Singer/songwriter Richard Wilson’s soulful, jazzy guitar is the center of his sound. On “Let’s Be Free,” it’s the sound of liberation.
To accompany the song, which was recorded with Scott Bomar at Sam Phillips Recording Services, he opted for a simple performance video, bathed in red light. “Sail away/Let’s be free …”
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
In March 1966, Muhammad Ali refused to be drafted into the Army to fight in the Vietnam War, citing his Islamic faith as a reason and claiming conscientious objector status. At the peak of his boxing career, he was banned from the sport and spent the next four years in and out of the courtroom. In October 1970, he was finally granted a license to fight in Georgia, and on October 26th, he faced Jerry “The Bellflower Bomber” Quarry in Atlanta. In front of a sellout crowd, Ali took Quarry down in only three rounds, setting off a night of celebration in Atlanta’s Black community. At one infamous party, a group of Black gangsters celebrating the victory were set up and robbed at gunpoint by another group of Black gangsters, setting off a chain reaction of botched reprisals and mutual misunderstandings worthy of a Coen Brothers movie.
Years later, journalist Jeff Keating, writing for the Atlanta alternative weekly Creative Loafing, discovered that the person who threw the party, an ambitious hustler known as Chicken Man, was not killed, as had long been reported, but instead had survived the ordeal and was living under an assumed name in Atlanta. Keating recounted the too-weird-to-be-true story in his true crime podcast Fight Night. Released in 2020 during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, it became a huge hit. Writer/producer Shaye Ogbonna and comedian Kevin Hart pitched the story to Universal Television, who ultimately ordered an eight-part limited series for their new streaming service Peacock.
One of the first calls they made was to Memphis director Craig Brewer. “I got this job the old-fashioned way,” he says. “I got a call from my agents saying that [executive producer] Will Packer and Kevin Hart wanted to meet with me on a project. … Shaye, the creator, has been a fan of my films, particularly Hustle & Flow, which he saw in Atlanta.”
Brewer was intrigued by the story and impressed with the rough drafts of the first two episodes, which were all that existed at the time. “I remember reading the script and thinking to myself, ‘This guy Shaye and I, I think are gonna really get along.’ We have the same interests in movies and TV and music. But more importantly, it’s something I always remember John Singleton talking to me about: ‘Is there regional specificity to this voice?’ And I was like, yeah, this feels like a guy from the South, in Atlanta, making movies from his heart, his culture, and his experience. It felt real to me; it felt furnished and honest and, above all, exciting.”
Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist was on its way to the screen.
Putting the Team Together
Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat and Will Packer Media had produced the podcast, says Brewer. “Kevin was always going to be Chicken Man. That was from the jump. Then I came on and we started putting together the other cast members.”
Samuel L. Jackson, an acting legend who Brewer worked with in 2006’s Black Snake Moan, was quickly cast as New York gangster Frank Moten. Taraji P. Henson, who was the breakout star of Hustle & Flow, came onboard as Vivian, Chicken Man’s partner in crime. “She was always at the top of the list,” says Brewer. “Then Will Packer called me and said, ‘We gotta go get your boy Terrence.’”
The producers thought Terrence Howard, star of Hustle & Flow, would be perfect for gangster Richard “Cadillac” Wheeler. “I’m speaking to you from New Jersey, so I’m speaking to you from Cadillac Richie’s territory,” says Brewer.
After Hustle, Brewer had directed Henson and Howard in the hit TV series Empire. “I called up Terrence, and I was kinda talking him into doing the show. I said to him, ‘Listen, it’s me. I’m gonna let you get up on that tight rope like you usually do. I’ll be your net. What I want you to do is bring your creativity to this and create this character because he’s an important character as the series goes on. I’m gonna just agree to anything you wanna do and help you get it.’ Then he said, ‘Well, I wanna look like one of the Bee Gees. That’s what I wanna do.’ I just remember feeling like, ‘Oh no, what is this gonna look like?’ But then he showed up, and I thought, ‘This cat is gonna steal this show because he looks amazing. … I don’t know if he’s gonna take it off ever again.’”
The final big get for the cast was Don Cheadle. The actor/director was on Brewer’s bucket list. “I have always wanted to work with Don, and it was everything that I could have dreamed for and more. He’s a great actor, yes. But I would say that with him — and I would put Sam Jackson in the same category — you’re not just getting somebody’s acting talent, you’re getting their experience of making, watching, and living the art of storytelling. They have an eye for things that some younger actors do not have. Are we telling the right story? They make you better because they hold you to a standard of making sure that you’re doing right, not only by their character, but how their character interacts with everybody. So there were countless times that Don Cheadle would take me and Shaye off into his trailer, and we would work a scene. By the time we left the trailer, Shaye and I would look at each other and just go, ‘Man, the scene is just so much better!’”
Fight Night is filled with star power, in a way very few TV shows have ever been. “The thing about movie stars is, they are decided by the people,” says Brewer. “This show is packed with five movie stars.”
Hotlanta
Fight Night was filmed in Atlanta, Georgia. The series features extensive location shoots among the split-level ranch houses of the suburbs and in the dense city center. Crucial scenes were shot in the distinctive Hyatt Regency Atlanta, whose 22-story atrium influenced hotel design for a generation.
“There is a crucial monologue in episode two that Sam Jackson delivers, where he’s talking about his vision for Atlanta,” says Brewer. “He wants Black people put in places of power, and for the economic future of Atlanta to be Black. It’s funny because you look at the monologue, and you can imagine if it were being said in 1970 to an all-white audience, it may seem outlandish. But last night at the premiere, there were cheers because you realize that dream is here and realized. So it’s very interesting to talk to young people about Atlanta at this crucial time in its history, in the early 1970s, where they were on a campaign that I feel is comparable to Memphis’ history, and to Memphis’ present, which is to deny that you are living, working, and thriving in a Black city. It is to your own peril if you fight against it.
