Tag: Stax

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Film Features Film/TV

Music Video Monday: The Stax/Volt Revue

Sam Moore on stage in Norway, April 7, 1967.

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Normally, we use Music Video Monday to highlight the latest work by Memphis musicians and/or filmmakers. But this Music Video Monday is a little different. We’re going to look back to one of the most significant moments in Memphis music history — and it didn’t even happen here.

Tonight, Stax: Soulsville USA premieres on HBO. I’ll have a lot more to say about the four-part documentary series in the coming days, but right now, I want to focus on one of the doc’s most thrilling moments. In 1967, Stax Records, then a startup regional record label, sent its stars on a whirlwind tour of Europe. As director Jamila Wignot reveals in episode 1, the BBC wouldn’t play American R&B, so pirate radio stations based on boats in international waters sprang up to meet the teenage demand for new music. When the Stax/Volt Revue hit European stages, the performers were shocked to discover that the kids in the audience were primed to go nuts.

This footage of the revue in action was shot in Norway on April 7, 1967. You’ll see Sam and Dave, Booker T. and the MGs, and Otis Redding in their prime. Strap in, put those headphones on, and hit play.

If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.

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Music Music Features

Summit of the Scribes: A Gathering of Stax Legends

Panel moderator Robert Gordon and Written in Their Soul panelists Deanie Parker, William Bell, Eddie Floyd, Bobby Manuel, CD producer Cheryl Pawelski, and Henderson Thigpen (Photo: Filmmaker Kyle Taubken)

The air was charged last Friday night at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, as five of Stax Records’ most valuable players gathered together to answer questions and speak their minds. The sold-out event was first and foremost a celebration of Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos, Craft Recordings’ seven-CD compilation (reviewed last week in the Memphis Flyer) featuring 140 never-before-heard recordings made in the studio’s back rooms, when songwriters made reference tapes of their compositions. Those demos would ultimately be filed away among the holdings of East/Memphis Music, the label’s publishing company, with the best serving as blueprints for full-on studio recordings by Stax artists.

Hence, it was not in their capacity as Stax performers that William Bell and Eddie Floyd appeared last Friday, but as some of the label’s best songwriters. They were joined by Deanie Parker, Bobby Manuel, and Henderson Thigpen, fellow masters of the craft, in a kind of summit of the scribes. The panel was rounded out by wordsmith Robert Gordon and the visionary record producer who’d first conceived of the release, three-time Grammy Award-winning producer Cheryl Pawelski.

Although the museum, built according to the original building’s plans, always conveys a sense of the bustling Stax studios and offices to the casual visitor, this historic gathering made it more palpable, as the panelists discussed their days in those very halls when Stax was at its zenith. It was a veritable money machine in its heyday, but, as Robert Gordon explained, that money wasn’t just from record sales. East/Memphis Publishing oversaw the equally lucrative income stream of song royalties. For songwriters like those gathered at the museum Friday, those royalties translated into “mailbox money.”

Henderson Thigpen was perhaps the purest expression of the songwriter’s ethos that evening. The others were involved with Stax in several capacities besides songcraft: Deanie Parker headed the label’s public relations and was later known as the primary conceptualizer of the Stax Music Academy and associated museum, Bobby Manuel was an ace session guitarist, and Bell and Floyd were stars, the most public voices and faces of Stax. Thigpen, however, focused on writing with laser-like determination, always keeping “a pen in one pocket and two notepads in the other pocket,” as he explained.

He described writing the Shirley Brown hit, “Woman to Woman,” noting the care with which he sang the demo to show Brown how the opening monologue had to be delivered. Then the museum’s executive director, Jeff Kollath, cued up the demo featuring Thigpen’s vocals, sung from a woman’s point of view, seeming to take the songwriter by surprise. He winced good-naturedly as his haunting voice from half a century ago filled the room, then took a moment to point out his wife in the audience. His only regret about the master recording of No. 1 R&B hit, he said, was that it didn’t open with the sound of a ringing telephone.

The room lit up when “Dy-No-Mite (Did You Say My Love)” by composer Mack Rice was played; while the song was recorded and released by the Green Brothers, all agreed that Rice’s high-spirited delivery on the demo, complete with whistles, could not be topped. Indeed, the late Mack Rice was a recurring presence at the event. So were prolific songwriters Bettye Crutcher, who passed away last October, and Homer Banks, who died in 2003.

The set’s art director and designer, Memphis’ own Kerri Mahoney, was in the audience and noted afterwards how stunned she was that so little memorabilia was preserved from those days. She’d had little to work with, she said, though her work ultimately resulted in a richly illustrated and smartly designed package.

Pawelski, for her part, sat back and let the legends speak, but eventually Gordon asked her to tell the long tale of the collection’s genesis and realization. When she worked for Concord Records (of which Craft is a subsidiary), she learned of the demos kept by East/Memphis. But, having been archived haphazardly, many were buried in long, uncatalogued tapes on which completely unrelated demos also appeared. Over 17 years and a few career changes culminating in the founding of her own label, Omnivore Recordings, Pawelski gradually listened through nearly 2,000 hours of audio in her quest to identify the lost gems of Stax. She was clearly elated that her baby was now out there in the world.

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Cover Feature News

Power to the People

Photo: Paul Mckinnon | Dreamstime.com

It was a dark day in 1989 for Memphis music fans when word got out that the old Stax Records building on McLemore, then owned by the Southside Church of God in Christ, was slated to be demolished. It had been in disrepair for some time, unused since the company’s 1975 involuntary bankruptcy, with crumpled PR photos and odd reels of tape scattered in the debris, languishing in limbo between the hopeful past and an uncertain future. Ironically, Stax fans had only seemed to multiply in the meantime. On this day, those in Memphis worked their landline phones, alerting others to a protest that was brewing.

Deanie Parker, who had headed artist relations and publicity at Stax before it was forced to close, was in on that phone tree, but she was not having it. “I started getting phone calls from people who knew me, and they said, ‘We’re getting ready to protest the razing of the Stax building!’ And I said, ‘Okay.’ And they asked, ‘Are you going to join us, are you coming?’ And my attitude was, ‘What good is it going to do? Why are we trying to save a run-down building that was already run-down when we converted the theater into a studio? Who in the hell is in the building? Is it doing any good? Are they cutting any records there? Are they providing jobs for anybody? What the hell — let ’em tear it down!’ And I felt badly after I had done that because I understood their passion, and I knew what they were trying to do. But this was deeper for me. What was that raggedy-ass building going to do? It wasn’t going to bring Stax back.”

Deanie Parker at Stax (Photo: Courtesy the Concord API Stax Collection | Bill Carrier Jr. All rights reserved)

Parker, as it turned out, was playing the long game. She knew better than anybody that Stax’s magic wasn’t in the building’s walls, but in the people who walked its halls. Now, nearly three and a half decades after the original building bit the dust, those faithfully reconstructed walls are celebrating their 20th year of being peopled again, animated by the same spirit that made Stax unique in the first place. On the eve of a 20th anniversary gala on April 29th, Parker notes that the creation of the Stax Museum of American Soul Music benefited from “the things that happen when people are working together. Allowing their creativity to take over, in the spirit of cooperation.”

Or, as executive director Jeff Kollath says of the Stax Museum now, “This is such a people-driven endeavor. And this is a Memphis people-driven endeavor.”

