Speaker 1: Questloft Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: So of y'all, June is Black Music Month, and every
Speaker 2: year we use this time to acknowledge something that really
Speaker 2: can't be overstated. Black music is one of the foundational forces.
Speaker 1: Behind modern culture.
Speaker 2: Now, back when Teams Supreme and I were doing the
Speaker 2: Questlove Supreme and now on the Quest Loft Show, we've
Speaker 2: always tried to create a space for those stories. So
Speaker 2: for the entire month of June, we're bringing you an
Speaker 2: episode every day focused on the history, influence, and ongoing
Speaker 2: evolution of black music. Team and I dug through the
Speaker 2: catalog and selected episodes that feel especially meaningful for now,
Speaker 2: the conversations that inform, entertain and connect the dots between
Speaker 2: where this music comes from where it's headed. Now, alongside those,
Speaker 2: we'll be releasing four new episodes of Quest Loft Show
Speaker 2: featuring trailblazers, innovators, and cultural connectors and visionaries who represent
Speaker 2: the past, present, the future of black music. I want
Speaker 2: you to enjoy this. Thank you. What's up, lazies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2: This is another episode of Quest Love Supreme. I mean
Speaker 2: host Questlove, which means the family. We got Layah, Hello,
Speaker 2: how are you.
Speaker 3: I'm well, Hello, sir doing well?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're back in LA right now?
Speaker 4: I am back in La.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah. Gloom and Doom.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Gloom and Doom.
Speaker 3: Yeah, May Gray June Gloom. People don't know this about La.
Speaker 3: Get it, get it into it.
Speaker 2: Okay. It's good to hear. Fan Tickeolo is in the
Speaker 2: blue room. Yeah, man, yeah, man, I got a new
Speaker 2: light bulb. I think previously you're going purple.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was on purple.
Speaker 2: I went blue. I went cool. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: We got a legend in the building with us today,
Speaker 4: so you know, I tried to make it cool for him.
Speaker 4: So yeah, that is what it is.
Speaker 2: Saga, Steve, what's up, bro?
Speaker 6: How you doing? Hi? Everybody?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 6: Everything's good? Everything's good, Thank you, Steve.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen. I will say our guest tonight is
Speaker 2: I mean, I feel like all of our guests are legendary,
Speaker 2: super legendary, but our guest tonight world famous Songwriting Hall
Speaker 2: of Fame member having damn near pinned over close close
Speaker 2: to two thousand joints joints in his illustrious career. He
Speaker 2: is the architect, in my opinion, the architect of the
Speaker 2: sound of Memphis, you know, a city that has rich
Speaker 2: musical history, and you know, as a staff member, as
Speaker 2: a writer, as a producer for Al Bell's legendary Stax label,
Speaker 2: he is giving us so much magic over the decades,
Speaker 2: along with this songwriting partner Isaac Hayes, and on his
Speaker 2: own of course, you know, he's worked with too many
Speaker 2: legends to name. Uh, there's Sam and Dave, There's Otis Wridding,
Speaker 2: bar Kay's, Carla Thomas, the Emotions, Albert King, Rufus Thomas
Speaker 2: and of course Johnny watch out for Jodie Taylor Eve.
Speaker 2: Even if those names I mentioned are slightly before your time,
Speaker 2: I will say that, you know, if you're a hip
Speaker 2: hop head, can we say that his composition might be
Speaker 2: the musical backdrop of the East West La beef.
Speaker 4: O Man, Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Well no, no, no, because the word is that you know,
Speaker 2: Pop got yeah, Pop sort of felt that you know
Speaker 2: who shot you was about him, which you know, we
Speaker 2: have clear evidence that Biggie did that rhyme with Keith
Speaker 2: Murray for the Mary j b interlude, you know, long ago.
Speaker 4: But the truth didn't matter at that point. The truth
Speaker 4: didn't matter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the truth didn't matter. I guess the perception was
Speaker 2: bigger than what reality was. You know, we live in
Speaker 2: a time where facts don't matter, and so I will
Speaker 2: just say that, you know, between like Biggie and Wu
Speaker 2: Tang and Kane and Mop and Will Smith and so
Speaker 2: many others have used his work. You know, we're in
Speaker 2: the presence of a legend and we're honored to have
Speaker 2: the one and only great David Porter on Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, as how I read said, how do you
Speaker 5: talk that? It's really.
Speaker 2: You laid the foundation. So I'm just you know, regurgitating
Speaker 2: your your life's work. So were you right now? Are
Speaker 2: you still a membhers?
Speaker 5: No, I'm in New York. I was speaker at the
Speaker 5: ai mp A summit, which I left there, came right here.
Speaker 5: That's why I have this loud jacket on. I was
Speaker 5: along with your fan and your friend Doug it Fresh.
Speaker 5: He wanted me to tell you.
Speaker 4: How Oh okay, we had Doug on the show.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, you know I was going to ask, like,
Speaker 2: do you normally dressed this swinky every day?
Speaker 5: Now? A sweatsuit guy? That's me?
Speaker 2: Okay right now.
Speaker 5: Loud jacket on it. But he's folk. But Dougiees wanted
Speaker 5: me to be sure to tell you hell and yes,
Speaker 5: it's an honor for me to be here.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 5: What you guy?
Speaker 2: Can you tell us your first musical memory?
