Tag: Robert Gordon

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Film Features Film/TV

The Sweet Thereafter

In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Memphis Flyer (our first quarter quell, as it were), I have chosen my personal favorite film from each year since the Flyer began publication. Then, for each of those films, I unearthed and have excerpted some quotes from the review we ran at the time. — Greg Akers

1989: #1 Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch (#2 Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee)

“While all the scenes in Mystery Train are identifiable by anyone living west of Goodlett, their geographical relationship gets altered to a point where we start to trust Jarmusch more than our own memories.” — Jim Newcomb, March 8, 1990

“Filmed primarily at the downtown corner of South Main and Calhoun, Jarmusch does not use the Peabody Hotel, the Mississippi River, Graceland, or most of the other locations that the Chamber of Commerce would thrust before any visiting filmmaker. His domain concerns exactly that territory which is not regularly tread by the masses, and his treatment of Memphis is likely to open a few eyes.”
— Robert Gordon, March 8, 1990

1990: #1 Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese (#2 Reversal of Fortune, Barbet Schroeder)

“This may not be De Niro’s best-ever performance, but he’s got that gangster thang down pat. His accent is flawless, his stature is perfect, and, boy, does he give Sansabelt slacks new meaning.”
— The Cinema Sisters, September 27, 1990

1991: #1 Terminator 2: Judgment Day, James Cameron (#2 The Silence of the Lambs, Jonathan Demme)

“Terminator 2 is an Alfa Romeo of a movie: pricey, sleek, fast, and loaded with horsepower. By comparison, the first Terminator was a Volkswagen. On the whole, I’d rather have a Volkswagen — they’re cheap and reliable. But, hey, Alfas can be fun too.” — Ed Weathers, July 11, 1993

1992: #1 Glengarry Glen Ross, James Foley (#2 The Last of the Mohicans, Michael Mann)

“Mamet’s brilliantly stylized look at the American Dream’s brutality as practiced by low-rent real estate salesmen who would put the screws to their mothers to keep their own tawdry jobs doesn’t relax its hard muscle for a moment. In the hands of this extraordinary cast, it is like a male chorus on amphetamines singing a desparate, feverish ode to capitalism and testosterone run amuck.”
— Hadley Hury, October 15, 1992

1993: #1 Dazed and Confused, Richard Linklater (#2 Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg)

“Dazed and Confused is a brief trip down memory lane. The characters are not just protagonists and antagonists. They are clear representations of the folks we once knew, and their feelings are those we had years and years ago. Linklater doesn’t, however, urge us to get mushy. He is just asking us to remember.”
— Susan Ellis, November 4, 1993

1994: #1 Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino (#2 Ed Wood, Tim Burton)

“Even though Tarantino is known for his bratty insistence on being shocking by way of gratuitous violence and ethnic slurs, it’s the little things that mean so much in a Tarantino film — camera play, dialogue, performances, and music.”
— Susan Ellis, October 20, 1994

1995: #1 Heat, Michael Mann
(#2 Toy Story, John Lasseter)

“I’m sick of lowlifes and I’m sick of being told to find them fascinating by writers and directors who get a perverse testosterone rush in exalting these lives to a larger-than-life heroism with slow-motion, lovingly lingered-over mayhem and death, expertly photographed and disturbingly dehumanizing.”
— Hadley Hury, December 21, 1995

1996: #1 Lone Star, John Sayles
(#2 Fargo, Joel and Ethan Coen)

“Although Lone Star takes place in a dusty Texas border town, it comes into view like a welcome oasis on the landscape of dog-day action films … Chris Cooper and Sayles’ sensitive framing of the performance produce an arresting character who inhabits a world somewhere between Dostoevsky and Larry McMurtry.”
— Hadley Hury, August 8, 1996

1997: #1 L.A. Confidential, Curtis Hanson (#2 The Apostle, Robert Duvall)

L.A. Confidential

“L.A. Confidential takes us with it on a descent, and not one frame of this remarkable film tips its hand as to whether we’ll go to hell or, if we do, whether we’ll come back. We end up on the edge of our seat, yearning for two protagonists, both anti-heroes … to gun their way to a compromised moral victory, to make us believe again in at least the possibility of trust.”

