Tag: William Bell

Magic Moments at RiverBeat

Post author By Alex Greene
Post date May 9, 2024

The Fugees at the inaugural RiverBeat Music Festival (Photo: Joshua Timmermans/courtesy RiverBeat Music Festival)

After it was discovered that the RiverBeat Music Festival‘s social media accounts posted a clumsily-Photoshopped image that inflated the apparent crowd size (which the festival organizers copped to, blaming the photographer and removing the image), many in the online-iverse ramped up their complaints about the festival, dissing the lineup, the attendance, and even the lack of chain link fencing along the river shore (believe it or not).

Yet, as a musician, a music fan, and journalist embedded in the actual RiverBeat experience, I witnessed throngs of happy listeners and had more than a few magical encounters myself. In the end, that’s what will stay with us. Here, then, are a few personal, highly subjective moments that make a celebration of music on this scale worth the while, complemented by the Memphis Flyer‘s own mixtape.

Charlie Musselwhite
The magic began before I even entered the festival gates. Walking along the perimeter toward the entrance, I heard the sound of pure liquid gold ringing out over the river. It was the blues harp of Charlie Musselwhite, known as “Memphis Charlie” in his youth, his family having moved here from Mississippi when he was a toddler, though he was based in Chicago as his career accelerated in the ’60s. To this day, he’s criminally under-booked in Memphis venues, making this moment a rare one indeed. This octogenarian and the melodic flow of his harp are national treasures.

Charlie Musselwhite at RiverBeat Music Festival (Photo: Joshua Timmermans/courtesy RiverBeat Music Festival)

Lucky 7 Brass Band
Seeing this group in the charged setting of the festival brought home what a tremendous font of creativity and groove the Lucky 7 can be. As I walked into Tom Lee Park, I heard the familiar strains of “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” but far groovier and brassier than the original. It was quickly followed by Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name,” Victor Sawyer’s singing full of the original’s fury, but layered over the forward momentum of a second line groove. An utter revelation.

DJ’s at Whateverland
The Memphis gem Qemist took DJing to new artistic heights, weaving together disparate tracks into a whole greater than the sum of its parts. “It’s about to get real Black real fast!” he announced at one point. The crowd gathered in the shade of the fanciful tent shimmied and swayed along with him…even the staff walking past. “I see you, Security! Get your strut on!” he exclaimed. On Saturday, WYXR’s Jared Boyd, aka Jay B, aka Bizzle Bluebland kept up a similar vibe with some fine disco-tinged vibes, puffing on a jumbo cigar as he manned the wheels of steel.

Durand Jones & the Indications
I’d never heard this old school soul and R&B vocalist live, but certainly will again after the scorching set he delivered last Friday afternoon. The very on-point band formed over a decade ago at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, but a distinctly more Southern flavor of soul springs from Jones’ roots in Hillaryville, Louisiana. “I feel like I’m an ambassador of the rural South,” he quipped at one point. “I’m just a boy from a town of about 500 people, and our land is being taken away from us. It’s about time we saw what is going down.” Midway through their cover of Irma Thomas’ “Ruler of My Heart,” Jones spoke wistfully about a young man who came to Memphis “with just a guitar” and made Thomas’ song his own, bringing the house down with Otis Redding’s version, “Pain in My Heart.”

Talibah Safiya
We just profiled this neo-soul/hip hop auteur, and, armed with fresh new tracks from her new album and a tight live band featuring MadameFraankie on guitar, she held the Stringbend Stage last Friday with aplomb. Even in the group’s tight execution of beats there was a playful looseness, exemplified when, seeing a few sprinkles in the air, they launched into an impromptu take on “I Can’t Stand the Rain.” That soon gave way to more of Safiya’s originals. “Look to your right,” the singer called out to the audience, pointing to the Mississippi River. “Let’s honor that body of water,” she said, and then launched into perhaps her most popular track, “Healing Creek.”

Carla Thomas at the RiverBeat Music Festival (Photo: Joshua Timmermans/courtesy RiverBeat Music Festival)

Take Me to the River
Having written about the group assembled by Boo Mitchell in last week’s cover story, I knew this would be a special moment, but it exceeded all expectations. Lina Beach, the young guitarist for Hi Rhythm, rocked her originals with verve, Jerome Chism delivered soul standards like “Tryin’ to Live My Life Without You” with passion, and Eric Gales delivered some scorching guitar work that was both virtuosic and soulful on “I’ll Play the Blues for You.”

While Mitchell is naturally grounded in Royal Studios and Hi Records, that latter song’s provenance in the Stax catalog confirmed that Hi Rhythm was the perfect vehicle for all stripes of Memphis soul. That was especially clear when Carla Thomas took the stage, cradling a crutch in her right hand but looking spry as she exhorted the crowd to do some classic straight-eighth note “soul clapping” while the band vamped on the intro to “B-A-B-Y.” She followed that up with the song her father Rufus put on the charts, “Walking the Dog,” whereupon Chism appeared with a small pup wearing ear protectors. That in turn was followed by the inimitable William Bell delivering stone classics like “I Forgot to Be Your Lover,” making the Take Me to the River set a festival highlight.

No Blues Tent, Plenty of Blues
As if to make up for the lack of a blues tent, always a fixture at Beale Street Music Festivals, the blues seemed to crop up everywhere at RiverBeat. Kenny Brown brought the Hill Country Sound on day one, laconic and completely at ease as he unleashed guitar licks with his trio. On Sunday, the Wilkins Sisters brought their unique gospel-blues straight out of Como, Mississippi, just as their late father, Rev. John Wilkins, and their grandfather, Rev. Robert Wilkins, did before them. As lead singer Tangela Longstreet said, “We lost our daddy in 2020. But I can still hear him telling me, ‘Don’t stop singing, baby!'”

And there was more of that sanctified blend from Robert Randolph & the Family Band, as the master of sacred steel guitar delivered a sermon from the church of good times. In his hands, the pedal steel guitar became an engine of squeaks, squalls, and heavily distorted riffs. Indeed, their finale of “It Don’t Matter” was the weekend’s personal highlight of unfettered abandon, and, judging from the way Boo Mitchell and Lina Beach were dancing, they felt the same. Such high energy blues were also apparent in Southern Avenue‘s fiery set, wherein the humble acoustic guitar played by Ori Naftaly on most of the tunes presented country blues riffs amped into overdrive, adding a new grit to their sound.

Yet there were blues in more unexpected niches. Lawrence Matthews‘ latest work draws heavily on sampled blues in the Fat Possum Records catalog, and his anti-hype attitude, sitting calmly on a stool as he delivered his rhymes was only underscored by the bare-bones country blues guitar underpinning much of his work. Al Kapone has also taken to blending his hip hop vision with the blues, and that was on full display in his Saturday set, especially on the dread-laden “Til Ya Dead and Gone (Keep Movin’).”

Al Kapone and Mayor Paul Young at RiverBeat Music Festival. (Photo: Chris McCoy)

And finally, bringing it back full circle to classic soul revivalism , there was plenty of blues in a groovy set by Rodd Bland and the Members Only Band, the horn section’s evocation of his father Bobby “Blue” Bland’s classic take on the minor-key “St. James Infirmary” giving this listener chills. Some of those same great horn players appeared with the Bo-Keys as they backed up singers Emma Wilson and John Németh in a stomping soul set. Are players like Jim Spake, Marc Franklin, Kirk Smothers, Tom Clary, and Tom Link becoming the new de facto Memphis horns? Their presence on the RiverBeat stages, and so many records cut here, suggests as much.