“Atlanta is a city that is open for business. We’re too busy to be dealing with any of that racist bullshit. We’re here to make some money, and I’ll be damned if that’s not the Atlanta that I go to all the time when I’m filming these movies. This is my third project in Atlanta. I’ve been there the whole time that Atlanta has said that they wanna be the next Hollywood. And so many people saying, well, that’s not gonna last, or this is gonna be transitional, or the industry is gonna change. I am telling you right now, no one wants to call it out, but production in Atlanta is there to stay. I don’t see this returning back to Hollywood as long as there’s places like Atlanta.”
Brewer had worked on episodic network TV with Empire, but Fight Night was his first limited series, a form that has become more common in the streaming era. Brewer compares the experience to shooting an eight-hour movie. Brewer directed the first two and last two episodes, and collaborated on the writing of the entire series. He describes the process as a mixture of careful prep and on-the-fly improv.
“I got a call from Shaye saying, ‘We got this idea to do the scene between Sam Jackson and Don Cheadle in an interrogation room,’” Brewer recalls. “We locked ourselves in a room and banged out this scene, probably had it written by like 8 o’clock, 9 o’clock at night. Then, the following morning, I went down to the sound stage and there they were, doing the scene that mere hours ago we had worked on. It’s amazing how fast it all happened. It was just so special because there’d be these moments where Shaye and I would write something, and we knew, ‘Okay, right here, Sam’s gonna probably make this part better. So let’s move on and know that he’s gonna come up with something great to say here — and sure enough, he did! It was this great moment of watching these titans just being amazing.”
Kevin Hart, one of the driving forces behind the development of the series, took the most chances. One of the best-known comedians in the country found a new lane as a dramatic actor. “I had a moment where I saw something that I had never seen before, and it kind of knocked me on my ass,” says Brewer. “It’s in episode two where Kevin Hart’s character is in grave danger, and he has to make a plea for his life. I’m sitting there at my monitor, and I watch Kevin make this tearful plea. That was one of the most real things I’ve ever seen an actor do. I remember just sitting there in awe thinking, ‘How could someone as successful as Kevin Hart actually have a whole other store of talent inside of him that we’ve yet to see? How can it be that he could drop everything that he is as the funniest man on the planet and actually be a dramatic actor?’ You make an assumption about a person, that maybe they don’t have this particular arrow in their quiver, and then suddenly they hit a bull’s-eye. I was stunned. Everyone was stunned. Terrence came up to me and he goes, ‘That cat’s the real deal.’”
Making the Music
Fight Night is set in 1970, a high point in the history of soul, funk, and R&B music. For Scott Bomar, producer and musician behind such acts as The Bo-Keys, that’s his wheelhouse. Bomar and Brewer have worked together on five movie and TV projects, beginning with Hustle & Flow in 2005. “I feel like I got spoiled working with him early on because he’s so musical,” Bomar says. “I find that the way Craig shoots, the way he directs his actors, the way he edits, it’s got a rhythm to it. I’ve worked with him enough now to kind of know what his rhythm is.”
Bomar says he was in “summer home repair mode” when Brewer called him out of the blue. “He said, I’m working on this TV show. Theoretically, if you had this gig, would you be able to do it? Are you available? And I’m like, sure, yeah. I can do it. I knew it was a pretty quick turnaround, but I had no idea exactly how quick of a turnaround it was. I think there were people involved who had their doubts on whether or not it was possible to do what we did in the amount of time we did it.”
Bomar and Brewer recorded the score to Fight Night at Sam Phillips Recording in Memphis. They had one week to take each episode from concept to final mix. “I can’t say enough about my collaboration with Scott Bomar,” says Brewer. “It’s something that truly is a collaboration. I see the scene, and Scott and I start just kind of grooving to a beat, to a track that has yet to be written. We start with rhythm. It really is kind of a Memphis way of doing it.”
Bomar enlisted several of his stable of veteran Memphis players, including drummer Willie Hall, who played on Isaac Hayes’ “Theme From Shaft.” Joe Restivo played guitar; Mark Franklin, Kirk Smothers, and Art Edmaiston contributed horn parts, along with Kameron Whalum, Gary Topper, and Yella P. Behind the board were veteran producer Kevin Houston and Jake Ferguson, who recently returned to Memphis after collaborating with superstar producer Mark Ronson. Most recently, Ferguson worked on the soundtrack to Barbie. “I feel like Craig came in and basically taught a master class on TV scoring,” Ferguson says.
“It’s quite a bit different than film because the schedule’s so accelerated,” says Bomar.
A 1970s vintage mini Moog synthesizer Bomar found in a closet at Sam Phillips Recording played a major role in creating the series’ soundscapes. In some cases, Bomar says they didn’t have time to assemble a full band, so he would have to play almost all of the instruments himself. “I’d say that this is the closest thing to a solo record I’ve ever made,” he laughs.
“It was fascinating to hear Scott and Craig talk about Atlanta in the ’70s and all the inspirations they had,” says Ferguson. “Musically, it was so cool to see how we can take, quote, unquote, ‘modern instruments’ and make them feel like you’re back in the ’70s. When we finished the first two episodes, it was just incredible to see how much the scenes would come to life with the music we added.”
“When we had the first mix, one of the producers said, ‘We asked Scott to do the impossible, and he’s done it,’” says Bomar. “That’s one of the best compliments I’ve ever gotten.”
Final Fight
The first three episodes of Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist premiered on Peacock Thursday, September 5th. New episodes will drop every Thursday for the next five weeks. The night before it hit streaming, there was a star-studded premiere at Lincoln Center in New York City. I interviewed Brewer the next morning, as he was beginning preparations for his next project, a film he wrote called Song Sung Blue starring Hugh Jackman. The director was still reeling from the reception to Fight Night. “When you’re dealing with a brand like Will Packer and Kevin Hart, that means it’s gonna be a party. You can’t just do wine and cheese and a floral arrangement. There were dancers dressed in some of the outfits from the show. There was a Cadillac in the middle of the dance floor. It’s just a party and everybody was there! My son [Graham], I had to pull his ass off the dance floor last night at like 1 a.m., saying, ‘I gotta work, son! Let’s go!’ But he was out there, doing the wobble with everybody else. … It was such a great thing to see it with a crowd. Yeah, I think we got a great show here.”