Speaker 5: Well, you mentioned one of the cornerstones of those memories,
Speaker 5: and that's Maurice. I was born on the Dating Street
Speaker 5: in Memphis, Tennessee. My next door neighbor was a family
Speaker 5: called the Cunninghams, and they were drummers, and we sang
Speaker 5: up the street at a church called Rosy, a Baptist
Speaker 5: church where if you read Maurice's autobacco, he mentioned that
Speaker 5: in his bikle but which is true? And Kelly Cunningham
Speaker 5: and Leander Cunningham were the brothers that were older than
Speaker 5: Carl Cunningham, who just so happened to be the drummer
Speaker 5: that was an airplane press with Otis Redding. He was
Speaker 5: the original drummer for the barcades. Four to us up
Speaker 5: the street on the left hand side of the street
Speaker 5: was Maurice White and we came together eight nine years
Speaker 5: old singing a rose here back to church right on
Speaker 5: that same dead end street. And the stimulus for the
Speaker 5: impressions and the motivation for her creativity and people making
Speaker 5: us thinking that we had some singing talent because they
Speaker 5: were clapping and shouting, and we didn't realize it because
Speaker 5: they were worshiping. We thought it was all about as
Speaker 5: young kids. But the motivation to want to have the
Speaker 5: passion for music where they stem out of that experience.
Speaker 2: So you were nine years old when you started playing
Speaker 2: in your church.
Speaker 5: Well, actually I was before nine. We were going to church.
Speaker 5: Uh yeah, but but actually singing in a kind of
Speaker 5: a quartet that's not the right kind of word, but
Speaker 5: loop kids singing together Linn, Kelly and Maurice and I
Speaker 5: was about eighty nine years old. We were going to
Speaker 5: Rose Elementary School and singing in church on Sunday. That
Speaker 5: was the real experience of learning how to feel good
Speaker 5: about doing that in front of people.
Speaker 2: And you were born in Memphis, Tennessee.
Speaker 5: I was born at two ninety Virginia Street, up against
Speaker 5: a building called Coal Manufacturing Company, which was the last
Speaker 5: last house at the bottom of the hill. When it rained,
Speaker 5: water would roll down the hill and up against that
Speaker 5: tin building and very close to going into our home.
Speaker 5: And the next door neighbor was the Cunninghams, which Carl
Speaker 5: was the drumming, and right up going up the hill
Speaker 5: was Maurice and that was it right there.
Speaker 2: Like I know, a lot of legends were born in Memphis.
Speaker 2: Aretha Franklin was born in Memphis.
Speaker 5: Was she notice she was? Yes?
Speaker 2: Okay, she was.
Speaker 5: Her father preached Reverend Franklin preached my father's funeral, you know,
Speaker 5: at Great Whitstone Baptist Church. Yeah. When I first when
Speaker 5: I told her Reef that years later, it just blew
Speaker 5: her away because she had recorded I Take what I
Speaker 5: Want one of the compositions bizic and I and I
Speaker 5: told her then she just blew her away. Yeah. Yes,
Speaker 5: she was born in Memphis, Tennessee, right near Fourth Street.
Speaker 2: So just tell me, like the general like, why is
Speaker 2: that town so musical?
Speaker 5: Well, there, in nineteen forty seven, forty eight, there was
Speaker 5: a radio the first black radio station in the country
Speaker 5: was WDA in Memphis, Tennessee. And the fact that that
Speaker 5: before that, all of the music you heard was you know,
Speaker 5: the pop, flavorite kind of kind of vibe. And so
Speaker 5: the energy for the originality and I'm going to speak
Speaker 5: for in just a second didn't come to bear until
Speaker 5: WDIA started playing all of those amazingly emotional connecting music
Speaker 5: by black artists. And the one thing that happened that
Speaker 5: was really really meaningful and impactful on young kids during
Speaker 5: that time was the individuality of artists and artists. You know,
Speaker 5: back then you had a four piece rhythm based drums,
Speaker 5: guitar and keys, and so in order for that kind
Speaker 5: of magic to happen in a unique kind of way,
Speaker 5: artists that you were listening to on the radio. One
Speaker 5: thing that as a he had, one thing that really
Speaker 5: manifested itself to you was the individuality of artists. You
Speaker 5: listened to Chuck Berry and what he was doing with
Speaker 5: the guitar and his rhythm essence of how he was
Speaker 5: doing what he was on even though he had a
Speaker 5: rhythm of compingment, but the focus was his guitar playing.
Speaker 5: And you listened to Little Richard and his piano playing
Speaker 5: and what he was doing. The individuality, in addition to
Speaker 5: his persona as a singer was was his personality. Fats
Speaker 5: Domino with the same piano playing. The individuality of Fats
Speaker 5: was the Fats buy So you were you were able
Speaker 5: Jackie Wilson with the range and the magic in his
Speaker 5: tones and things you were looking at as a youngster,
Speaker 5: those kind of impressions that were in turn motivating you
Speaker 5: to understand that the magic having through music was trying
Speaker 5: to find something that identified you and your uniqueness. And so,
Speaker 5: starting from that kind of foundation, all of us started
Speaker 5: trying to find that magic. So when you mentioned Al Jackson,
Speaker 5: his father was a musician and a drummer. But L
Speaker 5: started finding his own niche out of an individualistic way
Speaker 5: for himself. And by the time we got to Stacks
Speaker 5: with the slope floor in the room, the Stacks was
Speaker 5: an old movie theater and the floor was sloping. We'd
Speaker 5: get in there during our records. L would be at
Speaker 5: the bottom of the floor. We'd be doing the vocal
Speaker 5: off the top of the floor with Sam and Dave
Speaker 5: or Johnny Taylor, Aba King or whoever. Isaac would be
Speaker 5: the mid floor and Steve would be a little higher
Speaker 5: than that. L heard of the lake when he would play,
Speaker 5: and his pocket was feeling where the true essence of
Speaker 5: the tempo was with that laid back kind of essence
Speaker 5: that was coming throughout the room, and so but everybody
Speaker 5: would work to find the individuality because of the motivation
Speaker 5: of the music that we was hearing coming from Wdia,
Speaker 5: even with BD King before he blew up. You know,
Speaker 5: there was magic that he was finding it within himself.
Speaker 5: Bobby Blue Blain and Johnny A's and all these people
Speaker 5: had their own persona. Of course, was also in turn
Speaker 5: motivating us with aspirations to do music, to try to
Speaker 5: find that for ourselves.