Memphis is a Star
Perhaps the most striking pattern of the weekend was the way that the biggest stars of the event expressed their gratitude for playing our city. Of course, that was to be expected of Memphis-based mega stars like 8Ball & MJG, who made their set ultra-topical when they announced, “We’re going to dedicate this to the mayor!” then launched into their hit, “Mr. Big” in honor of Mayor Paul Young. Fellow hip hop star Killer Mike also got very specific in his love of the Bluff City, paying homage to both Gangsta Boo and Jerry Lawler in one breath.

There were plenty more tips of the hat to our city. Black Pumas singer Eric Burton called out the city many times, but his greatest tribute was perhaps through his vocal style, which one friend described as “Al Green without the horns.” Their psychedelic soul fit the riverfront crowd like a glove.

The Fugees‘ electrifying set also embraced our city in very musical ways. The crowd went mad as Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean (sans Pras) performed “Zealots,” with its distinctive sample of The Flamingos’ “I Only Have Eyes For You,” but no one could have expected them to shift that beat into a shuffle for a lengthy bridge, wherein their crack ensemble sounded like nothing so much as a consummate Beale Street blues band. Aside from the mere fact of their appearance at the festival, quite a coup for RiverBeat’s organizers, they showed their love of Memphis in myriad small ways, as when Hill sang “killing me softly in Memphis,” or turned the line “embarrassed by the crowd” into “embarrassed by Memphis’ crowd.” Naturally, the crowd ate it up.

Jelly Roll at the RiverBeat Music Festival (Photo: Joshua Timmermans/courtesy RiverBeat Music Festival)

And yet, fittingly, the most involved embrace of the Bluff City came from Tennessee native Jelly Roll, who closed out the weekend just before Sunday’s second downpour descended. As the set was still warming up, the Antioch, Tennessee native shouted, “It feels so good to be back in my home state!” Later, he quipped “Since we’re in one of the birthplaces of rock and roll, I figured we’d play a little rock and roll,” before launching into “Dead ManWalking.”

But then he got more personal. “When I was growing up, my family would drive down to for Memphis in May, to be right here in front of this river,” he said. “I feel like this is God’s exact fingerprint on the bible belt, right here.” He noted his disbelief at now being on the festival stage where his musical heroes once played, then added, “I cant express how honored I am that you people are out there standing in the fucking rain for this!”

Then he began to reminisce: “When I was 13, we were all listening to rap. I’d go up to my brother’s room, looking for whatever smelled like skunk. And someone gave me a mixtape from Memphis, Tennessee labelled Three 6 Mafia.” As the night wore on, he displayed his formidable rapping chops, even calling out his old friend in attendance, Memphis rapper Lil Wyte. It peaked when he described his influences as “somewhere between Hank [Williams] and Three 6 [Mafia],” then launched into his mega-hit, “Dirty South.” The multiracial crowd went wild in the drizzle, celebrating the hybrid confluence of the many musical styles that typify Tennessee, Memphis, and the RiverBeat Festival itself.

Tags Carla Thomas, Fugees, Jelly Roll, Memphis Blues, Riverbeat Music Festival, Soul Revival, Take Me To The River, William Bell

Music Music Features

Summit of the Scribes: A Gathering of Stax Legends

Post author By Alex Greene
Post date June 28, 2023

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.

Tags Bobby Manuel, Cheryl Pawelski, Deanie Parker, East/Memphis Music, Eddie Floyd, Henderson Thigpen, Memphis, Memphis Music, Stax, Stax Museum of American Soul Music, William Bell, Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos

Music Music Blog

William Bell: Tonight at the Halloran Centre

Post author By Alex Greene
Post date August 27, 2021

Vintage William Bell (Photo courtesy Stax Museum of American Soul Music)

The Halloran Centre at the Orpheum Theatre has made a name for itself as a songwriters’ showcase, partly due to its ongoing Memphis Songwriters Series, hosted by Memphis songwriter Mark Edgar Stuart. But one event that should have all fans of classic songwriting rushing the stage is happening tonight with little of the standard “songwriter” hype. That’s simply because tonight’s performer, in addition to helping pen some of the most memorable songs in American culture, is also a stellar performer.

That would be William Bell, the Memphis native, now living in Atlanta, who helped put Stax Records on the map, and then helped it stay there. He wrote and sang “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” one of the first Stax singles to hit the charts, and, like “Green Onions,” another surprise hit for a B-side. He wrote “Born Under a Bad Sign” with Booker T. Jones, a tune first recorded by Albert King and made legend by Eric Clapton and Cream, that has since become a pillar of American popular music.

And that’s just for starters. Anyone who loves the sound of Stax soul should be flocking to this show. More recently, Bell’s won considerable acclaim for his Grammy-winning album, This is Where I Live, and for his featured role in the Memphis music documentary Take Me To The River, where he and Snoop Dogg performed another one of Bell’s compositions, “I Forgot to be Your Lover.”

Reflecting on a career spanning several decades, Bell recently told the Memphis Flyer, “In my concerts I’ve got three generations of people now. I’ve got the grandparents, the parents and the kids, and when you can hear them grooving and dancing and singing along, it’s a wonderful feeling to know that. Yeah, this is the same music, this is the same story, and you can feel what we’re doing. It’s great.”

So get your family’s generations together, and go hear one of the last of the original soul singers still standing. He’s a true pillar of Memphis music, still out there doing his thing.

William Bell Onstage at the Halloran Centre, Friday, August 27, 7:30 p.m. $47.50

Tags Stax Museum of American Soul Music, Stax Records, Take Me To The River, Take Me to the River Educational Initiative, The Halloran Centre, William Bell

Cover Feature News

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

Post author By Alex Greene
Post date August 12, 2020

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.

Tags 'My Life in Song', Al Bell, Autobiography, Eddie Floyd, Isaac Hayes, Knock On Wood, Memphis Music, Stax, William Bell

Music Music Features

The Stax Heritage: William Bell Honored by NEA

Post author By Alex Greene
Post date July 1, 2020

CREDIT: David McLister

David McLister

William Bell

The legacy of Stax Records lives on. In the latest national recognition of a Stax-affiliated artist, William Bell, one of the first (and also one of the most recent) hit-makers for the soul label, was named a National Heritage Fellow last week by the National Endowment for the Arts’ Folk and Traditional Arts program.

As noted on the NEA’s website, “This is the country’s highest honor — a lifetime achievement award — for folk and traditional artists whose life’s work includes both artistic excellence and efforts to sustain cultural traditions for future generations.” Folk and Traditional Arts director Clifford Murphy has described folk art as “something learned knee-to-knee,” by way of noting that all nine recipients of the Heritage Award are exemplary mentors as well as inspired artists.

Memphis native William Bell, based in Atlanta for many years, has certainly excelled at both. As for being an inspired artist, there’s no question that his songs — either for his own records or for others’ — have helped to define soul music. From “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” a hit for Stax in 1961, to duets with Judy Clay like “Private Number,” to the genre-spanning blues hit, “Born Under a Bad Sign,” which Bell co-wrote with Booker T. Jones for Albert King, he’s proven his mettle repeatedly. The Grammy for Best Americana Album he won in 2017 only cinched his status. And yet, as we chatted recently, it was clear that his artistry was only part of the picture.

The 2014 film Take Me to the River was premised on pairing classic soul artists with contemporary rappers, as they recorded new interpretations of old-school gems at Royal Studios. Bell, for example, recut “I Forgot to Be Your Lover” with Snoop Dogg. Since then, director Martin Shore has leveraged its publicity to underwrite an educational initiative that’s becoming widely adopted. And of course, Bell participates regularly in workshops with students at the Stax Music Academy. Clearly, William Bell is thinking ahead.

Memphis Flyer: Did you have any inkling you’d be named a National Heritage Fellow?
William Bell: I wasn’t expecting it. My management, a couple weeks before the announcement, informed me that I was nominated to be selected. But I didn’t think I would win it. It was a total surprise to me. And I was just overjoyed, being in great company. It’s a high honor. I feel very blessed and humbled.

