Tag: Isaac Hayes

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Music Record Reviews

In Dolemite Is My Name Score, Scott Bomar Puts His Weight On It

“You’ve been blessed by Moses.” Those were the words uttered by none other than Isaac Hayes when he visited tracking sessions for the soundtrack to Hustle and Flow.  While that Craig Brewer film led to Three 6 Mafia winning an Oscar in 2006, much of the picture’s music marked the breakout of local producer, composer, and bassist Scott Bomar, and it was during his sessions that Moses descended.

Now, with Bomar’s soundtrack to Brewer’s latest, Dolemite Is My Name, that blessing has come to fruition. As Bomar recently told Variety, “I would say any Memphis influence that’s in the music is through the influence of the film scores that Isaac Hayes did. Isaac…was a very big influence and mentor to Craig and I both. I feel like that blessing has continued into this project, because he would have really loved this. We use three of the musicians on the score who were in his group who played on the scores to Shaft, Tough Guys and Truck Turner: Willie Hall (on drums), Lester Snell (on keys) and Michael Toles (on guitar).”
Courtesy Memphis Music Hall of Fame

Scott Bomar & Don Bryant

Bomar has always had impeccable instincts in choosing his players, as with the globe-trotting Bo-Keys, who purvey classic soul with front men like Percy Wiggins and Don Bryant. Some of those players overlap in this project, though there are some other cameos as well: actor Craig Robinson, regional blues lifer Bobby Rush, Beale Street royalty Blind Mississippi Morris, and trombonist Fred Wesley, who played with James Brown for many years, also make appearances.

Needless to say, this is one funky, soulful soundtrack, a veritable encyclopedia of 70s motifs and riffs. Wah-wah guitar, clavinet, organ, and punchy horns abound, all grounded by the rock-solid rhythms of Bomar and drummer Willie Hall. Having said that, many imaginative flourishes abound. “Pur Your Weight On It,” for example, employs some period-authentic synthesizer and unorthodox, high register bass notes to disarming effect. The campy “Ballad of a Boy and Girl,” sung by Eddie Murphy and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, makes for perhaps the most powerful use of kazoo in any major motion picture soundtrack.  And, as with so many classic Isaac Hayes tracks, the heavy funk is decorated with some gorgeous orchestral embellishments.

Beyond Isaac Hayes, amidst all the pitch-perfect funkisms, there are some unexpected influences on this music. As Brewer told Variety, “I told Scott Bomar that I wanted him to treat the score for Dolemite Is My Name as if it were a little bit of like a superhero movie. I wanted there to be a “Rudy theme,” just like there would be a Luke Skywalker or Captain America theme.”

Scott Bomar

Bomar adds, “The theme to Superman was definitely a reference for this film. With the melody that we call the Rudy theme, the first time we hear it is in the beginning of the film where he’s creating the character and experimenting with the comedy routine; by the end of it, with the music building, he’s pulling a wig out of a box in the closet, and when the wig is revealed, that’s where we first hear this theme. It’s used a few times throughout the film, and then the last time we hear it is at the end when they’re going to the premiere; when Rudy steps out of the limo, that’s where the Rudy theme is fully developed. And, definitely, the reference there was the theme from Superman.”

Aside from the two tracks sung by Robinson, the track by Bobby Rush perfectly captures the gritty roadhouse blues vibe, fired by his uncanny delivery, and Blind Mississippi Morris, accompanied by Jason Freeman, brings things down to earth as the album’s closer. All in all, it’s a grand survey of the sounds that make this place burn with musical passions, expertly curated and assembled by one of the city’s greatest contemporary producers.

Hear Scott Bomar speak with author Robert Gordon about this and other music he’s created, tonight at the Memphis Music Listening Party, Thursday, January 30, 7 pm, at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library. Free.

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Music Music Features

Soul Explosion: The New Stax Reissue

CREDIT: Wayne Moore, photographer; Stax Museum of American Soul Music

“I’m gonna have a hit if it’s the last thing I do!” exclaims Albert King. “Hanging around the studio for three days in a row now, I think ain’t nobody can get a hit outta here but Sam and Dave, Rufus Thomas, or Carla Thomas … I can play the blues myself! Yeah! Gonna get every disc jockey in business across the country. If he don’t dig this, he got a hole in his soul!” King is speaking over a song from half a century ago, but it sounds as urgent as this morning’s news. Such was the galvanizing spirit animating Stax studios throughout 1968 and 1969.