— Hadley Hury, October 2, 1997

1998: #1 Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg (#2 The Big Lebowski, Joel and Ethan Coen)

“Spielberg is finishing the job he began with Schindler’s List. He’s already shown us why World War II was fought; now he shows us how. … Spielberg’s message is that war is horrifying yet sometimes necessary. And that may be true. But I still prefer the message gleaned from Peter Weir’s 1981 masterpiece, Gallipoli: War is stupid.” — Debbie Gilbert, July 30, 1998

1999: #1 Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson (#2 The End of the Affair, Neil Jordan)

“Magnolia is a film in motion; there’s a cyclical nature where paths are set that will be taken. It’s about fate, not will, where the bad will hurt and good will be redeemed.”
— Susan Ellis, January 13, 2000

2000: #1 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ang Lee (#2 You Can Count On Me, Kenneth Lonergan)

“Thrilling as art and entertainment, as simple movie pleasure, and as Oscar-baiting ‘prestige’ cinema. Early hype has the film being compared to Star Wars. … An even more apt comparison might be Singin’ in the Rain, a genre celebration that Crouching Tiger at least approaches in its lightness, joy, and the sheer kinetic wonder of its fight/dance set pieces.”
— Chris Herrington, February 1, 2001

A.I. Artificial Intelligence

2001: #1 A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Steven Spielberg (#2 Amélie,
Jean-Pierre Jeunet)

“What happens when Eyes Wide Shut meets E.T.? What does the audience do? And who is the audience?”
— Chris Herrington, June 28, 2001

2002: #1 City of God, Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund
(#2 Adaptation., Spike Jonze)

“The mise-en-scène of the film is neorealist, but the cinematography, editing, and effects are hyper-stylized, as if The Bicycle Thief had been reimagined through the post-CGI lens of Fight Club or The Matrix.”

— Chris Herrington, April 3, 2003

Lost in Translation

2003: #1 Lost in Translation, Sofia
Coppola (#2 Mystic River, Clint Eastwood)

“Lost in Translation is a film short on plot but rich with incident; nothing much happens, yet every frame is crammed with life and nuance and emotion. … What Coppola seems to be going for here is an ode to human connection that is bigger than (or perhaps just apart from) sex and romance.”
— Chris Herrington, October 2, 2003

2004: #1 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Michel Gondry
(#2 Kill Bill, Quentin Tarantino)

“This is the best film I’ve seen this year and one of the best in recent memory. Funny, witty, charming, and wise, it runs the gamut from comedy to tragedy without falling into either farce or melodrama. Its insights into human loss and redemption are complicated and difficult, well thought out but with the illusion and feel of absolute spontaneity and authentic in its construction — and then deconstruction — of human feelings and memory.”
— Bo List, March 25, 2004

2005: #1 Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee (#2 Hustle & Flow, Craig Brewer)

“The film is a triumph because it creates characters of humanity and anguish, in a setup that could easily become a target for homophobic ridicule. Jack and Ennis are a brave challenge to the stereotyped image of homosexuals in mainstream films, their relations to their families and to each other are truthful and beautifully captured.” — Ben Popper, January 12, 2006

2006: #1 Children of Men,
Alfonso Cuarón (#2 The Proposition, John Hillcoat)

“As aggressively bleak as Children of Men is, it’s ultimately a movie about hope. It’s a nativity story of sort, complete with a manger. And from city to forest to war zone to a lone boat in the sea, it’s a journey you won’t want to miss.”
— Chris Herrington, January 11, 2007

2007 #1 Zodiac, David Fincher
(#2 There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson)

“[Zodiac is] termite art, too busy burrowing into its story and characters to bother with what you think.”
— Chris Herrington, March 8, 2007

2008: #1 Frozen River, Courtney Hunt (#2 The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan)

“Frozen River is full of observations of those who are living less than paycheck to paycheck: digging through the couch for lunch money for the kids; buying exactly as much gas as you have change in your pocket; popcorn and Tang for dinner. The American Dream is sought after by the dispossessed, the repossessed, and the pissed off.”
— Greg Akers, August 28, 2008

2009: #1 Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze (#2 Julie & Julia, Nora Ephron)

“I know how ridiculous it is to say something like, ‘Where the Wild Things Are is one of the best kids’ movies in the 70 years since The Wizard of Oz.’ So I won’t. But I’m thinking it.”
— Greg Akers, October 15, 2009