Memphis blues man Richard Wilson has a new album. You Can Have It All was laid down at the historic Sam Phillips Recording studio by producer Scott Bomar, featuring heavy hitters Al Gamble on keys and Justin Walker on drums.
“Whisper in Your Ear” is a sweet come-on of a song, which Wilson and Walker perform in the stark black and white video. Take a look.
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
“You picked up on this energy
I can see it in your E-Y-E
It’s like I’m fresh off the shelf, fresh off the lot, fresh out the pot.
It’s like I’m brand new … “
Cameron Bethany wrote and sang those words at a turning point in his life, when he was indeed feeling brand new. For the singer/songwriter and his colleagues in the Unapologetic collective, it marked one of those moments of reinvention that they all strive for, a moment of pure authenticity, unaffected by conventional demands. Like most such moments, it was intensely personal.
Darnell Henderson II
Cameron Bethany
That was more than three years ago, released on his debut album, YOUMAKEMENERVOUS, so it came as a bit of a surprise when that musical moment took on a new life this summer. In the Netflix series Trinkets, as one character confronts two others and then walks out of the scene in disgust, the track’s beats kick in, full of portent and tension, until the final credits and the song’s chorus roll out together.
It feels as if the music was designed for the scene. And while the licensing of his song for a major television series, known in the industry as placement, represented a hefty payday for Bethany and co-producers Kid Maestro and IMAKEMADBEATS, it was the way the show’s and the song’s aesthetics dovetailed that made it feel like such a triumph to the singer.
“When we were making the record, when I first brought it in, I had a small GarageBand track, and we talked about what I did as we remade it. We all agreed that it sounded like something that could be used in movies or commercials,” Bethany tells me. “But I couldn’t imagine it might be placed. So it’s almost like we predicted the future a little bit. Still, it ended up being better than anything I could have thought about.”
Although having music tracks placed in movies, television, and commercials is part of Unapologetic’s bread and butter, all agree that this moment was special. “When I first heard that [the placement] was happening, I went back and ended up falling in love with the show,” Bethany says. “Which I was hoping for. I was hoping it was something I could watch on a daily basis, something I gravitated to. Me liking it made me love that moment and made that moment so much more. I would have been grateful either way, whether I liked it or not. But it adds something, to be a fan of something that your work is featured in.”
It doesn’t always happen that way, of course, but placing a song in a movie, a series, or an ad, or scoring such media from scratch, can often be the one time an artist or group is paid a fair price for their music. Now, with live shows few and far between due to the pandemic, and streaming paying only pennies for plays, such placements, also called synchronization or “sync”-ing, have taken on a new importance.
David Patten Mason
Marco Pavé
Memphis rapper Marco Pavé, who has also enjoyed some success with music placements, including the locally made indie film Uncorked, notes that there are different levels of success in the game, but all of them tend to be more lucrative than live shows or album sales, at least for an independent artist. And they tend to offer more exposure as well.
“The placements that you’re really trying to get are the feature films in theaters,” he says. “TV is more of a mid-tier, that could be more high-tier depending on the network. That could range from $2,500 to $5,000 for one song. So it’s definitely a payday for a lot of artists. And it’s a huge discovery tool. A lot of people consider music supervisors to be the new A&R of the music industry. It’s a level of discovery that you really can’t beat because for one, you’re getting paid, but also you’re getting discovered in a way that labels are not suited to do.”
If music supervisors, in choosing the tracks that films and series use, are especially hands-on, they may indeed take on the de facto role of artist and repertoire (A&R) development. But just as often, tracks are lifted wholesale from albums or singles.
That’s been the case for a long time. One local example comes from the surf/crime jazz group Impala, whose love of such genres led them to self-release an EP cut at Easley-McCain studios in the early ’90s.
Billy Fox
Joe Restivo, Willie Hall, Lester Snell, and Michael Tolesore
Bassist and producer Scott Bomar recalls that the EP led to bigger things. “Then we put our first record on Estrus Records, Kings of the Strip, and that got distributed real widely. It seemed to get a lot of attention specifically in Los Angeles. That was the days of faxes, so I remember getting a fax out of nowhere from somebody at HBO, and they wanted to license a song for a Rich Hall show. Which we did. I didn’t know anything about licensing whatsoever. We’d been working in the studio with Roland Janes, so I asked Roland about it and he broke it down and explained the business part of it. And the information he gave me, I feel like I made a whole career out of it. He really gave me some good advice.”
The best was yet to come for Impala, thanks in part to serendipity. “The story that I heard is that George Clooney’s music supervisor for Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, David Arnold, was in New Orleans for Jazz Fest and he bought our very first EP at a record store there. It had our version of Henry Mancini’s ‘Experiment in Terror.’ And we licensed that to George Clooney’s first film that he directed. It was probably the biggest placement we had.”
That such an obscure track could translate into a major placement many years after its release leads Bomar to conclude: “The best thing you can do to get your music licensed is tour and try to get airplay. The more exposure you get for your music, the more chance you have of a director or somebody hearing it. Of course, you can send the stuff to people, but it seems like as much as you try to get things licensed, a lot of times it’s just sort of blind luck. Random.”
It’s ironic that Bomar emphasizes the role of luck and fate, when in fact he has parlayed those early successes with Impala into a career in the ultimate “placement” — soundtrack production. Early work by the band first caught the attention of local underground auteur Mike McCarthy, who hired them to score his film Teenage Tupelo (remastered and reissued this year). This in turn caught the ear of then-burgeoning filmmaker Craig Brewer, who, after his The Poor & Hungry captivated filmgoers, contacted Bomar about his next project, a film called Hustle & Flow.
“He gave me a script for it,” Bomar recalls, “but it took another five years for it to actually get made. And when John Singleton came on board, he said I’ve got some great composers in Hollywood that could do this, but Craig really vouched for me. But, even though I’d been working with Craig on this thing for five years, he said to me, ‘You’re gonna have to sell John.’
“Now, Shaft was John’s favorite movie in the whole world. His email even had Shaft in the name. So I told him about [Bomar’s soul band] the Bo-Keys, with Willie Hall, and Skip Pitts who played with Isaac, and he got real excited about that. And then I realized I had a live recording from the night before in my pocket. So I put the CD in and the first thing on there was us doing the theme from Shaft. The first thing he heard was Skip doing that wah-wah guitar intro and Willie playing the high hat, and he said ‘Yep, this is it!'”
