CREDIT: Courtesy of the Tom & Ethel Bradley Center at California State University, Northridge
Courtesy of the Tom & Ethel Bradley Center at California State University, Northridge
Billie Holiday at The Tiffany Club, Los Angeles, 1952
You read that headline right — the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, is launching a virtual exhibit, “It’s Been Said All Along: Voices of Rage, Hope & Empowerment,” focusing on the music of social justice.
So, why write about an Ohio museum in a Memphis paper (or music blog)? The exhibit is virtual — the museum’s largest and most ambitious virtual exhibit to date. What’s more, it’s filled with memorabilia highlighting Memphis’ contributions to the music of protest and progress. Isaac Hayes at Wattstax, Mavis Staples, Aretha Franklin — in the music of protest as much as in popular music as a whole, Memphis musicians loom large.
Courtesy the 1974 Collection of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
Isaac Hayes’ vest from the Wattstax performance
“It’s Been Said All Along: Voices of Rage, Hope & Empowerment” will open on Tuesday, September 1st — just in time for the museum’s 25-year anniversary on September 2nd. A statement from the museum explains that the exhibit is intended to “highlight how music and visual artists have created art as a response to unspeakable tragedy and to promote social justice for decades.”
Courtesy of Bruce Talamon
Muhammad Ali and Gil Scott-Heron, 1977
The exhibit is curated by Nwaka Onwusa, director of curatorial affairs at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and can be accessed at rockhall.com. It will include a virtual walk-through of the exhibit; artifacts including an Aretha Franklin Valentino dress, a Mavis Staples dress, and an N.W.A jacket; rare photos captured by influential African-American photographers, including Chuck Stewart and Bruce Talamon; educator essays with audio recordings; and more.
CREDIT: (l) courtesy Specialty Archives; (r) by Jean Pierre Leloir
(l) courtesy Specialty Archives; (r) by Jean Pierre Leloir
Little Richard & Otis Redding
“When I heard Otis sing ‘Lucille,’ I thought it was me!” That’s just one bombshell that dropped from the mouth of Little Richard many years ago, as he inducted Otis Redding into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. Some such inductions transcend sheer pageantry, and, though there was pageantry in all he did, Little Richard’s tribute to the Big O was one of them.
It’s worth revisiting that moment, now that the rock and roll firebrand, the “architect of rock ‘n’ roll,” the Georgia Peach himself, has left us. Since Richard Penniman’s death on Saturday at age 87, few could have missed the outpouring of both grief and love by a world celebrating his influence on modern music, from the Beatles to Prince. But fewer have noted the supreme influence of the Georgia Peach on another transcendent talent, usually associated with Memphis and Stax Records: Otis Redding.
That it was a deep and abiding influence is clear within the first seconds of Little Richard’s appearance at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. As the band revs up the classic Stax arrangement of “I Can’t Turn You Loose,” he steps up to the podium and starts to sing. And it’s eerie how much of Otis Redding’s unique timbre and delivery is captured by his elder and inspiration, Little Richard, almost fifty years after Redding’s own death. In that instant, you can hear the Richard in the Redding and the Redding in the Richard.
Little Richard & Otis Redding: The Unsung Bond of Their Macon Roots
As he dips into other hits from Redding’s repertoire, Little Richard’s evocation of Redding’s voice becomes more uncanny. Though the groove and feel of the Stax hits were very different from Little Richard’s, and Otis never directly copied Richard’s trademark “Wooooo!” (as the young Paul McCartney did), there is a deep resonance common to the delivery of both performers. And suddenly you can sense how powerful it must have been to be young and Black in 1950s Macon, Georgia, hearing and seeing a hometown hero ascend to immortality. Courtesy Specialty Archives
Little Richard
“I can remember when Otis quit school he went out on the road with Little Richard’s old band, the Upsetters,” remembers his brother Rodgers Redding in Peter Guralnick’s Sweet Soul Music. “And he would send home $25 a week. That was a lot of money in those days…I remember Otis saying, ‘One of these days I’m going to be like them.’ He was just determined, there was nothing that could have stopped him.”
Little Richard & Otis Redding: The Unsung Bond of Their Macon Roots (2)
Indeed, it was when singing Little Richard’s “Heebie Jeebies” that the young Otis Redding tasted success for the first time. “That song really inspired me to start singing,” Otis told writer Stanley Booth. “I won the talent show for 15 straight nights with that song, and then they wouldn’t let me sing no more, wouldn’t let me win that five dollars any more.”
Before long, Otis Redding was singing in guitarist Johnny Jenkins’ group, the Pinetoppers. When they had a regional hit with “Love Twist,” Joe Galkin of Atlantic Records took notice, and sent them to Memphis to cut some more sides in the Stax Records studio. Galkin, claimed a third of all of Otis Redding’s publishing royalties from that point on, and in return insisted that Stax’s Jim Stewart record Redding as well as the Pinetoppers that day. He sang “These Arms of Mine” with the Stax house band, and the rest is history.
Little Richard & Otis Redding: The Unsung Bond of Their Macon Roots (3)
Viewing Little Richard’s presentation from 1989, it’s clear that he watched Otis’ ascension with wonder and delight (and perhaps some envy?). As he sings one Otis hit after another, his internalization of the man’s phrasing is remarkable. It’s telling that, before that moment, Little Richard had not indulged in such music for decades. But when it was for Otis, he fired up the engines once more.
