Tag: Stax Records

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B-side Players

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

This isn’t another story about Isaac Hayes. Or Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, and Booker T. & the MGs. While their voices and faces sold millions of Stax records during the company’s heyday, dozens of lesser-known musicians contributed their talents to the little label that did. Stax drew from Memphis’ deep reservoirs of talent — from its beginning in a garage on Orchi Road in the late 1950s to its bitter forced bankruptcy in 1975 — for its featured artists and for its supporting cast. Most of the studio musicians Stax employed for recording sessions lived in the city, and many have stayed. Memphis must have more residents who’ve played on Top 10 records than any city outside New York, L.A., and Nashville.

In honor of Stax’s 50th anniversary, we’ve dug up a few hidden treasures. The recognition these artists have received falls well short of the significance of their contributions to the Memphis sound. They have witnessed and participated in pivotal moments in Stax history and now share their stories.

In the beginning … a fan club and a pompadour

Charles Heinz goes back to the garage-studio beginnings of what was then Satellite Records. He recorded four sides for the label that would be Stax — including the local hit “Destiny” — in 1959, a time in the label’s evolution that predates its foray into rhythm and blues (the soul genre as such didn’t yet exist, either) and is, subsequently, overlooked in Stax history. It’s hard to find any mention of Heinz, a lifelong Memphian, beyond the wall of records in the Stax Museum, and his tracks were not included in the “complete” Stax singles box set released in 1991 or the Stax 50th-anniversary double disc released this year.

The artists whose records Satellite released before Heinz are dead or unaccounted for.

Justin Fox Burks

Heinz had a fan club and a pompadour back then. He sang in nightclubs with the Bill Black Combo and other bands. After his brief stint as a local pop star, he devoted his career to church music. He retired as music director of Central Church and helped found Redeemer Evangelical, where he conducts the choir and orchestra today. Here is his story in his own words:

“My influences were Mahalia Jackson and Mario Lanza. He was a tenor for the Metropolitan Opera. I would study things that they’d sing at the Metropolitan and then go out and sing rock on the weekends. It was an interesting combination. The soul that Mahalia Jackson put into songs connected with the instruction of how to sing correctly. It’s like a baseball player. Fundamentally, he’s got to know how to hit, but he’ll use his own style.

“I went to White Station and was singing with a group there that included Jim Dickinson on piano. I was introduced to the people at Stax, Satellite at that time, and they wanted me to record. In about ’59, Jim Stewart was looking for artists. Chips Moman and I wrote ‘Destiny.’ It was on the charts here in Memphis for about 10 weeks.

“We recorded at Pepper [also known as Pepper Tanner studio, formerly located at 2076 Union Avenue]. Stewart rented that studio to record, and they later did some overdubbing on McLemore. Bill Black played bass — I really enjoyed him.

“At that time, Satellite was not going in a rhythm-and-blues direction. With Carla and Rufus [Thomas] coming on, that changed things quickly. [Satellite] was going in a pop direction, but when they bought the studio on McLemore, it brought a lot of African-American people in [from the surrounding neighborhood], and they went in a rhythm-and-blues direction.”

The other Jerry Lee

Justin Fox Burks

Jerry Lee ‘Smoochy’ Smith

Ask fans of early rock-and-roll to name their favorite piano-thumping Jerry Lee, and they’re guaranteed to say Lewis. But another ivory-tickler named Jerry Lee from Memphis has made his own mark on American music: Jerry Lee “Smoochy” Smith. Like his better-known namesake, Smith began his music career in the studios of Sun Records, where Smith played on recording sessions from 1957 to 1959. Smith wrote a riff that launched Satellite’s first million-seller and helped the company make a name for itself. Literally.

“I was playing in a band, and my guitar player was Chips Moman. Chips was the engineer at Satellite. We were playing one night at the Hi-Hat Club. In one of the songs, I throwed in a little groovy piano sound. Chips, having the ear for music he has, turned around and said, ‘Where did you get that?’ I said, ‘I made it up. It’s a rhythm-and-blues-type riff.’ He said, ‘Come on by the studio, and let’s put that down.’

“Chips called me one night and said, ‘I’ve got a group over here [at the McLemore Avenue studio], and we’re working on that riff you put out.’ He had added the horns in there. They were blowing two notes against my rhythm pattern. I said that sounds pretty good. I forgot about the song for a while. It stayed on the shelf maybe six months.

