law enforcement on the front lines against gangs.

In 2006, the Metro Gang Unit made 66 arrests. Last year, under Blue Crush, the Memphis Police Department made 1,500 gang-related arrests.

“With Blue Crush, we’re more effective in going after the gangs by concentrating on what they do instead of who they are,” Godwin says. “It’s not illegal to be in a gang. … If they were getting together to bake cakes, that would be great with us, but if you rob, steal, sell drugs, we’re going to put you in jail.”

Using a 10-point system to identify gang members, the Memphis Police Department has amassed a database of 8,900 active and known gang members in the Memphis area. Memphis mayor Willie Herenton has suggested a similar system to assist parents and teachers in identifying potential recruits.

Harris says older gang members “feed off the young,” getting them to run errands and do various jobs.

“What we’ve found is that [gang] affiliation means nothing once they get older and graduate into real crime. They’ll do business with anyone,” Harris says. “It’s just about getting their money.”

On a recent morning, Harris’ unit was about to make arrests in a major investigation. An undercover officer pulled a file on a young woman affiliated with the Gangster Disciples. Her case record is 52 pages long.

“And she’s just 21,” the officer said. “I did not get into law enforcement to be busting kids. But that’s what it’s coming to.”

Categories
Opinion

Willie Mitchell

Willie Mitchell’s Royal Recording studio is the last of the historic independent soul-music houses still operating. Though he didn’t come to own the place until the mid-1980s, it was always his domain. His Memphis career began in the mid-1950s, with Ace Cannon and Bill Black, through a string of his own 1960s R&B instrumentals, up to the heyday of Al Green, Ann Peebles, Denise LaSalle, Syl Johnson, Otis Clay, and others pumping out hit after hit.

Mitchell and the Hi Records artists created a sound that no one has ever duplicated. Part of that has to do with the studio’s location at 1320 South Lauderdale, smack in the heart of South Memphis, where the ground is rich and sweet with the feeling that makes soul music. Originally a movie theater, the building’s acoustics are derived from its design. The studio rises where the movie screen used to be. The sound grows in a space duplicated nowhere else. “I’ve recorded all over the world and never found a sweeter spot than right here,” Mitchell says. “There’s something about the ground here. It’s got soul.”

While many Memphians might be afraid to traverse the area now, you’d be surprised at the artists who visit or call seeking his services. Alternative and post-punk bands have driven from as far as Seattle to record here. Keith Richards, Boz Scaggs, Rod Stewart, and Tina Turner, to name just a few, have all come calling to record, consult, hang out, snoop, try to get a project financed, or just pick the brain of the master. Mitchell, however, seems remarkably unimpressed with his own status. He’ll mention an unfamiliar artist in the same breath as the heavyweights. Just making music is what gets him off. But remember, he says, “I like making hit records. You got to make hits.”

And hits he has made. A state-commissioned research paper written in the mid-1990s put the number of Mitchell’s gold and platinum units at more than 100. There’s a great CD in record stores now — Soul Serenade: The Best of Willie Mitchell on the Right Stuff label — that catalogs the instrumental hits he’s had under his own name. A Hi Records compilation released by the label in the early 1990s packages a wider retrospective. Others are still being planned.

Following the death of his wife Anna Barbara Mitchell in 2001, he battled diabetes for a time. But now Mitchell has recuperated and appears in terrific health.

Mitchell’s not a big talker. This interview request came during what could prove to be one of the most significant projects of his career. We had to promise not to divulge it here, but Mitchell agreed to a short interview during a listening session.

Flyer: What are you working on now?

Mitchell: [Grins] I can’t say who we’re cutting right now, but it’s a very talented artist. A great voice. We’ve been working hard, man. Every day. I think this is going to be a big, big record.

You seldom went to the nightclub you owned on Beale, and you’re notoriously shy about speaking in public. Do you plan to attend the Premier Player Awards?

Yes, I’m going. I’m actually looking forward to it. I think it’s a great thing for them to do, and I’m proud that they’ve thought of Hi Records. We had a great run. It’s good to see the city bringing Stax back too. I’m real glad about that. It’s helped the city, helped me, helped everybody. I hope it’s really a big success.

Did you cut anything over at Stax?

Me and my brother James worked on some Little Milton things over there and some Johnnie Taylor stuff — a lot of cats. I’ve played so many places I can’t remember all of them.

When did you realize you could actually make it as a producer?

When I cut “Eight Men, Four Women” with O.V. Wright then came right back with “Two Steps from the Blues” with Bobby Bland. I knew I could make it then. That was 1965.

What’s the key to the Willie Mitchell sound? Any secret knowledge you’d like to drop on the younger generation?

Oh, I’m not telling that. There is a secret, a couple of little things I do, but I’ve been lucky a man to be around so many good artists and hit records. It’s really the artists that you work with. It’s like a school teacher: The producer is the teacher, but it makes it so much easier and so much better when the student likes to get his lesson. If he doesn’t want to get his lesson, it’s a lot less fun.