After the first number at the podium, Little Richard steps back to say, “I haven’t done that in 30 years! Ooh my God, I felt good doing that. You all gonna make me scream like a white lady!”
More songs follow. Richard doesn’t know all the words to “The Happy Song (Dum Dum),” but continues with fervor, undaunted, before noting, “Otis Redding was born in Macon, Georgia. His father was a preacher, and Otis Redding was a preacher,” seeming to know that we won’t take his words literally, knowing that we know Otis was a preacher in the church of soul.
When Richard invites Redding’s wife, Zelma, up, the affection and protectiveness he feels for her is palpable. He won’t let her speak until he takes her across the stage and exhorts photographers to “mash your button!” All in all, Little Richard’s moment is less an induction ceremony than a warm embrace of all that Otis Redding meant to us, seemingly repaying the favor of Redding picking up where Richard left off, so many years ago. Courtesy Stax Museum of American Soul Music
Otis Redding at his ranch near Macon, GA
Want to explore Otis Redding’s music? Start with his first album, Pain In My Heart, released in 1964 on ATCO Records, featuring his version of Lucille as the closing track.
To hear more Little Richard, there’s no better place to start than his debut album from 1957, Here’s Little Richard, recently remastered and reissued by Craft Recordings, complete with a second disc of studio outtakes and demos Richard recorded at home in Macon in 1955.
Long-time readers of this column know that each May I take a journey to the backwoods of Western Pennsylvania, near the historic town of Ohiopyle, to hang with a few old friends and share lies and whiskey. This year, I added a little bonus trip.
It began with a couple of days in Pittsburgh, where I spent eight years as editor of Pittsburgh Magazine. I spent some time reuniting with a couple of former co-workers, but mostly I just drove around and marveled at the things that had changed. And the things that hadn’t.
Bruce VanWyngarden
Hey hey, my my. Rock-and-roll can never die.
The iconic things hadn’t changed — the Carnegie Museum, the University of Pittsburgh Cathedral of Learning (where I once taught undergrads how to write news features), the massive spires of PPG Place, and the rivers and bridges and countless green hills. What had changed is pretty predictable: Old neighborhoods like Lawrenceville are getting repopulated and redeveloped with those ubiquitous, glassy, boxy apartment buildings that seem to be the required urban redesign form these days. There were coffee shops where machine shops used to be. The infamous Sal’s Salvage was nowhere to be seen, replaced by yoga studios and boutiques and hip-looking cafes. The old Steel Town ain’t the same. It’s mostly better.
The next day, I continued my tour of the upper Midwest by driving over to Cleveland, where my son’s band, MGMT, was playing the Masonic Hall. I got to town before he did, so I did what you’re supposed to do in Cleveland: I went to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which sits on the very edge of Lake Erie, Downtown.
The building is a glassy pyramid (sound familiar?) designed by famed architect I.M. Pei, but it’s much smaller than Memphis’ Pyramid. Out in front is a long and linear (and Instagram-unfriendly) slogan: Long Live Rock. After backing up as far as could, I got a picture of “ONG LIVE ROCK.”
I paid my $28 and started the tour. It begins below ground level, where you are first forced to walk past a photographer who tries to get you to hold a guitar while he takes your picture and then sells it to you. I bypassed the line of grandmas and geezers waiting for their chance to strike a pose, strolled under a neon sign reading “For Those About to Rock,” and wandered into the dark room that begins the self-guided tour.
It starts with various historic exhibits meant to demonstrate the evolution of rock-and-roll — early blues artists, mostly. This area also includes musical artifacts and historic photos from the seminal rock cities, including Memphis (Furry Lewis’ guitar, some old blues records and posters, etc.), Detroit, New York, Chicago, L.A., San Francisco, etc. Notably, Cleveland is not among them. That would be because Cleveland’s claim to be the birthplace of rock-and-roll is specious and overblown, at best. But that’s another story.
The exhibits spiral from bottom to top, with lots of stair climbing from one exhibit level to another. One is forced to accept, after touring the six increasingly smaller floors (that pyramid construct has limitations), that rock-and-roll history is basically comprised of stage outfits and shoes worn by facsimile mannequins, old album covers, posters, vintage photos, music videos, and lots and lots and lots of guitars.
Major icons — Elvis, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Aretha, Springsteen, to name a few — are given individual displays. Michael Jackson, whom I suspect once had a place of prominence, has been downgraded to a single large photograph near an emergency exit — in case you have to beat it, I guess.
The history of hip-hop gets a nod, but not much else. This is a pretty caucasion kind of place, to be honest. As are most of the visitors.
As you leave, you are funneled — as you are in most museums, these days — into the gift shop, where a maze of over-priced T-shirts, guitar earrings, miniature pyramids, guitar picks, posters, snow globes, and other rock chotskies awaits. Meh.
They say rock-and-roll never forgets, but honestly, this place is, well, kinda forgettable.
Courtesy of the Tom & Ethel Bradley Center at California State University, Northridge 
Courtesy the 1974 Collection of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 
Courtesy of Bruce Talamon 
(l) courtesy Specialty Archives; (r) by Jean Pierre Leloir 
Courtesy Specialty Archives 
Courtesy Stax Museum of American Soul Music 
Bruce VanWyngarden