Speaker 2: Actually, I'm glad I have you now because you know,
Speaker 2: even though it's been kind of six months since the
Speaker 2: release of the movie. As a director, Baz Luhermann kind
Speaker 2: of has us at arm's length a little bit with
Speaker 2: his You know, it's when you make Hollywood biopics, it's
Speaker 2: either like did these facts really happen? Or is this
Speaker 2: a Hollywood tale? And I want to believe the Elvis movie,
Speaker 2: but I gotta hear from someone that was at least
Speaker 2: in proximity. The way they portrayed it was like, you know,
Speaker 2: he was just hanging around the way amongst the brothers
Speaker 2: and whatnot. I mean, is that a fact or was
Speaker 2: that more or embellosing beers.
Speaker 5: Lhrmann came to Memphis and asked if he could talk
Speaker 5: to me. So he came to my studio in Memphis.
Speaker 5: The reason he came to the studio in Memphis because
Speaker 5: HBO did a special called The Searcher on Elvis Presley.
Speaker 5: And if you saw the Searcher, which they showed it
Speaker 5: for a couple of days in a row, and it
Speaker 5: was a few years ago, then you saw me talking
Speaker 5: about Elvis on that special. The reason that I was
Speaker 5: able to talk about everscol So when I was a
Speaker 5: kid walking up from the Virginia Street where I was born,
Speaker 5: up to Beale Street, which wasn't that very far, Maurice
Speaker 5: did the same thing. We would see people because we
Speaker 5: were not able to go in the clubs or anything like,
Speaker 5: we would just walk up the street and just see people.
Speaker 5: I was a poor kid, like I said, from a
Speaker 5: lar's family. My dad was died when I was two
Speaker 5: years old, and so I had a little bit of
Speaker 5: freedom of beautiful, amazing mother. So I was able to
Speaker 5: go and just with these aspirations that want to do music,
Speaker 5: get that kind of vibe. And so there was this
Speaker 5: young kid, white kid hanging around the street. I didn't
Speaker 5: know it was Elvis especially anything like that, nothing akin
Speaker 5: to that. But I've found out that that was, in
Speaker 5: fact Elvis, a white boy that wanted to sing black
Speaker 5: And so what I did was I really told bears
Speaker 5: where Elvis got the vine from. Elvis got the vine
Speaker 5: from Roy Hamilton. And if you saw the movie The
Speaker 5: Search It, the reason that the name Roy Hamilton is
Speaker 5: mentioned in the movie is because I told him that's
Speaker 5: where it came from. Otis Blackwell, who was the writer
Speaker 5: who didn't get all of the money and certainly didn't
Speaker 5: get all this writer credit, was a writer of so
Speaker 5: much of the Elvis still and if you listen to
Speaker 5: ODIs if he was alive, you see where Oldis also
Speaker 5: got it from. But but Roy Hamilton, the flavor and
Speaker 5: the nuances of Elvers's singing came from Roy Hamilton. Check
Speaker 5: us out of some MISERI to catalog.
Speaker 2: I used to Yeah, I used to listen to I
Speaker 2: think Isaac covered Don't Let Right, Yes right, So my dad,
Speaker 2: my dad used to play the Roy Hamilton version. Now,
Speaker 2: I always thought that was Elvis. The turntable was too
Speaker 2: high for me to see, like what was on the lake.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, for the longest I thought that was
Speaker 2: an Elvis Presley song.
Speaker 5: So what with this being straight up in real there
Speaker 5: was an authenticity about Elvis's comment being influenced by black
Speaker 5: artists and that that was in fact true. Elvis would
Speaker 5: come to It was an event that WD I with
Speaker 5: Hole in Memphis called the Good Real Review. Elvis would
Speaker 5: show backstage at the Dead Review. There are pictures of
Speaker 5: Elvis with Rufus Thomas and so, but that's real now.
Speaker 3: So was he the only white gentleman to do that?
Speaker 3: Is that why I feel so special?
Speaker 4: Because he was just by himself?
Speaker 5: Listen, the individuality of black talents was a template that
Speaker 5: American used to break talents like that them finding ways
Speaker 5: to replicate some anuances of black talents was the cornerstone
Speaker 5: became whatever you want to call it, even up into
Speaker 5: this day. So no, no, he was not. He was
Speaker 5: not the only one.
Speaker 3: And not the first I'm guessing either, just the maybe
Speaker 3: the most talented.
Speaker 5: He just blew up, but he, you know, he was.
Speaker 5: There was so much magic happening around Beal Street. This
Speaker 5: is famous street Memphis, a lot of poor people, but
Speaker 5: we were people having a good time inside of what
Speaker 5: they had to deal with, and that was the place
Speaker 5: they would go to do it. And there were clubs
Speaker 5: and the like on that street. That was magic. And
Speaker 5: like I said, the individuality of people being proud of
Speaker 5: who they were would manifest itself, not only in the
Speaker 5: way people would perform on stage, but even the way
Speaker 5: a guy who may have been working on the garments
Speaker 5: shop were dressed for the weekend, just be having a
Speaker 5: good time in his own world. In in the bias
Speaker 5: and the racism that was going on in that prevalent time,
Speaker 5: you could not kill the spirit of a people, and
Speaker 5: that was that was what it was. And then there
Speaker 5: was some folks lock in the Elvis would would come
Speaker 5: and hang around that vibe and that spirit, and obviously
Speaker 5: we eventually found out what it a being.
Speaker 6: Friend.
Speaker 2: Well, let me ask you, so, you know, having come
Speaker 2: of age in the mid seventies early eighties, I'll say
Speaker 2: that you know, your average soul singer is pretty much
Speaker 2: at this point like emulating Stevie Wonder like with his
Speaker 2: soulful voice and whatnot. And so you know, I've of course,
Speaker 2: because I wasn't born during the time when Elvis first
Speaker 2: came out, I didn't know for sand like, so everything
Speaker 2: I learned was you know, sort of like later in
Speaker 2: my life. And I always knew, you know, that the
Speaker 2: theory of like, you know, if I could find a
Speaker 2: white boy that sings like a black guy. I'll make
Speaker 2: a billion dollars from you know, Colonel Tom Parker saying that.