Carla Thomas and Al Jackson Jr. (Photo: Courtesy Stax Museum of American Soul Music)

The Birth of the Soulsville Foundation

The campus built around the Soulsville Foundation, under which the museum, the Stax Music Academy, and the Soulsville Charter School operate, is striking in just how closely it resembles Parker’s original vision. Called to protest the building’s demolition or to invest in a Stax-themed nightclub on Beale Street, Parker instead asked, “What’s wrong with a museum and a companion school of some sort, an academy or a performing arts center?” She recalls telling other parties, “I’d like for people to study and preserve and promote what we did. And pass it on, with an educational component and a museum that people could come and see.”

By the early ’90s, the working group sharing Parker’s vision called itself CISUM, reverse-spelling the word at the center of it all, having architectural renderings made and securing a license to use the Stax name for some 20 years. Nothing came of that, but by the decade’s end, Sherman Willmott of Shangri-La Records had started a new nonprofit, Ewarton, using letters from the names of Stax’s co-founders, Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton, that had not been used when “Stax” was coined.

After years of false starts, Parker recalls, “What I said to them was, ‘It’s about doing the right thing, and it’s about damn time! So count me in.’ And that was where we started. Sherman and I worked together, and he was busy procuring artifacts from everywhere and anywhere. And a curator, he was not! But nevertheless, he had the passion and the vision and he was making hay while the sun was shining.”

And, Parker’s lack of interest in the old building notwithstanding, the original lot on McLemore Avenue was a prime concern. “We felt very strongly that success rested on us getting the original site back. There’s something spiritual about that place, I’m telling you. It wasn’t in that raggedy building. It was a sense of place. A sense of place.”

Soul Comes Home

That in turn led to a change in priorities. “We were driven by building the Stax Museum of American Soul Music. But then I became reaquainted with that community and realized how that area had decayed after Stax was closed. That area had deteriorated beyond recognition. People didn’t give a damn because they felt that they had been thrown away and that nobody cared. So it was good that the board decided to switch horses, and you know what we finished and cut the ribbon on first? The Stax Music Academy. That was opened a year before the museum.”

Meanwhile, as Ewarton became the Soulsville Foundation, seeing a new museum facility take shape according to the blueprints of Stax Records’ original home was emotional for many. “Every day until that museum was opened, I walked from the front door to the back door of that place,” says Parker, “and the day that I walked through there and didn’t cry, I knew we had achieved what we were trying to do. By that time I was too tired; I was all cried out! It was an emotional thing, seeing it come alive.”

True to the Stax spirit, that also meant reuniting the people who’d made the label what it was. As befitting a people-driven enterprise, Parker was the ideal recruiter. “One of my responsibilities at Stax Records had been artist relations. And as the publicist, I was acquainted with all of them in some way. I was connected,” she says. But she found that it wasn’t as straightforward as she’d hoped. “I focused on galvanizing the Stax family. But I got mixed responses. Some of us left there bitter. People who were essentially told to go to hell, with nobody ever saying, ‘Thank you.’ Some of us left there with all kinds of damn baggage — baggage that I’m still finding out about today.”

Nonetheless, most of them were moved by the finished space. Touring the museum with his extended family, bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn enthused that everything looked the same but now had air conditioning (the original space had none). “After it opened, Eddie Floyd told me, ‘I went through there 12 times.’ They were ecstatic,” says Parker. “It was tangible evidence of Memphians finally celebrating what we thought was great and wonderful.” The greatest celebration was not the ribbon cutting on May 2, 2003, but the concert at the Orpheum Theatre anticipating it. Dubbed Soul Comes Home, the Stax and Memphis music reunion concert (featured on this week’s cover) included Isaac Hayes, Booker T. & the MGs, Mavis Staples, the Rance Allen Group, Jean Knight, Eddie Floyd, William Bell, Carla Thomas, Ann Peebles, Al Green, Jimmie Vaughan, and other luminaries.

William Bell, Johnnie Taylor, and Carla Thomas (Photo: Courtesy Stax Museum of American Soul Music)

Back to the Future

Now, 20 years later, it’s impossible to imagine the Soulsville neighborhood without the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, the Stax Music Academy, or the Soulsville Charter School. The museum alone has hosted enough art exhibits, book discussions, and music events to keep it at the forefront of ever-evolving scholarship on American soul music. But over time, the exhibits themselves have not evolved much — until now.

The 20-year mark has inspired some long-overdue makeovers to the museum this year. As Jeff Kollath points out, “The public isn’t really aware how much our collection has grown in the last five to 10 years. We see it because our shelves are full, and we’re always connecting with new objects and new materials in the archives. [Collections manager/archivist] Leila Hamdan is doing a lot of organizing and getting a better handle on some of our documents.”

Now some of that will see the light of day, but, Kollath stresses, “This isn’t an expansion. We’re prettying the place up and changing some things out for the first time in 20 years. And we’ll have a rolling, gradual opening of new exhibits. We’ll be correcting errors, especially where they have birth and death dates. Some things have aged out. And we’ll include more Memphis history: how Stax sprang up in this city, and what about this city made that happen? The big thing is relating the end of Stax Records as accurately and as engagingly as possible. Currently, the end of Stax is on three oval panels with no photographs; it’s a book on a wall. And it’s not totally accurate, either. People want to say Stax was dead, but it never really died. Obviously we’re the legacy of that.”

Retelling the story of Stax Records’ latter days will also include a heightened focus on the political activism of the era. “We started looking at that side of Stax Records in 2018 with the ‘Give a Damn’ exhibition we did at Crosstown Arts,” says Kollath. “That was built around activism at Stax. Artists felt more compelled to speak out, to act, and became more involved in the community here in Memphis, and in the case of Isaac Hayes becoming internationally involved in charitable pursuits. That peaked with future presidential candidate Jesse Jackson acting as Isaac Hayes’ hype man at the WattStax festival. There’s all these reminders of the cultural and political impact of Stax that I don’t think are addressed enough.” Look for more of that, not to mention Rufus Thomas’ blazing-hot pink hot pants, as this anniversary year progresses.

The Night Train and the Church

Having duly recognized the sociopolitical impact of Stax, it should be noted that the prevailing mood at the Soulsville Foundation these days is more in line with those hot pants: “Let’s party!” This museum does not take the launch of its third decade lightly, and from 7 p.m. till midnight on April 29th, its walls will witness some serious celebrations. As Soulsville Foundation president and CEO Pat Mitchell Worley says, “The party itself is a trip through Black music. That’s why we call it the Night Train Gala. It reflects how important the train has been historically for African Americans, as far as travel, especially in the South. It’s how the Chicago Defender was delivered to the South, when Pullman porters would give copies of the Defender to people who wanted news that was important to African Americans. The trains went through the South and then up North, mirroring the map of how music was moving.”

Pat Mitchell Worley (Photo: (Photo: Courtesy Stax Museum of American Soul Music)

Such an implied journey, complete with signature drinks and Pullman porters in each room, will underscore the degree to which the Stax Museum is indeed representative of all American soul music, as party patrons move through different stages in the evolution of Black music. “We’re owning that we’re the global capital of soul,” says Mitchell Worley. “The event will start with Shardé Thomas’ Rising Stars Fife & Drum Band to give that nod to Mississippi, and then we’ll move to jazz with Joyce Cobb and then on to a capella doo-wop. Then we’ll come to the sweet soul music, with our Stax Music Academy Alumni Band performing with special guests. A couple of Stax artists will jump up for a song or two. That’s going to be fun! From there we’ll go into hip-hop ciphering and spoken word, in recognition of those styles’ place in the story of African Americans. It’s an important piece because from the ciphering came rap. So we’ll end with the hip-hop piece and a multiple DJ battle focused on all the Stax songs that have been sampled. It’ll be interactive, so if people know the song that was sampled, they can go put it up on the board. Sort of like the Soul Train board!”