By then, the need for hits had become a matter of survival: Atlantic Records, which had distributed all Stax material through 1967, was enforcing the contractual fine print that made all Stax master recordings the property of Atlantic. Severing relations with the industry giant, Stax, guided by co-owner Al Bell, began cranking out new music at a furious pace.

Wayne Moore, photographer; Stax Museum of American Soul Music

Soul Explosion Summit Atendees with Covers

It was known as the “Soul Explosion,” and Craft Recordings has just re-released a two-LP set by that name that served as the capstone of this Herculean effort. Last year, the five-CD Stax ’68: A Memphis Story gathered every release from the first year of the label’s reinvention. The new double-vinyl reissue, identical in appearance to the original 1969 album, captures the time even more viscerally. Deanie Parker, former head of Stax publicity (and, more recently, president and CEO of the Soulsville Museum), recalls the time wistfully. “That was a time when people loved to read, to see pictures, to touch the album covers, singles, and labels, and have the artists autograph them.”

The vinyl reissue literally brings it all back home. As part of the label’s “Made in Memphis” campaign, the lacquers were cut by Memphis-based engineer Jeff Powell and manufactured at Memphis Record Pressing. And for Parker, the reissue transports her back to that time. “You’d hear something new and think, ‘Oh, this is fantastic! Look what these people did in the studio! Did you hear what they came up with last night?!’ Overnight, something dynamic could happen creatively, and it would modify the strategies that you had in mind earlier in the week, in terms of how we were gonna package it,” she recalls.

Package it they did, with an ever-refined sense of strategy. The Soul Explosion album assembled the biggest hits of 1968, with other diverse potential hits from that productive year. Johnnie Taylor’s “Who’s Making Love,” the label’s first big post-Atlantic smash, is followed in quick succession by Booker T. & the MGs’ “Hang ‘Em High,” Eddie Floyd’s “I’ve Never Found a Girl (To Love Me Like You Do),” and other chart-toppers and rarities. The LP was assembled for maximum impact, just before the label hosted a massive summit of industry players in May of 1969. As Parker recalls, “That album was the centerpiece.”

Al Bell recalls, “We were multimedia before multimedia was even a thing! During that one weekend in Memphis, we had large projections on the walls the size of movie theater screens, and we had video interspersed with live performances by all of our top acts. The energy during that weekend was like nothing the music industry had seen before.”

Beyond appearing 50 years after the original release, the timing of the reissue was especially poignant, coming only days after the death of John Gary Williams, the star vocalist of the Mad Lads. The LP’s two numbers from that group, “So Nice” and “These Old Memories.” In more ways than one, “these old memories” will “bring new tears.”
Editor’s note: Memorial services for John Gary Williams will be Saturday, June 8th, at the Brown Missionary Baptist Church, 7200 Swinnea in Southaven, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

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Music Record Reviews

Stunning Releases by Memphis-Related Artists Old and New: A Record Roundup


Julien Baker – Turn Out the Lights (Matador)

On her second album, Baker, a regional girl done good, channels that Steinbeckian concept of the Hebraic timshel: “Thou mayest,” via a beautifully sparse Ardent Studios production. Baker’s incontestable lyrics dig at the blessing—and curse—of self-inflicted solitude, veering from one garish image to another with an understated delivery that frequently belies the urgency of the situation. “I shouldn’t have built a house in the middle of your chest,” she sings on “Sour Breath.” On “Happy to Be Here,” she croons about the “orchestra of shaking metal” inside her head. The title track reminds me of Richard and Linda Thompson’s 1982 classic Shoot Out the Lights, a snapshot of their failing relationship. The Thompsons sang about window blinds; Baker references drywall. Recorded and released 35 years later, her take on emotional pain hurts that much more, particularly because it’s amplified by her (presumed) innocence and youth.     
 Andria Lisle

Stunning Releases by Memphis-Related Artists Old and New: A Record Roundup

Linda Heck – Experimental Connections in the Memphis (Linda Heck)