You’ve done a lot of work with the Take Me to the River Educational Initiative and the Stax Music Academy. Did that factor into your selection?
I assume that was a lot of it. We work with a lot of different groups. We work with the Berklee College of Music also, and the New York School of Music. I think a lot of that would have been part of the reason I was selected.
[pullquote-1] You’ve really thrown yourself into this kind of public service work.
I feel very fortunate to have come up and had the success that I’ve had, as far as a career, for so long. And my health is still good. So I think it’s time to give back and help the youngsters along, and teach them the importance of music itself.

So that’s what I strive to do. Give them as much wisdom and foresight as I can, into a career in music, or just being creative in whatever the arts are. Because that’s a gift for all of us.

Do you have specific plans on how to use the $25,000 grant that comes with the fellowship?
Oh yeah! It’ll be put to good use. I work with a lot of kids here in Atlanta. I have a production company and a studio, so I work with kids here. And I’m working still with the Stax Music Academy and Soulsville over there, and with the Take Me to the River Educational Initiative. So I will be putting it to good use. We’re recording and teaching kids here in Atlanta. Trying to get them started on the right path.

You recently did a webinar on Take Me to the River with Martin Shore, Boo Mitchell and former Stax president Al Bell, subtitled “A Movement of Social Consciousness.” What were some of the ideas you explored?
I’ve done about three or four of these with Martin. Just keeping busy, trying to pass the torch along. The times are amazing. I’ve lived through the upheavals and the things we’re going through now, for many years. It’s just amazing that we’re still going through the same identical things that we went through in the ’60s. When you realize that people have given their lives, protesting and dying for so many years. … We try to make people aware of how to get along, how to live together on this planet as one human species, in songs, because that’s what we’ve gotta learn to do. And we’ve got to be open and honest with our dialogue. And find some common denominator and solution to this problem of bigotry and hatred and inequality in our society.

Tags Martin Shore, Memphis, national endowment for the arts, Take Me to the River Educational Initiative, William Bell, You Don't Miss Your Water

Cover Feature News

“Faith Cometh By Hearing”: The Gospel Roots Behind the Memphis Sound

Post author By Alex Greene
Post date December 19, 2019

In covering the Memphis music beat, I talk to a lot of inspired artists — composers, singers, and performers who have rattled the world with their choice of notes, their tone. And they’ve worked in a variety of genres as sprawling as the city itself. But through all the conversations, all the life stories that come pouring out of them, there’s a common thread: church music.

Herman Green, recalling the days of his youth in the 1930s, before he’d ever imagined mastering the saxophone: “I played guitar with a blind pianist man named Lindell Woodson, who played piano for my stepfather’s church. I don’t even know how he could tell what key it was, but he’d get all over that piano like Art Tatum. And it was the Church of God, [claps and sings], you know? It was that kind of thing.”

Photographs by Justin Fox Burks

Fellowship Baptist Church

Booker T. Jones, on his earliest years as a musician: “I want you to mention Merle Glover. She was the organist, and she played the pipe organ. That was the first organ I ever played, at Mt. Olive Cathedral, over by Porter School on Vance Avenue. I was the pianist for the men’s Bible class. I was there at 9 o’clock every Sunday morning for years.”

William Bell, reminiscing about “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” his first hit for Stax Records: “At that particular time, I had been singing secular music in clubs, but the training and the background was strictly gospel. Most soul singers and country singers, we all came out of church … You sang with the choir for a while, and those choir rehearsals taught you how to sing in tune and treat a lyric and express an idea. So all of that helped as we created a career.”

DJ Squeeky, producer of 8Ball & MJG and Young Dolph, recalls growing up playing drums at First Baptist Church on Beale Street, where his mother has always gone. His uncle was “cold” — a master of any instrument in the church, able to jump in and accompany any singer, on any song.

MonoNeon

MonoNeon, trailblazing funk and avant garde bassist: “Eventually I started playing in church. That’s where I really got most of my skill from. Olivet Fellowship Baptist Church on Knight Arnold.”

Vaneese Thomas, noting how she and siblings Carla and Marvell grew up a little differently from most: “Our church 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.”

And that’s just a small sampling. Everywhere you turn, the influence of African-American churches on the Memphis sound — even in the era of hip-hop — is inescapable. The church crops up in nearly every musician’s biography, yet remains under-recognized for what it is: a crucible for musical talent and skill without parallel.

Minus Red Productions/Candied Yam Music

Kirk Whalum

In order to dig a little deeper into this milieu, I could think of no better guide than Kirk Whalum, composer, producer, and sideman extraordinaire, whose command of the saxophone has carried the tones and phrasing honed in his father’s church across the world.

“It’s that thing that we take for granted many times, but other people go, ‘Well, that’s just exactly what I need,'” Whalum reflects. “Whether it’s Quincy Jones — as many sessions as I’ve done with him — or many other artists, they hear Memphis in my sound. Not just Memphis, but Memphis church. And it’s specifically the black church. I mean, Aretha Franklin — her dad was pastoring a black church here. And, you know, Maurice White and David Porter were singing in a black church group in their formative years. So those are the things I’m talking about when I say it’s all about that soul that you get from that place. And that makes its way into art.”

If Whalum takes a philosophical perspective on the idea, perhaps it’s a family thing, given that his late father, Kenneth Whalum Sr., once was pastor of the Olivet Baptist Church on Southern Avenue, and his brother, Kenneth Jr., now presides over that church’s latest incarnation, the New Olivet Baptist Church. It’s only natural that Kirk looks beyond the more superficial influence of, say, the gospel repertoire.

“I think it’s more of an approach. In white culture — what represents Western white culture? I think ballet. In ballet, the more intense you get, the higher you get: literally, physically higher. And the pinnacle of ballet is en pointe. You’re on your toes, you know, and you’re reaching for the sky. And just the opposite applies to African music. When you hear people talking about getting down, it’s like the pinnacle of the African musical experience: You’re almost on the floor. You’re bending down all the way.

“I think that’s a good metaphor for the approach that you get from black music. It’s not about someone ‘playing soulful,’ it’s about believing in something and being a part of something and someone. In this case, Jesus. That brings about a completely different approach. It’s not so much the technique or those other things that we all aspire to. The main thing is that feeling, that conviction.”

Yet there’s another force at work here as well, something larger than oneself that players can reach for and one that often goes hand in hand with the church: family. This too arises over and over again in Memphis musicians’ stories, with such a diversity of what “family” actually means that it need not be reduced to a simple Norman Rockwell image.

Barry Campbell with John Black and Austin Bradley

Musical families have marked the evolution of Memphis music since before that history was written. Herman Green never knew his biological father, Herman Washington Sr., a player in W.C. Handy’s band who was murdered when Green was only 2 years old. But his stepfather, Rev. Tigner S. Green, played a major role in his love of music. Other Memphis families were even more legendary: the Newborns, the Jacksons, and the Thomases, from father Rufus to his three children, to name but a few.

The Whalums, of course, are a formidable musical force in this town, yet they are far from the only dynasty springing from a fortuitous union of both religious and filial continuity. Take the Barnes family: Deborah Gleese, daughter of Rev. James L. Gleese, was, for a time, a Raelette, one of the background singers for Ray Charles, before she married gospel singer Duke Barnes and family life demanded that she leave touring behind.

Converting to the Seventh Day Adventist Church, the couple sang and played around Memphis regularly, ultimately incorporating their children into the show. Today, the Sensational Barnes Brothers, brothers Courtney and Chris, are a gospel act in their own right on the newly minted Bible & Tire Recording Company, while their older brother Calvin is the Minister of Music at the Olivet Fellowship Baptist Church.