Speaker 2: But like, in your opinion, was Elvis's voice in your
Speaker 2: opinion as a true blue Memphis in that in that era,
Speaker 2: was that the actual voice of a black guy?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 2: Was it if you were to put him more, was
Speaker 2: it sort of like Bobby Carwell? Well, yeah, I know
Speaker 2: I agree with the Roy Hamilton thing. But is that
Speaker 2: sort of snarling thing that was gonna was that the
Speaker 2: actual voice of because if I'm thinking of that time period,
Speaker 2: I'm thinking more like Ray Charles and whatnot. But is
Speaker 2: it just was it just typical for black singers to
Speaker 2: have that sort of voice?
Speaker 5: That isn't you got to give him a little bit
Speaker 5: of him finding what the black brother couldn't give, and
Speaker 5: that's the whiteness of who he was. And so the
Speaker 5: nuance is that that gave him a little bit of
Speaker 5: a tort came out of him not being able to
Speaker 5: replicate with the truness of what all these talents were.
Speaker 5: And you consider what Otis was doing. Otis Blackwell, who
Speaker 5: wrote the songs I Wish you could hurt. I met
Speaker 5: this brother and knowing that there were a lot of
Speaker 5: credits that were given to Elvis that I knew Elvis
Speaker 5: didn't write the songs with him, but he's written the
Speaker 5: songs with Otis Black well, things that I heard, those
Speaker 5: kinds of things. But you can listen to him, and
Speaker 5: you can hear this guy saying and you can say, oh,
Speaker 5: Ever's got some of that from him. Ever's got some
Speaker 5: of that from Roy Evers got some of that from him.
Speaker 5: And so he was able to put those things together
Speaker 5: but also find a niche that gave you a little
Speaker 5: bit of what he was about as well. And it
Speaker 5: became a combination of those things. But it was magnified
Speaker 5: by the uniqueness of the Black contribution that he grew
Speaker 5: from fast forward justin without a doubt, right. You know.
Speaker 5: The interesting being if you think about the seventies and
Speaker 5: before them, listen, Teddy was Teddy, Otis was Otis. Johnny
Speaker 5: Taylor was Johnny. Albert who couldn't read, and we would
Speaker 5: whisper the lyrics. I would be on the mic when
Speaker 5: he was singing, say the line before he was singing.
Speaker 5: But the uniqueness of Albert planning to get to us
Speaker 5: hitting the line, the uniqueness of Albert was inside of
Speaker 5: his personality as avert. Oh wow, only he to do
Speaker 5: those kinds of things. You give Johnny Taylor the melody
Speaker 5: that Isaaca and I we wrote out, got love Somebody's
Speaker 5: Baby because somebody been loving mine. Now were the song,
Speaker 5: and Dave wrote a song and to teachers. But when
Speaker 5: Johnny sang the song, the individuality of Johnny took it
Speaker 5: to another another kind of a blue song, Little Bluebird.
Speaker 5: We wrote that one listen to it. The individual reality
Speaker 5: of the artists, even with the hazing for the song,
Speaker 5: would take it to the persona that was the inside
Speaker 5: of their uniqueness. And then by the time we get
Speaker 5: the Sam and David, we're doing the church thing, which
Speaker 5: is all we're doing the individual of Sam with the
Speaker 5: combination of David and I would direct them like a choir.
Speaker 5: If you listen, I think you you're gonna hear me
Speaker 5: holler at the very intro, I thank you because I
Speaker 5: make the mistake and holler. We kept that tape, but
Speaker 5: that's because I'm on the other side of the mic
Speaker 5: directing them. But I cannot give them the individuality that
Speaker 5: brings out the uniqueness of what they were. And it
Speaker 5: became an identity thing because they were focused on making affairs,
Speaker 5: and so that's what all of those are. So even
Speaker 5: before Stevie, the individuality that ultimately ended up being Stevie
Speaker 5: grew out of some of the influences that he heard
Speaker 5: as a youngster. Because the first record I heard on
Speaker 5: Steven Fingertips, I didn't hear Stephen One like Stevie Wonder.
Speaker 5: You all I heard Steven want to like Stevie Wonder
Speaker 5: because he stopped affecting the uniqueness that was truly him
Speaker 5: and he magnified it. And then everybody says, to your point,
Speaker 5: chus start trying to follow that template. But those who
Speaker 5: followed the temple never got to the strength that Stevie had.
Speaker 2: I see, I see class for you. When do you
Speaker 2: sort of credit the moment that you started your mission
Speaker 2: like you're not your come to Jesus moment with music,
Speaker 2: but that this was something that you professionally wanted to pursue.
Speaker 5: I was, how real should I be with this?
Speaker 2: Let's super real?
Speaker 5: I was so so poor, from a family of twelve
Speaker 5: with an outdoor toilet in Memphis. I told you who
Speaker 5: my neighbors were, and we all were that way. Maurice
Speaker 5: and I moved from where we worked to a housing
Speaker 5: project called Lamau Gardens at the same time, which was
Speaker 5: a housemand I just felt that I had to find
Speaker 5: a way to do this thing. I thought I was
Speaker 5: a singer to do this thing, and I was trying
Speaker 5: to find an identity and didn't know where that was.
Speaker 5: And so here's a kid working at a grocery store,
Speaker 5: just getting ready to graduate from high school from Booker T.
Speaker 5: Washington High School where Maurice White and I graduated in
Speaker 5: nineteen sixty one from and I'm working across the street
Speaker 5: from this movie theater, which was Satellite Records, and I
Speaker 5: would go over there because there was a little record
Speaker 5: shop there, and I had no money to buy the records.