Heck, a creative force who erupted on Memphis’ circa-1980s alternative scene, might’ve decamped for Sewanee, Tennessee, at the beginning of the millennium, but she’s still an undeniable fixture on the local circuit. I’ve spotted Heck’s all-black visage topped with a wacky baseball hat at shows of all varieties, ranging from blues concerts to garage rock house parties to rap performances, and every point in between. Recorded at Alan Hayes’ House of Hayes studio, Experimental Connections is a revelation: Heck has a commanding presence that hovers between Laurie Anderson and John Cale’s vocal deliveries. Collaborators include fellow ex-pat Greg Cartwright, the Nots’ Charlotte Watson, and Memphis Flyer music editor Alex Greene. The originals “Everything” and “Poor Little Stray”represent some of the best (and possibly most under-the-radar) Memphis music released this year, while her interpretation of Alex Chilton’s “Kanga Roo” is a fluxist masterpiece.   
Andria Lisle

Isaac Hayes – The Spirit of Memphis 1962-1976 
(Craft Recordings/Stax)

“Isaac has never gotten the credit,” writes Sam Moore (of Sam & Dave) in the book for this new box set. Actually, that’s debatable. He’s rightfully revered in this town and throughout the world. But Moore may have a point if one considers how far Hayes’ reach extended into other artists’ careers and identities. All the world loves “Shaft,” but how many appreciate the breadth of his musical understanding? This set could correct that, starting with the first disc, which highlights his talents as a songwriter and producer. The biggest Sam & Dave hits are there, of course, as are hits with Carla Thomas, but few listeners are aware that he produced solid soul sides with jazz vocal legend Billy Eckstine, or that Charlie Rich recorded Hayes-Porter songs for Hi Records, or that Hayes co-wrote the Booker T & the MGs classic, “Boot-leg”? From the Astors’ “Candy” to the Emotions’ “Show Me How,” the disc is packed with stone classics that deserve greater recognition. And that’s just Hayes behind the scenes.

Disc two takes up Hayes’ solo singles, and its here that his jazz influences (thanks, perhaps, to his time at Manassas High School?) really come to the fore. Even a little-known Christmas side, “The Mistletoe and Me” reveals a mighty hip interpolation of “Jingle Bells” into sly chord changes, and the instrumental excursions take his surprising-yet-natural innovations in arranging even further. Yes, “Theme from ‘Shaft’” is here, not to mention themes from “The Men” and “Three Tough Guys”. And, furthering the jazz tradition of investing great performances into time-honored standards, his re-imaginings of “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” or “The Look of Love” are just as original. If disc one highlights his powers of composition, disc two adds to that his powers of interpretation. Disc three drives the point home, focusing only on his cover versions, like his twelve minute “Walk On By,” which he made his own. These covers culminate in previously unreleased tracks from a 1972 concert in Chicago. Finally, the emphasis of disc four is all groove. It also treats us to newly released material, including a thirty-three minute version of “Do Your Thing.” As a bonus, a re-pressing of his first 45, recorded at American Studios before Hayes landed at Stax, is included — a lovely vinyl bon bon to top off four full-course platters.

The booklet, over fifty pages, is a little skimpy on some of the details for the tracks on disc one, but compensates with information on band members who played on Hayes’ own singles and albums. It also features a biographical essay by Robert Gordon, and other reminiscences by Hayes’ colleagues. None can compare with Moore’s recollections, who shared with Hayes the time-tested nickname of “Bubba.” And to top it off, as Moore writes, “I actually knew him when he had hair.”   
Alex Greene

Stunning Releases by Memphis-Related Artists Old and New: A Record Roundup (2)

John Lee Hooker – King of the Boogie  (Craft Recordings)

What are the first things you think of when you think of John Lee Hooker? A mean Mississippi Blues arriving by way of Detroit? Electric guitar boogies working one droning, hypnotic chord to its limit? The terrifying command in his voice? Listening to all the clear toe taps on the first disc of a new, generous, hundred-song collection called King of the Boogie, I kept thinking, in addition to all the rest, Hooker may be the world’s most underrated percussionist. He’d stamp out rhythms on a piece of plywood, or maybe a wooden chair. Critics are quick to deploy the word primitive, when nothing could be more modern in its perfect economy and purpose.

I’ve got a theory about King of the Boogie. Folks will be divided into two camps. One will prefer disc one’s collection of Hooker’s early singles, while the other will prefer disc 5’s collection of duets pairing the man from Vance with artists like Santana, Canned Heat, BB King, and Bonnie Raitt. How one feels about the remaining three discs will depend on which camp you fall into.

