On December 20th Little Rock's American Princes came to Ardent Studios to record the second edition of The Ardent Sessions that debuted today on Breakthruradio.com. While they were in town John Fry offered to take them on a personal tour of the Stax Museum. Collins Kilgore, singer for American Princes, recounts the story here:
When we traveled to Memphis for our chance to appear on The Ardent Sessions we showed up early. Little Rock is close, and Rachel had let us know that if there was time John Fry would take us on a tour of the Stax Records Museum. We knew this was an opportunity we couldn't pass up, and as soon as we explained to the Ardent engineers why we had arrived early they testified to the royal treatment we were about to receive. "You're gonna hear the stories that aren't written on the walls in that place," one of them told us.
After carefully shuffling our equipment past the stacks of Marshall cabinets, organs, and other irreplaceables that line the halls of Ardent (an original Mellotron, for instance!) we loaded everything into Studio A for the engineers to arrange and hopped back in our van. John Fry and Rachel led the way as we followed them down Madison Avenue and over to the Stax Museum on McLemore.
We gathered in the parking lot, and John began to tell us about the building adjoining the museum, the Stax Music Academy. He explained how this charter school was founded with the goal of effecting the neighborhood similarly to how the original Stax Records did in the 60s. Regardless of background local kids were encouraged to explore their musical talents and were exposed to the resources that allowed them to do so, and many in turn became some of the most famous and talented musicians ever to come from the south. I couldn't help wondering how different this country would be had that kind of mentality been in any way incorporated into our system of education. To me the fact that the music of the 60s and 70s even occurred at all has value connotations, and the idea that that kind of creativity has been smothered almost completely by commercialism, passivity, and complacency is really a moral issue (not to get all didactic).
Inside the museum we were treated to a short film-screening on the history of soul in America, and were able to see some of those soul musicians today reflecting back on what a great time it was for music back in the late 60s and 70s. We had some idea going in that this would be a pretty momentous experience for us, but it was beginning to sink in how lucky we were to be so close to some of the places where powerful and innovative new genres were molded.
The museum opened it's story of soul with a hundred-year-old, one-room gospel church that had been transported from the Mississippi Delta and reconstructed, complete with splintering pews, inside the first room of the exhibit. There was lots of great gospel footage, including plenty of Sister Rosetta Tharp playing her electric-guitar hymns with all the seriousness and charm that was still missing from rock-n-roll. Talk about stage-presence, Sister Rosetta made it seem like there was no state more natural than to be at the front of a church, singing at the top of your lungs as if the music itself were the object of praise.
Further inside the museum there were countless relics of the soul records produced at Stax. We got to see old studio consoles, and two, four, and eight-track tape machines, some donated by John Fry himself. We saw the Hammond Organ on which the melody of 'Green Onions' was originally set to tape, and many numbers of trumpets, saxophones, and trombones that had been played by the finest studio-musicians who's names I'll never remember. John pointed out somewhere along the way that The Beatles had wished to be able to record Revolver here. "Listen to those horns at the end of 'Got to Get You into My Life," he said, "and tell me if you don't hear the Stax sound."
We saw the exhibits on The Bar-Kays and Otis Redding, after which John told us the details of the plane crash that killed Otis and most of the Bar-Kays. The lone survivor, the Bar-Kays' trumpet player, floated in the frigid water of the lake hoping to save his friends, and only saved himself by clinging to a seat-cushion until he was rescued almost completely hypothermic. John commented on how he thought a lot of musicians probably died needlessly in making dangerous journeys under the pressure of getting to the next show and avoiding cancellations.
Amazingly, as we were nearing the end of the tour Ben Cauley, the survivor of the plane crash, came into the museum for a visit with another member of the new Bar-Kays. In a moment that I'm sure none of us will forget John ushered us over to him and introduced us all. Somewhat in awe, we shook his hand and then made our way all too quickly, not wishing to linger. Our friend and agent Gary Crump has the phrase, "only in Memphis," as his sign-off for his booking and management business, and I wondered if he was thinking of such encounters when he began using it.
Or maybe Gary was thinking more of things like Isaac Hayes' brightly-colored and embroidered leisure suits, which are displayed in the museum along with their matching capes. Or, better yet, Isaac's car, "Superfly," which is upholstered in turquoise, trimmed with gold, and includes a black and white television set in plush, mock-rabbit fur just beneath the dash. In order to fully display this vehicle's ostentatiousness the museum's organizers have it set atop a revolving platform, which not only lets you see it from all possible angles, but has presented the gold-plated Cadillac in the eternal state of being driven slowly round and round the block.
There are many other little brilliances I'd love to fully describe: the televisions playing excerpts from the Wattstax concert (most notably clips of Rufus Thomas performing in a pink tuxedo jacket with matching shorts), the Stax Hall of Records where they've lined the walls with every Stax recording ever produced (including Big Star's #1 Record and Radio City, which are revered by our band as classics), but it's foolish of me to try and express with words an experience that was so essentially visual and acoustic.
Photography isn't allowed in the museum, otherwise we'd have spent half the time snapping pictures with our phone cameras. But there's so much that I know that I will remember better through the lens of John's insightful narration. We were very fortunate to have had this opportunity and are, of course, utterly grateful to John for taking us. Clearly, he is a man who still cares greatly about music's past and its future. And in an industry where I've seen shockingly little of that mentality I cannot understate how important it is to have people like John and the rest of the excellent staff at Ardent to keep great music alive.
Only in Memphis, Indeed!!
Listen to American Princes on The Ardent Sessions HERE!!
All the way from Little Rock, these guys will put a bounce in your step while lighting up your intellect. Take a listen to some brand new tunes from their upcoming release "Other People".
Setlist:
00:40 Real Love
05:28 Watch As They Go
09:30 Son of California
13:40 Auditorium
20:10 Kid Incinerater
24:20 Still Not Sick of You
29:07 Never Grow Old
34:31 Open Letter
40:13 Shake Baby Shake
44:04 Gravel
Photos of the performance can be found in our gallery here.
Check out a feature article I wrote about American Princes on Breakthruradio.com here.
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