Seeing him lead the band this past Sunday was an excercise in polished euphoria. From the mellow background passages, bubbling under Dr. Geno Gibson’s sermon, to the band and choir syncing flawlessly with a spritely drum machine and video projections, the service was a master class in stage craft. In the context of references to young congregation members who had recently been murdered, and in Gibson’s unflinching critique of the New Jim Crow, the music’s shimmer was a welcome blast of ecstatic community.

Jonny Pineda

Jason Clark

Mostly, the service created a spirit of inclusiveness, and, it turns out, the church band is itself a testament to such openness. Calvin Barnes remained a Seventh Day Adventist for years when he began playing for Olivet Fellowship, before finally joining the church where he works nearly a decade ago. This is not uncommon. Jason Clark, executive director of the Memphis-based Tennessee Mass Choir, puts it this way: “Sometimes it’s difficult to find the level of talent you need right within a congregation. Sometimes you have to be a part of a congregation that’s willing to support the music industry financially, and that doesn’t always come from your home church.”

In the case of the Olivet Fellowship (which splintered from the New Olivet Baptist Church some years ago), that openness to outside talent extended to allowing one young drummer to rehearse his secular band in the church during off-hours. Calvin Barnes recalls meeting the drummer’s bass player, a kid named DJ, whose father was a well-known bassist already. “The first time I met him, he was playing with this little group, kids really, and some of them were members of my church. DJ was probably around 12 and came in with his bass bigger than him, and when he played it was like ‘Oh. My. God.’ He wasn’t as good as he is now, but he was playing like a grown man. At that time he was super shy. But when the church ended up losing our bass player, we said, ‘Why not DJ?'”

Though DJ didn’t know the formidable gospel repertoire, he soon mastered it. Calvin nurtured both his idiosyncracies and his ensemble chops. “I really took him under my wing,” says Barnes. “And on the music tip, I would challenge him. Because he’s always been that avant garde-in-the-making type. So when the pastor gets up to preach, musicians typically go off to the side because they’re done for the moment. They just chill. Not him. He would sit there in his chair, turn his volume down, and start practicing bass. He’d do that through the entire sermon, every week. Over and over and over. And I would tell him, ‘You’re gonna be major.'”

Calvin Barnes, Minister of Music at Olivet Fellowship Baptist Church, on keyboards

As he coached the young bassist, little did Barnes realize that DJ’s idiosyncracies were what would lead him to greater renown. Some years later, DJ began posting YouTube videos of his more off-the-wall music, under the name MonoNeon. One such video caught the ear of Prince, who flew him to Paisley Park in Minneapolis to jam and record several times before the mega-star’s untimely death. Today, MonoNeon continues to ride that momentum, both with his own albums and in collaborative bands like Ghost-Note.

Church bands, it seems, are especially open to child prodigies. Jason Clark remembers well one young talent in particular: “When I played at Abundant Grace, close to 28 years ago, there was a young guy named Stanley Randolf, who was 9 years old. He was one of the most phenomenal drummers that I had ever heard. Now he’s Stevie Wonder’s drummer, to this day! We have quite a bit of those stories here.”

Clark himself is no stranger to being a prodigy nurtured by both a musical family and the church. Both playing in a church band and directing the Tennessee Mass Choir, which pulls talent from across the state to Memphis, he seems to have been destined for a life in music. “The choir was actually started by my mother, Fannie Cole-Clark, back in 1990. Next year we’ll be celebrating 30 years. Our mother passed away six years ago, so it was handed over to me when she passed. A lot of people remember her from back in the day, when she started the Fannie Clark Singers, produced by the late, great Willie Mitchell. It was a gospel group. I actually started out playing tambourine for the Fannie Clark Singers when I was 6 years old.”

Clark went off to a life in religious music and credits his success, in part, to time he spent at one of the city’s most pre-eminent musical ministries, Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church. “Dr. Leo Davis is one of the best Ministers of Music that I’ve worked under,” he says. “I know he single-handedly trained a lot of musicians here in the city. And to this day, they have probably one of the top five bands in the city. I think that’s due to his leadership.”

Now Clark’s an accomplished keyboardist, while his brother Jackie is a go-to bass player for the likes of Kirk Whalum and others. But for Clark, the luck of being born among musical folk is not a prerequisite for thriving in the church music scene. “No, not really,” he says. “There of course are a few like that, but there are some who are just gifted. There are some who went to school. That’s the beauty of church musicians. You get such a variety. That’s why our genre is more diverse than any other style of music. It encompasses jazz, to pop, to that gritty bluesy feel, to classical. I really credit that to the fact that not everyone grew up in church, just playing gospel music. So you get this whole eclectic feel within the gospel arena. There are just so many different beginnings to it.”

And, as it turns out, there are happy endings as well. While church bands can foster talent in the making, they can also offer a haven to great players who once toured the world. Such was the scene I stumbled upon at the historic Mt. Pisgah Christian Methodist Episcopal (C.M.E.) Church in Orange Mound, which only last month celebrated its 139th anniversary. Attending their service on that Sunday was like turning the calendar back a half century. On either side of the 90-year-old building’s proscenium, high above the altar, were two vintage Leslie speakers, hard-wired to a classic Hammond organ. At the keyboard sat Winston Stewart, longtime member of the Bar-Kays throughout their ’70s and ’80s heyday. Playing bass behind him was Barry Campbell, who was in demand as a New York session player for nearly 20 years, playing with the likes of Eric Clapton, David Bowie, and Quincy Jones. Together with drummer and singer Austin Bradley, guitarist John Black, pianist Davida Winfrey, and the earnest choir led by City Councilwoman Jamita Swearengen, they created magic.

As one friend noted, finding such talent in unassuming corners of the community is as Memphis as it gets. And it helped me appreciate the phenomenon of the church band as a haven as well as a hothouse for youth. As Campbell tells me, “When I was in New York, the music industry began to change. Everyone went for that MIDI programming thing, like with hip-hop and rap. And the rent in New York City kept going up. After a while I was like, ‘Why am I here?'”

So he returned to the community where he grew up. “It’s a church in the ‘hood,” he says. “It’s old-school. It’s a good church. Young people want that contemporary stuff, those mega churches with flat screens and big sound systems. But musically, at Mt. Pisgah we’re still kinda doing it the way they did it back in the ’60s and ’70s. We’re not really throwing in much of the jazz fusion that’s going on now. We’re more soul and blues-oriented. We don’t get into too much Kirk Franklin-type stuff because we don’t have a youth choir. Everybody in the choir is old enough to be my big brother or daddy or mama.”

Neither Campbell nor Stewart grew up playing in the church but came to it later in life. For Campbell, this was partly a practical matter. “Live music isn’t as popular as it once was. So a lot of musicians have gone to the church over the last 30 years. Once I came back, all my guys had a church gig. Every church had at least a bass drum and keyboard. Some churches even had synthesizers. Some had bands. I even knew white churches that had orchestras. It just expanded to where it’s a thing now.”

On this late autumn Sunday, I was glad it was a thing, as Winston Stewart coaxed waves of emotion from the Hammond organ in a minor key, playing even the drawbars’ shades of timbre deftly, while the bass and drums defined a slinky pocket. Though Stewart’s a relative newcomer to the gospel idiom, it was clear that his lifetime of music and soul was pouring out of those speakers, as one extended organ showcase piece after another evoked waves of blues-drenched sorrow and joy.

It was then that the Reverend Willie Ward stepped up and quoted Romans 10:17. “Faith cometh by hearing!” he declared. Still recovering from the reverberating wooden chambers of the organ, bass, drums, and guitar, topped with those soaring voices, I was inclined to believe it.