Yet as the party righteously rages on, patrons would do well to remember the quiet, beating heart at the center of the Soulsville Foundation, embodied in the first thing that most patrons see when entering the museum: a little country church, fully reconstructed, that represents both Stax’s musical roots and its people-centered mission. In this case, it’s a direct expression of Deanie Parker’s people. “My grandparents were buried on a lot at Hooper’s Chapel A.M.E. Church in Duncan, Mississippi,” she says. “It was the first church I ever attended in my life. One weekend when I took my mother down, over 20 years ago, she looked at the church and said, ‘I’m afraid that one day lightning is going to strike this church, and I don’t know if I could bear to see it burn. I’d almost rather tear it down.’ And I thought to myself, ‘What a wonderful opportunity it could be if we could dismantle this church, move it to Memphis, reassemble it so that it would fit into that Stax museum, and serve as a means of helping people appreciate the roots of soul music.’”

That church still stands in the heart of Soulsville today, much as Parker’s original dream stands in the form of the museum, the music academy, and the charter school. “Those three programs are dynamic and make the Soulsville campus and foundation distinctly different from any other in the world,” she says with more than a little pride. “Because we’re doing exactly what I dreamt we should do the first time I had an opportunity to communicate my vision: to showcase and preserve the incredible contributions of Stax Records, and to pass on and teach that style of music. And most importantly, we’re doing something for the children.”

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We Recommend

“Solid Gold Soul” Exhibit Opens at Stax

Photo: Claire James, courtesy of Stax Museum
The new exhibit features the Bob Abrahamian Collection of more than 35,000 rare records.

The Stax Museum has a huge collection of funk and soul music items from the ’60s and ’70s. On Friday, 926 — the Stax Music Academy Alumni Band — is helping to celebrate the opening of a new and exciting temporary exhibit, “Solid Gold Soul: The Best of the Rest from the Stax Museum.”

The exhibit collection includes never-before-seen staff favorite objects, including rare photographs of Otis Redding performing in Memphis, stage costumes worn by members of Funkadelic and the TSU Toronadoes, and rare vinyl records and photographs from the recently acquired Bob Abrahamian Collection. Each artifact tells a story about the person who used, wore, or played it.

To add to the celebration, local performers will share the stage with 926. There will be family-friendly games and activities, local food trucks, back-to-school giveaways, arts and crafts activities designed by the Stax Museum, informational booths, a Stax Museum sidewalk sale, and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines for those who qualify.

“This is a way for the Soulsville Foundation to re-engage with the community after the past year-plus of closing temporarily at various times, canceling most in-person events, and many of us living in isolation,” says Soulsville Foundation Communications Director Tim Sampson. “We hope this will be a fun, entertaining, informative, and productive event that will finally allow us to all come together in person.” 

As an added bonus, the Stax Museum will be open and offer free admission to all attendees during the celebration. That’s solid. 

Solid Gold Soulsville: A Celebration of the Music and Community at the Global Capital of Soul, Stax Museum of American Soul Music, 926 E. McLemore, Friday, Aug. 6, 6-8 p.m., free.

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Cover Feature News

Knock On Wood! Eddie Floyd on Music, Life, and His New Book

CREDIT: Courtesy of Eddie Floyd

Eddie Floyd’s attitude is contagious. After speaking with him for over an hour, what stuck with me most was the laughter. It was a perfect foil to the doldrums of days without direction, to the dread of disease that colors all our lives now. The same good humor comes through in his voice, on such iconic tracks as “Knock On Wood,” “I’ve Never Found a Girl (To Love Me Like You Do),” and other stone classics from his time with Stax Records. As of this week, that humor can also be found in his new autobiography, Knock! Knock! Knock! On Wood: My Life in Soul (BMG, 302 pages), penned by Floyd and author Tony Fletcher.

Other salutary effects of the book spring from this good-natured disposition. His lack of grasping materialism is especially refreshing in these days of chicanery and corruption. “I got a badass Lincoln I bought with cash,” he writes in the final chapter, “Eddie’s Gone Shagging.” “But I ain’t driven it in eight years because I like to drive a truck! And people say, ‘Yeah but you could be more.’ And I always ask them, ‘What is more? … I’m happy with exactly what I’ve got.”

A corollary to this is his acknowledgement of those who’ve helped him. For this is an autobiography peppered with quotes from others — colleagues and collaborators like Steve Cropper, Booker T. Jones, Al Bell, and Carla Thomas. As he told me, “I thought, would it be okay if I did a book? I don’t know if I’m worthy of a book, but if I did one, it’s gotta be on the positive. And so Tony Fletcher, who helped me put it together, he got the names of all the different people in Memphis, and they were willing to be in the book and talk. And I didn’t know all these people felt this way about me. I’ve got so many people I’ve gotta thank for that.”

Still, as illuminating as his new book may be, I wasn’t prepared for the additional revelations and insights that came out as he spoke to me from his home in Alabama, near his hometown of Montgomery. He fleshed out the book’s details with still more observations on his life: learning music at Alabama’s Mount Meigs juvenile correctional center, his early days with R&B legends The Falcons in Detroit, his Stax years, and more. Through all these chapters run the common threads of writing and singing songs, which he continues to do to this day, a songwriter’s songwriter, no matter where he may find himself.

Courtesy of Eddie Floyd

Eddie Floyd was recognized on the Beale Street Brass Note Walk of Fame in 2016.

Memphis Flyer: You’ve moved around some, I’d say.

Eddie Floyd: Yeah, pretty much all my life. I started out in Detroit, Michigan, at 13 years old. And I wanted to be in a doo-wop group back during that time, so I formed the group The Falcons at 16 years old. I’ve been traveling ever since. I did record in Detroit with The Falcons. And then went on to Washington, D.C., where I met Alvertis Isbell [aka Al Bell], a disc jockey who was from Memphis. Carla Thomas was there, going to Howard University. And we kinda got together. Well, I was writing songs all the time, and I realized that Alvertis wrote songs also, so we got a chance to write a couple of songs for Carla during that time, when I first met her. That was my introduction to Memphis.

How much writing did you do with the Falcons?

Well, the two hits were by Lance Finnie and Willie Schofield. Schofield was the bass singer. He played piano; Lance Finnie played guitar. So they were the two to write the two hits that we had, “You’re So Fine” and “I Found a Love.” But there are quite a few ballads that I wrote. I wrote mostly all of the songs, if you could go back to the albums. But didn’t write the hits.

Is that you singing on “Oh Baby”? With that nice falsetto? That’s an amazing performance.

Yeah, that’s basically what I wanted to do. Joe Stubbs, his voice was quite different, and he did the real uptempos. Wilson Pickett came into the group after Joe left, and did “I Found a Love,” which was a ballad. Ballads were always my favorite. I liked the falsetto during that particular time, especially with your doo-wop groups. But as far as actually learning how to sing, I learned all registers, and I could sing all registers. I could sing the deep bass, or I could go all the way up to soprano.

You write that you owe a lot to the music director at Mount Meigs.