2010: #1 Inception, Christopher Nolan (#2 The Social Network,
David Fincher)

“Nolan has created a complex, challenging cinematic world but one that is thought through and whose rules are well-communicated. But the ingenuity of the film’s concept never supersedes an emotional underpinning that pays off mightily.”
— Chris Herrington, July 15, 2010

2011: #1 The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick (#2 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Tomas Alfredson)

“The Tree of Life encompasses a level of artistic ambition increasingly rare in modern American movies — Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood might be the closest recent comparison, and I’m not sure it’s all that close. This is a massive achievement. An imperfect film, perhaps, but an utterly essential one.”
— Chris Herrington, June 23, 2011

2012: #1 Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow (#2 Lincoln, Steven Spielberg)

“Zero Dark Thirty is essentially an investigative procedural about an obsessive search for knowledge, not unlike such touchstones as Zodiac or All the President’s Men. And it has an impressive, immersive experiential heft, making much better use of its nearly three-hour running time than any competing award-season behemoth.”
— Chris Herrington, January 10, 2013 

2013: #1 12 Years a Slave, Steve
McQueen (#2 Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón)

“Slavery bent human beings into grotesque shapes, on both sides of the whip. But 12 Years a Slave is more concerned with the end of it. McQueen and screenwriter John Ridley are black. It’s one of those things that shouldn’t be notable but is. If you consider 12 Years a Slave with The Butler and Fruitvale Station, you can see a by-God trend of black filmmakers making mainstream movies about the black experience, something else that shouldn’t be worth mentioning but is.”
— Greg Akers, October 31, 2013

Categories
Music Music Features

Due Respect

Some people irrationally love Memphis. Others irrationally hate Memphis. The truth is that the whole thing is complicated. Memphis can make you cry tears of joy or sorrow with equal ease. It depends on where you’re looking. Stax is one of our holy places and a point of faith. It’s a source of pride, where we can point to people of different races working together. And they did. But the truth is complicated.

Robert Gordon’s new history of Stax Records, Respect Yourself, dives into that complicated story and revels in its complexity. Other books have outlined the story. Gordon fills in detail that brings Stax down from the mountain of ideas and into the human, Memphian realm. This is not idolatry. It’s history.

Inevitably cast in the light of race relations, the Stax story is also a tale of great women: Founder Estelle Axton’s story is moving.

“She just seemed to have a great attitude,” Gordon said in a recent interview. Axton was the Union Planters National Bank employee who, with her brother, not only opened a business in a poor, black neighborhood but also opened the doors of that business to the neighborhood. “Her welcoming spirit had so much to do with the whole label. Not to underplay Jim’s musicality or organizational abilities. Those are all essential. But she was the face out front and helped imbue that spirit into the label.”

Axton’s open-mindedness was essential to the label’s early success. But her fate at the label is one of the hardest parts of the book to read. It’s a great story about women in the workplace and about people living in Memphis. But it’s complicated.

Gordon and I recently drove south to New Park Cemetery in Horn Lake, where Rufus Thomas, Al Jackson Jr., and all but one of the Bar-Kays who died with Otis Redding are buried.

“The Bar-Kays: what a story,” Gordon said. “Their narrative very much shadows the Stax narrative. That was the second tragedy [after the loss of chart-topper Redding]. Their comeback has never stopped. It’s been ongoing. They’ve never stopped pushing to create. I try to give them their due in the book, because they have never stood still creatively.”

The loss of Redding and all but two of the Bar-Kays is well told. It’s primary-source history, but it never gets dry. The tale of an integrated label in the South finding huge success with an integrated talent roster is thrilling. The loss of Stax’s shining star and the kids he nurtured is still raw in the telling. And that’s where this book succeeds: in taking the names out of the museums and liner notes and giving them their full due.

“Have you ever seen that footage of them performing with Otis?” Gordon asked. “That is like 36 hours before the accident. You look at all of that energy onstage. You just think there’s no way it could ever be terminated. Can you imagine being at the label? Isaac Hayes, I remember him saying that he couldn’t create for a year. That he just shut down. I imagine that you would be stunned. The sense of promise. The sense of a new generation. And to have it ripped from your guts. So many of them were still teenagers. Matthew Kelly was 17. One of the preachers at the funeral said, ‘It’s a strange phenomenon. These guys are experiencing sunset at the morning of their lives.’ Oh my God. It’s so true.”