Speaker 5: But there was a lady inside there who said if
Speaker 5: they had a recording company and they had a label.
Speaker 5: Asked her about it, so they said we recorded country artists.
Speaker 5: So I said, well, could could you audition me? Would
Speaker 5: you listen to me? She said, well, you can talk
Speaker 5: to my brother, but we just recalld country. So I
Speaker 5: went in there and I talked to Jim Stewart, who
Speaker 5: didn't want to to to listen to me or anything
Speaker 5: such as that. He had a guy working with him
Speaker 5: by the name of Chips Morman. If you google the
Speaker 5: name Chips Moman. He became legendary later on, but he
Speaker 5: was the guy that was working with Jim Stewart. Before
Speaker 5: there was no Stacks, it was called Satellite Records. And
Speaker 5: so I got the audition there and froze in the
Speaker 5: room on the audition, but I bought to them. I
Speaker 5: got some of my classmates to perform on it for me.
Speaker 5: I got Booker T. Jones to play baritone horn on
Speaker 5: the demo. I got Andrew Love to play tennis sacks
Speaker 5: on the demo. I got William Bail the same background
Speaker 5: along with James Austin on the demo. Willie Bail became yes, Yes,
Speaker 5: and my demo was a song original song. Because he
Speaker 5: asked me did I have it? Did I write songs?
Speaker 5: I told him yeah, I didn't have any. He asked me, well,
Speaker 5: did I have a band? I told him yeah, I
Speaker 5: didn't have one, And so he had two artists, Nick
Speaker 5: Charles and Charles Hines Country. I convinced him to let
Speaker 5: me do an audition. I then got the guys together
Speaker 5: to do the audition with me and Froze on the
Speaker 5: demo and flopped. It didn't work for me, but Jim
Speaker 5: Stewart met booker T. Jones, who used to play baritone
Speaker 5: on Rufus Thomas record William Bell. He recorded you don't
Speaker 5: miss your water to your well run dry, and the
Speaker 5: rest is history. I mean, it's so. What it showed
Speaker 5: me was that I had a long way to go,
Speaker 5: and I started trying to find out who I really
Speaker 5: was if I wanted to be this, and I realized
Speaker 5: that I couldn't be the artist. I tried a couple
Speaker 5: of other records. I recorded for Savoy Records. I was
Speaker 5: Little David. I recorded with Willie Mitchell, Kenny Kane. Yes,
Speaker 5: on Savoy Records.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that this avoid subsidiary.
Speaker 5: Really, no, no, no, So boy was different. The boy
Speaker 5: wasn't Stax Records.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's that's for me.
Speaker 5: Out hustling, trying to trying to find.
Speaker 2: A pant Okay, I get it.
Speaker 5: Okay, that's that's report. But so in trying to do that,
Speaker 5: I get with this guy who we we used to
Speaker 5: sing on talent shows. It at the Palace Stade on
Speaker 5: Beale Street, by the name of Isaac Hayes. So Isaac
Speaker 5: and I started talking and said, let's let form a
Speaker 5: writing team. Now to come to Jesus. Moment was me
Speaker 5: figuring that if I'm gonna get in the music business,
Speaker 5: I'd already failed with the audition trying to sing. But
Speaker 5: I bought this guy all this amazing talent, and so
Speaker 5: I didn't get right in. I got with Isaac and
Speaker 5: we formed a label called Genie Records. And there's a
Speaker 5: record on a guy by the name of Homer Banks
Speaker 5: called Little Lady of Stone and ain't that a lot
Speaker 5: of love? If you find that record, that's a record
Speaker 5: that I did with Isaac before Stax Records. Then I
Speaker 5: went and Convensium Stuart to get an opportunity as a writer.
Speaker 5: I became the first staff writer for Stax Records, given
Speaker 5: a six month trial. In the rest of his history,
Speaker 5: I started building the writing staff and all of that.
Speaker 4: What year was that, I want to.
Speaker 5: Say it's nineteen sixty three, but I could be slightly
Speaker 5: slightly off because I was there in nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 5: There's a record called The Life I Live On Barbara
Speaker 5: Stevenstead that I did with Marvel THOMASLF was before Evan.
Speaker 5: Isaac and I really connected, So it was like I
Speaker 5: was hustling.
Speaker 4: You mentioned Willie Mitchell. What was it like working with him?
Speaker 4: At that time?
Speaker 5: Willie Mitchell was was working with a company but of
Speaker 5: High Records, that was working with London as a distributor,
Speaker 5: and WILLI was not on the inner loop of High Records.
Speaker 5: Willie was working with a guy by the name a
Speaker 5: white guy by the name of Ray Harris, and they
Speaker 5: didn't really realize what Willie Mitchell was. And so I
Speaker 5: found a way to convince them to let me make
Speaker 5: a record there. And so Willie and I wrote a
Speaker 5: song you can google this called practice makes Perfect you'll
Speaker 5: see written by Porter Mitchell. That's Willie and I and
Speaker 5: I'm Kenny Kane is David Porter so so, but this
Speaker 5: is before they allowed Willy to be Willie and Ray
Speaker 5: Harris got out of the way and Willy got the
Speaker 5: opportunity with some kind of deal. He worked with Joe
Speaker 5: Kogie and Nick Pacy and those guys and became the
Speaker 5: guy that Royal Studio became and High Records became. The
Speaker 5: rest is history with Willie Mitchell. That's how my coming
Speaker 5: to Jesus, moment of finding that writing was my in
Speaker 5: road defining a.
Speaker 2: Path for this, So was it mostly a trial by
Speaker 2: fire in terms of you know, even with me, like
Speaker 2: with my musical education, a lot of my knowledge of
Speaker 2: like the first year that I came to a studio
Speaker 2: was more or less like what does this do? What
Speaker 2: does this do? And you know I didn't. No one
Speaker 2: told me about sixteen bar structure and you know, how
Speaker 2: to find my own sound. So you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of my education of music production just came from like
Speaker 2: the first three years of trying to see what works
Speaker 2: and whatnot. But how do these people know to trust
Speaker 2: you if you don't was expected for you to like
Speaker 2: be accredited songwriters and have experience like writing out charts
Speaker 2: and knowing arrangements and all those things, or you just
Speaker 2: are you singing to the each band members like this
Speaker 2: is what you do?