Mount Meigs Industrial School, where I was at for three years, Mr. Arthur Wilmer was the music instructor. He also had a jazz band during that time, the Cherokees, locally in Alabama. And he taught me theory, as far as all the registers to sing. And we had a choir. I sung second tenor, sometimes first. During the rehearsals, we had girls in the group also. I would always sing along with them, too. And that’s been my success as far as writing songs, and when I put a song together: I can hear all the parts that I actually wanna put in there. And actually sing them.

But of course, I went off to Memphis with Al Bell to do Carla Thomas’ two songs, “Stop! Look at What You’re Doing” and one called “Comfort Me.” I didn’t get the chance to do backgrounds behind them, but I would have been ready [laughs].

You write about not having grown up singing in church, like so many soul artists, but it seems that Mount Meigs choir had a lot of the that gospel element. Is that correct?

Oh, definitely. Of course we did classical songs also, with Mr. Wilmer, because he was a jazz band leader. And he would give us different classical songs, too. Not necessarily gospel songs. But, as a child, back earlier in Detroit, I used to go to the theater and see Lena Horne, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Billy Eckstine, all of ’em. And really when I write, it may come out that way. I mean, I don’t like one particular style of music. What comes to my mind is what I write.

I guess that keeps things fresh.

Yeah, well, I just like the challenge [laughs]. You know — some time uptown, some time downtown. The way I feel about it. And going to Memphis, well hey, the R&B scene. The Falcons, they said we were the first R&B group, basically. And so it kinda fit when I went to Memphis, because it had that R&B sound, and I was able to, right away, come up with different songs. I wrote with Steve Cropper first, you know, and then on to Booker T. And Al Bell, we wrote in Washington, D.C., and in Memphis. We did one good tune, “I’ve Never Found a Girl,” along with Booker, which was a good ballad also. So there I was still in ballads. And then I did “California Girl” with Booker also. But with Steve, we kinda went uptempo, and we came up with quite a few uptempo songs.

Courtesy of Eddie Floyd

Eddie Floyd (left), Myrlie Evers-Williams, and William Bell at the Medgar Evers Memorial Festival in 1973

Very versatile! You write that in the days of the Falcons, you and the others didn’t think about hits, you just wanted a good song, a good track.

Oh yeah, we never spoke that way, as far as what was gonna be a hit. That was the beginning of an era of music, and everybody was involved. Everybody was into it and they all just wanted to write a song. We would actually see some of the songs become hits, but still didn’t speak of it that way. Like, ‘Oh wow, he’s got a hit, this number [on the charts].’ Well, we never would know what our number was, No. 2, No. 1, anything like that. That was years later. But going down to Memphis, everything changed. When we wrote a song, we did say ‘that’s a hit!’ many, many, times in the studio on McLemore Street. We knew when we were putting the song together. We knew. Everybody could feel it. And I guess that’s why it really did work.

Even when the people at Stax were conscious of hits, it seems like creating a song that stood on its own was the main thing.

Yeah, well, this is true. Everybody contributed to each song, no matter what song it was. Steve [Cropper] and I brought “Knock On Wood” in, and as we introduced it to the MGs, Donald Duck Dunn played this little bass line, and we didn’t tell him what to play. He played his own thing. I would say it wouldn’t have been a hit unless Al Jackson wanted to put a break in that particular song. He said, ‘Wait just a minute, let me put in a little stomp!’ ‘I better knock,’ boom boom boom boom. Stop. ‘On wood.’ Back to the rhythm. I remember Isaac Hayes in that particular song played the little bridge part of it. And we had never heard a bridge like that before [laughs].

I love your description of that recording and all the details of the teamwork that made it gel.

Well, that was true for just about every writer [at Stax]. Every song was really a family affair. If I could put it that way. Everybody contributed to every song, it didn’t make any difference. Even backgrounds. I would sing on somebody else’s song, if I’m there at the studio at the time. And they would do the same thing for me.

Does it still feel like a family when Stax folks get together?

Yeah! It’s just unfortunate that we’ve lost so many of our family members. But of course, Booker T., myself, William Bell, Deanie Parker, maybe Mavis Staples when she comes, and definitely Carla Thomas, ’cause she’s my favorite. And the groups there, too. The Temprees and others. Not leaving them out! When I first came to Memphis, and coming from a doo-wop group, I was actually more involved with those groups, because they were groups.

Like the Mad Lads?

Yeah! My favorite. Yeah, all of them.

It’s interesting that you were one of the first to embrace reggae, during the Stax years. Like that track you recorded with Byron Lee and his band, in 1971.

The reggae song? “Baby Lay Your Head Down (Gently on My Bed).” Actually, we went down to Kingston — Al Bell, Jim Stewart, and the MGs. They were doing a distributing deal. We knew about all the guys over there playing the music, too. Of course, we were gonna meet a lot of ’em. Byron Lee, who was the biggest music there at that time, we went to his studio. And actually, none of the MGs played on that record at that time. We wanted to get the guys from Kingston to play it, you know? Little guitar player come down the road, and he don’t even have a case for his guitar. He’s got it on his shoulder, walking. But when he got in the studio and started playing, man! Wow. So we come up with two or three songs and got back to Memphis, and then the MGs did the overdubs on those songs. I have three or four records that have probably never been hits over here, one called “Consider Me,” but in the islands, man, they’ve been No. 1 for over 30 years at least. Every time I go down there it’s just amazing.

It’s a beautiful thing, these little regional markets where you can have a hit, like the Carolina beach scene you write about, or Jamaica. Or the UK, where so many songs have taken on a new life.

Oh yeah. And Northern Soul in England. They’ll listen right away. And I know all the fields. That’s the way I write, too. Sometimes I’ll be thinking about them also. Definitely Northern Soul. You can do different styles, if you have an idea. ‘Cause they’re open-minded there! If it’s got a groove, they’ll get into it. You can introduce some new things to ’em, so they’ll be eager for new grooves. It’s an amazing area.

I was wondering how well some of your more recent records have done in some of these alternative scenes, like Northern Soul. Has your recent stuff had an impact?

I could write a song 30 years ago and then get an idea today, and it might sound like the one that was 30 years ago. I just keep that same concept, and that’s the way it comes out with me when I write. I’m beginning to find that a lot of the young kids are beginning to pick up a lot of my songs. “I’ve Never Found a Girl (To Love Me Like You Do)” and “Big Bird.” Those are two where I’ve had many young groups hit me up and say, ‘Listen to our version. We’re gonna put it out.’ [laughs] Well, you’re gonna have to contact some people to make sure it’s legal! And a couple actually took off.

You were here for the groundbreaking of the Stax Music Academy 20 years ago and have been closely associated with them. Do you get to Memphis often?

I’m in Memphis all the time. And I’ll get with different artists. Lester Snell is my favorite keyboard man; he was with Isaac [Hayes]. I was there three weeks ago and did a song for the Blues Brothers Band in New York. Dan Aykroyd’s band. “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love.” I went in with Lester and put the vocal down. Lester played the whole track, and I came back home and did a video of it, sent it to the Blues Brothers, and they’re at the moment putting all the other guys on the video. They wanted to do something for the virus, you know, to kinda inspire people and all. So that all came out of Memphis.

I spent a lot of time on the road with the Blues Brothers and Steve [Cropper]. One time we were in Canada doing a thing about Stax, and Steve invited me to come out and be a special guest, and it ended up being 22 years [laughs]. It was all right with me. It was family!

At 83, it seems you aren’t slowing down a bit. You released an album on the revived Stax label in 2008, and you still work with the Blues Brothers Band. What’s the future have in store?