For Memphis history buffs, the business side of the story is essential reading. One central tenet of the Stax mythology is the financial mismanagement of the label. This is another place where complexity beggars the myth. There was arguably more mismanagement among the white bankers at Union Planters Bank who financed label operations than there was at Stax. The major labels were no help either. This part of the book really works and sets the book on your shelf beside Hampton Sides’ Hellhound on His Trail. The books complement one another. Gordon’s work on union leader T.O. Jones and the sanitation workers’ strike adds context to the Stax story. That context is missing from Peter Guralnick’s Sweet Soul Music, which was only partly about Stax.

Some of the grittier aspects of the Stax story gave Gordon pause. Johnny Baylor was Stax’s distribution man. His tactics were illegal on several fronts, but he broke open new markets one after the other whether it involved a handshake or a pistol. Baylor’s story makes for fascinating reading.

“I worried a little bit about that,” Gordon said. “The gangster thing is such an attractive idea now. But in the end, I had to think that’s what happened. I have to stick to what happened. At one point I remember thinking: Will the kids at Stax Academy want to be reading about Johnny Baylor? Maybe I should be writing a different book.

“But in this book, Johnny Baylor is part of what happened. A pretty brutal man. I think representative of a certain period of business. Especially in distribution … distribution of all things. Not just records. Who was Motown’s guy like that? I don’t know, but I know that there was one. So that part of the industry doesn’t get talked about so much.”

Respect Yourself succeeds by talking about the hard stuff. But that’s what makes the sweet stuff so meaningful.

Robert Gordon will read from and sign Respect Yourself at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music on Saturday, November 16th, beginning at 5 p.m.; at Burke’s Book Store on December 19th; and at the Booksellers at Laurelwood on December 20th. 

Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion

By Robert Gordon

Bloomsbury, 384 pp., $30

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Doc in Black

Johnny Cash’s America grew out of a politically tinged discussion between the documentary’s directors, author Robert Gordon and producer/director Morgan Neville. The presidential primary races were just getting started, and both men were worried. They wondered how much longer a house divided against itself might stand.

“We were discussing how divided the nation was,” Gordon says. “[That] led us to discussing figures around whom the nation could unify … [and that] led us to Johnny Cash.” The idea for a documentary was born.

“What interested us most was that people who could agree on little else could agree on their respect for Johnny Cash,” Gordon says. “So we set out in this show not to profile Cash and tell his life story but to use Cash as a lens through which we could examine America and leadership in America.”

Gordon was looking for someone to finance a film based on Can’t Be Satisfied, his biography of Muddy Waters, when he first encountered Neville, who had come to Memphis to develop a documentary about Sun Studio founder Sam Phillips for A&E’s popular Biography series. They hit it off right away, and Can’t Be Satisfied aired on PBS in 2003. The creative duo have since collaborated on a variety of projects, including Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story and Shakespeare Was a Big George Jones Fan, an off-the-wall documentary about Cowboy Jack Clement.

Cash lived his life in the public eye, and the years following his death have witnessed numerous biographies, anthologies, and tributes, including the Academy Award-winning feature film Walk the Line. Gordon says he wanted to do something completely different.

“We found ourselves having to constantly fight the pull toward biography,” Gordon says of his struggle to create an essay rather than a biography. “We consciously fought the questions about Cash’s life and coaxed ourselves and our subjects and our film toward a more philosophical, meditative place.”

As an example of what to expect, Gordon describes a scene in which members of the Cash clan gathered in Dyess, Arkansas, to celebrate Cash’s life and achievements. The group met around the grave of Jack Cash, Johnny’s brother, whose premature death haunted and inspired the artist throughout his life and career. After a prayer and a moment of silence the family spontaneously began to sing “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

“It just happened,” Gordon says. “And it was incredibly moving.”

In addition to family members, Gordon and Neville talked to liberal politicians, conservative politicians, musicians, and ordinary folks in order to get some sense of why Cash’s appeal is so universal.

“Lamar Alexander told us that Cash wore black so we could project ourselves onto him and see whatever we wanted to see,” Gordon says. “Snoop Dogg talked about how gangsta [Cash] was.”

It’s no spoiler to pre-announce Gordon’s personal conclusion, which is intriguing but unsurprising: America loves Cash because he never hid his flaws or tried to be somebody he wasn’t.