Tags Booker T. Jones, DJ Squeeky, Kirk Whalum, Memphis church music, Mt. Pisgah, Olivet Church, Vaneese Thomas, William Bell

Cover Feature News

Memphis: City of Song … and Songwriters

Post author By Alex Greene
Post date June 27, 2019

CREDIT: Chris Paul Thompson

Jocelyn “Jozzy” Donald is recalling her mother’s glory days in the recording industry. “She was a singer with Hi Records, with Willie Mitchell producing. She had a group called Janet and the Jays, back in the day. Boo Mitchell knows my whole family.”

It’s the kind of memory a family can treasure, a brush with greatness, a bit of immortality on vinyl. The group not only worked with a producer who became legendary, they recorded songs by writers like Don Bryant and William Bell, masters of their craft. They too have become legendary, though Janet and the Jays fans would only have seen their names in the very small print below the songs’ titles. That’s just how songwriters were credited. In the age of streaming, the people who composed the music are often completely unacknowledged (though the Sound Credit platform designed by Memphis’ own Soundways is trying to change that).

Chris Paul Thompson

Jocelyn “Jozzy” Donald

The lack of public credit given songwriters is all too apparent when I ask Boo Mitchell if he remembers Jozzy and her family. “Sure!” he says. “She writes music herself. I recorded some of her first stuff in the four-track room at Royal Studios.” It’s yet another moment in the big small town of Memphis, where everyone seems to know everyone else. But he’s not ready when I toss out another factoid: that a song she co-wrote is currently the No. 1 song in the nation — a little number called “Old Town Road.”

Matt White

Don Bryant

“Really?” he exclaims. “Good for her!”

It’s a Memphis thing. Great songwriters are crawling out of the woodwork, and most of us don’t even realize it.

Jamie Harmon

William Bell

In the case of Jozzy, it’s a tale many years in the making. “My brother became a recording artist but got locked up. So I pretty much took his whole love of music and just ran with it. That’s what happened with me falling in love with music. I started working at this studio called Traphouse, with DJ Larry Live. He’s actually Yo Gotti’s right-hand man now. He had a studio on Highland, right near the University of Memphis, and I used to go over there and write. That was where I got my start. I was still at Germantown High School then. All the rappers in the city knew me as the girl who wrote hooks. I was just the hook girl.”

Word of her prolific creativity got around, and before long she was working with famed producer Timbaland in Miami. Then came a move to Los Angeles and being signed to Columbia Records as an artist in her own right. It was then that her label mate, Lil Nas X, found he needed a hand supplementing a song he’d already written and released.

“Old Town Road,” his song of determination in the face of alienation, made use of the old pop trope of the African-American cowboy, which dates at least as far back as the Coasters or Jamaican dub legends the Upsetters. But having a banjo-driven track with Western themes wasn’t enough for the Nashville establishment to recognize the song as a legitimate entry on the country charts. So Lil Nas X upped the ante and actually featured a country star in a remix of the song. That’s where Jozzy came in to write an extra verse for the cameo.

“I just love that Billy Ray Cyrus really stood behind us,” says Jozzy of the star she ended up writing a passage for in the remix. “Because Billy Ray went through the same thing with ‘Achy Breaky Heart,’ which they also took off the country charts. So he could relate to it. And really, the controversy added to the greatness of the song, but I hate that the country music industry had to act like that. Still, new country artists like Keith Urban are supporting this song.”

Indeed, country fans even love it. When Cyrus brought Lil Nas X out for the song at the recent Country Music Association Music Festival, the crowd went crazy.

Now dropping her debut single as an artist, “Sucka Free,” featuring Lil Wayne, Jozzy is poised for something most songwriters never receive: public acclaim. It’s almost a tradition in Memphis, which does not always get the same credit as Nashville as a font of song creation. The absurdity of that is apparent if one simply reflects on the songwriting legacy of the Bluff City. Of course, Memphis looms large in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, where notable inductees include Al Green, Isaac Hayes, David Porter, Otis Redding, Maurice White, and W.C. Handy. Keith Sykes, now managing Ardent Recording Studios after a lifetime of songwriting for himself and other artists like Jimmy Buffett, recently attended this year’s induction ceremony for the New York-based institution and saw fellow Memphian Justin Timberlake receive the Contemporary Icon Award. “He also closed the show. Fantastic, man! And he gave a huge shout-out to Memphis, several times,” Sykes says. His friend and erstwhile collaborator John Prine, who is rightfully honored as the gold standard of songwriters, also was inducted, causing Sykes to ponder Prine’s longtime connection with Memphis.

Keith Sykes

“He did his first album here, with Don Nix at American,” recalls Sykes. “He did Common Sense here and Pink Cadillac here. He’s done a bunch of stuff in Memphis. And he loves it down here.” Beyond working in the city so often, Prine has influenced a whole crop of songwriters based here, who took his template of finely honed, detail-rich narratives to heart. The great John Kilzer, whose recent death is still being mourned, was one such practitioner of the narrative songwriter’s craft. “John Kilzer, I signed in 1986,” says Sykes. “His songs, you could just tell there was something there.”

Beyond his natural talents of observation, Kilzer studied creative writing at then-Memphis State University. It’s a path that other songwriting greats have taken as well, including local writer and performer Cory Branan, whose tightly woven tales are gems of song construction. (I should know; I sometimes play bass for the guy.) English hitmaker Frank Turner recently quipped, “The thing about Cory for me is, almost every songwriter I know is slightly embarrassed by his existence, in the sense that he’s just better than all of us. And should be more successful than any of us.”

Cory Branan

Branan says studying creative writing and literature can indeed enhance this approach to songwriting. “I didn’t write songs until I was 24 or so, but I wouldn’t be doing this if I hadn’t tested into the right classes when I was in school in Mississippi. My teacher, Ms. Evelyn Simms, went off the curriculum, let’s just say that. She would see what we were interested in and then steer us toward things that technically she couldn’t assign.”

From wider reading, Branan learned to take in the wider world. “Keats called it ‘negative capability.’ The idea of not having a persona or a personality, to be able to pursue another one. Basically, not getting your fingerprints all over shit.” (Playing with him and seeing rooms full of fans singing along to “The Prettiest Waitress in Memphis” and others attests to the power of evoking characters that may or may not reflect the songwriter himself.)

It’s an approach that befits almost any style of songwriting, revealing a basic attitude toward the craft that transcends any genre or timely trends. Producer IMAKEMADBEATS, reflecting on songs he’s cowritten with singer Cameron Bethany, puts it this way: “The thing about stepping out of the world of hip-hop, whether it’s for a Cameron Bethany record or an Aaron James record, is that you get to just shamelessly become somebody else. You get to really take on the perspectives of another person. And try to tell that story. With that, songwriting is fun to me because it becomes infinite. I’ve heard songs by people from the perspective of being a gun. I’ve heard songs from the perspecitve of what they thought it was like to be their parents. You can take on any and all perspectives.” Memphis native William Bell, one of the first hitmakers for Stax Records and a 2017 Grammy winner, would agree. “I started singing with the Phineas Newborn Orchestra when I was 14, and I was always a people watcher. At that age, I couldn’t go out in the club, so I had to sit backstage and peek out at the audience. And I would just watch people as they’d come into the club, and after a couple drinks, how they were acting. All of that stuff just kinda hit home, and I wrote about a lot of that just from observation.”

Catherine Elizabeth

Cameron Bethony

Don Bryant, who started in the same era and for a time put off his own performing career to become a staff writer for Hi Records (penning “I Can’t Stand the Rain” for wife Ann Peebles), is similarly inspired by the everyday tales he hears around him to this day. “I had six brothers,” Bryant recalls, “and they always came home with something, or I’d be out in the neighborhood and you hear little things. After a period of time, you visit back on those days and you see a whole lot of things. I pull stories from anywhere I can.”