There’s other stuff I did with Lester that will come out under my name. You know, I’ve played with him so many years. Like I said, I never really stopped, so, one more! Let’s try one more album. Then there’s Mike Stewart, who used to be in Atlanta with William Bell but he’s now in Nashville. I’ll go up to his place and do part of that same album. It just all depends on this virus. But at least we got each other! [laughs] Yeah, we have. I will never stop the music. I’ll put it to you this way, the way I tell everybody: I’ll rock ’til I drop. That’s it.

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Music Music Blog

Vaneese Thomas Brings It All Back Home, With Show, New Album

Vaneese Thomas

Though she’s a longtime resident of New York, Vaneese Thomas has Memphis deep in her soul. So her show at Lafayette’s Music Room tonight has added significance. As the youngest daughter of Rufus Thomas, she had a ringside seat for the Stax circus in the label’s heyday, and she saw her older siblings, “Memphis Queen” Carla Thomas and keyboardist and producer Marvell Thomas, thrive there. Vaneese, on the other hand, left Memphis for college, where she cultivated her own style, and a New York-based career. Her self-titled debut album spawned the Top 20 US R&B singles “Let’s Talk It Over” and “(I Wanna Get) Close To You” in 1987.

She’s covered a lot of stylistic ground since then, most recently with albums grounded in the blues. But her latest album, Down Yonder, is a more eclectic slice of classic soul. Thomas is the project’s co-producer and either wrote or co-wrote all of its twelve tracks. Joining her are: Shawn Pelton on drums and percussion; Paul Adamy, Conrad Korsch and Will Lee on bass; Al Arlo on acoustic and electric guitars; Thomas’ husband and the disc’s co-producer, Wayne Warnecke, on dobro and percussion; Tash Neal on dobro and electric guitar; Robbie Kondor on keyboards and organ; Charles Hodges and Paul Mariconda on organ; Marc Franklin on trumpet; Tim Ouimette on trumpet and flugelhorn; Lannie McMillan and Ken Geoffree on tenor saxophone; Kirk Smothers and Rick Kriska on baritone saxophone; Katie Jacoby on violin; and, last but not least, sister Carla Thomas and Berneta Miles on background vocals; and Kevin Bacon on lead vocals.

Speaking with Thomas recently about her upcoming show, I found it has a regional focus that resonates with Memphis as much as any of her other blues records.

Memphis Flyer: How did this new album come about?

Vaneese Thomas: Well, I mentioned it in the spring, and my husband was like, Okay, here we go again…But I’m so happy with the sound of it. I think it’s the best material I’ve ever written. It’s good story telling.

In your most recent albums, you’ve been exploring the straight up blues, but this sounds like a dynamite classic soul record.

I’ve been calling it ‘blues and beyond.’ Because, you’re right, there’s so much blues and gospel in it, but it’s a little departure from and expansion on traditional blues. Like any style of music, it has the capacity to expand, and you certainly don’t have to stick to the traditional Delta blues.

Some of the promotional material notes that “she tells stories of her Southern upbringing.” How personal are these stories?

Well, it’s not necessarily my personal experience, but certainly the experience of my Southern upbringing. For example, the story of “Ebony Man” is about African-American farmers and the difficulty they’ve had ever since post-slavery, in keeping their land. Because a lot of it was taken from them. It’s a current phenomenon as well. The New York Times just had an article about this very issue. Where ConAgra and lots of corporate farming interests have been pressuring people to give up their land. And of course, the black farmer, being at the bottom of the totem pole, has had the most difficulty over time, maintaining his property. So those are the kinds of stories I’m telling: not just my personal experience, but my Southern experience.

Wasn’t your father’s family from rural Mississippi? Did he have rural roots?

He was a baby when his family moved to Memphis, so he didn’t really know the rural experience. My mother did because she was raised on a farm in Whitehaven. But daddy was always urban. His parents moved into the city almost right after he was born.

You moved to New York when you were fairly young. You seem pretty happy there.

Oh I am. It gave me an opportunity that I would never have found here, for expanding my musical horizons. There used to be so many ways to have income streams. Playing live, doing television, touring. All the kinds of things you can do. But because television was rooted there, I got to know Paul Shaffer and Will Lee and all those guys who did TV. So I was always first call for television shows, and artists coming through town who needed singers. That sort of thing. So New York’s been very, very good to me.

And I suppose you’re always helping to bring a bit of Southern flavor to the city…

Oh, no question. ‘Cos they love that kind of background in your singing.

Edgar Mata

Carla and Vaneese Thomas

Speaking of your singing, as I listen to the new album, I’m reminded how different your voice is from Carla’s.

Oh my gosh! She has a sweeter tone, I think. It’s interesting. Our church was very straight-laced. It was not the gospel experience people expect from Memphis. We grew up in a very straight-laced Baptist church. So we sang hymns and anthems. It was very different from, say, the Pentecostal religious experience. So neither of us really had gospel as a foundation to our singing. But because we had access to the blues and big band and gospel, just being in Memphis, it certainly was a part of our experience.

Did any singers in particular have a big impact on you?

Well, it’s interesting. When I was younger, it was the British Invasion. I loved all the Beatles’ stuff. The variety of their music was a big influence on me. Because I realized you can’t be monolithic. You have to have a wide variety of musical experience to grow. So I loved the Beatles.  I was always playing and singing, but when I got to college, I began to play and sing at the same time more often, for concerts. And Elton John was a tremendous influence on my playing and writing style.

You were playing piano?

Yes, piano. And if you listen to “Down Yonder,” not only is that song a little gospel-y at the end, but at the beginning it’s very Elton John, like “Your Song” or “Tiny Dancer.” That kinda thing. So if you combine all that with other influences like the Staple Singers and Otis Clay and Al Green, you’ve got a tremendous well to draw from.

You have quite a band to back up your singing.

Oh yes! I am so pleased with the guys that played, both in New York and here. In fact, the horn players on the album are playing with me at Lafayette’s. All three of them. Then in New York, one of the best drummers ever is Shawn Pelton. This is right in his wheelhouse. And Will Lee can play anything. He’s just multi talented, from blues to Jazz. And Robby Kondor used to be Carole King’s son-in-law, so I’ve known Robby for years. And he plays gospel as well as anybody I’ve heard. It’s sort of like a Spooner Oldham kind of vibe. These cats are really multifacted. And when I came down here to do some overdubs, I got Marc Franklin to do my horn arrangements. He just sits in it so great. And Lannie McMillan and Kirk Smothers. And my sister sang background on a few songs, and my friend Berneta. So it’s just the best of all worlds.

Where did you record when you worked here?

At Royal Studios, of course! If the walls could talk… And Boo Mitchell was the engineer, so I had all my peeps with me. 
Courtesy of Stax Museum of American Soul Music

Back: Mr. & Mrs. Marvell Thomas, Vaneese Thomas; Front: Carla, Lorene, and Rufus Thomas

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Music Music Blog

Revolve-Her: Booker T. Tribute Band The MD’s Re-imagine Beatles History

The MD’s

Whether it’s The Man in the High Castle or the upcoming For All Mankind, alternative histories are capturing something deep in our psyche right now. “If only a few things had been different, how might history have unfolded?” But the logic of such re-imaginings has thus far not been applied to music much — until now. Leave it to the MD’s, Memphis’ own combo featuring the music of Booker T. and the MG’s, to go there.