That 2005 soundtrack by Bomar, which complemented the pure hip-hop that won Three 6 Mafia an Oscar for the film, would take on a second life this year, as Brewer worked on another labor of love, Dolemite Is My Name. “Craig and Billy Fox were editing the film and trying out different music and having a hard time finding the right vibe,” says Bomar. “And Craig told Billy, ‘Put in the Hustle & Flow score.’ Craig said once they started editing with that score, it really started to come together. I think they really fell in love with that sound for Dolemite.”
The final result was a masterful, original genre study of blaxploitation scores in what may be Bomar’s finest achievement. Yet he still finds soundtrack work and placements to be elusive. “If that was the only thing I did, it wouldn’t be sustainable for me,” he says. “I’m thankful for those projects when they come around, but they’re not always there. For someone outside of Hollywood to get placements, it’s a little tricky. You’re not gonna get as much of it. You’re not in the middle of all the action.”
Though both Bomar and the Unapologetic artists have stoked interest in placements with frequent visits to New York and Los Angeles, an alternative approach, being pioneered by Made in Memphis Entertainment (MIME), is to bring L.A. to Memphis. With the legendary former Stax songwriter David Porter as a partner, MIME can turn some heads, but that’s also due to astute management by company president Tony Alexander.
“About two and half years ago,” explains Alexander, “as part of our overall strategy, we acquired a songs catalog, a sync business in L.A. called Heavy Hitters Music Group, that had been around about 25 years. And that business has continued to grow. So that’s our L.A. operation, and that has been very, very beneficial to us. Made in Memphis Entertainment has the label, but we also have the recording studios, the publishing companies, and our distribution business. Heavy Hitters Music Group is one of our publishing companies. They represent about 1,700 artists, and their business model, unlike many that sign the writer, is to sign the songs. And then they represent the songs for placement. They have a pretty amazing track record.”
While MIME develops local performing artists like Brandon Lewis, Porcelan, and Jessica Ray, they also quietly go about the business of placements. And yet, Alexander notes, “The vast majority of who we represent are not local to Memphis.” Rather, Heavy Hitters Music Group tends to work with L.A.-based producers, who are more savvy to the ways of placed recordings. Accordingly, one of MIME’s missions has been to educate local creators in the ways of placed tracks.
“One of the reasons why education is such an important component of what we do is that we wanted the local artists here in Memphis to understand what makes songs sync-able,” Alexander says. “These are the things that make them easy to clear. So we can create more opportunities for Memphis artists. Because historically, most of the time that Memphis artists were able to get placements, it was for things that were either produced here or had a Memphis theme. It was not access to global projects or projects that were not Memphis-oriented. And that’s what we’re really trying to do, is open up opportunities for Memphis artists to get placements in non-Memphis-oriented projects.”
As the manager of MIME’s 4U Recording Studio, Crystal Carpenter takes that educational role very seriously, showing artists who work there, for example, how important documentation, credits, and even file formats are. As Alexander explains, “One of the things that makes sync easier for an artist or writer is if it’s one stop. If the master and the publishing is controlled by the same individual, that’s really what a lot of music supervisors are looking for. Because if it’s too complicated, they’ll just move on to another song.”
Beyond impromptu teachable moments in the studio, MIME also sponsors workshops to confront such issues in a more focused way. Tuesday, October 20th, and on the 27th, they’ll host workshops covering “the nuts and bolts of music licensing and publishing, creating and pitching, artist branding and sync-writing for a brief vs. placing existing music.”
MIME is not alone in this pursuit. The local nonprofit On Location: Memphis was originally formed to produce the International Film and Music Festivals, but when entertainment attorney Angela Green took over, she changed directions. “I felt that the film screening space was getting crowded, and that there were a lot of organizations doing it quite well. There were other areas of film and music being overlooked. That’s what led to me coming up with the Memphis Music Banq.”
Margaret Deloach
Memphis Music Banq
The Memphis Music Banq, launched a year ago, administers music for placements, and now represents the work of nearly a dozen local artists. This Banq contains songs, not dollars, though its aim is to translate one into the other, and it offers workshops and networking opportunities for artists who seek knowledge about the world of placements. One lighthearted series they host is their “Mixer Competition,” wherein two or more music producers try scoring a single film, and viewers vote on the best score. Such opportunities for education and networking have already paid off, with Memphis Music Banq creator Kirk Smith having landed a soundtrack deal for Come to Africa, to be screened at this year’s Indie Memphis Film Festival. (The next such mixers are scheduled for October 15th and October 20th.)
And yet, with many of these educational opportunities focused on how to do things according to the established norms and expectations, it’s important to remember the fundamental philosophy of IMAKEMADBEATS, founder of Unapologetic: Be your most authentic, vulnerable self in all your work. “I feel like if people are looking for a hired hand, they’re not going to come to me,” he says. “They’re gonna come to me for what I do. They’re gonna come to Unapologetic for what we do. Because we’re daring and we’re bold. It would be hard to imagine someone saying, ‘Hey Cameron, we need you to do this Aretha Franklin thing here. Make that happen.’ We’d be like, ‘What?’ People are going to go to Cameron because he’s going to be who he is.”
In recent years, the appeal of classic sounds from the the ’60s and ’70s has grown and grown, leaving many wondering if such retro stylistic moves are mere trend-hopping, simply another attempt to create a flavor of the month. And yet, there’s a certain rightness to the sound, an undeniable frisson when you listen to a contemporary act capture the sound and feel of that era, as if synth-pop and Pro Tools had never happened. As it turns out, this may all be because the records of that era were simply, objectively better. In an interview with Tape Op, Gabriel Roth, co-owner of the retro soul label Daptone Records, puts it like this:
I started making records because I was listening to old records and they sounded great. It’s not really an agenda or an angle as much as it is just kind of being honest with ourselves. In articles, people say, “Aren’t you just doing something that’s been done before?” or “Isn’t this some kind of retro fad?” First, we’re not making enough money for it to be called a fad, that’s for sure. We’re just trying to be tasteful and try to make the kind of records that sound good and feel good. If they sound old, that’s great — I dig old records … the truth is we dig old records, so we’re going to try to make old records.