“Meanwhile, Jim Stewart had gotten in touch with Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records. Wexler came down to listen to some of the songs that had been recorded to see if he liked any of them. Chips played every song that they did. Wexler told him he didn’t hear anything that knocked him out. He was fixin’ to leave, and Chips said, ‘I’ve got one more song. This is an instrumental.’ He played it, and Mr. Wexler said, ‘Now that’s what I’m looking for. Only thing, I’d like for you to put a saxophone ride in it.’

“Chips called a session, and we went and recorded it. He added two horns, Gilbert Caple and Floyd Newman. Gilbert played the saxophone ride. Floyd, he’s the one that said, ‘Awww, last night.’ He came up with that.

“I wasn’t but 21 years old when we recorded that. It took us four weeks to get it where we wanted it to be. I played organ and piano on it. I didn’t have much faith in the song. It started climbing the charts. We went on the road, and finally it hit #1. It turned out to be a great song. We recorded it in 1961, and I’m still drawing royalties on it.

Justin Fox Burks

Howard Grimes

“The song has been put in movies, and a lot of different people have recorded it. One year, the NBA used it as their theme song. Every now and then something happens with that song, and I’m making more money off of that song than I did when it first came out. It has kept me going over the years.”

Smith’s song, “Last Night,” recorded by the Mar-Keys, was the first million-seller for Satellite Records. It came to the attention of a California record company, also named Satellite Records. The California Satellite offered Jim Stewart the name outright for a hefty fee. Rather than pay or risk legal action from the California company, Stewart opted to rename his company. By combining the first two letters of Stewart’s last name with the first two letters of his sister Estelle Axton’s married name (she had bought into the company a couple of years earlier), a new brand was born: Stax.

“That was my shot, and I missed it.”

The lazy, laid-back beat that drove Al Green to the top of the charts in the late 1960s and early ’70s is one of the distinctive elements of the Memphis sound. Hi Records producer Willie Mitchell cultivated that groove at his Royal studio located one mile from Stax’s McLemore Avenue site. A different drummer, though, would have turned out different tunes. Name a hit from the Hi Records heyday and chances are Howard Grimes played drums on it. Though he made his mark at Hi, he got his start at Stax as a child prodigy.

Grimes lives a block away from the Stax Museum, yet, he says, he’s never been asked to participate in events there. “They don’t acknowledge me,” he says. “I don’t let it bother me, though I used to.

“I was self-taught on the drums. My mother had them big old 78 records of Big Joe Turner and Ray Charles. I’d play on the pots and pans. My granddaddy used to listen to the Grand Ole Opry. I’d sit and listen to it with him.

“I could hear the drums from the school over there on Smith Street where I lived in North Memphis. I came to Manassas in ninth grade. That’s when I took an interest in band — Mr. Able was the band teacher there. Mr. Able and them were into jazz, listening to Max Roach, Art Blakey, and these drummers. They started tuning me in.

Justin Fox Burks

Charles Heinz

“Mr. Able singled me out as a drummer that he felt would be successful. He used to let me out of school — I got an opportunity to record up there at Satellite. Rufus Thomas decided to cut a record one day, and it was suggested that I play on it. I was excited ’cause I had never recorded before and didn’t know whether I could do it. I was 12.

“I went up there and met Ms. Axton and Mr. Stewart. Chips Moman was the engineer. He was the most kindhearted man I’d ever met. He believed in me for some reason. It was Bob Talley’s band: Alfred Rudd, Wilbur Steinburg, Talley — he was a piano player but played trumpet on that session — Booker T. Jones, long before he became the MGs … Me and Booker were the youngest ones up there. The record was called ‘Cause I Love You.’ [Released in 1960 between Charles Heinz’ only two singles.]

“After that, they brought me back, and I cut Carla Thomas’ ‘Gee Whiz.’ [Released in late 1960, it was Satellite’s first national hit.] Something went wrong with the machine, so we did the session at Hi [Willie Mitchell’s studio at 1320 Lauderdale]. Marvell Thomas played piano, I played drums, and they had the Memphis Symphony, Noel Gilbert and his two kids. Sam Jones and the Veltones were the back-up singers.

“They called me back for William Bell. I also cut with Wendy Rene, Prince Conley. And I did a lot of instrumentals with the Mar-Keys. I never got any royalties. I got statements but never any money.