Hooker, the son of a Mississippi church woman and a Baptist minister, went North looking for opportunity. He swept floors for Ford while developing a distinctive, relentlessly driving sound. His biography is effectively condensed for King of the Boogie’s illustrated liner notes, which includes a few lines about the time he spent  in Memphis in the early 1930’s, working as an usher at the New Daisy Theater on Beale Street.

Disc one is Hooker distilled, and an exciting jolt of raw  acoustic sound, unconstrained by traditional forms. The next two discs map his evolution from acoustic to electric and from idiosyncratic solo player to potent bad leader. The fourth disc is all live cuts, while disc five is the smoothest, and most evidently produced in a thoroughly comprehensive collection pulling together everything from the early Modern 78s to some terrific collaborations with Little Eddie Kirkland, culminating (maybe a little too predictably) with Eric Clapton on a reprise of “Boogie Chillen.”

If you’ve got a blues lover in your life this holiday season, King of the Boogie is a terrific package bringing together all the essentials, with plenty of lagniappe.
Chris Davis

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Editorial Opinion

Ruby Wilson

There’s a video clip from 1988 of Ruby Wilson singing “The Thrill Is Gone” at the Peabody Hotel with B.B. King and Rufus Thomas. When Ruby steps up to the microphone, B.B. steps back. “You think I’m gonna sing behind that, you’re crazy,” he says, getting out of the way.

And who can blame him? Wilson, who passed away August 12th, following a severe stroke, was a one-woman wall of sound. Her voice could be a precision tool or a wrecking ball, and when even B.B. King yields the floor, it’s not hard to see how she earned her reputation as the Queen of Beale. 

Ruby Wilson

Wilson, a 40-year veteran of Memphis nightclubs, grew up in Texas, where she worked in the cotton fields as a laborer, picking and chopping the stuff. Her mother was a maid and the director of her church choir. Her father was a self-employed handyman, mechanic, and friend of guitarist and Federal recording artist Freddie King. Between her two parents, Wilson was firmly grounded in gospel and blues traditions, and she started singing in public when she was only 7. By the time she was 15, she was touring as a backup singer for gospel star Shirley Caesar. At 20, she was singing with B.B. King, who called her his goddaughter. 

Following advice given to her by Isaac Hayes, Wilson moved to Memphis in the early 1970s and went to work in the Memphis City Schools system as a kindergarten teacher. She wrangled 5-year-olds by day and continued to pursue her career as a singer at night, performing at a club called the Other Place on Airways. She soon became a fixture on Memphis’ club scene, playing all over town in venues like Club Handy, Club Royale, Rum Boogie, Mallards, Alfred’s, Silky’s, Neil’s, Boscos, and Itta Bena, to name only a few. She appeared in several films, including Craig Brewer’s Black Snake Moan, and performed on stage with Beale Street Ensemble Theatre, a summer stock company working out of Southwest Tennessee Community College. 

Wilson toured the world numerous times. She sang for presidents, prime ministers, princesses, and queens. She performed alongside artists such as Willie Nelson and Ray Charles and recorded 10 solo albums. 

She was also a survivor, who reclaimed not only her speech, but her ability to sing and perform following her first stroke in 2009.

The thrill may have gone away when B.B. King passed last year, but, as anybody who ever partied with Ms. Ruby on Beale knows, now it’s gone away for good.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Shaft, the film and music, at Stax

Gordon Park’s genre-defining crime drama, Shaft, opens with a claustrophobic shot of one of New York’s concrete canyons. We hear the street sounds of Manhattan as the 1960s gave way to the ’70s. Tires skid, engines rev, and horns honk as the camera pans down past a number of cinema marquees advertising films like The Scalphunters, a western starring Burt Lancaster, a British skin flick called School for Sex, and The Animal, a true(ish), plucked-from-the-tabloids story about a perverse urban voyeur with shocking plans. Then, moments before our hero enters, the urban noise gives way to the sound of Willie Hall’s drumsticks hammering out eighth notes on a hi-hat cymbal and Skip Pitts’ iconic, Cry Baby-laden guitar. A mustachioed man in a sweet leather trench coat emerges from the subway and walks right into a street thick with cabs, cursing at the ones that don’t stop for him. This is Richard Roundtree as John Shaft, the complicated private dick who’s a sex machine to all the chicks. He’s a bad mother, with one of the baddest theme song’s in cinema history.