Speaker 5: Or yes, all of that, but we didn't do. Isaac
Speaker 5: Hayes did not write music. David Border did night No,
Speaker 5: he didn't, And so we went through the whole process
Speaker 5: of head arrangements. The great artist, the greatest creative that
Speaker 5: was Otis Ready. If you were able to be in
Speaker 5: a studio with Otis reading during a session, you would
Speaker 5: marvel at how he would come up with the baseline,
Speaker 5: the horn patterns, the guitar direction for Steve to play
Speaker 5: out of. On those records, Isaac and I were motivated
Speaker 5: from the church. We realized that motoon had to straightforwth
Speaker 5: be with these beautiful melodies on the top of that,
Speaker 5: and it was amazing how they did that. But we
Speaker 5: also realized, because we talked strategically about how we were
Speaker 5: going to find a path inside of this industry to
Speaker 5: do this, we realized that if we want to have
Speaker 5: an impact, we had to find an identity. We had
Speaker 5: records before we did the Sam and Dave, there are
Speaker 5: quite a few of those records, but we were trying
Speaker 5: to find the identity way for us to be affected,
Speaker 5: and we realized that that opportunity came from the spirituality
Speaker 5: of the church on the lower end of things, and
Speaker 5: so we started focusing on the bass, drums, guitar lines
Speaker 5: rather than the straight four kind of things. And that's
Speaker 5: why they became patterns inside of all of the songs
Speaker 5: that we were doing. But those patterns didn't come from
Speaker 5: us writing a chart for that came from us giving
Speaker 5: the musicians the extra patterns. Hold on I'm coming a
Speaker 5: perfect example of that. The drum beat on hold On
Speaker 5: I'm Coming did not come about with us just starting
Speaker 5: to sing and they started playing No. I went to
Speaker 5: Al and said, I remember the record get out on
Speaker 5: the Life Woman by leaving play that beat. He played
Speaker 5: that beat. I said, Chick, that that's the beat that
Speaker 5: we want. Hold On I'm Coming. Isaac had the horn,
Speaker 5: just a horn lit on that that lick. It put
Speaker 5: that down two or three weeks before we even thought
Speaker 5: about hold On I'm Coming. Hold On I'm Coming came
Speaker 5: one night late we were We left a club after
Speaker 5: we were jamming, went to the studio by two thirty night.
Speaker 5: I went to the restroom. Isaac was trying to get
Speaker 5: me the hurry out of the restroom. I said, hold
Speaker 5: On I'm coming then, and I said God, it came
Speaker 5: out of the room. Twenty minutes later we wrote hold
Speaker 5: On I'm Coming. The drum pattern we did all.
Speaker 4: That's the movie story. That's the God's true.
Speaker 5: It is the deal.
Speaker 3: I've already seen that acted out in a whole.
Speaker 5: Isaac records happen because of the inner spirits inside of
Speaker 5: the creative juices that came, not from somebody doing sitting
Speaker 5: down and write a charge from it, but somebody giving
Speaker 5: the people the answers or where the songs were in
Speaker 5: the individuality was only magnified through that.
Speaker 2: Okay, then I gotta ask you this question. Okay, you
Speaker 2: guys have this like ten minute song on presenting Isaac
Speaker 2: Hay's called I Want to Make Love to You, and
Speaker 2: it is one of the most ambitious arrangements I've ever heard.
Speaker 2: It's like part jazz, part blues, part serious soul, part comedy.
Speaker 2: But there's so many parts to this song. So if
Speaker 2: it's not notated, like how for these like extravagant arrangements
Speaker 2: that you guys are doing, because it's not just like
Speaker 2: here's the A part, here's the B part, here's the
Speaker 2: A part, here's the B part, here's the coda. Like
Speaker 2: you guys are writing these like extravagant arrangements, Like how
Speaker 2: are they able to maintain that memory of what to
Speaker 2: do if you guys aren't notating that stuff?
Speaker 5: Well, first place I did, I didn't produce Presenting Isaac Hayes. Okay, right,
Speaker 5: but let me tell you because Isaac and I worked
Speaker 5: for from the core, I can tell you how the
Speaker 5: things that the core foundation of all of the records
Speaker 5: was inside of the base patterns. Now there was chance
Speaker 5: done on the up end of the chante. Isaac used
Speaker 5: and huns. We'd used al Warren Free. I mean we
Speaker 5: used cats to put the orchestration on the top. But
Speaker 5: that's also coming out of Isaac's head. That's not some guy.
Speaker 5: He given the track to it said okay, create the parts.
Speaker 5: That's not how that happened. But because there was such
Speaker 5: an authenticity of remembering things, all of the RECs from
Speaker 5: hold on them coming to soul man, you don't know
Speaker 5: those are things that of course, the records was for
Speaker 5: two minutes forty seconds long. Your point is, well, how
Speaker 5: are you gonna do this on a long, long, long
Speaker 5: lung record. Well, on a long, long, long lung record.
Speaker 5: If you were inside of the stacks room and you know,
Speaker 5: everybody's standing up looking at Isaac and isa is directing
Speaker 5: and cueing on the parts, you guys are write down
Speaker 5: four balls here, eight balls here, and the cats would
Speaker 5: know if you hold up his hand, it's the next
Speaker 5: it's the next pense, it's the next pats of whatever
Speaker 5: was going to be. So I wasn't in the room
Speaker 5: when he was doing it, but I'm sure that the
Speaker 5: same kind of processes that I did on The Victim
Speaker 5: of the Joke AB but what you rights the same
Speaker 5: thing because that's what I did.