The Hi Records recording band — the Hodges brothers — and backup singers Rhodes, Chalmers, and Rhodes and your regulars are famous for their contribution here. Anybody in town you see as being that good?

There’s a bunch of good musicians around here. I like working with saxophonist Lannie McMillan on sessions. He’s real good, very creative. I have my regulars on horns that I like to work with — Jack Hale, Scott Thompson, Andrew Love, and Jim Spake. Got to cut with those guys. And Ben Cauley. Can’t forget Ben.

Heard any good hip-hop lately?

[Laughs] They cut a lot of it around here, but it’s really not my thing. It’s too fast for me. I like this guy, Brian McKnight. He’s really good. I also like what we did with Preston Shannon for Rounder. I was kind of disappointed that they never really took off.

It seems every year someone has a hit with “Let’s Stay Together.” Any favorite versions?

Not really, but I’m glad they do it though. I was glad to see Tina [Turner] have a big record with it.

Interest in your catalog is growing.

Yeah, that’s good. I just got my [royalty] statement from Capitol. The greatest-hits package is selling a lot, but they didn’t put “Robin’s Nest” on it. I was surprised by that. Illinois Jacquet cut it a long time ago and I’ve always loved that song.

You’ve always said there’s something in the ground here that makes your sound. Can you explain it?

I’ve been down here since ’59, mingling with the people here. The winos come down here; the working folks come by. There are just good people around here. I like them and they like me. [Laughs] They come in and rob me sometime, but it’s no big deal. Some guy’ll come in saying he needs a few dollars to get something to eat and then a few minutes later you see him at the whiskey store! But I know when to give and when not to.

If you were to meet God tomorrow, how would you like to be remembered?

Music has been my whole life. I don’t know if you’d call it a spiritual connection, but I’d die without it. One thing that I’m proud of is that I was able to make a living for my kids. I’ve always wanted them to know about what goes on around here so they can take it on after I’m gone. I always loved all of them, the boys and the girls. I teach them the board, help them write songs, play the piano for them. I just can’t live without music, man. I still walk the floor at night, get up, and play something that’s in my head. I’m still always trying to create something.

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News The Fly-By

Last Defense?

Readers, employees, and others interested in the future of the Tri-State Defender were abuzz this week with the news that the paper had finally been sold. The paper s future has been a subject of speculation since the death of owner John Sengstacke five years ago. But the speculation has jumped the gun a bit, according to general manager Audrey McGhee.

Declining a full interview, McGhee briefly explained that the presiding judge in the case had cleared the tables for a possible sale but that the decision of the Sengstacke board also awaits any potential buyers.

Sengstacke scion and the Defender s chief editor Tom Picou and an unnamed silent partner are said to be the leading, and perhaps last remaining, bidders. African-American casino owner Don Barden was once among a string of suitors interested. Barden visited the office on Calhoun in 1999, but all offers except Picou s have now apparently fallen off the table.

When reached at his home in Chicago, Picou indicated the deal was nearly done: The board had already approved the sale before the judge s decision, he said. Sengstacke Enterprises now has to get approval from the IRS to make it all final.

Once the largest and most powerful black newspaper chain in America, Sengstacke controlled papers from Chicago to Florida. Bids for the remaining four The Chicago Defender (the nation s first and sole black daily), The Michigan Chronicle, The Pittsburgh Courier, and the Tri-State Defender reached a reported $14 million. Sengstacke tried to leave the business to a niece but tax law changes scuttled the plan. The company carries several million dollars in estate-tax liability, which has been blamed for the reported cash-flow problems.

It is no secret that the company s fortunes are desperate. Tri-State Defender employees have been working under death-watch circumstances for well over a year. Payroll has been consistently late and often missed entirely. Employees say McGhee has often been heard to say don t be surprised to come to work and find the doors are locked. Fourteen-year employee Eileen Sullivan recently had to quit because of the paper s money problems. I got tired of going to work every day, then at the end of the week you didn t even know if you were going to get paid, she said. I just couldn t take it anymore.

The paper s financial troubles come despite recent improvements in the product. Picou is credited with adding modern graphics techniques and a broader scope in the tone of departmental news. There is a regular column devoted to news from African nations, and writer Wiley Henry has been recognized for feature stories that have a pulse to them.

But the company s corporate culture has also hurt its present commercial status. Former managing editor Virginia Porter said, They laid off three black women to keep on one white boy because he was practically Tommy Picou s nephew. Not to mention they were already paying him more than anyone else. And they continued to do so even after he moved out of town. The people in Memphis can t get a raise, can t even half get paid, and they could send him his money all the way to Pennsylvania. That s the mentality that is strangling the Tri-State Defender.

Porter, like most of the paper s critics, feels its mission is still necessary. The paper s editorial closeness to the African-American community still gives it strong potential editorial reach. But the economic strain is becoming evident to the paper s readers. An on-air comment made a few months back by popular radio personality Mother Wit summed up the paper s present condition and image in the marketplace: The Tri-State Defender is the city s black weekly, she said. That s spelled w-e-a-k.