“A lot of [rumors] have come out over the years. Someone said that Al Jackson [Jr.] tutored me. Al Jackson never tutored me — I was before Al Jackson.

“[Stax] gave Booker T. an opportunity to record one day. I don’t know where I was, usually I was at home, but that day I left home. When I got back, my mother told me [Stax] had called. I was the staff drummer, but I called them back, and they said they had got someone else. I found out it was Al Jackson. Steve Cropper had recommended him. He called [Jackson] in that day for ‘Green Onions,’ and the rest is history. That was my shot, and I missed it.”

The man who kicked Isaac Hayes out ofthe high school band

High school bandleaders have had an influence on Memphis music that is huge and overlooked. To name just two, the great jazz orchestra leader Jimmie Lunceford taught at Manassas in the 1920s, and Harry Winfield tutored future Stax luminaries at Porter Junior High.

Emerson Able started teaching music at Manassas in 1956 and instructed many, including Grimes, who became prominent musicians. The most famous of his former pupils is the one who got away.

While a student at Manassas, Isaac Hayes couldn’t decide between Able’s band class or voice class. “I told him, ‘Go on,'” recalls Able. Hayes didn’t hold it against Able and later hired his old teacher to join the Isaac Hayes Movement. “Hayes introduced me on stage as the man who kicked him out of the school band,” Able says.

“I was not one of the musicians that hung around Stax. I had a job. They had been doing a lot of ‘head’ tunes at Stax [i.e., a song played from memory or verbal instruction rather than sheet music], and that can be very time consuming. A head tune is like ‘Last Night,’ a simple tune that they can pick up on. Basically, that was the Stax sound.

“Musicians didn’t always get credit for what they had recorded at Stax. They were doing what they called demos. You’d go down, record a demo, and they’d pay you 12 bucks. They have you to believe that it was only a demo, and they’d have you back to cut it [i.e., record for the purpose of releasing the material rather than practicing on a demo]. Then they’d [release] it and have you believe you’re not on there. Some of us could identify our errors, and we knew it was us.

“Another game they’d run, they’d make a demo, then play it on WLOK for a while. If [African Americans] in Memphis like a record, we’ll like it anywhere. So they’d test it on black listeners here, and if it got a lot of requests, they’d make a record out of it.

“Onzie Horne [Hayes’ arranger] brought me into Hayes’ band. That’s when we hit the road. We had charts, he had accomplished musicians, and we never would have gotten through all of that shit had it been a ‘head’ thing.

“We lost the music [traveling] between San Francisco and Los Angeles for Wattstax. We didn’t know it was missing until it got there. We assumed the airlines lost it. We had to write the music from memory before Wattstax.

“The other thing that happened, the tune we originally did for Wattstax was a Burt Bacharach tune [probably “Walk On By”]. After we recorded it at the Coliseum in L.A. and got back to Memphis, we had to go back out there. Bacharach would not give permission to use the tune [in the Wattstax film]. They fixed up the Coliseum, and we shot again.

“We’re supposed to be getting monies off of that, but we ain’t getting shit.”

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Soul Survivors

CREDIT: Courtesy of Stax Museum

Armed with an astute sense of what constituted “soul” and built on a sturdy foundation of blues, country, and jazz, Booker T. & The MGs presented gutbucket dance music that brought teenagers to their feet. But more unlikely pop-music saviors could hardly be imagined.

They were an integrated band from the Deep South at a time when such relationships could prove fatal, providing the gritty Soulsville backdrop for smash singles from both Stax and Atlantic Records. They eschewed the sophisticated sounds emanating from Detroit’s Motown label for fatback party numbers typified by finger-poppin’ instrumentals such as “Green Onions” and “Hip-Hug-Her.” And they conquered America and Europe without singing a single note.

When asked what it was like to be part of the core unit at Stax Records, organist Booker T. Jones pauses for a long beat, then admits, “I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it at the time.”