Speaker 2: So what are al Bell's basic thoughts when you guys
Speaker 2: and I'm I'm going back to Stacks in the sixties,
Speaker 2: but I'm just curious, like, when this turns in the
Speaker 2: Enterprise and you guys are making serious albums, what are
Speaker 2: our Bell's thoughts when some of these album cuts are
Speaker 2: seven minutes, thirteen minutes, twenty two minutes.
Speaker 4: Not right friendly at all.
Speaker 2: That's how well I know that the age of FM
Speaker 2: radio was sort of like we play longer cuts when
Speaker 2: I at least you know, the first five years of
Speaker 2: this seventies. But I mean, you guys were almost like
Speaker 2: the anti Moodtown, because I know Motown's whole thing was
Speaker 2: like has to be three minutes and thirty seconds and
Speaker 2: easily digestible. And so was that by design or but.
Speaker 5: That is that is an amazing question because the truth
Speaker 5: needs to be told. Isaac was the first to do
Speaker 5: the extended creative of the song the very first. The
Speaker 5: way that happened was Al bail now was being in
Speaker 5: control because Stacks all of the masters that Stax had
Speaker 5: recorded Atlantic got those because Jim Stood had signed one
Speaker 5: of those funny contracts and didn't realize they'd given the
Speaker 5: catalog away. Then Albert l got into the power control
Speaker 5: of the company and ultimately end up owning the company.
Speaker 5: And so what al did was in order for us
Speaker 5: to get back in the move in a competitior Way said, listen,
Speaker 5: we got to create product and get an abundant of
Speaker 5: product to get out there. He encouraged Easac to do
Speaker 5: the album. He encouraged Easa going, Isaac said, because we
Speaker 5: were already in the power position. Isaac said, if I'm
Speaker 5: gonna do it, I gotta do what I feel I
Speaker 5: want to do. El had no idea that isa was
Speaker 5: gonna take it there because Isaac always was influenced by
Speaker 5: jazz cats. I mean he always, but that wasn't not
Speaker 5: the kind of records that we were doing. So when
Speaker 5: he'd have the freedom to do it the way he
Speaker 5: wanted to do it, we used to go to the
Speaker 5: club called Club La Run. We would go there and
Speaker 5: just jam before we'd go back to the studio. One
Speaker 5: night we were jamming and singing some stuff at the
Speaker 5: club to Run. When something is wrong with My Baby
Speaker 5: and some of the other songs that we had written
Speaker 5: and that they were popular songs we singing, and Isaac
Speaker 5: went into a vibe with the substained thing on the
Speaker 5: hammonbe three organ that was there and start talking and
Speaker 5: he would start talking and the message was on a
Speaker 5: song by Glenn Cammell called by the time I get
Speaker 5: to Phoenix and Isaac started talking with me standing up
Speaker 5: on the stage with him and I knowing what the
Speaker 5: heck he's doing, and him start and they were getting
Speaker 5: in to listen to him, and he just start making
Speaker 5: it longer and longer, and it case he didn't have
Speaker 5: it hidden out. It came to him in the natural
Speaker 5: way that these lines I'm telling you, and the horn
Speaker 5: Patterson came in and he talked the whole thing out
Speaker 5: and hit By the time I get the Phoenix with
Speaker 5: the bat three loud and whatever, and the cast was
Speaker 5: just trying to follow him, which they did. And by
Speaker 5: the time he got the opportunity to record and told
Speaker 5: alba Al on a second because presiding Heasac Hayes album
Speaker 5: did not really work, so on the second he told
Speaker 5: me to do it again. Honestly, I want to really do
Speaker 5: it the way I want to do it, and that's
Speaker 5: why there are four tunes on that album. And the
Speaker 5: first motivation was that Thience thing that we did at
Speaker 5: the club I run and that was what nineteen minutes
Speaker 5: long as something.
Speaker 2: Would tape ever run out? Would tape run out at all?
Speaker 5: Well, that didn't know matter, but you know, Isaac would
Speaker 5: we would have been in the studio jam and and
Speaker 5: we in it with a lot of tracks that would
Speaker 5: then and writing songs off later on, just by the
Speaker 5: extended part that we didn't use on a record. So
Speaker 5: so cats would know that that. And by the time
Speaker 5: I get the Phoenix case that had to be a
Speaker 5: new real to tape. Guests would know that he was
Speaker 5: going to do extended verse. They just did not know
Speaker 5: it was going to be that long. So I don't know.
Speaker 5: I wasn't in the room on Phoenix, but I can
Speaker 5: tell you.
Speaker 2: So can you explain, especially like with with the tension
Speaker 2: that's happening in the mid to late sixties, especially in
Speaker 2: the civil rights movement, how was it socially, especially with
Speaker 2: you know cats like uh, you know, Donald Duck Dunn,
Speaker 2: Steve Cropper, like because you know the sound of stacks
Speaker 2: even though it's gut bunket soul, gut bucket funk like this.
Speaker 2: This is an integrated, intersectional kind of organization with men
Speaker 2: and women, black and white, that sort of thing. So
Speaker 2: how easy was it now navigating especially with sort of
Speaker 2: I guess culminating to King's assassination like in Memphis? What
Speaker 2: is the social atmosphere of these white musicians and black
Speaker 2: musicians playing together?
Speaker 5: Like what's a work dinner look like inside the street?
Speaker 5: Well to a question, if I think I understand correct,
Speaker 5: this is this is the interesting thing about that period.
Speaker 5: Racism was still rapid during that period, it was still there,
Speaker 5: but because Stewart was smart enough to see that the
Speaker 5: black contraditional talents were far exceeding where Steve was and
Speaker 5: dunk Walls. But these were casts that were able to integrate,
Speaker 5: for lack of a better word, into the Bible what
Speaker 5: we were doing, because they were able to listen to
Speaker 5: where we were coming from. And it was it was
Speaker 5: showed that the possibility of seriously making some money until
Speaker 5: they were there was a willingness to follow the lead
Speaker 5: of the black towns. And when I say say that,
Speaker 5: when you could see there's Booker T. Jones in that
Speaker 5: in the combination of talent, we called it the Big Six.