Daptone is based in Brooklyn, but it turns out that the same philosophy holds true in another epicenter for classic soul and funk sounds: Memphis. It shouldn’t come as a great surprise, given the longevity of many legendary studios here. Some of them, like Royal Studios, still have the same gear used to make those classic sounds in the first place. Others, like Scott Bomar’s Electraphonic Recording, take pages out of the Royal playbook and stick to the same methods.
Beyond that, one needs players who are sensitive to the classic sounds and textures and, most of all, an artist capable of delivering performances with all the soul, integrity, warmth and outright heat that was more typical in the days before sequencing and cut-and-paste production.
And all those elements come together seamlessly in Don Bryant’s latest album, You Make Me Feel (Fat Possum). It’s not surprising, given that Bryant, after a brief foray as a solo artist, was a house songwriter for Willie Mitchell’s Hi Records, eventually marrying Ann Peebles, who made his “I Can’t Stand the Rain” famous. He carried on behind the scenes for decades, until his second solo album, Don’t Give Up On Love, was released in 2017. That album, like the latest, was produced by Bomar, pairing Bryant with Bomar’s crack soul band, the Bo-Keys. It was such a powerful return to form, with all of the classic ingredients, that one might consider it Bryant’s 21st century comeback. Now, with the same team in place for a second album, we see that Bryant, now nearing his 80th year, is not slacking his pace or his taste in the least.
The album kicks off with a classic horn-driven intro conveying the majesty of a blues-based riff in a soul context, before laying down a very ’70s groove that can’t be denied. Then, track two reveals Bryant’s take on a song (that he wrote) made popular by his wife back in the day, “99 Pounds.” Also sporting some powerful horn riffs, this one captures the classic Royal sound, with the same driving Howard “Bulldog” Grimes beat that made Hi a beacon of soul back in the day.
From there, we hear plenty of mood swings, all delivered with an aching, heartfelt panache that few singers can pull of these days. For Bryant, it seems it’s second nature. And, as tracks evoking various emotions go by, we are reminded of how eclectic Bryant’s career was even before the mid ’70s. Some tracks here, like “Your Love is Too Late” or “Cracked Up Over You,” evoke more of a ’60s soul sound, with the latter sporting echoes of the old Satellite Records (pre-Stax) track by Prince Conley, “I’m Going Home.” It’s an earlier take on R&B than the classic Ann Peebles-type, funk-infused grooves, but Bryant, who was singing and recording from the 1950s onward, can carry both with equal aplomb.
Interspersed along the way are some moving ballads, which, given the homespun strength of Bryant’s voice, may be his strong suit. (Though, to be fair, he can howl on the uptempo tracks with a unique urgency). The standout here may be “Don’t Turn Your Back on Me,” which begins with only solo guitar and Bryant’s vocals. From there, it adds layers of sound and emotion as the band falls in.
Both the ballads and the groovy numbers have one crucial element: air. The sound of a band playing mostly live in a room just may be the key to that “old record” sound. And it only makes it better when it’s a room in Memphis, where one of soul’s great architects is pouring his soul into every note.
Don Bryant’s You Make Me Feel is an Instant Classic
Ceylon Mooney on the road with Pezz.
Music Video Monday keeps going!
Pezz, the Memphis punk legends, have been spreading their hardcore gospel for thirty years. Marvin Stockwell, Ceylon Mooney, Scott Bomar, and Nic Cupples played their first show as Pezz on June 11th, 1990 at the Singleton Community Center in Bartlett. That September, they made their debut at the Antenna, where their all-ages free-for-alls would become iconic moments in Memphis music history.
Bomar left the band after recording two EPs to become the bassist for surf-rockers Impala. He is now a producer and Emmy-winning soundtrack composer, and was instrumental in founding Memphis soul revivalists The Bo-Keys. But Bomar was just the first of dozens of Memphis rockers who cut their teeth on stage with Stockwell and Mooney.
“Pezz was one of the bands that made me want to play music,” says Christian Walker, longtime Pezz bassist and music video director. “Back then it was still a revelation to me that normal people could play music, and not only that, that they could play music and say something important. They promoted the idea that if you had a platform, it was your obligation to say something important. All these years later, we still feel that way.”
Pezz’s discography includes 14 full lengths, EPs, and singles. The group toured relentlessly in the 1990s and early 2000s, playing thousands of shows all over America.
“We really wanted to play a show to commemorate 30 years of Pezz, but when COVID made that impossible, I thought, ‘What better way to celebrate this milestone than by finally digitizing old tour footage and sifting through all of these moments in the 30-year history of the band?” Walker says. “Honestly, I could have used more time to gather long-forgotten VHS tapes from people, but I believe I found plenty of material that represents different eras of the band, and the people who have played with us and friends we’ve made along the way.”
Currently at work on their sixth full-length album, the punk ethos that has animated the band for three decades has not faded.
“For this video, we had in mind a sickness of the heart and a condition of isolation and disconnection, but here we are with the disease of police violence as well, and, as always, it’s more deadly to people of color than the rest of us,” says Ceylon Mooney. “Don’t wait any longer. Do what your conscience demands and what your resources allow,” he said. “You can give your time to the struggle, your body to an action, your support to the Coalition of Concerned Citizens, and your money to the Black Lives Matter bail fund.”
Music Video Monday: Pezz
If you would like your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com
“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.
Now that Beale Street has been renovated, and neon warms its coldest nights, it’s hard to conjure up the feeling that must have greeted 37-year-old Calvin Newborn when he returned there after making his name in the jazz world.
“I came back to Memphis in 1970,” he told author Robert Gordon. “Beale Street was being torn down. I couldn’t find no place to play. … [I was] playing with Hank Crawford every six months in California. And when I came back to Memphis, I would stay inebriated. It broke my heart, you know, to come on Beale Street and it wasn’t there. So I just went to the liquor store. When they finally tore it completely down, I thought that was the end of Beale Street, you know. But they started to rebuilding, you know, slowly.”
