PBS film chronicles unlikely rise, tragic fall of R&B movement

Mike Hughes | Lansing State Journal

For years, a vacant lot in Memphis, Tenn., reflected cascades of music history.

That lot now houses the Stax Museum of American Soul Music and the Stax Music Academy. For a time, however, it was vacant and abandoned.

“It broke my heart to see that there was no symbol that represented what we were all about,” said Al Bell, the former owner of Stax Records.

Now fresh symbols are growing. There’s the museum, the academy, the revival of the label itself. There’s also a dynamic special tonight, under PBS’ “Great Performances” banner.

Stax was one of two soul music houses that transformed popular music.

In the North was Detroit and Motown, with a relatively sweet, smooth sound; in the South was Memphis and Stax. “It’s a trend in Memphis, actually, to go for the overall feel over the perfect recording,” said Robert Gordon, a music author who directed the PBS film.

This was the music that Stax founder Jim Stewart savored.

“Jim had been a country fiddle player, and … he started finding out about something called rhythm and blues,” Bell said. “And it took over his spirit and his heart and his soul.”

In 1957, Stewart, a bank clerk, started the label with his sister, Estelle Axton. (Their last names squeezed together to form “Stax.”) They moved it into a South Memphis theater in 1960; they soon brought in blacks as managers, co-owners and, eventually, owner.

It was a collective experience. “We worked together, ate together, laughed together,” Isaac Hayes said.

Forming a label

Otis Redding arrived as a roadie for Johnny Jenkins, Bell recalled.

“He was really sort of like a helper, a handyman and carried the clothing. … Otis had stayed around all day long and had been bugging everybody for an opportunity to be heard.

“Jim Stewart said, ‘OK, you know, we gotta listen to this guy.’\u2009” When Otis started singing ‘These Arms of Mine,’ “the rest is history.”

Then there was Hayes, who had moved to Memphis as a teenager. He played with bands, became the keyboardist for the Stax house band, then was teamed with David Porter to write; “we just clicked,” he said.

They wrote more than 200 songs, including the classic “Soul Man,” plus “B-A-B-Y” and “Hold On I’m Coming.” Deanie Parker — once a Stax performer, now president of the Soulsville Foundation — says the Stax sound was molded by Hayes, Porter, Booker T. and the MGs and, especially, Redding. “Those horn lines that we hear today on all of those Stax records … can be attributed to Otis Redding.”

At first, people felt Stax would be limited to a black audience. Then touring changed that.

“We had standing room only, throughout the continent of Europe,” Bell said. “Nothing but white people, appreciating Booker T. and the MGs, appreciating Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas.”

Stax was soaring. Then everything went wrong.

Its star, Otis Redding, died in a plane crash in 1967, at 26. Its distributor, Atlantic Records, exercised a clause Stewart hadn’t noticed; now it owned the Stax hits.

Hayes’ big break

That could have brought an early end to Stax. Instead, Bell made a gutsy decision in 1969 to release about 27 albums. That brought a second chance for Hayes, whose previous album had gone nowhere.

His “Hot Buttered Soul” drew raves. Hayes had the music and — it turned out — the look.

“A barber shop was next door to Stax,” Hayes recalled. “I said, ‘I want you to cut it all off.”

The bald-is-beautiful look worked and Hayes drew attention. When Stax made the 1971 movie “Shaft,” it hired famed photographer Gordon Parks to direct and Hayes to write the score.

“I did it in one day,” Hayes said. “The next day, I did the strings; the third day, I did the vocals.”

The “Shaft” theme became another classic and Hayes won an Academy Award.

The rest is history

At its peak, Stax was turning out “Midnight Hour,” “Respect Yourself” and “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay.” At its low point, it crumbled in 1975, amid court cases, criminal and civil. Both extremes are described in the PBS film

Now Stax has restarted, with Hayes is one of its performers. At 64, he talks quietly, with words sometimes eluding him. New generations know him as the voice of Chef on the “South Park” cartoon series.

And he brings grand memories. He spent the day of his “Shaft” Oscar win with his grandmother, who had raised him after his parents’ early deaths. They went to his Los Angeles mansion and then to the ceremony.

“I said, ‘Momma, what do you think?’\u2009” Hayes recalled. “She said, ‘Wow, I never thought I would see the day.”

She would see many more days, living to 105. Her grandson would become an actor, an author, a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He would be a keeper of the Stax traditions, past and present.