In a multimedia tour de force that the band has been honing for months, they’ll set out this Friday to imagine just what it might have sounded like if the Stax house band, who famously re-interpreted The Beatles’ Abbey Road on their album McLemore Avenue, had somehow given that treatment to Revolver four years earlier. 

I spoke with MD’s bassist and arranger Landon Moore to get an inkling of what the audience might expect, and found it will be a lot more than I could have imagined.

Memphis Flyer: What was the genesis of this idea?

Landon Moore: I guess it started when we decided to do McLemore Avenue as a show. It was a fun record to learn, and it definitely gave us insight into how they approached arranging things: where they took liberties, how they chose to do the medleys, and songs they decided to leave off. For a long time the MD’s have wanted to do something ‘original.’ So we thought, you know, McLemore Avenue went over well, so let’s just do Revolver. And there really was a chance that Revolver could have been recorded in Memphis. It’s been documented: Brian Epstein was here in March 1st of 1966. He was staying out east and toured Stax with Steve Cropper and Jim Stewart.

So in covering Revolver, we’re essentially going to do it the same way McLemore Avenue was done. We took liberties, there’re medleys and stand-alones. But predicting what the MG’s would have done is difficult. When listening to the version of “Eleanor Rigby” that they actually did … Well, if I was asked to come up with something I thought they would have done, I never would have come up with that. I never would have thought of it. So we took everything that they were doing from 1966-68 and said, ‘Let’s pull rhythmic elements and tones from these songs, and let’s force this square peg of Beatles songs into this triangle that is Booker T. and the MG’s.’ What we got was something very interesting. We’d say, ‘This is the groove, this is the bass line, and you have to make this into “And Your Bird Can Sing.”‘ Then you’re left with, ‘Whoa! That’s interesting!’ I would study little sections where it’s just All Jackson, Jr. playing and say, ‘I’m going to force “Tic Tac Toe,” off the MG’s second record, to be “Tomorrow Never Knows.”‘

So there were a lot of surprises. What was the biggest?

The most interesting thing that came out of the whole process was, we didn’t want to just have it be music. So what we’ll have Friday is an interactive documentary about ‘what happened in Memphis when the Beatles recorded Revolver at Stax.’ It’s this Ken Burns-style documentary that follows Brian Epstein’s trip, which turns out to be very successful!

The Beatles actually come here for chunks of time, culminating at the end of July 1966, right before they’re about to release Revolver. It imagines what the Beatles did in Memphis, how they interacted with the MG’s. Why Booker T. and the MG’s, in 1966, decided to record Revolver, an instrumental version to be released on Stax. And how the biggest band in Memphis and the biggest band in the world both mingled and clashed. So we will be performing the role of Booker T. and the MGs, as they arrange this record. Which they decide to call Revolve-Her.

So that is what October 4th is all about. And of course, through it, we’ll be paying tribute to the band that we’ve been paying tribute to this entire time.

It sounds like you’ll be alternating between live performance segments and portions of this documentary.

Yes, it will be back and forth. There’ll be a segment up front that sets everything up. And the audience will be surprised at some of the photos featured, let’s just leave it at that. The Beatles are unaware that the MG’s are arranging a version of the record they are currently writing in Studio A of Stax. Booker T. and the MG’s are doing this in secret, in the back, in the demo studio at Stax, while the Beatles are recording. And there’s this whole elaborate plan that Cropper comes up with, of ways to get these chords. He’s essentially watching Lennon and Harrison’s hands, and then delivering that information to the demo studio. But then Al Jackson, Jr. books a secret show at Club Paradise, under the name the MD’s. John Lennon finds out about it, and makes someone take them to Club Paradise. And that’s where the first medley happens … 

Just imagine this ‘letter from George Harrison’ about the Fabs recording at Stax in 1966

Hear the MD’s perform their interpretations of Revolver live, mixed with their faux-documentary, at the Kemmons Wilson Family Stage at Crosstown Theater, Friday, October 4th. Doors at 7:30 p.m., show at 8 p.m. $20

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Music Music Blog

Tracks With Memphis Roots Added to National Recording Registry

CREDIT: Alex Greene

Alex Greene

Library of Congress

Score another one for the hometown team, as Memphis-related recordings are again added to the Library of Congress’ (LOC) National Recording Registry.

Since 2002, the institution has selected recordings — dating back over a century — that they deem worthy of special recognition and preservation. These recordings, according to the LOC website, showcase “the range and diversity of American recorded sound heritage in order to increase preservation awareness. The diversity of nominations received highlights the richness of the nation’s audio legacy and underscores the importance of assuring the long-term preservation of that legacy for future generations.”

While fifty per year were originally selected, that number dropped to 25 in 2006. Each year’s announcement indicates titles nominated in the previous year, making the recorded works announced today the selections for 2018. Selections may be entire LPs, archival field recordings, or singles

Memphis native Maurice White co-wrote one of the newly recognized songs, the smash single “September,” released by his band Earth, Wind & Fire in November of 1978.  Another recognized single, Sam & Dave’s “Soul Man,” needs no introduction to Memphis music fans. Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline,” recorded at Memphis’ American Sound Studio in 1969, also was given a nod, as was “Memphis Blues” by W.C. Handy, as recorded by the Victor Military Band.

Tracks With Memphis Roots Added to National Recording Registry

Recordings with Memphis connections added to the registry in past years have included:

  • Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five Sessions (including Memphis native Lil’ Hardin Armstrong).
  • Elvis Presley’s Sun Recording Sessions
  • Aretha Franklin’s “Respect”
  • Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)”
  • Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ on”
  • B. B. King’s Live at the Regal
  • Howlin’ Wolf’s “Smokestack Lightnin'”
  • Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes”
  • Booker T & the MGs’ “Green Onions”
  • Love’s Forever Changes (led by Memphis native Arthur Lee)
  • Isaac Hayes’ Shaft
  • Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour” (recorded at Stax, co-written by Steve Cropper).
  • Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together”

Many of the titles have accompanying essays explaining their history and significance. Memphis producer/engineer/musician Scott Bomar contributed the essay for “Green Onions.” The 2018 additions do not yet have essays posted. 

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Music Music Blog

Jim Stewart Makes a Rare Appearance at Stax, With Special Donation in Hand

CREDIT: api photographers

api photographers

Estelle Axton & Jim Stewart

This Wednesday, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music will host a rare visit by the label’s original co-founder, who will present a rare piece of memorabilia to the museum, pay honor to alumni of the Stax Music Academy, and tell tales of the label’s early days. Jim Stewart, who lives in Memphis to this day, albeit with a low profile, is a spry 87, which perhaps accounts for his reticence with the media. I spoke with the museum’s executive director, Jeff Kollath, about the events scheduled for the evening and how Stewart views his legacy.

Memphis Flyer: It must be a big deal for Jim Stewart to return to Stax.

Jeff Kollath: Yeah, I think so. He’s attended Stax Music Academy concerts before, so he’s obviously incredibly supportive of what we’re doing. But I think the thing he’s most proud of, in terms of legacy, is what the Stax Music Academy does. I think he sees what those kids are doing as an extension of the type of things that he and his sister [Estelle Axton]  and [onetime executive vice president] Al Bell were trying to accomplish by giving young people in Memphis opportunities fifty-plus years ago. Obviously it’s in a formal educational setting now, as opposed to running a recording studio. But for us, the legacy he created with his sister and Mr. Bell, was one of espousing corporate social responsibility before anybody knew what corporate social responsibility was. And it’s totally true. In terms of enmeshing yourself in a community, being a part of that community, working with the community, supporting that community, and especially for two relative outsiders to come to South Memphis and do that 58 years ago, is pretty remarkable. Whenever he’s been around, that’s the part that always strikes me. When he sees the kids, it’s coming full circle.