Johnny Cash’s America was produced by A&E and features commentary by Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Bob Dylan, Sheryl Crow, Tim Robbins, and Kris Kristofferson.

Johnny Cash’s America screens at 7 p.m. Wednesday, October 15th.

Categories
Music Music Features

Soul You Can See

In this year dedicated to celebrating the 50th anniversary of Stax Records, the hits just keep on coming, with the latest batch of Stax product: independently packaged DVDs, two released this week, one released in late September.

Co-directed by local filmmaker/writer Robert Gordon and his partner Morgan Neville, the two-hour documentary Respect Yourself was broadcast this summer as part of PBS’ Great Performances series, but an expanded version was released on DVD October 2nd.

Consisting of interviews — both new and archival — with most of the key players, including a rare contribution from Stax founder Jim Stewart, Respect Yourself gives a chronological telling of the Stax story that mostly hits the obvious high (and low) points.

For those who know the music and the story behind it, much of Respect Yourself may feel like rehash. It is a primer, but with so much attention given to Stax locally this year, it’s easy to forget that most people — most music fans, even most Memphians — still aren’t that familiar with the details of Stax. And Respect Yourself reinforces what an amazing story it is: an artistic entity whose very success was rooted in racial partnership and shared/mixed culture in the middle of the civil-rights-era South; a record label whose thrilling music embodied — like perhaps no other cultural product of the time — the hope and ultimately broken promise of racial integration in the ’60s and ’70s. This story can’t be told enough, and Respect Yourself tells it well.

Early on, tireless label booster Deanie Parker allows that “Stax Records was an accident,” pointing out that siblings Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton never intended to start an R&B record label when they opened a recording studio in a converted theater on McLemore Avenue. The implication is that Stax was ultimately the product of the neighborhood it became a part of.

In terms of reviewing the basic spine of the Stax story, Respect Yourself offers a neat, multi-viewpoint retelling of the Otis Redding origin story — that day Redding showed up as another artist’s “valet” and pestered his way to the microphone — with Booker T. Jones speaking eloquently about knowing he was part of something special and staying in the moment.

There’s also a great segment on the Stax family’s visit to the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, with Memphis Horn Wayne Jackson talking about the culture clash between the long-haired, unkempt hippie crowd and the relatively clean-cut Stax crew, who showed up with matching suits and dance steps: “We must have looked like a lounge act or something. But it killed ’em. And when Otis walked out onstage, it was over for everybody.”

Those good times wouldn’t last, and Respect Yourself deftly shows how the tragic four-month stretch between December 1967 (when Redding died in a plane crash) and April 1968 (when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis) transformed the label.

There are also less obvious pleasures and insights in the film. During one interview segment, Jones sits at his organ and replicates the sax riff that, as a teenager, he played on the early Stax hit “Cause I Love You,” a duet between Rufus Thomas and his daughter Carla. Similarly, there’s a graceful moment when, during a newly filmed segment, William Bell stands in front of a piano manned by Marvell Thomas and sings his Stax standard “You Don’t Miss Your Water.” These dynamic segments are so good, you wonder why there aren’t more like it.

And even those who think they’re pretty familiar with the Stax story may learn a few things: the extent to which the Lorraine Motel was used as a second home — for both work and play — for Stax artists (reflected, in part, by a vibrant color photo of Carla Thomas emerging from the Lorraine pool); the revelation that the label’s iconic finger-snap logo was the brainchild of later-period executive Al Bell and thus post-dates most of the classic music it’s associated with; the level of violence that infected the label in the aftermath of the King assassination.

But as fine as Respect Yourself is, most established Stax fans will crave more depth, and the two other recent label-specific DVD releases provide it. Released concurrently with Respect Yourself is The Stax/Volt Revue Live in Norway, 1967, which captures one set on the fabled Stax European tour. Filmed in black and white, this 75-minute concert features performances from Booker T. & the MGs, the Mar-Keys, non-Stax performer Arthur Conley, Eddie Floyd, Sam & Dave, and Otis Redding.

This is a more subdued affair than you might expect, with an extended Conley performance of his hit “Sweet Soul Music,” in particular, coming across as filler. But just having sustained footage of Sam & Dave performing is a revelation, even if the material here isn’t as exciting as the concert footage featured on Respect Yourself. Certainly, the footage reinforces the degree to which Sam Moore outshines Dave Prater vocally. And Redding, closing the show with “Try a Little Tenderness,” towers over them all.