This week, film and music fans can explore Shaft and its Academy Award-winning theme from two different perspectives. On Monday, April 25th, Indie Memphis concludes its Soul Cinema series with a free screening at the Stax Museum. Then, on Wednesday, April 27th, former Stax and Royal Studio musicians team up with members of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra for the Hot Buttered Symphony, a concert and conversation exploring the deep relationship between Shaft composer Isaac Hayes and Memphis’ classical music set. Because, if a man’s going to risk his neck for his brother man, he needs a strong woodwind section.

The Hot Buttered Symphony will be moderated by John T. Bass and Allie Johnson of Rhodes College.

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Cover Feature News

Rockin’ the Halls

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

“I have gladly given my life to Memphis music, and it has given me back a hundred-fold. It has been my fortune to know truly great men and hear the music of the spheres. May we all meet again at the end of the trail.” — Excerpted from the last words of Jim Dickinson.

Justin Fox Burks

The ceiling of the hallway leading to the museum’s second-floor space is lined with guitars that point the way to the exhibits.

Jim Dickinson liked to “watch shit rot.” Those are Dickinson’s own colorful words, of course. The storied producer, musician, Memphis Music Hall of Fame inductee, and provocateur, always placed “decomposition” at the heart of his personal aesthetic. He believed you could hear the sounds of decay in the songs he recorded with Alex Chilton and Big Star. You could see it represented visually in the paintings he labored over, then left outdoors for nature to complete.

Until very recently, visitors to Dickinson’s Zebra Ranch recording studio, were encouraged to touch a broken-down piano decomposing in the yard. In its former life, the crumbling instrument, propped up on cinder blocks like some old jalopy and covered in filth and leaves, had belonged to the Stax recording studio. It was in the building when Isaac Hayes and David Porter were songwriting partners cranking out hits like “Soul Man,” and “Wrap it Up.” It was there when Booker T. and the MG’s was the Stax house band, and when Otis Redding wrote “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.”

Dickinson’s widow, Mary Lindsay Dickinson, says some people understood her husband’s fondness for decay. It also made a lot of people angry to see a beautiful piece of music history left out in the weather to fall apart.

Justin Fox Burks

Jim Dickinson’s piano detail.

Justin Fox Burks

Jim Dickinson’s piano

John Doyle, executive director of the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum, describes what’s left of the old Stax piano as, “a piece of Jim Dickinson’s soul.” He says it’s a perfect example of the kinds of things a visitor can expect to find on display at the Memphis Memphis Music Hall of Fame museum, which opens for business this week at the corner of Second and Beale, in a cozy two-story space nestled between the newly relocated Hard Rock Cafe and Lansky Bros. Clothier to the King. The exhibits are primarily on the second floor, where the Lansky brothers once stored their formal wear. It’s the place where Johnny Cash was taken after he came to Bernard Lansky brandishing a Prince Albert tobacco tin, wanting to buy a black frock coat just like the prince’s. “That may be the beginning of the ‘Man in Black,”‘ Doyle speculates.
Justin Fox Burks

John Doyle, Executive director of the Memphis Music Hall of Fame, shows off a few of the museum’s treasures including Jerry Lee Lewis’ Cadillac, Johnny Cash’s black suit, and an original Elvis jumpsuit.

Although the two museums share administrative staff, the Memphis Music Hall of Fame isn’t Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum Jr. The latter Smithsonian-affiliated museum, located in the FedExForum, has been telling the story of Memphis music for the past 15 years. The Memphis Music Hall of Fame has only been inducting members since 2012. Its new brick-and-mortar facility will give visitors a chance to spend some digitally interactive quality time with the legendary heroes of Memphis music.
Justin Fox Burks

A customized emblem on Jerry Lee Lewis’ Cadillac.

“I asked myself, if I had the opportunity to hang out with the musicians we’re inducting each year, what would that cocktail party be like?” Doyle says, explaining his vision for the Hall of Fame exhibit. “I’m pretty sure it would not look like the Smithsonian. It would probably be weird. So we’re positioning the Memphis Music Hall of Fame as a museum where our exhibits are as outrageous as our inductees.”
Justin Fox Burks

John Doyle, executive director of the Memphis Music Hall of Fame, discusses the layout of a large case with Pam Parham, director of operations.