It shouldn’t sound too surprising. After all, the Memphis native wandered into Stax when he was just 14 years old. He couldn’t have imagined the immensity of his musical future: joining forces with drummer Al Jackson Jr., guitarist Steve Cropper, and first bassist Lewis Steinberg, followed by Donald “Duck” Dunn, to back dozens of soul acts, ranging from Rufus Thomas and Otis Redding to Wilson Pickett and Sam & Dave, appearing with Redding at the ’67 Monterey Pop Festival, and touring Europe as part of the astonishing Stax-Volt Revue. And Jones didn’t slow down much when Stax dissolved in the mid-’70s — producing Willie Nelson’s finest Atlantic-era work, reuniting with the MGs to back Bob Dylan and Neil Young, winning a shelf-full of Grammys, and getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

“I was there at the beginning, so I kind of took it for granted,” Jones says. “It was a place to belong, a place I wanted to belong to before I got in, when I was hanging out and listening to records at the Satellite Record Store.” Courtesy of Stax Museum

Duck Dunn, Booker T. Jones, and Steve Cropper

“I’ve always described working at Stax like going to church every day,” says Cropper. “It was safe, and my energy level went up the minute I walked through the door. It was magic, although we didn’t know it at the time. We were just having fun.”

Fast-forward four decades to March 2007, when the MGs experienced that same thrill backing an all-star roster of Stax artists at Austin’s South By Southwest Music Festival (SXSW).

“When I was working with Willie Nelson, I used to come to Austin when there were just four clubs on Sixth Street,” says Jones. “Playing at Antone’s, where I used to hang out, was wonderful. My life is just getting full of moments like that.”

“We were back with Eddie [Floyd] and William [Bell]. I hadn’t been onstage with Isaac [Hayes] in years,” Cropper says. “I’d never done SXSW, but playing to a packed house, to people who knew our songs, was great. A lot of write-ups I saw later were overwhelmed by our performance, saying how good Eddie sounded and that William sounded like ‘a step back in time.’ It’s good to know we’re still capable!

“We’re able to adapt,” Cropper claims of the MGs’ ability to shift gears from a headlining instrumental group to agile backing musicians. “The way you have to address it is that Booker T. and the MGs are extremely highly trained session musicians. We could cover all the bases: If you wanted it to be jazz, it was jazz. If you wanted church, it was church. Even at Stax, there was a difference between the songs we did as the MGs and songs we did backing William Bell and Rufus Thomas.”

Courtesy of Stax Museum

Booker T. Jones

This adaptability has served the group well in the years since Stax disintegrated.

“Neil Young is incredible, just like Otis was incredible,” Dunn says. “They just play different styles. Neil’s a poet and he loves to rock, but he grew up on the same people I grew up on, singers like Jimmy Reed.

“It’s second nature,” Dunn says of the group’s onstage chemistry. “We’ve just been together for so long that what we really do is listen to each other. It’s spontaneous every time we play. We’ve got a certain tempo or a groove goin’ where anyone can venture off and go into something different. It’s fresh to us every night, and we never play it the same way twice.”

“I call it ad-libbing,” Cropper adds. “Duck and I have a little bit of a road map about where the changes are gonna go. In the old days, we just worked a song out then rolled the tape.”

The MGs have ad-libbed much of their career, after enduring numerous tragedies — including Redding’s death, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Jackson’s murder, and the bankruptcy of Stax — that would have felled other, lesser groups.

“We had a contract that wasn’t so great, but we were still a family — our routine was still the same,” Jones remembers of the beginning of the end, when Stax dissolved its distribution relationship with Atlantic Records (the deal cost Stax its back catalog of records that had been distributed by Atlantic) and briefly foundered before being purchased by Gulf & Western for $4.3 million in ’68. (Four years later, Stax would sign another deal, with CBS Records, that would ultimately sink the label in ’76.)

Courtesy of Stax Museum

Al Jackson and Steve Cropper

“The thing that happened at Stax was about the people and partly the place,” Jones says. “We all grew up within the history of blues and gospel down on Linden Avenue and Beale Street. We had the rockabilly and country roots of Cropper and Duck, and those combinations made the Memphis sound. You couldn’t re-create it anywhere else.

“But almost immediately, the studio was remodeled,” he recalls. “Offices were upgraded, and new people started coming in from New York and California. They built a new office right where Slim Jenkins’ joint used to be. It was a corporate environment, and they said we had to have three shifts, with the MGs working from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., the Bar-Kays working from 6 ’til 2 a.m., and another band coming in for that third shift. It reminded me of the steel mills.”

Even so, Dunn says, “Backing those guys and playing with Al made my life. I really didn’t have the answers ’til later on about exactly why it didn’t work out. Fortunately, we put it back together. I’m so glad we did.”

Invigorated by the SXSW experience, Jones says that he’s open to a discussion with the powers-that-be at Concord Music Group, which acquired the Stax name and the non-Atlantic portion of the catalog as part of its purchase of Fantasy Records two years ago.