For more Redding, check out the hour-and-a-half-long documentary Dreams To Remember: The Legacy of Otis Redding, which was released on September 18th and, for serious Stax fans, is the most interesting DVD in this current batch.

Though the interview subjects are oddly limited — Steve Cropper, Wayne Jackson, Jim Stewart, and Redding’s widow, Zelma, mainly — Dreams To Remember offers the depth that Respect Yourself — charged with covering an entire label rather than just one artist — can’t match.

Because Cropper co-wrote so many songs with Redding (in addition to working on the recording sessions themselves) and because Jackson, as a trumpet player, was uniquely attuned to Redding’s musical instincts, these men are positioned to offer considerable insight into Redding’s music. And they do not disappoint.

Cropper talks about coming up with the idea for “Mr. Pitiful” after hearing WDIA disc jockey Moohah Williams tab Redding with that moniker for his begging, pleading vocal phrasing. Cropper tells of how Redding took Cropper’s song concept and immediately worked out the song’s chorus.

For “I Can’t Turn You Loose,” Cropper reveals that there wasn’t time before the session to write multiple verses, so Redding kept repeating himself to keep up with the energy of the song, resulting in a recording that functions like the classic Stax instrumentals.

Cropper also talks about how his guitar playing for Redding, in particular, was rooted in country music and how Stax liked to try and reinvent songs they covered, turning ballads into fast songs and fast songs into ballads, or writing new intros and outros unconnected to the original songs.

The most famous example of this was Redding’s take on the standard “Try a Little Tenderness,” which Stewart dubs the best record Stax ever made. Cropper talks about how drummer Al Jackson’s double-click beat with his drum sticks and Cropper’s own Latin-style guitar lick create a “Drifters kind of groove” before Redding carries the song away into something else altogether.

“Nobody will ever sing ‘Try a Little Tenderness’ the way Otis Redding sang it,” Cropper says.

The most interesting area of this technical talk comes in a discussion on the horn work on Redding’s records. Jackson gives a colorful explanation of how Redding would gather his horn players together and instruct them on what to play by singing the various horn parts.

This dynamic was made explicit on “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa,” which Cropper says he and Redding wrote at a Memphis Holiday Inn on Third Street. (Because of Redding’s touring schedule and because he didn’t live in Memphis, he was only available to Stax two to three days out of a three-month period, according to Cropper, which made for some intense, prolific writing and recording sessions.) The nonsense syllables that make up the song’s title (and chorus) were Cropper’s interpretation of the saxophone sound Redding would make when arranging horn parts.

“When I wrote with Otis, I wrote about Otis,” Cropper says, before launching into song himself: “I keep singing these sad, sad songs/Sad songs is all I know.”

The relationship between Redding and his horn section that “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa” takes as its subject is given visual accompaniment here in a splendid bit of black-and-white footage (also seen on Respect Yourself ) where Redding sings the song, sitting down, with his horn section around him. This performance literalizes the call-and-response quality between Redding and the horn section, Redding turning to Jackson or one of the other players after the chorus with a generous offer of “your turn.”

Stewart ties this all together with an insight about the absence of back-up singers on Redding’s recordings. Stewart points out that Redding used his horn sections as a stand-in for what back-up vocalists would be for other artists.

This performance footage isn’t exactly real, however. It seems to be lip-synched, which is the case with many of the television performances shown on Dreams To Remember. Zelma Redding talks about how much her husband struggled with these lip-synched performances, because he rarely sang his songs the same way and often forgot the exact lyrics on the recordings. “I look at some of the footage and say, Lord have mercy,” Zelma says.

In addition to this insight, Dreams To Remember is packed with plenty of standout footage, including a goofy promotional video for the duet single “Tramp,” with Redding wearing overalls and riding a donkey around a farm to play up the “country” character he plays on the song.

Concert footage includes an awesome rendition of Sam Cooke’s “Shake” at Monterey and, most poignantly, a performance of “Try a Little Tenderness” on Cleveland television the day before Redding’s death. Unlike the other television appearances, this one is live, as is clear when Redding ad-libs the phrase “mini-skirt dress” in the opening lines.