That explains decorative touches like a ceiling hung with St. Blues guitars and the full-sized piano suspended upside down and transformed into an enormous light fixture. That’s also the philosophy behind both Dickinson’s decomposing keyboard, and a lifelike python built to accompany Larry Dodson’s costumes in the eye-popping Bar-Kays exhibit.
Justin Fox Burks

John Doyle, executive director of the Memphis Music Hall of Fame, stands art the top of the stairs where a glowing piano stands in for a traditional light fixture.

“In Europe, they’re protecting Rembrandts,” Doyle says. “In Memphis, we’re protecting a pink shorts set with a cape that Rufus Thomas wore at WattStax. It is the funkiest-looking thing ever. But in Memphis it becomes an art museum treasure.”

Additional treasures collected in the Hall of Fame include an acoustic guitar that belonged to Memphis street sweeper and blues legend Furry Lewis. The well-documented guitar is on loan from a North Dakota collector, as is the original guitar case on which Lewis painted his name.

The seeds that grew into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame were planted in 2007, when Doyle asked his Rock ‘n’ Soul board to brainstorm new ways for the museum to enhance its mission to tell the Memphis music story and grow beyond the walls of the FedExForum. It was Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau President Kevin Kane who first suggested the idea of opening a hall of fame. The concept was an immediate hit, although nobody seemed to know for sure what form such an entity might take. “It could be a chicken dinner we have every year, with special performances and trophies,” Doyle says. “It might be a public art installation somewhere downtown. Or a comprehensive website with music and pictures.” Doyle thought a new off-site exhibit would be cost-prohibitive. Then, about a week after the hall’s first induction ceremony, Memphis Mayor A C Wharton approached the Rock ‘n’ Soul director with news that Beale Street’s Hard Rock Cafe was moving from its original location on the eastern stretch of Beale, into the old Lansky’s building. The club, Wharton said, was looking to partner with a museum.

“As the executive director, my heart sank,” Doyle jokes. “I could tell this was going to mean a lot of work.” With nearly six million visitors annually, Beale Street is Tennessee’s largest tourist destination, and although it’s home to the W.C. Handy House and Museum, there’s no visitor center where people can find out about the Memphis Zoo or the Stax Museum of American Soul Music or the newly opened Blues Hall of Fame on South Main or anything else.

“We felt like we could assist in doing all that by having a presence here,” Doyle says. Between the licensing appropriate music and photos and the hiring of top-notch music writers and designers, the Memphis Music Hall of Fame’s website was costing the Rock ‘n’ Soul museum $90,000 a year. “That’s a good-size burden for a not-for-profit museum,” Doyle says. “Fortunately, because of our relationship with the Memphis Grizzlies and because of our location at the FedExForum, we’ve been able to sustain that and grow our mission outside the walls they provide for us.”

Even in a tourist-rich zone like Beale Street, that kind of “assist” might not sound like a big deal. But Memphis music tourism is already on the rise and Elvis Presley’s Graceland Public Relations Director Kevin Kern thinks the new Hall of Fame will only help to promote that upward trend. “[It] will add to our story, while expanding the list of options for the traveler to keep them in town,” Kern says. Memphis, he adds, has finally grown into something “more than a long weekend destination.”

More than 600,000 tour Graceland annually, making it Memphis’ second largest music-related destination after Beale Street, and the second-most-visited residence in America after the White House. More than 150,000 people visit Sun Studio annually, and another 60,000 tour the Rock ‘n’ Soul museum and the Stax Museum of American Soul Music.  

Tim Sampson, communications director for the Soulsville Foundation, agrees with Kern. “Our attendance at Stax is way up,” he says. “We’ve got people here in the museum from every continent every single day.”

Sampson welcomes the new Memphis Music Hall of Fame, just as he welcomed the Blues Hall of Fame, which opened in May. He credits the recent boom in music tourism to the fact that music-related destinations are more collaborative than competitive. He also believes that additions to the landscape such as music-related murals and an increasing number of historical markers and museums also help the Memphis tourism industry.

Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul hit 60,000 tourists annually in 2013, and had its best month ever in April. Each subsequent month has broken previous records. Doyle thinks this is strong evidence that the stage is perfectly set for a facility like the Memphis Music Hall of Fame.

“There is no other city in America that can host its own music Hall of Fame,” Doyle boasts. “Some states can. Alabama has one. Texas has one. But Memphis is the epicenter of American music.