While much younger than pioneers like Bell or Bryant, Greg Cartwright is universally admired in Memphis as a writer whose songs might have been written in their heyday. As such, his recorded work (on which I’ve played in the past) stands as a kind of bridge between the classic songwriting that emerged from studios like Stax, Royal, or American and the edgier, punk-infused style of bands like the Oblivians or the Reigning Sound.

Kyel Dean Reinford

Greg Cartwright

“I write about things that I’m familiar with,” he says, “so I can speak with authenticity when I say it. But that doesn’t mean necessarily that it happened to me. It just means that I can empathize with the idea. Even though it may not be purely autobiographical, it’s certainly something that I can understand and empathize with. I’m not saying it’s about me so much as to say, ‘I empathize with you if you feel this.'”

But if not autobiographical, Cartwright feels it’s imperative to find one’s authentic voice, something he did through a longtime bandmate. “When I met Jack [Oblivian], he was the first person I met who didn’t sound like anybody I’d ever heard. He wasn’t trying to sound like anybody I could put my finger on. Sure, he had lots of influences, and he would tell you right away what they were, but in my early 20s, most people were very taken with whatever the music of the time was or whatever their social scene was into. And he just seemed like he was just flying his own flag.” In the end, this willingness to buck prevailing trends and pursue a personal vision may be the hallmark of all the city’s great songwriters. “What I look for is something fresh and original,” says Sykes. “And I can never put my finger on what that is.” Some toil at length to build that quality into their songs. “I work hard at making things sound off the cuff,” Branan told one interviewer. Others, like Jo’zzy, take another route. “Your first mind is everything,” she says. “Your first melody that comes into your head, normally that’s the right melody. I tell my manager all the time, ‘Never play me a beat before I go in the studio.’ I’d much rather go freestyle.”

Yet another approach to forging individuality is to be overwhelmingly prolific. Kirby Dockery, a graduate of the Stax Music Academy, left Berklee College of Music to pursue her music career, but was having trouble getting recognition. Her resolve led her to post a song a day on YouTube — eventually culminating in 200 compositions and being signed to Jay-Z’s Roc Nation Publishing. There, she ascended to what is surely the songwriter’s mountaintop, co-writing “Only One” with Kanye West and Paul McCartney, and “FourFiveSeconds” with West, McCartney, and Rihanna.

Josiah Roberto

Kirby

Working under the name Kirby, she reflects on the role of the Stax legacy in her achievements. “The Stax Music Academy [SMA] was one of the first catalysts that helped me believe that songwriting wasn’t just a dream. It was there where I first heard my lyrics and melodies put to music. If it wasn’t for SMA I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of meeting my future publisher years before I even knew how to be signed as a songwriter. SMA planted seeds that are still blooming in my life today. I am forever grateful.”

To that end, she’s now giving back to the institution. As SMA executive director Pat Mitchell-Worley notes, “Kirby offered four scholarships to students in the program, based on the students creating original material. And she listened to every song that was offered. And not only did she pick the best ones, she gave them feedback on their songs. So her scholarship reinforced our songwriting focus.” In fact, the SMA is now promoting the importance of songwriting more than ever.

“For the upcoming regular school year,” says Mitchell-Worley, “we have a full songwriting track. Songwriting and music business. And the two go hand in hand. If you’re gonna pursue a career as an artist, you need to have every form of revenue that you can grasp, and songwriting is a very important part of how you get paid. Students have come to understand more that owning the material that they record and perform affects their revenue streams.” Beyond that, they’re thriving on the creativity that such an emphasis fosters.

Perhaps an old tune by Youmans, Rose, and Eliscu from 1929 puts it best, reeling off the reasons we should be grateful for the craft that has shaped the city’s history for so long:

Without a song, the day would never end

Without a song, the road would never bend

When things go wrong, a man ain’t got a friend …Without a song.

Tags Billy Ray Cyrus, Boo Mitchell, Cameron Bethony, Cory Branan, Don Bryant, Greg Cartwright, J'ozzy Donald, Keith Sykes, Kirby, Lil Naz X, Old Town Road, William Bell

Cover Feature News

You Don’t Miss Your Water

Post author By Alex Greene
Post date October 4, 2018

CREDIT: David McClister

Missing Memphis is a common condition, it would seem. Everyone’s heard about the curious travelers who come for a one week visit and end up staying a lifetime, but fewer talk about the many who leave, only to experience an epiphany about what was left behind and return with renewed fervor. It’s a theme that the creator of the Mempho Music Festival has in common with one of the festival’s greatest performers, William Bell. In harkening back to their hometown from afar, both created something musical that could last for decades, if not generations.

David McClister

William Bell needs no introduction to those who appreciate Memphis music. Though he lives in Atlanta now, he exudes our city’s history. And, as it turns out, his first hit was inspired by homesickness. Born William Yarbrough, he took his stage name after his grandmother Belle. And he needed a stage name at a very young age.

Like so many before and after him, he had Rufus Thomas to thank for his leap into show business. “His band played behind me when I was 14 years old. One of the Bihari brothers, Lester, he had a little label here called Meteor Records, out on Thomas. I was with the Del Rios then, a vocal group I had formed to work down at the Flamingo on Hernando Street. I was 14 years old, still in high school. And Rufus’ band, the Bearcats, played behind me. So the whole Thomas family is like family to me. Marvell, Carla, Vaneese, and I all grew up together.”

Ronnie Booze

Hi Rhythm: Leroy Hodges, Rev. Charles Hodges, Archie “Hubbie” Turner

Bell eventually became a featured performer with the best local band of them all, the Phineas Newborn Sr. Orchestra. When Bell was only 21, the orchestra scored a six-week residency at a New York club, which was extended to three months. That was when Bell’s longing for home kicked in, and when he returned he put that feeling into a song that evoked his days singing in church.

As Peter Guralnick wrote of the number, “‘You Don’t Miss Your Water,’ like most of Bell’s hits for himself and others (‘Share What You Got,’ ‘Everybody Loves a Winner,’ ‘Every Day Will Be Like a Holiday,’ ‘Born Under a Bad Sign’) retailed a familiar folk saying and expanded upon it with a simplicity and craft that rendered it quietly eloquent.”

Bell had been to Satellite Records’ studio once before, singing backup on Carla Thomas’ “Gee Whiz.” In 1961, he took in his own song, “Formula of Love,” to cut a single for the label, freshly re-christened Stax. For the B-side, he offered up the homesick/lovesick lament he’d penned after his New York stay. And that was what DJs all over the country literally flipped for. Six months later, it had put Stax on the Billboard charts.

Bell, of course, went on to become both a performer and songwriter at Stax into the next decade, and his voice and recorded masterpieces lived on beyond the label’s eventual bankruptcy. What’s striking, though, is the way the creation of his first hit echoes the genesis of the very festival he’ll be playing this week.

Jamie Harmon

Leroy Hodges, from sessions for Amazon’s ‘Produced By: Matt Ross-Spang’ series.

We have Diego Winegardner to thank for Mempho, whose career in the New York area gave him the means to jump-start the festival of his dreams last year. “I grew up in Memphis in the late ’70s and into the ’80s,” he says. “I think being here when Stax was prominent and all these great hits were coming out of Memphis, made me think Memphis was the music capital of the United States. It wasn’t Nashville, and it wasn’t Austin. So I wanted to be able to provide a platform for all these great local artists that are here, drawing inspiration from that past but also bringing it forward. So we’re always gonna tip our hat to some aspect of that rich music legacy. Last year, we did a tribute to Stax, with Steve Cropper and Booker T. And Eddie Floyd also sat in on that. And this year we’re gonna pay tribute to Royal Studios, Boo Mitchell, and his family’s contribution to Memphis music.”