But the Defender s roots are deep. Though the black community s assimilation into mainstream America here and elsewhere has cut the company s revenues and circulation drastically, many current and former employees feel that the company s management also bears responsibility for the Defender s present circumstances. The paper s 50th anniversary passed recently without making a blip in the marketplace.

If any of this intimidates Picou, he doesn t let on. We re not going to change the content, he says. We think we have a pretty good paper.

Picou, who started with the firm in his teens, has worked in every capacity, from editorial to a brief stint as president of the company.

If the sale becomes final, Picou says he will bring in a marketing staff, but the main concentration will be on making the paper function in a digital age. The Defender has made a lot of progress in the last seven years, he says, in terms of direction and targeting it toward a more favorable readership meaning people between 25 and 55. Basically, I think the paper is a sleeper. Even though Memphis has the 52nd-worst reading market in the country, I think there is tremendous room for expansion. And not only in Memphis but in the entire state of Tennessee.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Silent Giant

Robert Worsham may be the most significant writer to emerge from the South in the modern era. You’ve probably never heard of him, but Worsham penned a work that embodies Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s “Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword.” Though unpublished, unschooled, and mostly overlooked by the leaders of the movement he helped define, Worsham wrote four of the most important words ever printed.

“I Am A Man”

Don’t look at me with disdain,

For I am not a weakling, I am a man.

I stood when to stand

brought severe reprimand,

I spoke, when to speak

brought denunciations from the weak,

and brutal attacks from those in power,

But to me this was my greatest hour,

With chin thrust out and head up proud,

I stood up straight and I said out loud,

I am a man!

And I shall always defy

the oppression of mankind

until the day I die.

Worsham’s defiant verse gave the civil rights movement its most telling image, captured by acclaimed photojournalist Ernest Withers in his famous photograph. “People always want to focus on the so-called leaders,” says Withers, “but it was the contribution of the everyday man and woman, the working people, that brought us forward.”

Though few know of Worsham’s pivotal contribution, he gained fleeting recognition from an appearance on a local morning talk show, The Marge Thrasher Show, in 1988. As part of the program’s focus on Black History Month, Worsham recounted the heartbreaking incident that moved him to write I Am A Man. Thrasher was moved to tears. “I was riding the bus home, so I went to the back of the bus where I could stretch out and be more comfortable,” Worsham recalled. “A couple of young kids on the bus, black kids, saw me go to the back and called me an Uncle Tom.”

It was 1962. Memphis buses had only recently been desegregated when the kids insulted him, mistaking his seeking an unshared seat as following old custom. “I thought, How dare you say something like that to me. To me!” he says. “I am a father. I made it through hard times that would have made those little clowns run off crying for their mamas. I had helped organize strikes at the Chisca hotel and the American Finishing Company long before the movement took hold, and they would say something like that to me.”

So Worsham took out his notebook and penned the words that would so influence modern history.

Ironically, just two days before, Judge Beverly Bouche had fined him $20 for taking the law into his own hands and shoving his way onto a bus seat next to a white man. “I didn’t put my hands on him or anything,” Worsham says, “just pushed my way in so they had to move over and give me room. It was crowded, but there was enough space to slide over and give me a seat, but he wouldn’t let me sit down. Judge Bouche also gave him a $20 fine for refusing to move over.”

Recognizing his poem’s power, Worsham copyrighted I Am A Man and later gave a copy of it to local activist and friend Cornelia Crenshaw. “I gave it to her to honor people that were committed to change,” says Worsham. She used the poem as a rallying cry for Memphis’ sanitation strike.

But while the phrase commanded worldwide attention, Worsham’s contribution remained an obscure fact until his appearance on Thrasher’s program. In another ironic twist, Worsham believes his recognition actually led to his being fired from his job as director of operations for Horizons of Memphis, Inc., a janitorial service. “I couldn’t really prove it, but that’s what it was,” he says. “I knew I couldn’t sue them for being racist, so I sued them for age discrimination.”

Always a fighter, Worsham served as his own attorney in the litigation. His suit against Horizon’s owners, Robert Worsham Sr. vs. Jack Price, Et Al., was fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear his pro se arguments. But Worsham claims victory in the matter. “We lost the battle but won the war. It went on for seven years. I was representing myself, but can you imagine what it cost them in attorney fees? They shut down not too long after that,” he says with a laugh. “They didn’t know who they were messing with.”

Eighty-two years old now, Worsham putters around his small home in North Memphis, joshing with his wife Gertrude, attending to his writings and reflections, and delighting in the lives of his four children. It’s been a long journey but a happy one. He feels that he should have received more recognition for his contribution to the civil rights movement but says, “I’m not really bitter about it. I haven’t had time. I have four beautiful children who all have successful careers,” he says. Retrieving a new microcassette recorder from the room that serves as his library and study, he grins and says, “My baby girl just bought it for me so I can record my writings and thoughts.”

Worsham made his living at such jobs as railroad porter, hotel operator, and tax inspector. But he has no regrets. He’s lived his life like his poem reads. “I actually got along better with white people because I looked them straight in the eye when I spoke,” he says. “I carried myself with pride and respect and received it in return.”

He is a man.