“I see [the relaunch] as a positive thing, because the focus is on the music,” Jones says. “It could be a give-and-take thing that benefits both sides. Our music is getting played, and more people are becoming aware of it, like a revival or a resurgence of the Stax sound. The music always was our little gift to the world, and in return, we might get something else back from it. It’s a new life — 50 years is a long time.” Courtesy of Stax Museum

Duck Dunn

For Dunn, however, the jury is still out. “I don’t know yet. I got a little bit bigger check this month,” he says of the royalties he receives for playing on countless hit singles — rates that haven’t been reconfigured in decades. “They’re still paying us on a rate for an album that cost $3.98 retail. It’s not fair. I haven’t been happy with it, but what can I do?”

“It’s water under the bridge to me,” Jones says. “I’ve had my troubles, and I still have to work, but I’d be working no matter how much money I have anyways. But [Dunn] has every right to feel that way. This country has dropped the ball on royalty laws.”

Musing over this year’s 50th anniversary of Stax Records, a celebration co-sponsored by Concord, Soulsville, and the Memphis Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, Jones says, “When I was there, Memphis was pretty much unaware of Stax and what it was doing. A lot of the city enjoyed the music and appreciated it, but we didn’t get wholehearted city support. The city has a rich, rich heritage that people are just now seeing.

“I am impressed with the [Stax] Museum, and I’m sort of flattered by it. I’m proud that there’s a music school there, because that was one of my main obstacles as a kid. It’s a great opportunity for local children and a really good use of the land.”

“Any time the Stax Museum, the label, and its artists can get extra publicity, it’s a good thing,” Cropper says of the anniversary celebration, which will bring the MGs and other Stax veterans to the Orpheum Theatre in June and to the Hollywood Bowl and the Sweet Soul Music Festival in Porretta Terme, Italy, later this summer.

Asked whether or not he’d work with Concord, Dunn concedes, “I’d be willing to sit down and talk about it. Us doing a record of Stax music with other artists like, say, Carlos Santana, is something to think about.

“I love to play live. That’s the reason most musicians play,” he says. “It’s just fun seeing people liking what you do. The first thing you want to hear is yourself on the radio — then you know you’ve made it. The second big thing for me was the Stax-Volt European tour we did in ’67. Getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the first ballot was great. So was the [2007] Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.”

“It’s pretty special,” Cropper agrees. “You can win a Grammy for a song, but this kinda thing is gonna be around for a long time. This is proof that you can digitize the MGs, run our music through a meat grinder, but that energy’s gonna stay in there.”

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Relaunch

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Fifty years ago, white Memphis fiddle player Jim Stewart started a music label, called Satellite, releasing a few pop, rockabilly, and country singles. A few years later, that label, rechristened Stax, would emerge as the Southern giant of soul music, rivaling its Detroit counterpart Motown as the country’s most important purveyor of “black” pop music (not such a simple distinction at Stax).

This year, three organizations — Soulsville (which operates the Stax Museum of American Soul Music and the Stax Music Academy on the original label site at the corner of College and McLemore in South Memphis), the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau (MCVB), and Concord Music Group — have joined forces to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Stax with a yearlong campaign that will involve a massive slate of classic Stax reissues, a publicity campaign, a new documentary about the label, a series of revue-style concerts (including June 22nd at the Orpheum), and, most daringly, a relaunch of Stax as an active record label.

According to Deanie Parker — a former Stax publicist, songwriter, and artist who would go on to head up the Soulsville organization and is spending her final year on the organization’s board overseeing the “Stax 50” celebration — the genesis of this celebration came a few years ago, right after the museum opened in 2003 and Soulsville board members were looking toward the future: “While we were concentrating on the stabilization of Soulsville — the academy and the museum — we were also thinking, What is the next thing that warrants our time and attention? And one of the things the board had put on its agenda was Stax 50.”

Under Parker’s direction, Soulsville partnered with the MCVB, which had overseen the city’s “50 Years of Rock and Roll” celebration in 2004. But what could have been — like the “50 Years of Rock and Roll” campaign — a primarily Memphis-generated P.R. initiative became something more tangible when the California-based Concord Music Group came into the mix.

Concord purchased Fantasy, which had acquired the bulk of the Stax catalog (that not distributed by Atlantic records during the early years of the Memphis label’s history) and the Stax name after the soul label’s messy mid-’70s dissolution, in 2004, with plans to re-energize the Stax brand.