Last year, Royal Studios celebrated its 60th anniversary, and Saturday evening’s tribute will offer a slice of Memphis, past and present, that will be hard to beat. It will feature an approach that was pioneered in the 2015 Royal-produced film, Take Me to the River, where old-school soul legends were paired with rappers and other younger performers. William Bell, for instance, collaborated with Snoop Dogg in a revisitation of “I Forgot to Be Your Lover,” Bell’s hit from 1968. The Mempho show will follow in those footsteps, featuring Bell and Bobby Rush alongside hometown hip-hop giants Frayser Boy and Al Kapone, and a cameo from Ashton Riker.

Image of Bell in his early Stax years.

But the real secret weapon behind the show will be the Hi Rhythm Section, named after the label that was synonymous with Royal Studios for decades. Having backed the likes of Al Green and other Hi stars, the band, with Charles Hodges on organ, Leroy Hodges on bass, Archie “Hubbie” Turner on keyboards, has been enjoying a renaissance of sorts, including last year’s Grammy nomination for their collaboration, Robert Cray & Hi Rhythm. But the band can collaborate on more than the blues, as the ongoing tours spawned by Take Me to the River proved.

Boo Mitchell, who runs Royal Studios and Royal Records with his sister Anna, notes that the seasoned players can easily adapt to hip-hop. “They’ve done it before. We’ve done several things with Frayser Boy and Al Kapone. Definitely not a stretch. They’ve played behind Snoop Dogg and played on records with the Wu-Tang Clan. That Better Tomorrow record has some of the Hi guys on that.”

In fact, Bell sees the Hi players having a beneficial effect on the hip-hop world. “It worked so great that Frayser Boy and Al Kapone said they would never work with pre-recorded tracks again. They love live music behind ’em now. Because the energy and the freedom of being loose on stage and conversing with the audience and everything, and not have to follow a track. A lot of the rappers now, Snoop and Jay Z and a lot of them, are working with live musicians.”

For his part, though he’s associated with Stax, Bell feels right at home at Hi as well. The familial spirit of the two studios was always similar and came to full fruition when Bell participated in Take Me to the River. “We did that movie and we won a lot of awards behind it, so it gave us a shot in the arm, career-wise,” he says. “So we toured for two months with Take Me to the River, part one. And we filmed a sequel that’s coming out soon, with New Orleans musicians.”

But that’s not all that’s keeping Bell’s name in the spotlight. His 2016 solo record, This Is Where I Live, stubbornly anchored in the classic soul sounds that put him on the map, won a Grammy for Best Americana Album. And he recently joined Margo Price, John Prine, and Al Green in the Amazon-sponsored sessions with Matt Ross-Spang at Sam Phillips Recording Studio, just released last month. And in a few weeks, Craft Recordings will release a massive compilation, Stax ’68: A Memphis Story, that heavily features some of Bell’s most iconic work.

“There are some gems,” he says. “Concord asked me to give my input, so I’ve listened to a lot of the stuff. There’s some unheard of gems in that collection. Any fan of Memphis music, you can’t go wrong in getting that ’68 compilation.”

Even with so much recent recording work going on, Bell is clearly thrilled to revisit his work of 50 years ago. “You know, a good song is a good song. It’ll come back around.”

Editor’s Picks for Mempho
Only in its second year, Mempho Music Festival has become a magnet for some of the nation’s biggest artists. Perhaps the most anticipated show is Nas, who’s just dropped his 12th album, Nasir. Beck, another artist rooted in the ’90s, has similarly become a major artist who continues to innovate. Newer megastars like Post Malone and Phoenix should draw massive crowds, but given the way Janelle Monae’s star has risen since her debut in 2010 and her parallel film career, she may outdraw all of them. There will be plenty of local genius on display, including Juicy J and Project Pat, Lucero, Don Bryant, Big Ass Truck, and the Lovelight Orchestra. As festival advisor Boo Mitchell notes, “It’s a music combination that’ll have something for every demographic.” And one distinctive Mempho feature, the all-star jam, blends diverse artists to entertain late-night groovers and those taking advantage of the new camping option. This year, it features Robert Randolph, Karl Denson, Cory Henry, Nate Smith, and Mononeon, among others. But the real triumph of Mempho may be in the shake-your-booty department. Says Mitchell, “We’ve got Parliament-Funkadelic AND the Bar Kays! That’s a whole lotta funk!”

Tags Beck, Big Ass Truck, Boo Mitchell, Don Bryant, Hi Rhythm Section, Janelle Monae, Juicy J and Project Pat, Lovelight Orchestra, Lucero, Mempho Music Festival, Nas, William Bell

Music Music Blog

David Porter and Friends: Bringing Memphis to the World, and the World to Memphis

Post author By Alex Greene
Post date November 10, 2017

CREDIT: Focht

Focht

David Porter

David Porter, who worked with Isaac Hayes to craft some of Stax Records’ most compelling songs, is a busy man. Though he’s not often seen onstage, this Saturday he will host a one-of-a-kind evening of conversation and performances, featuring a diverse sampling of his friends from over five decades in the record business. Here, he talks a bit about the star-studded event, and the community cause he’s hoping it will benefit.

Memphis Flyer: Tell me a little about the show you’ll be hosting. It’s a rather unique format.

David Porter: This is the second David Porter and Friends show that I’ve done at the Horseshoe Casino. The first one was a sellout. And I had Samuel L. Jackson, the actor, I had Julius Irving, the athlete. I had Isaac Hayes, and J. Blackfoot. And the casino had been actively wanting me to do this show again for several years. I just agreed to do it for a couple of reasons. One, I wanted to create a bit more attention for a nonprofit that I was the founder of, the Consortium MMT. But the primary focus of it was me putting some friends of mine together. Included in that, I will have Stevie Wonder, who was the first recipient of the Epitome of Soul Award, present the award on this show to William Bell.

Alex Burden

William Bell

It’s a great opportunity to present the Epitome of Soul award to William. We were going to present the award a year ago, and we were working with Shelby Farms but we were not able. There was a storm that happened and kinda messed it up. It was flooded and all, and so we decided not to opt on that. And so because we did have the award, and had named William Bell as a recipient even before he won a Grammy, we wanted to be sure and not let another year go by. So this show was a great opportunity to do that.

But the show’s structure is akin to The Tonight Show, a talk show with entertainment. I have friends of mine that I sit on a couch with, on the stage, talk about their careers, we have videos of their lives, we have a fun discussion that’s in-depth. I’ll be doing that with Stevie Wonder. I’ll be doing that with William Bell as well. With Ray Parker, Jr. as well. With Richard Roundtree, the star of Shaft. It is that kind of event. The reason I call it “and Friends” is because I create a personal kind of connection for the audience, with people that they’ve certainly heard about and seen, but never had this kind of view of them, with them talking about their lives in such a candid way. Involved with that are performances by these artists as well.

I suppose you’ve assembled a select house band for the event?

Yes. Gary Goin, who has been associated with me for more than 20 years, who is a known musician here, and has bands of his own that tour to casinos in other parts of the country, is the house band for this show. It’s the Gary Goin Band. There’ll be a ten piece band on that stage.

Will you be performing as well?

I’m not gonna be performing. I’m the host of the event. I interview people, though I talk about my career, certainly. Some of my material is performed and showcased. But I’m just like Jimmy Fallon, except a lot of this involves friends of mine. For instance, Stevie Wonder is going to sing a tribute to William Bell. I’m gonna refresh people on the success and the magnitude of success that Ray Parker, Jr. has had in his career. People don’t know. People don’t know that one of the most accomplished songs in the songbook of America is “Ghostbusters”. They don’t know that. They have no idea how well this man lives. Conversationally, it becomes extremely entertaining and informative for an audience to experience that. But then also to see that he’s still performing is also special.