Christian Patterson
Calvin Newborn
Newborn had dealt with heartbreak before, over the years, in many forms. Happily, he did eventually resume his rightful place as one of Beale’s star attractions. Now the heartbreak’s all ours, since he passed away on December 1st in his adopted home of Jacksonville, Florida. And for lovers of music history, his death marks the loss of more than one man and musician, great enough in his own right. Calvin was the last of the epoch-defining Phineas Newborn Family Showband.
Photo Courtesy of Jadene King
Herman Green
Family Ties
“When I hear stories about Elvis going and hearing [Calvin’s] dad’s band in the Flamingo Room, and borrowing Calvin’s guitar and sitting in with their family band, I think that Elvis probably got a lot of his feel from their family band. I can see how that was an influence on Elvis,” reflects musician and producer Scott Bomar, who worked with Calvin. “It was quite a band. I think Calvin and his family are that missing link between Sun Records and Stax. They were playing on Sun sessions, and you look at all the people that came through that band. William Bell, George Coleman, Honeymoon Garner, Fred Ford, Charles Lloyd, Booker Little. That whole Newborn Family Band was a cornerstone of Memphis music. It’s a chapter that I don’t think has gotten its due.”
Saxophone legend Charles Lloyd recently tried to give the Newborns their credit, when asked to recall his formative years in Memphis. “I was also blessed that Phineas Newborn discovered me early and took me to the great Irvin Reason for alto lessons. Phineas put me in his father — Phineas Senior’s — band. Together with Junior and his brother, Calvin, we played at the Plantation Inn which was in West Memphis. Phineas became an important mentor and planted the piano seed in me. To this day he still informs me.”
Photo Courtesy of Jadene King
Calvin with brass note on Beale honoring the Newborn family.
Of course, Phineas Newborn Jr., or just “Junior,” was Calvin’s older sibling, who some would later call “the greatest living jazz pianist.” Their parents, Phineas Sr., or “Finas,” and Mama Rose Newborn, raised them to love and play music, always hoping to carry on as a family band (with Finas on drums). And, for a time, they did. But, ultimately, Junior was too much of a genius on the ivories to be contained by such ambitions. Indeed, Calvin grew up in the shadow of Junior’s gift, something he apparently did not mind one bit. Though the brothers won their first talent show early on as a piano duo, that moment also brought home Junior’s genius to Calvin, who soon after began guitar lessons on an instrument that B.B. King helped him pick out.
Beale Street held a fascination for the whole family, who would initially make the long trek on foot from Orange Mound just to be there, until they moved closer. Finas turned down opportunities to tour with Lionel Hampton and Jimmie Lunceford just to be near his family and the promise of playing music with them. At that time, a flair for music was often a strong familial force. Dr. Herman Green, master of the saxophone and flute, went to Booker T. Washington High School with Calvin. “We grew up together. We been knowing each other since we were babies,” Green says. “The Newborn family, and the Green family, and then the Steinberg family. We had a lot of families together at that time that were musicians, you know? So we came up together, ’cause we had to go to the same school.”
Steve Roberts
Calvin Newborn, Chuck Sullivan, Richard Cushing, Robert Barnett (back). Dr. Herman Green & Willie Waldman (front) in FreeWorld. ca. 1990.
Though both brothers were soon proficient enough to tour with established acts (as when Calvin hit the road with Roy Milton’s band), by 1948, their father landed the family group a residency at the Plantation Inn in West Memphis. Green, too, joined the band, as did a young trombonist named Wanda Jones. For a time, Finas’ dream flourished. “Oh, we all was good, man!” recalls Green. “We was playing with his daddy. We had some good singers, like Ma Rainey.” Before long, they moved to the Flamingo Room in Downtown Memphis, and then collectively hit the road with Jackie Brenson, who was touring behind his hit record, “Rocket 88,” recorded (with Ike Turner’s band) by Sam Phillips.
If the family band was tight, Calvin and Wanda were getting even tighter. As Green remembers it, “Wanda, yeah — I’m the one that put ’em together. She was the vocalist with Willie Mitchell. I heard her, and I told Finas Sr. about her. And then we ended up using her for quite a while there. Now, Calvin was my right-hand buddy, man. Junior was in and out of there, you know, but me and Calvin were very close. He told me he was getting ready to get married to Wanda. I said, ‘Well, congratulations.’ He said, ‘Well, you ain’t heard the rest.’ I said, ‘Well, what is it?’ He said, ‘I want you to be my best man.’ And then we lived together in my daddy’s house, when he got married.”
The Phineas Newborn Family Showband was the toast of Memphis, with a plethora of future jazz and soul greats rotating through. And Calvin was distinguishing himself with a talent that his gifted brother did not have: showmanship. As Calvin told author Stanley Booth, “You’d have guitar players to come in and battle me, like Pee Wee Crayton and Gatemouth Brown, and I was battlin’ out there, tearin’ they behind up, ’cause I was dancin’, playin’, puttin’ on a show, slide’ across the flo’.” And flying, as captured in an iconic photo of Calvin in mid-air, his eyes fixed with fierce determination on his fretboard, his legs angled high in a mighty leap.
The Elvis Connection
As their reputation grew, the family band began to notice a young white kid at their shows, watching Calvin’s moves like a hawk. As Calvin recalled to Gordon, “I would see him everywhere, he used to come over to the Plantation Inn Club when we was over there.” That kid was Elvis Presley.
“Elvis used to be there, show up every Wednesday and Friday night to see me do Calvin’s Boogie and Junior’s Jive. I’ll be flyin’ and slidin’ across the dance floor [laughs] and I think that’s when he … started to flyin’, too.” Almost as a footnote, Calvin adds, “but he went on and made all that money, made millions of dollars, and I went to the jazz mountaintop and almost starved to death.”