“When we first sat down and started coming up with the names of potential inductees it was so easy,” Doyle says. “There was Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, Otis Redding, Rufus Thomas, Al Green, Isaac Hayes, The Staple Singers, and on and on. In that first evening, we listed 300 well-known performers from different musical traditions — jazz, blues, rural field-holler-type music, jug bands, rock ‘n’ roll, rockabilly, gospel, R&B, rap, hip-hop. In a very short time, our list of potential inductees became enormous.”

On the morning before his latest documentary, Best of Enemies, was scheduled to screen in Los Angeles, author and Memphis music historian Robert Gordon offered some perspective regarding the potential of a Memphis Music Hall of Fame compared to other music towns.

“Lots of cities can say they’re home to a star,” he said. “Buddy Holly’s from Lubbock, Texas, for example. And so is Waylon Jennings.  So they can make a little Buddy Holly shrine in Lubbock. But Memphis? What decade do you want to talk about? What musical genre?

“People ask how can it be possible that Carl Perkins wasn’t selected until the third year of the Memphis Hall of Fame?” says Gordon. “He’s the first guy to have a number-one record on the pop, country, and R&B charts at the same time,” Gordon says. “And that frustrates some people. It’s something we should celebrate. Our music history has been so rich that we can not induct Carl Perkins until the third year, because each year we’ve wanted to recognize our musical diversity.

“What I want to know is, when will Booker Little get into the Hall of Fame?” Gordon asks, rhetorically. Even though Little died young and his name isn’t a household word, his contributions were significant. It may be next year or 10 years from now, but the Manassas graduate and hard-bop trumpet innovator who performed alongside John Coltrane will eventually be enshrined alongside the better known heroes of Sun, Hi, and Stax.

The answer doesn’t matter, Gordon finally concludes, because the Hall of Fame isn’t a popularity contest.

In a telephone interview, Mary Lindsay Dickinson remembered the day the big truck with “Amro” painted on the side pulled up to the family’s Zebra Ranch recording studio in Coldwater, Mississippi. It had come to take her late husband’s special piano to its final resting place in the Memphis Music Hall of Fame. “There are no better piano movers in the world, I don’t think,” she said. But in spite of their expert handling, the wooden portions of the once-fine instrument fell into shreds as the movers lifted it from its resting place. “It had rotted completely,” Dickinson said, unable to conceal her delight that her late husband Jim had gotten exactly what he wanted.

Spooner Oldham, the great keyboard player, known for his work with Bob Dylan and Aretha Franklin, described Dickinson’s piano as the perfect metaphor for both mortality and immortality. He told Mary Lindsay that even when the wooden bits on the outside had returned to ashes and dust, “there will still be a harp inside.”

“And a harp is what was left,” Dickinson said, reiterating Doyle’s desire to collect edgy artifacts. “The harp was left. And when it finally goes up in the hall of fame it will be the oddest, ugliest, and most unique exhibit in any museum anywhere in the world.”

The Memphis Music Hall of Fame opens to the public on July 27th at 126 Second. Hours of operation will be 10 a.m.-7 p.m. 205-2532 memphismusichalloffame.com/

Categories
Music Music Features

Memphian Launches Beatles Calendar

CREDIT: Courtesy of Robert Johnson

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

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

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

Westside High School was another fountain of musical culture.

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

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

Courtesy of Robert Johnson

Robert Johnson

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Cover Feature News

R&B Royalty

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

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

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

Justin Fox Burks

Elmo and the Shades

Some bar band.

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

Let’s introduce the band.

Justin Fox Burks

Harold Beane

Harold Beane

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

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

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

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

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

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

Justin Fox Burks

Tommy Lee Williams

Tommy Lee Williams

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

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

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

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

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

Justin Fox Burks

Mickey Gregory

Mickey Gregory

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that they do.

Categories
Calling the Bluff Music

Classic Soul: Isaac Hayes’ “Walk On By”

urban_isaac-hayes.jpg

Singer. Songwriter. Composer. Producer. Actor. Icon. These are some of the words that come to mind when I think about the late, great Isaac Hayes. For nearly a half-century, he provided monumental melodies to the world, many of which helped evolve the soul and funk genres.

“Walk on By” from Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul album is a song I really enjoy. I was introduced to it while watching Dead Presidents as a kid. Years later, it’s still a pleasure to hear Hayes’ soulful voice and emotional lyrics, along with the track’s bevy of instruments. Take a listen to it below.