It’s only gaining momentum as many years’ worth of students go on to play music.

Yeah, some of ’em aren’t kids anymore. Some of them are full-fledged adults. The Academy started before the museum did, back in 2000. Some of these kids are well into their thirties now. But I think music is just a means to an end. It’s part of the process. And I think the great youth development work that everyone at the Academy does, making informed, engaged, empathetic citizens, is just as much of a testament to Academy graduates as how great they are as musicians.

So they’ll be playing tomorrow night, too.

Yeah. The Stax Music Academy Alumni Band will be playing, and then John Paul Keith is going to play a couple songs from the early Satellite Records catalog, which he did for us during our 60th anniversary stuff last March. I think he’ll do “Blue Roses,” which is appropriate, because that’s the only song that Mr. Stewart has a songwriting credit for, and that was the very first single out on Satellite. I don’t know the other song he’s gonna do. He’ll do something else from the early, early days, from when Mr. Stewart used his wife’s uncle’s garage on the north side of Memphis. And then Krista Wroten is going to play a fiddle tune, since obviously Mr. Stewart got his start as a fiddle player. That was how his love of music really began, playing fiddle around West Tennessee, as Red Stewart and the Tennessee Cotton Pickers.

Jim Stewart Makes a Rare Appearance at Stax, With Special Donation in Hand

Will there be an open discussion?

Yeah, there’ll be some things at the start of the event, then we’ll do some talking, some music, and then Mr. Stewart and [onetime Soulsville Foundation President and former Stax employee] Deanie Parker will have a conversation. And then we’ll go into the rest of the music for the night. It’ll be a nice program. Hopefully some folks will hear some stories. It’ll be a good chance for former Stax employees and musicians to get together and see each other again. There’ll be a few folks floating around.

And he’ll also unveil the new bit of memorabilia that he’s donating to the museum?

Yes, we’ll do that at the start. That’s a surprise, we can’t tell you about that. But we’re pretty excited about it. We really wanna encourage folks to donate. If they’ve got it, share it with us and the world. We’ve been around 15 years, and we’ve got a lot of great stuff out, but we’ve got room for more. Jeff Dunn donated his dad [Duck Dunn’s] jacket that he’s carrying on the cover of [Booker T & the MGs album] McLemore Avenue. He donated that last summer when we did an event for the recent Duck Dunn book. We’re gonna put the McLemore Avenue jacket out on display this fall. 

McLemore Avenue, by Booker T & the MGs

An Evening to Remember, Wednesday, July 25th, 6-8 pm: a special celebration during which Satellite/Stax Records founder Jim Stewart will present the Stax Museum with a very special donation of memorabilia. Live music by the Stax Music Academy Alumni Band, John Paul Keith, and Krista Wroten. Free and open to the public. Doors open at 5:45 p.m.

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Cover Feature News

The Thomas Sisters: We Are Family

CREDIT: Courtesy of Stax Museum of American Soul Music

In February, the Memphis Housing Authority took steps to remove the last dwellers from the city’s oldest public housing project, Foote Homes. Though many had left already, and though carcinogens stained the surrounding soil, some longtime residents were reluctant to go. Perhaps they still had vivid memories of a time when Foote Homes was at the center of a thriving neighborhood culture in South Memphis.

Some may have even known the place soon after it was built in 1941, when a young couple, Rufus and Lorene Thomas, moved in to start a family with their young son, Marvell. When daughter Carla was born a year later, they had little inkling that the Thomas family was just beginning, or that the father, son, daughter, and daughter-to-come would one day become stars on a global scale.

Rufus was a natural showman, having proven himself on the road with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and the Royal American troupe, tap dancing, scat singing, and learning how to work a crowd. Perhaps it seemed he was leaving that life behind for good when he and Lorene settled at Foote Homes, but the call of the stage still rang in his ears.

Before long, he was back in touch with his old history teacher from Booker T. Washington High School, Nat D. Williams, a learned writer and entertainer — and a pillar of the community. Williams had been hosting a popular Amateur Show on Beale Street, and when he left, Rufus stepped in to replace him.

He would end up staying for over a decade, helping to launch the careers of B.B. King, Bobby “Blue” Bland, and local jazz stalwart Herman Green, among others. From there he would become a renowned deejay and recording artist, of course, but this track record can obscure the fact that he was also, first and foremost, a family man.

Courtesy of Stax Museum of American Soul Music

Back: Mr. & Mrs. Marvell Thomas, Vaneese Thomas; Front: Carla, Lorene, and Rufus Thomas

To learn a bit more about the spirit of the Thomas family, which would ultimately nurture the talents of siblings Marvell, Carla, and Vaneese, I made my way to that hub of African-American culture in South Memphis, the Four Way Grill. Established in 1946, just a few blocks from the Capitol Theater, the eatery fed the Thomas kids and thousands of other Memphians for generations. When the Capitol was sold and became Satellite, and then Stax Records, the Four Way was a natural hang-out for performers as they dreamed of stardom. Community leaders of all kinds flocked there, and many of their photographs grace the walls. It’s the embodiment of the community of South Memphis and a reminder that to raise families full of potential, it may not take a village. Sometimes the neighborhood will do.

When Carla and Vaneese join me, I have to pinch myself. “Gee whiz, it’s Christmas!” I think. Of course, as soon as we sit down, talk gravitates to their legendary father who, even 16 years after his death, somehow still commands the room.

Vaneese, the “youngster” of the family, wants to emphasize the musicianship of her father. “If you ever see album credits listing so and so as the arranger of a Rufus Thomas session, don’t believe it. Daddy was always right there, going to each musician, telling them their parts.” She and Carla speak a little wistfully of their parents, and of their brother Marvell, who passed away earlier this year.

And yet it’s like they’re all there with us, as Carla relives her childhood days when Rufus first began working at “The Mother Station of Negroes,” WDIA. It was the first station in the nation to feature African-American deejays, and, as with the Amateur Hour on Beale, the road there was paved by Nat D. Williams, who helped Rufus step into B.B. King’s on-air slot after King’s music took him on the road.

Despite the progressive moves the station made at the time, Rufus found himself in a bizarre, half-segregated world where the deejays of color were not allowed to actually play the records: That was left to the white “engineers.” Announcers like Rufus would pull their record selections from the shelf, log them in, and step back as the engineers spun the platters. In any case, it wasn’t the magic of the records that captivated Carla so much as the live chorus, masterminded by deejay A.C. Williams. His “Teen Town Singers,” dreamt up as a promotional foray into local high schools, became an inspiration to many an aspiring vocalist.

Courtesy of Stax Museum of American Soul Music

Carla Thomas

“When daddy started at WDIA, we’d listen every day,” Carla recalls. “And that’s when I started listening to the Teen-Towners. I must have been 9 or 10. And I’d be, ‘Am I gonna be in there?'” Rufus would reply, “You’re too young. You can’t be in there.” Still, she persisted. “I wanna be in the Teen Town Singers!”

“She begged for a year,” says Vaneese.