But through it all, Presley remained close to the Newborns. It went far beyond studying their moves and their sounds at the club, as Calvin’s daughter, Jadene King, tells it. In describing her father’s prolific writings, she notes that he penned an as-yet unpublished volume with “a lot of the history between him and Elvis in it.” Titled Rock ‘n Roll: Triumph Over Chaos, “there’s an enormous amount of unspoken-of history of my dad and Elvis’ relationship. Actually, Elvis’ relationship with my entire family,” King says. “A lot of people think he was a prejudiced kind of human being, and from a very bigoted family, but that’s not true. He spent a lot of his life with my father and my uncle, at my grandmother’s home. They were very close. He ate many meals with my dad and my uncle, and my dad was the one that was responsible for a lot of his moves and a lot of his musical talent, as far as teaching him a lot of what he knew. They were very close.”
The Jazz Mountaintop
Family and Elvis aside, Calvin was more concerned with climbing to the jazz mountaintop, especially once the extent of Junior’s deep genius on the piano became widely known. After brief stints in college and the army, Junior was back in Memphis when Count Basie and the great talent scout John Hammond happened to visit, and heard him play. In that moment, the ring of opportunity became the death knell for Finas’ dream of a family band. By 1956, Junior and Calvin had moved to New York, playing in a quartet with two legends-to-be, Oscar Pettiford and Kenny Clarke, and recording for Atlantic and RCA.
Before long, Junior would go his own way, and deal with his own demons, leaving Calvin to deal with his. At first, the jazz mountaintop offered an escape from the South’s rampant racism. “I think that’s the main reason why I left Memphis, you know,” he told Gordon, “to play jazz. Because jazz seemed to have put it on an even keel, because a lot of white people respected jazz. And that was the bebop era, you know, and I admired Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday and all the jazz artists, so I was, that’s one reason I was so glad to get away from Memphis.”
But he also fell into the traps of bebop life, as did Wanda. As Booth writes, “Calvin began working with Lionel Hampton, then joined Earl Hines. His wife, who had become a narcotics addict, had convulsions and died in her sleep, and Calvin began using heroin himself.” And yet, he managed his addictions well enough to keep playing, building his reputation every step of the way. As the 1960s wore on, Calvin ended up working with Jimmy Forrest, Wild Bill Davis, Al Grey, Freddie Roach, Booker Little, George Coleman, Ray Charles, Count Basie, Hank Crawford, and David “Fathead” Newman.
Meanwhile, Junior’s eccentricities were turning into full-blown mental anguish, and he spent time here and there in mental institutions, recovering from his alcoholism in hospitals, or simply convalescing in the family home. Still, he would perform and record.
In 1965, Finas, now suffering from heart problems in spite of his then-clean living, ignored his doctor’s warnings against performing and joined his eldest son onstage in Los Angeles. It was the closest he’d come to recapturing the Newborn family band’s glory days. And he died of a heart attack as soon as he walked off stage. Still, Mama Rose kept her home in Memphis, and Junior stayed there more and more.
Thus was the state of his life and his family when Calvin returned to see Beale Street in ruins. He was once again based in Memphis, but toured often. As his daughter recalls: “The first thing I remember as a little girl was him being in the Bubbling Brown Sugar tour. That had him over in Europe for several years, and he lived in Holland, London, Paris.”
King, whose mother was an Italian immigrant whom Calvin met at Coney Island, but who grew up in Jacksonville, goes on: “That’s my first memory of daddy being gone for a long period of time. That was in the mid-1970s. And he did that for a while. He was constantly gigging and touring during most of my childhood, but he would always come to Jacksonville to see me, or I would go to Memphis and spend time with him at my grandmother’s house. Mama Rose’s.”
Staying at the family home or on his own, Calvin would help with Junior’s care and began playing more with his old classmate, Herman Green. The quartet recordings they made as the Green Machine still stand as some of the finest jazz that Memphis has produced. As the 1980s went on, Calvin joined Alcoholics Anonymous, cleaned up his act, made the occasional solo album, and began working with younger musicians. When Green fell in with the funk/rock/improv group FreeWorld, Calvin was not far behind. “Calvin was a member of FreeWorld for about two years, and his guitar virtuosity brought us all up several levels, musically speaking,” says FreeWorld founder Richard Cushing. “Herman and Calvin would occasionally start playing off each other in the middle of a song, pushing each other, cutting heads as only two old-school masters can do.”
Mike Brown
Working in the studio.
New Born
Memphis musician and producer Scott Bomar also treasures his time with Calvin, first as pupil and then as the producer of his phenomenal album, New Born. “I had to put a band together to back Roscoe Gordon, and I asked Calvin to play guitar. That was the beginning of our friendship and the beginning of us doing gigs together. Some of the most amazing musical settings that I’ve had the good fortune to be part of were with Calvin. At one Ponderosa Stomp show, the Sun Ra Arkestra actually played with Calvin and me. That’s one of the most intense audience reactions I’ve ever seen at a concert. And every time I’d talk to Calvin, he would still talk about it. The last time I spoke to Calvin, he was still talking about that performance. It was a tune of his called ‘Seventh Heaven,’ and that was a very, very special performance.”
Even as the next century approached, Calvin had a flair for showmanship. Bomar goes on: “When he got on stage, he had this energy that not many people I’ve ever played with have. He was electric. He could hit his guitar in a way that got people’s attention. His tone — I love his rawness. Of course, he had this deep musical knowledge and was very melodic, but he also had this kind of raw, rock-and- roll edge to his tone and his playing. His tone was always on the edge of distortion.”
By 2003, there was less to keep Calvin here in Memphis. Junior and his mother, Mama Rose, had left this mortal coil behind. And so he settled in with his daughter, adapting to the Sunshine State and a more contemplative life. “My dad had various levels of spirituality, and he studied every religion known to man. He studied Islam, he studied Jehovah’s Witnesses, he studied Judaism, he studied Hinduism. My father was just a brilliant individual. He’s read the Koran three or four times. He’s read the Bible many times. He was just a very well-versed man, and I would say the last 10 years of his life he completely went over to Christianity.”
Calvin also continued to perform at the Jazzland Cafe and the World of Nations festival in Jacksonville, not to mention many area churches. And he remained as feverishly creative as ever. “He has several unpublished compositions that I have,” notes King. “I have several plays, several books, and tons of lyrics and scores for new music, new songs. He had just finished scoring a musical project that he wanted to take to New York and record.”