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Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

There’s a new exhibit at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music titled “The Grammy Goes to Memphis” that is both interesting and revealing. The actual Grammy statues presented to Elvis, Otis Redding, Bobby “Blue” Bland, and others are collected and displayed for the first time. A highlight film of Memphis-area Grammy winning moments is featured, along with a wall listing all the great artists from the Memphis area who have received the coveted award.

Jim Stewart

Full disclosure requires me to tell you that the Stax Museum is also my place of employment, but it  explains why I’ve had the chance to sit and stare at that wall for several hours at a time. All the names you would expect are there: Sam Phillips, Johnny Cash, Al Green, even Sheryl Crow from Sikeston, Missouri. An impressive number of Grammy awards have been bestowed upon the Stax family of artists, including Isaac Hayes, Booker T. & the MGs, The Staples Singers, and Sam and Dave. The prestigious Grammy Trustees’ Award has gone to Stax President Al Bell and company co-founder Estelle Axton. There is one glaring omission, however: Jim Stewart. I first thought it was an oversight and hastened to try and correct the error, but the co-founder and contributor of the first two letters of the name “Stax,” has never been recognized or celebrated by the Recording Academy.

Perhaps Stewart prefers it that way, since I understand that he is a private person, but it seems odd that his sister, Estelle, and his partner, Bell, would each receive one of the Academy’s highest awards, and he wouldn’t.

I don’t know Stewart personally and have only met him once, so I have no axe to grind here for anyone, but if not for Stewart, all those famous names on that Grammy wall would have never been known. Stewart and Axton’s leasing of the Capitol Theatre in South Memphis in 1958 and opening the doors to the talent in the neighborhood began a renaissance in soul music that still reverberates in popular culture. The former banker and country fiddler who fell in love with Ray Charles’ music, supervised and produced some of the most unique sounding recordings of the 20th century. And he did it by working with musicians, singers, talent, and administrators who were white and black, right in the middle of the Jim Crow era in the South.

For people like me, who grew up under segregation but never understood it, this rich and untried collaborative effort was and is a source of great pride. Watching films of the MGs and the Memphis Horns backing up the Stax stars and driving audiences crazy all over the world is still a thrilling experience. It’s not just the Recording Academy that owes Stewart long overdue accolades and appreciation; the city of Memphis does too.

Stewart’s contributions to popular music have not gone unrecognized. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, but sent two granddaughters to receive the award on his behalf. This may be of great interest to visitors of the Cleveland museum, but what about the old hometown? Along with Sun Records scion Knox Phillips, Stewart’s efforts were instrumental in bringing the chapter of the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) to Memphis, which celebrated its 20th anniversary last year. The local organization also recognizes its most vibrant and vital contributors to what has become known as the “Memphis Sound.” In annual programs and ceremonies over the years, NARAS Memphis has paid special tribute to Rufus and Carla Thomas, Eddie Floyd, Albert King, and the legacies of both Sun and Hi Records. It’s highest honor, the Governor’s Award, has been presented to Rufus Thomas and Axton, but not Stewart. The man who produced Otis Redding’s ”Respect,” can’t seem to get any from the same chapter he helped establish. Either Stewart called and personally insisted that he not be further involved in these awards, or somebody’s asleep at the switch.

In Robert Gordon’s perfectly pitched, new Stax biography, “Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion,” he describes Stewart’s selling his interest in Stax to Bell in 1972. Yet two years later, when the company began feeling a financial squeeze from all quarters, Stewart reinvested his assets in an attempt to save what he had helped create. In the resulting bankruptcy and padlocking of Stax by the same bank for which Stewart once worked, he lost his fortune and his home. Stewart has remained retired from the music business and semi-reclusive in his private life, yet he attended the opening of the Stax Music Academy and has generously advised and assisted the young musical talents who were not yet born during Stax’s heyday.

I have always believed in sending flowers to the living, because afterward, they can’t smell them. Axton’s Trustee’s Award from the Recording Academy was given posthumously. Stewart is 84 years old. A man who has touched so many lives and literally altered the social fabric of the cosmos deserves at least an “attaboy” from his acolytes. Can I get a witness?

Randy Haspel writes the Born-Again Hippies blog, where a version of this column first appeared.