“And then one day, he was nice to me,” says Carla. “He had no idea I could sing or even carry a note. I didn’t either! I just knew I wanted to be in it. One day he said, ‘I tell you what. You’re about to get on my nerves. Okay, I gotta go pull my show.’ They still had engineers in those days. ‘Now, you sit there with Martha Jean [Steinberg], and you just sit there til I finish.’ He goes in the back and he sits me with Martha Jean. And she was so gorgeous. She was just so beautiful. And she said, ‘Hey, you’re Rufus’ little girl.’

“I’m thinking ‘Oh God, I’m at WDIA!'” But something appeared to be wrong, the show’s producer was in a mild panic. After the main chorus sang, they were to broadcast the Teen Town Talent Time, where other high schoolers could join the chorus, often winning prizes. They were short one singer. Someone said, “Can you sing, little girl?”

“She didn’t know me from a hole in the ground,” says Carla, still excited at the memory. “And I said, ‘No, ma’am, I can’t sing,’ because my daddy had already told me I couldn’t sing. And then I thought, ‘Oh my God, the Teen Towners are still in there!’ And I said, ‘Mm-hmm, I sing!’ I didn’t know I could sing a note. I just knew I wanted to tell daddy I could actually sing with the Teen Towners. Anyway, I went in, and they had a little riser she found and stood me on it. And they had the little mic come down right in front of me. That’s how I won, because it picked up my voice. People called and said, ‘Who is that little girl? We wanna vote for her.’ I kid you not!”

Her talents thus revealed, rules were bent and Carla was allowed to join the regular Teen Town chorus. “Every Wednesday, every Friday, every Saturday. I never missed one rehearsal. From 11 years old to 17,” she remembers.

Courtesy of Stax Museum of American Soul Music

Carla Thomas

“And that was the case for all of them,” recalls Vaneese, who later won the talent contest herself but never joined as a regular member. “Which is why so many of them became professional singers. Percy Wiggins. He was one. His brother Spencer. Tyrone Smith. Ed Townsend.” And perhaps the most renowned Teen Towner of them all, Isaac Hayes.

As the Teen Towners made their appearances, Rufus began cutting records that were released on Chess, Meteor, and other labels, including Sun Records’ first hit, “Bear Cat.” Even then, he continued to deejay at WDIA, working days at a textile mill to make ends meet. Meanwhile, the other Thomas kids began their forays into music as well.

Marvell began studying music at LeMoyne College. His professor was known as “Doc Whitaker” — it wasn’t until later that the Thomas kids learned of his importance to American music history, having served as part of James Reese Europe’s military band during World War I, widely recognized for having pioneered orchestral jazz both at home and abroad.

Vaneese also learned from her brother’s music professor. “I took lessons there for 10 years,” she says. “He was a very, very cultured man. A very brilliant guy. A classical pianist. He spoke in French to me, and I wound up majoring in French in college as a result. I just love the language.”

Whitaker clearly made an impression on Marvell as well, as marked by the trajectory he traced in the music industry before, during, and after Stax. “Marvell — he carved a niche for himself in Memphis, in the early days of traveling bands, and by working with different arrangers and band leaders,” says Vaneese. This was apparent when Rufus showed up unannounced at the fledgling Satellite Records’ studio in 1960, proposing to cut a record. When Rufus and Carla sang what would become Satellite’s first hit, it featured Marvell on piano and a young multi-instrumentalist on baritone sax by the name of Booker T. Jones. Both would figure heavily in crafting the Satellite/Stax sound.

Vaneese Thomas

Carla, for her part, had gained enough confidence from her Teen Towner work to begin writing songs, which Rufus diligently captured on a home recorder. His tape of “Gee Whiz,” a song Carla had written at the age of 15 or 16, earned her her own session at Satellite and proved to be an even bigger hit than their previous duet. It remains a career-defining song for her to this day. She laughs at the song’s longevity, and the many ways she’s performed it. “I used to play with this little combo, we would go all over Tennessee. It was a jazz combo, and there they were playing ‘Gee Whiz,'” she chuckles.

The Stax tale is ultimately a tragic one, ending with the label’s bankruptcy in 1976. For Carla, moreso than most Stax artists, it proved to be the de facto end of her recording career, but not of her performances. Ironically, one of her fondest memories was the time she was called on to fill in for a Motown artist. When Tammi Terrell, partner in many hit duets with Marvin Gaye, was forced to quit performing due to a brain tumor, Carla somewhat reluctantly agreed to fill her shoes when Gaye played the Apollo Theater. For the confirmed fan of the duo, it was a watershed moment and foreshadowed a future career based more on performance than recording.

After the Stax collapse, Carla performed tirelessly in television appearances and concerts throughout the world. As Vaneese reflects, “It’s so precious that it doesn’t matter, the time frame since you had your last record. It’s timeless, classic stuff.” For her part, Carla seems content with her track record, noting, “Isn’t it amazing how people make you realize how important Stax was — more important to them sometimes than Stax was to itself.”

As the 1970s wore on, the time was ripe for the third Thomas sibling to step up to bat. But Vaneese was determined to explore music on her own terms, without relying on the Thomas family legend. “The Thomas legend, yes,” she muses. “And you know it took a long time for me to want to embrace it. And when I did, it was okay then. And it was because I had worked very hard on my own, and by then I appreciated the legacy.”

The story of her career begins with leaving Memphis. “I went to Swarthmore, outside of Philadelphia,” she recalls. “And I really didn’t know for sure what I was going to do. I was avoiding music, sort of. Every time it would chase me I would turn. But eventually I started doing it. I sang in recording studios in Philadelphia. Me and a friend were the B singers of the Sweethearts of Soul. I don’t know if you know the Sigma Sweethearts, but they sang on all the Spinners records and all those people like that. We didn’t get that high on the ladder; we sang on the lesser lights. But it didn’t matter, we were getting great studio experience.”

A brief time courting success as half of a duet led to some minor record deals, but it wasn’t until she tried her hand as a solo act that she broke out. “My first solo record was on Geffen Records. And I had a top 10 R&B record, called ‘Let’s Talk It Over.’ I’ve been doing this a long time,” she laughs. That first hit was in 1987, followed by another, “(I Wanna Get) Close to You.” Subsequent records failed to chart as well, but “then I moved to New York and did a lot of commercials.”

That last comment underplays Vaneese’s varied career since her Geffen days. Her work can be heard on countless voice-overs and as a background singer for the likes of Aretha Franklin. And with her ongoing work as a singer, writer, and producer, even as she remains planted in New York, she has launched a new phase of her career — exploring the rootsier sounds of her hometown.

“When I put out Blues for My Father in 2014, that was my first foray into the blues. So I did that really in honor of Daddy, obviously. And because people don’t know that he sang blues all through his career, from the beginning to the end. So I wanted to dab my toe in that, and I’ve grown to love it. And I want to sing more earthy stuff.” Last year’s The Long Journey Home continues in that vein, and she shows no sign of letting up.

Meanwhile, all records aside, there is the call of the stage. In recent years, it has brought the two sisters closer together. Aside from one or two performances in the 1970s featuring Rufus and all three siblings, Carla and Vaneese had not performed together until recently. It began with an appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2002, and it seems to be accelerating. “Carla and I did one in the Canary Islands this summer,” notes Vaneese, and that was fast on the heels of performing at the famed Poretta Soul Festival in Italy. This fall, they were scheduled to sing at the Ponderosa Stomp Festival, but Hurricane Nate nixed that. Nonetheless, they show no signs of slowing. As we sit in the Four Way Grill sipping our tea, they’ve come to terms with each other, with the neighborhood that nurtured them, and where fate may yet take them — together.