Spirit of Stax Records and future of the music can still be found in Memphis
by Bob Mehr
via The Commercial Appeal

Early in his essential 1986 volume, "Sweet Soul Music," author Peter Guralnick offers an insightful description of what soul music is. "It is the story of blacks and whites together," wrote Guralnick. "It is the story of the complicated intertwinings of dirt-poor roots and middle-class dreams, aesthetic ambitions and social strivings, the anarchic impulse and the business ethic."

Although Guralnick meant his description to be applied to all soul music, it feels as though he's writing about Memphis -- about Stax, Hi Records and any number of smaller labels that flourished here in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s

Later, he admonishes us not to forget that the power of soul music derives from the fact that it's not a limited form expression, but one that encompasses all aspects of human emotion and experience. "We should always remember that soul music could stink as bad as the nastiest blues," observed Guralnick, "could offer redemption, like the church, only after acknowledging the basest human needs."

In an increasingly fragmented culture, it's hard to find any art form or entertainment that can satisfy all those impulses and needs. But soul, at its best, still manages to do just that.

Here we are, in 2007, observing the 50th anniversary of that music. The Memphis Convention & Visitor's Bureau has designated the week starting Saturday "Seven Days of Soul."

The golden anniversary is nominally tied to 1957, the year that Royal Studio opened and future Stax founder Jim Stewart began making recordings in his garage. But the date is a somewhat arbitrary choice.

As Kevin Kane, president and CEO of the Memphis CVB, put it a few months back: "Is this year really the 50th anniversary? Probably not. Who really knows?" But, he noted, it's as good a time as any to celebrate the music and musicians, rather than to wait until even more of the principals pass away.

But for every artist who will be recognized amid the celebratory hoopla this week, there will be 10 or 20 whose names won't be mentioned and whose contributions will probably be overlooked. Singers like Johnnie Taylor and O.V. Wright, writers like Roosevelt Jamison and Quinton Claunch, crucial players like Al Jackson Jr. and Howard Grimes -- men and women who literally gave Memphis music its beat, and gave Stax and Hi their sonic foundation and creative identity.

Of course, that's a common problem with sweeping celebrations or museums that seek to enshrine art and artists. Often the most interesting characters and moments in music history don't occur in the spotlight, but rather take place in the margins.

Much of the CVB-sponsored year-long celebration of soul has been focused on Stax -- in part, because of the financial patronage of its parent company, the California-based Concord Music Group. But Stax is a story that continues to fascinate.

Launched by Jim Stewart and, later, his sister Estelle Axton in the late 1950s, the company became a magnet for both black and white musical talent and would prove an oasis of integration in the still divided South of the '60s.

The little label that could would develop into a grittier Southern counterpoint to Motown, producing a succession of hits and stars: neighborhood kids like Carla Thomas, the Mar-Keys, and Booker T. & the MG's, and later, outside talent like Otis Redding, Sam & Dave and Eddie Floyd.

Redding's death in a plane crash and Stax's split with distribution partner Atlantic Records in 1968 nearly destroyed the label. But, led by executive Al Bell, the company would have an even bigger second act.

Thanks to Isaac Hayes' "Shaft" soundtrack, a series of crossover hits by the Staple Singers and the massive WattStax concert and film, by the early '70s, Stax had become a major force in African-American entertainment and culture.

However, a series of poor business decisions and external pressures forced the company into a quick decline and eventual bankruptcy by early 1976.

Local author and filmmaker Robert Gordon, who is co-directing the documentary "Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story" (set to air nationally as part of PBS's "Great Performances" series on Aug. 1) offered an insight into what makes the Stax tale so compelling after all these years. "The label's story has the framework of a Greek tragedy," said Gordon. "There's this great rise, tragic fall, and from the ashes there's a new rise to even higher heights, followed by an even bigger fall."

Those tragic qualities, the great heights and perilous plummets, have conspired to create a controversial and often contradictory legacy that Memphians are still grappling with.

The open, some would say wonderfully naive approach, that Stewart and Axton took with their label allowed new talent to flourish and Stax to grow against the odds. It was not the kind of environment that could've ever been fostered by professional record people. But, in a way, it was those very same qualities that doomed the company in the end.

Appropriately, Stax's legacy is also one of self-doubt, bad business deals and unchecked ambition. There's a darker inheritance, too, the role of a rogue promotions man like Johnny Baylor -- a shadowy figure who was neither musician nor singer, whose name won't be found on any monuments or museum walls, but who is an equally important part of the Stax story.

In the end, all of that is something for historians and journalists and filmmakers to chew over. What survives, what matters most in the end, is the music that was made. And that has remained unsullied and untouched by time or travails.

What is up for grabs now is the future: of Stax, of soul and Memphis' relationship to both.

For much of the past year, speculation ran wild that the city's most famous living citizen, Justin Timberlake, would be involved in relaunching the label in some manner. It was an exciting prospect, less because of J.T.'s musical lineage than what it would have meant for the city, both for its wider image and for its coffers.

As it transpired, the Concord Music Group pushed ahead with the relaunch of Stax without Timberlake in January. Any lasting hope for his involvement was doused when Timberlake officially announced the formation of his own vanity imprint with Interscope Records last month.

There were fans of Stax and soul, including many of the artists and label veterans, who breathed a sigh of relief at the news. There seemed to be something antithetical about a professional showbiz kid like Timberlake -- one groomed for stage and stardom since the cradle -- being the new face of Stax.

As Steve Cropper said not too long ago, the main reason Stax was so singular a phenomenon was that, "We had no idea what we were doing. I guess you'd say there was a kind of magic in not knowing, and that made it special." As Cropper notes, everything that made Stax great was, at its essence, beautifully raw and largely untutored. Certainly, that kind of description could never be applied to a stylized performer and personality like Timberlake.

So, instead, the future of Stax belongs to Concord.

Apart from the odd veteran artist like Isaac Hayes, the bulk of the new Stax's signings are solid, even exceptional, neo-soul artists including Angie Stone, Soulive and Lalah Hathaway.

But even so, does anyone believe the fate of the city's music scene should rest with a company that has a Beverly Hills ZIP code?

The truth is, we've got all we need right here. The spirit of Stax, of the best soul music, is still around and abundant.

You'll find it in unexpected places: Watching legendary Hi Records sidemen the Hodges Brothers play with indie rock songstress Cat Power; hearing Jack Oblivian lead his band through Booker T. & the MG's "Time is Tight"; listening to the latest Kinfolk Kia $hine track on the radio; and certainly on every occasion the children of the Stax Music Academy perform.

It's also to be found during dance nights at The Big S Lounge -- a South Memphis bar populated by mostly older African-Americans -- and among the young, white rock fans that congregate for the weekly soul sets at the Buccaneer in Midtown.

Watching these disparate crowds dance to the same music, often the same songs, you find a microcosm of the charmed collision that made, and continues to make, Memphis music so special. So, simply put, as we mark the next "Seven Days of Soul," it's important to remember that the other 358 days are worth celebrating, too.