“In the purchase of Fantasy, everyone thought that Stax was a very important part of the package,” says Robert Smith, senior vice president of strategic marketing for Concord. “Those Stax records, obviously, never went away, but it was certainly looked at as a property where the catalog could be further revitalized and the label could be relaunched. It’s one of those very few actual brands in music. So the plan was never just to do more reissues and raise awareness about the legacy but also to move forward and relaunch it as an active soul-music label.”

Smith says that the 50th anniversary of the label was a definite factor in Concord’s initial planning, making a partnership with Soulsville and the MCVB a mutually beneficial relationship.

“We found within the Concord family, I think, an appreciation for and a sincerity about the Stax catalog,” Parker says. “And one of things that I like about Concord is that they do have marketing and promotional savvy. They’ve got that. They’ve got the capacity and creativity to recognize promotional opportunities, seize them, and take them to the next level. And [we’ve] not had that opportunity with the previous owner of the Stax catalog.”

Parker praises Fantasy as a respectful guardian of the Stax catalog, but says that now “the need is different.”

Concord’s revitalization of Stax began earlier this year with what promises to be a massive reissue campaign. The first foray came in February with Johnnie Taylor: Live at the Summit Club, a concert album from the Stax singer (best known for his 1968 hit “Who’s Making Love”) recorded in Los Angeles during the filming of the famous 1972 WattStax concert. Concord followed in March with the two-disc Stax 50th Anniversary Celebration, the first self-contained collection to span the gamut of Stax’s history, and a bonus-track-laden reissue of Carla Thomas’ 1967 studio album The Queen Alone.

The reissues will continue with a series of “very best of” collections from multiple Stax artists, expanded reissues of Isaac Hayes’ studio albums, multi-disc sets dedicated to the Staple Singers and the 1967 Stax/Volt Revue European tour, and other releases.

A Stax documentary — Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story — produced and directed by Memphian Robert Gordon and Los Angeles filmmaker Morgan Neville will be released on DVD by Concord in August, following a broadcast as part of PBS’ Great Performances series.

Many of these releases require cooperation between Concord and Rhino, which holds the rights to the portion of the Stax catalog retained by Atlantic after that label’s distribution deal with Stax ended in 1968.

“Traditionally, over the years, there has been a great deal of cross-licensing between Atlantic, now Rhino, and Stax, so that’s just continued,” says Smith. “If you go through your Stax Justin Fox Burks

collections, there is a great deal of intermingling. Stax 50th is clearly a major piece of collaboration. Twenty-one [songs] from Atlantic and 29, I think, from our Stax catalog.”

The Stax 50th compilation was produced and compiled by noted Stax scholar Rob Bowman and Cheryl Pawelski, a Concord executive who left the company in January to take the job of vice president of A&R at Rhino, a move that Parker hopes will help bring the two sides of the Stax legacy even more in line.

“Without a total understanding of how all of that fits together, and realizing that whatever they’ve structured today is going to change tomorrow, because the industry is in flux, I will say this with total confidence: That woman loves the Stax product and the soul music that comes out of Memphis,” Parker says. “So we have an ally. We have somebody there who understands and appreciates it enough that when she has to go to a meeting where there are 20- and 30-year-olds making a decision and who can only relate to rap and hip-hop, she’ll bring some balance to the table. Makes a difference.”

But as exciting as the current (and future) reissue campaigns might be to fans of Stax’s classic sound, Smith emphasizes that that’s only a part of what Concord has planned for Stax.

“The real purpose is to combine the heritage and legacy of Stax with the relaunch of the label and the signing of new artists and releasing of new records,” Smith says. “If you’re only dealing with it from a catalog standpoint, then you’re really missing what is truly behind this, which is that soul music is truly an important part of American musical culture.”

This relaunch of Stax as an active label began modestly with the March release of Interpretations: Celebrating the Music of Earth, Wind & Fire, a tribute album to the ’70s Chicago funk/R&B band — founded by Memphian Maurice White — in which contemporary soul artists cover the band’s songs.

This relaunch kicks into a higher gear in August with a new release by highly regarded neo-soul singer Angie Stone, followed by albums from Lalah Hathaway (daughter of soul star Donnie Hathaway), N’Dambi, and Soullive. But the highest-profile release on the new Stax will likely come from a name inseparable from the old Stax: Isaac Hayes, whose first album of new material under the Stax name in 20 years is set for release later this year.