William Bell… very few people in this area know the magnitude of William Bell’s success. They don’t know that he had a record company in the 2000’s that had a number one major record on the label that he started. And then he just won a Grammy this year. To be able to see a guy talk about his life and career and go through all that and get up on a stage and be able to perform in a quality way is a special thing. And then, how many people can see Stevie just sit on a couch and talk?

It has that personal dimension because you’ve known all these folks for years now.

Yes. Exactly. And see I’ll also be showing them some information on a nonprofit that I started in 2012, and why I started it and why I wanted to give something back. And what it all means and why it’s impacting lives and that whole thing. And so it’s gonna be an entertaining show, I can tell you that.

Well darn, I was hoping to hear you perform something off [1974 Stax album] Victim of the Joke?

Porcelan

Ha ha! Well, I still could do that but no, this is not me performing. This is me just showcasing and talking about other talents. And also I have an artist who’s on my new record label, Made In Memphis Entertainment (MIME): Porcelan, who is doing very well right now. She’ll be performing. And she’s a knockout. I mean she’s a tremendous talent. She’s a local Memphis talent who was performing with some of the booking agencies around here that have bands playing in the circuit for colleges and private parties and the like. And I heard about her and I wanted to hear her. Then I met her and was blown away. She’s 26 years old, just a beautiful young lady and extremely talented. And so we created an artist development with her and now we’ve got a record, “The Real Thing Don’t Change,” that’s getting noticed nationally. She’s a Memphis kid, born here in Memphis, went to Westwood High School in Memphis.

David Porter and Friends: Bringing Memphis to the World, and the World to Memphis

So MIME is quite distinct from the Consortium MMT?

Without a doubt. MIME has a 16,000 square foot building at 400 Union. We have three recording studios, state of the art. We have a roster right now of four artists, we’re gonna have as many as ten artists on our label. We just released the first record on Porcelan in September, we’re getting ready to release her album, as well as two others, the first quarter of 2018. I’m very excited about this company.

MIME headquarters

Additionally I’m just really really pleased about being able to do something as a give back with the Consortium. What we wanted to do, and I wanted to do, was give a significant give-back that could carry on well into the future. So I developed a nonprofit that dealt with giving aspiring songwriters, record producers and recording artists an opportunity to learn from many of us that have had success doing it, whereby they can incorporate whatever their natural instincts are into what they do with this additional knowledge, and use that part of it that complements what they’re looking for. And so I started the program with a clearly focused emphasis on three areas: songwriting, recording and performing. And inside of that I developed a curriculum, for lack of a better word, that follows processes from A to Z with that.

It was not a profit center for me, I make no salary from it. Matter of fact, I started it with my own money. I got many of my friends who knew that I wanted to do this for the right reasons, and they were comfortable with giving their time to participate. So what I got them to do, I have 135 plus videos of some of the biggest names out there, talking about the steps they use in their various processes. For instance, Valerie Simpson, her and her husband, Nick Ashford, of Ashford and Simpson, in addition to being great artists they were great songwriters. So Valerie is on film in our catalog, talking about her creative steps as a songwriter. Jimmy Jam, who produced Janet Jackson, is another example. I have him on video talking about his steps in producing records. And what he does in order to make that effective. I have Philip Bailey, of Earth, Wind and Fire, talking about what artists need to do not only to preserve their voices, but to reinforce their voices in a more credible way to last through a long career in this business.

And the talents in the program, they have to do independent studies to show what they’ve learned. And then I sit down and talk with them individually about how their progress has gone, and if we feel that they could be a credible reflection of the talent pool that’s coming out of our area, we then lobby other record companies and music publishers to come look at these talents. We don’t sign any artists, they’re free to do whatever they wanna do with their music, and who they associate with. But we just try to better prepare them to be more effective. And the program is really impactful on young folks. In a really emotional way. I don’t wanna sound like people crying and that kinda thing, but it’s really like that because it’s really impacting people.

David Porter and Friends takes place on Saturday, November 11, 2017, at Horseshoe Tunica’s Bluesville Showcase Nightclub in Tunica, 8:00 pm.

Tags David Porter, Memphis Music, Stax Records, Stevie Wonder, William Bell

Music Music Blog

The Blues Music Awards: A Funky Family Reunion

Post author By Alex Greene
Post date May 13, 2017

William Bell and Bobby Rush

The Blues Foundation’s 38th Annual Blues Music Awards (BMA’s) were held Thursday night at a packed Cook Convention Center, and for those few hours, a kind of blues utopia materialized in downtown Memphis. First and foremost, it was a utopia for blues fans of all stripes, with performances by luminaries old and new keeping everyone moving and “rattling their jewelry” at the gala event. But it was a utopia as well for the performers and others in this niche of the music industry, coming together to renew old friendships, forge new ones, and see the once-humble world of blues entertainment exploding before their eyes. Paradoxically, and perhaps due to the blues’ homespun values, the community has lost none of its personal quality even as the industry of the blues has grown.

“It’s the biggest night in blues. We have two Grammy award winners, Fantastic Negrito and Bobby Rush, and they presented together,” explained Blues Foundation president Barbara Newman, who noted that the personal quality of the gathering remained intact. “It’s all about relationship-building. It’s a big reunion. And everybody’s looking out for everybody else. All the nominees want to win, but they’re really happy for their friends if they don’t.” Having headed the organization for less than two years, she’s made it her goal to reach beyond the established community. “The blues world knew about the Blues Foundation, but people that love the blues, but aren’t necessarily entrenched in the blues, didn’t know us, and we’re working to get them to know who we are. We’re seeing a lot more excitement and energy. Our social media has popped. There’s been huge growth there.”

Highlights of the night included a soulful set by Betty Lavette, who fondly recalled recording one of her hits here in Memphis forty-eight years ago, and a bristling performance by longtime Muddy Waters sidekick John Primer. Primer delivered the most gripping solos of the night, playing bottleneck slide in frenzied, coruscating sheets of sound, invoking the early Chicago scene one minute, quoting the Star Spangled Banner in the next. Pausing between numbers, he noted, “You know, I won one of these trophies last year. But I’ll be so happy when someone else wins. I don’t need five or six trophies. Let these young people win some and keep the blues alive.”

And while many young talents were recognized last night, the royalty of the evening was clearly Bobby Rush, fresh off his recent Grammy win for Best Traditional Blues Album. At the BMA’s, not only did his Porcupine Meat win Album of the Year, his fifty-year career retrospective on Omnivore Recordings, Chicken Heads, won Historical Album of the Year. “It makes me feel old!” quipped Rush. “But it’s a blessing to get old. You put your mark on a wheel and you roll it down a hill, and your mark come back to you.”

Musing on the four disc set, Rush noted, “to have a CD out with this many records, you have to be blessed enough to have that many masters. Because the masters that I have, I own. Not many artists, especially black artists, own their own masters.” Was this due to his business smarts at the time? “Now I think it’s smart. But I was blessed, because I think what happened was, they counted me out, ‘cos I was just a little blues guy, would never amount to anything. ‘Let him have it, he’s not gonna do anything with it.’ And all of a sudden I get 80 years old, and I have a valuable piece of property.” Rush hinted at more retrospectives to come. “That’s not even about half of it. I probably have another 120 songs in the can,” he said before adding, with his eye on the future, “My motto is, ‘I must do all I can while I can.’ The best song never been sung yet.”

For a complete list of winners and other information, go to https://blues.org/blues-music-awards/

Tags Blues Foundation Annual Blues Music Awards 2017, Bobby Rush, William Bell