And then, in the spring of this year, romance came back into his life, in the form of one Marie Davis Brothers, who he had known for decades. “I’ve known her my whole life, for over 43 years,” says King. “Originally, they were together for 12 years, and they separated and were apart for 20 more years. In 2017, they started communicating again. They’d been talking over the phone for a little over a year, and then in April she moved here from Memphis. And in May they got married and they moved into their own apartment.”
Photo Courtesy of Jadene King
Calvin Newborn at the Memphis Music Hall of Fame induction of his brother Phineas.
The Final Chapter
No one expected Calvin Newborn to die this month. “He had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) from the years and years and years of smoking and drinking and just the jazz life, but he’d been sober and clean for over 35 years, and he was doing very very well,” says King. “Just in the beginning of November, his oxygen levels weren’t what they needed to be, but he just went from not having oxygen to wearing a little Inogen [portable oxygen] machine. And then toward the end of the month, that stopped giving him the levels that were needed, and here we are.”
Just before the end, he was still giving his daughter new writings to type up. “In my father’s last couple of months, he wrote a poem called ‘Seventh Heaven.’ It was based on a dream where he saw his great-granddaughter, who he called Bliss, looking out into what he called seventh heaven, and everyone was at peace. There was no more hatred, there was no more racial divide. There was no more poverty. Everything had been leveled out. It was a beautiful world. I guess if my father had an epitaph, it would be ‘Seventh Heaven: There’s no race, just the human race.'”
In Calvin Newborn’s heaven, there’s room enough for everyone to fly.
As you struggle to readjust to the world after a long Thanksgiving holiday full of gluttony and rest, Music Video Monday knows there’s a dark cloud hanging over you.
As you read here in the Memphis Flyer, Amy Black came to Memphis to record with the Hi Rhythm Section at Scott Bomar’s Electra-phonic Recording. “The Blackest Cloud” is a blast of horn-heavy stone cold groove from her 2017 album Memphis. This video by Stacie Huckeba and Scot Sax takes the artist on a tour of Bluff City landmarks. Hopefully this will wake you from your turkey coma.
Music Video Monday: Amy Black
If you would like to see your music video appear on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com
This weekend, music aficionados not overly damaged by Gonerfest will be making that breezy drive down to New Orleans, our sister city of soul. They’ll be chasing the sounds of old vinyl brought to life, marveling that one can still see pioneers of soul, R&B, swamp pop, rockabilly, and garage rock who the mass media spotlight has long since neglected. It’s Ponderosa Stomp time, and the threads linking Memphis with the festival, now an institution in the Big Easy, go back to its earliest days.
I still recall Andria Lisle telling me, back in the ’90s, about a wedding she’d attended in New Orleans that featured, instead of the usual party band, a performance by Eric Burdon of the Animals. That was the first I heard of Ponderosa Stomp founder Ira Padnos, the anesthesiologist known as “Dr. Ike”: a man who takes his music very, very seriously.
“The Ponderosa Stomp is like Ira’s record collection coming to life,” says local producer and bandleader Scott Bomar, who’s seen many Stomps over the years. “He’ll have all these obscure records, and he’ll start to wonder, ‘Well, where is so and so? Where’s this obscure swamp-pop artist? Why haven’t they played?’ He’ll go on expeditions to try to find folks. It’s pretty amazing, the research he does. He just gets obsessed with certain artists. And sometimes he can track ’em down and sometimes he can’t, but he’s sorta the master of finding these artists who maybe only cut one record in their entire lives, that maybe 500 copies were ever pressed of. So it’s interesting; he likes to celebrate great unheralded talent.”
Padnos’ wedding party was just the beginning. “He used to do shows at the Circle Bar,” recalls Bomar. “And, kind of like the Ponderosa Stomp is named after a song on Excello Records, he would name these parties after songs. I know he had one called ‘I Got Loaded.’ Those Circle Bar shows were amazing. He would hire me to play bass behind people down there. I remember playing with D.J. Fontana on drums, Paul Burlison on guitar, Alex Chilton on guitar, and we backed up a couple of rockabilly guys.”
The search for obscure genius has often led Padnos to Memphis. As he told OffBeat Magazine in 2011, “I always loved the song ‘Bar-B-Q,’ so we were trying to track down Wendy Rene, but that was hard because nobody knew her real name.” Naturally, he found her, and before long, she was once again singing her ode to pulled pork.
But the Stomp is not just about obscurity. One headliner of this year’s show is Roky Erickson, the famously off-kilter singer for the 13th Floor Elevators who has staged somewhat of a comeback in the past decade. Closer to home, Carla Thomas and her sister Vaneese, daughters of Rufus Thomas, are hardly obscure. With her “B-A-B-Y” featured in the film Baby Driver, Carla is back in the spotlight again. And sister Vaneese, whose “Let’s Talk It Over” single on Geffen was a top 10 hit in the ’80s, has begun turning heads in the blues world recently with a new record this year, The Long Journey Home. “When I put out Blues for My Father in 2014, that was my first foray into the blues. I did that really in honor of daddy, obviously. Because people don’t know that he sang blues all through his career, from the beginning to the end,” Vaneese says. “So, I wanted to dab my toe in that, and I’ve grown to love it. I want to sing more earthy stuff.”
Bomar and his band the Bo-Keys will be backing the Thomas sisters, who only began performing together in 2002. The Bo-Keys will also back Memphis soul singer Don Bryant, who had some now-rare releases in the ’60s before focusing on writing hits for Hi Records into the ’70s. Bryant is hardly obscure either these days, having just played packed houses in New York and Europe this summer. Other Memphis artists on the bill this year include Linda Gail Lewis, Jerry Lee’s talented sister, and legendary session guitarist Reggie Young, who will be featured in a panel discussion at the festival’s Music History Conference.
Ponderosa Stomp performances will be at the Orpheum Theater, New Orleans, October 6th-7th, with a gospel brunch show on Sunday, October 7th. Music History Conference events are hosted at the Ace Hotel, October 5th-6th, as is the Record Show, October 5th-7th. For details, go to www.ponderosastomp.com.