John Burk, Concord’s executive vice president of A&R, acknowledges that it was important for Concord to launch this new Stax with a connection to the label’s legacy, but Smith says the signing of Hayes goes far beyond mere symbolism.

“Isaac Hayes is still a really vital artist and still a really important one, and we’re very fortunate to have him recording for Stax,” Smith says. “It wasn’t done for another reason. He’s just a great artist and one who does stand for what Stax is about, so of course it’s important from that standpoint. But Isaac Hayes is not recording here because he was on Stax. He’s recording here because he’s Isaac Hayes.”

Concord hopes to expand interest in a classic artist with the Hayes release, something the label, which released the hugely successful 2004 Ray Charles album Genius Loves Company, has some experience in.

“There are a lot of reasons it would be satisfying,” Smith says. “Isaac Hayes is one of those cornerstones of great American music. He hasn’t gone away. He’s so well-recognized and by young people, which doesn’t mean they own a lot of old Isaac Hayes records.”

And there’s a chance other veteran Stax artists could follow Hayes back onto the Stax roster. Booker T. Jones has acknowledged discussions with Concord, and Burk says, perhaps teasingly, “a lot of those original Stax artists are still around and still have things to say.”

But however much original Stax artists may get involved in the relaunch, the core of the new Stax is likely to be just that: new.

“There are great singers who, in a modern way, fit what that Stax tradition has always meant,” Smith says. “I think it’s exemplified by Angie Stone or Lalah Hathaway. Of course, if we didn’t have Stax we’d still want to have Angie Stone on our label, making a great record. She really epitomizes what Stax is about.”

But this relaunch may be bittersweet for a lot of Memphians. After all, Stax isn’t just a name but the product of a specific time and place, a specific set of unrepeatable historical circumstances. Burk cites the way Motown has remained a viable label over the years. But even though records have continued to be released with the “Motown” imprint, that hasn’t made those records Motown. Similarly, can the new “Stax” be Stax, especially based in Beverly Hills rather than South Memphis?

“I’m not critical of that,” Deanie Parker says of the relaunch. “But I have thought about it. I take comfort in my belief that Concord is not going to put anything on that Stax label that would destroy or belittle the integrity of that brand. I am all for Stax making a quantum leap into the 21st century and providing an opportunity for today’s artists to express themselves if they have a love, understanding, and appreciation for what we did.”

“It can’t be repeated,” Burk says of the creative formula that forged Stax, “but it can be a model for an artists’ community, which is what we’d like it to be. But that’s not geographic anymore. The world has changed.”

“People buy music because its great music,” Smith says. “I think the new releases will speak for themselves. They’re certainly of great quality. Very few things stay the same or stay in one place. What Stax was at its very beginning is different from what it was in its later years. Art, the commerce of art even, evolves. Tastes change. And social and cultural influences change music. What Stax started as and what it was by 1975 were very different things, because it’s a living tradition. One wouldn’t expect anybody to make music that tried to sound like it. So, I think the question is, what did Stax stand for, and how would it have evolved going forward? I think that the kind of artists we’re signing and the respect we’re paying that label and what it stands for will be really self-evident in the records we’re putting out.”

“The kind of place that Stax Records created is not one that can be duplicated,” Parker acknowledges. “But we could emulate it, and I’d like to see that happen in Memphis.”

If you believed everything you read in Memphis last fall, you would have been under the impression that it would, indeed, be happening in Memphis, with Millington-bred pop star Justin Timberlake overseeing Concord’s Stax relaunch from here in the heart of Soulsville. But that didn’t happen and isn’t likely to.

“There are so many things that are reported, and there are so many conversations that happen that go somewhere or don’t go somewhere, and I’m not in any official capacity to be able to talk about it,” Smith says of the Timberlake rumors.

Another source close to the situation acknowledges that there were discussions between Concord and Timberlake, though the two sides never got close to an agreement about the extent of his involvement with the label. But the two sides have maintained a good relationship, and it isn’t out of the question that Timberlake could get involved in the new Stax in some capacity.

Even though the new Stax won’t be based out of Memphis, Concord executives stress that an active relationship with the city is a priority.

“We’d like to have a presence in town,” Burk says, suggesting that could come in the form of a satellite office in Memphis or the signing of contemporary Memphis artists to the new Stax, if the right situation emerged.

“We feel that we’re attached at the hip,” Smith says. “And that’s where the pleasure of working with people in Memphis, especially Deanie Parker and [original Stax] artists, is very satisfying.”

As for Parker, her hopes for the bundle of activity surround this 50th anniversary celebration are many, from financial and publicity benefits for Soulsville and its mission to tangible benefits for original Stax artists to raising the profile of Stax as a model for what’s possible in Memphis.

“Stax served its community,” Parker says. “Too much of [music today] exploits the community. This focus [on Stax] distinctly defines what music can do: economically, morally, socially, culturally. It has the capacity to do that.”

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Music Music Features

Stax Makes a Comeback

Late last month, Concord Music Group kicked off a “50 Years of Soul” celebration at B.B. King’s Blues Club in New York City. Now, says Robert Smith, Concord’s senior vice president of strategic marketing, the company’s relaunch of Stax Records has begun in earnest.

“It went very well,” Smith says of the event, co-produced by the Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau, which drew many Memphis-based Stax veterans to the Big Apple, including Steve Cropper, songwriting partners Isaac Hayes and David Porter, and Big Star drummer Jody Stephens.

Although Concord has primarily marketed itself to a jazz audience, its 2004 acquisition of the Fantasy catalog — which included Stax — was a calculated move.

“The purchase was really part of a strategy to become a viable independent music company,” Smith says. “The Fantasy catalog represented one of the last great treasuries of music. Besides Stax and the phenomenally important jazz labels [Prestige and Riverside], Fantasy includes Credence Clearwater Revivals’ work and the R&B output on Specialty Records. It was a fully informed and brilliant move.”

According to Smith, the Stax relaunch is giving Concord “an opportunity to create a really great contemporary soul label. We want to carry this legacy into the future.

“We’re very focused on the adult market and alternative channels, and we’re real believers in real artists,” he adds, noting that Hayes and contemporary neo-soul singer Angie Stone have already been signed on as artists for this new era of Stax Records.

This March, Concord will release a Stax two-disc compilation that runs the gamut from Carla Thomas’ “Gee Whiz” to Shirley Brown’s “Woman to Woman,” with several new best-of collections and a three-disc WattStax box set to follow. The Stax Museum of American Soul Music‘s Deanie Parker, Soulsville USA: The Story of Stax Records author Rob Bowman, former Fantasy owner Bill Belmont, and the crew at Rhino Records, which owns the Atlantic-era Stax catalog, are working in tandem on projects, while Memphian Robert Gordon and Los Angeles filmmaker Morgan Neville are co-directing and producing a period documentary called Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story, scheduled to air on PBS’ Great Performances in July.

Also on the books: an all-star showcase at Austin’s South by Southwest Music Festival in March and a show at The Orpheum this summer.

Members of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences are also getting on the Stax bandwagon, awarding the studio’s house band, Booker T & the MGs, a Lifetime Achievement Award and giving a posthumous Trustee Award to label co-founder Estelle Axton.

“Estelle was a mother to so many musicians, and she fostered a lot of the young people at Stax, encouraging them and giving them a chance,” says Katherine Sage, senior project manager of the Memphis chapter of the Recording Academy.

While both awards will be presented on the eve of the 49th Annual Grammys, slated to air on Sunday, February 11th, Sage says that both Axton and the MGs will receive televised recognition.

For just $25, you can attend a Grammy viewing party at the Hard Rock Café on Beale Street, along with local nominees, Recording Academy members, and a slew of VIPs. The show starts at 7 p.m., and food and drinks are on the house. For more information, go to www.Grammy.com.

Taking a cue from Axton, Sage has launched a project with Midtown rockers Giant Bear.

“I saw them perform at Otherlands, and I was amazed at their musicianship,” she recalls. “I was also impressed that they played all original music and that four out of five band members sing lead.”

After buying their album, Sage presented an offer to the group: “I felt that I could help them create a better recording, so I pulled together various producers to work with them to develop their songs. They were doing so great on their own that it didn’t take much help, so I put a team together for a recording session.”

In January, Giant Bear spent 10 days at Young Avenue Sound with producers Bill Ellis, Louis Myers, and Jimmy Davis and engineer Kevin Houston. When they emerged, they had 12 songs, including four that Sage produced herself. The album should be released April 1st; in the meantime, you can catch Giant Bear live at the Young Avenue Deli on Saturday, February 10th.