Speaker 5: That was Al Jackson Junior in that combination of talent.
Speaker 5: That was Isaac Hayes in a combination of talents. That
Speaker 5: was David Porter in the cumination of talents. And here
Speaker 5: is Steve and Duck. And the leading parts was either
Speaker 5: coming from Booker or from Isaac, or from I or
Speaker 5: from l as relates to where a lot of the
Speaker 5: originality come from the abilities to a depth and to
Speaker 5: be affecting with it was coming out of the rhythmic
Speaker 5: treaties that Cropper would bring to many of the songs,
Speaker 5: and Duck would was amazing at remembery and containing the
Speaker 5: patterns and giving you the right kund of imagy for that.
Speaker 3: Like what about once y'all left the studio, Because like
Speaker 3: you said, y'all were the leaders in the individualities, but
Speaker 3: y'all couldn't eat in the same places, stay in the
Speaker 3: same places, and that.
Speaker 5: That is so so true, And then we didn't make
Speaker 5: a norm of that. They would go to a place
Speaker 5: called the Four Way Green with us, which was a
Speaker 5: black restaurant on the Mississippi Walker. And when we wanted
Speaker 5: to really eat together, we would go to the Four
Speaker 5: Way Grill, and in the Four Way Grill, if you
Speaker 5: read the history of it, that was also the place
Speaker 5: where doctor King would go. That's also a place where
Speaker 5: Jesse Jackson would go. At the front of the four
Speaker 5: Way is the door. People would come in from the street,
Speaker 5: but they had a back entrance at the back of
Speaker 5: the door. James Brown and a lot of folk we
Speaker 5: would go in the back door there and we would
Speaker 5: eat some of the best soul for which you ever
Speaker 5: want to have. But that was a place when we
Speaker 5: would do I was a vocalist Boogleton MG's on the
Speaker 5: road playing the College Circuit. To your point, we'd get
Speaker 5: in the car. We didn't this is booker ten MG's well,
Speaker 5: we do sessions with We worked at the College Circum.
Speaker 5: On the weekend, we'd get in the car and go
Speaker 5: play gigs and we had a lot of This is
Speaker 5: where we could not get in the hotel in a
Speaker 5: in a real comfortable kind of way. We'd go and
Speaker 5: play the gig on the College State, come back and
Speaker 5: be in the studio on Monday. So it wasn't it
Speaker 5: wasn't kind of thing where you'd see a lot of
Speaker 5: let's go out and hang out together. There were black
Speaker 5: clubs and they were white clubs, and that was still
Speaker 5: going on in Memphis by the time you went into
Speaker 5: the Stax rooms to do the work. It was a
Speaker 5: unity there, but it was also a willingness to follow
Speaker 5: the lead of the black talents who was really making
Speaker 5: the thing. And that's why the magic came from an
Speaker 5: Otis Redding, who showed everybody what all of that meant
Speaker 5: what I just said, because there was no one who
Speaker 5: could do it to the degree that Otis could do it.
Speaker 2: Did you personally feel some sort of way when like
Speaker 2: your sound and your formula are being used by other
Speaker 2: Memphis Like in other words, like if you were to
Speaker 2: if anyone were to listen to like Let's Stay Together, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, the sound of the brass band in the
Speaker 2: front and the basic gut bucket groove of that song.
Speaker 2: You know, someone to say to me like, oh, that's
Speaker 2: probably Stax Records or something like that. And you know,
Speaker 2: even though you guys are in proximity of each other
Speaker 2: in terms of mileage, like I'm certain that Willie and
Speaker 2: his organization were way different. Might be like one or
Speaker 2: two musicians that are the same. Are you guys feeling
Speaker 2: some sort of way that, like the sound that you
Speaker 2: helped make the Blueprint Architects is sort of now being
Speaker 2: even outside of Memphis, because I'm certain that you know,
Speaker 2: there's the Cats and Muscle Souls are also I'm thinking
Speaker 2: that they too, are you know, Memphis based and whatnot, Like,
Speaker 2: especially with the work they were doing with the Refit like,
Speaker 2: did you feel some sort of way when your sound
Speaker 2: is sort of like identified with that whole region but
Speaker 2: some of those things that you had nothing to do with,
Speaker 2: it just sounds like you did.
Speaker 5: Well. The beautiful thing about it is we have so
Speaker 5: many artists that we have to use other rooms to
Speaker 5: do that. The reason that Muscle showed a sound became
Speaker 5: revered as it did was because we sent so many
Speaker 5: arts this there so many many artists there.
Speaker 2: How far was Muscle Souls from Memphis?
Speaker 5: Maybe maybe a little bit more than to our drive?
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, yeah, I mean, I.
Speaker 5: Don't know if you're familiar with the album that I
Speaker 5: did that that has the victim of the joke, the
Speaker 5: song the Masquerade is over.
Speaker 1: Wait time out all right?
Speaker 2: Okay, are you really asking us right now? We know
Speaker 2: I'm afraid the Masquerade is over.
Speaker 5: But but but that quest that's a huge kind of
Speaker 5: things you mentioned earlier about hair stuff. That's one of
Speaker 5: those kind of things. I had a mic going around
Speaker 5: room with the head says going in the home and
Speaker 5: lincense to catch the play. But but but that's also
Speaker 5: one of the dumbest mistakes I made because the second
Speaker 5: half of it, which has nothing at all to do
Speaker 5: with the original song which I was given the head
Speaker 5: arranged to and that's where all the samples came from.
Speaker 5: Do you know how many millions of dollars I gave
Speaker 5: away with that? All of those those how many that's
Speaker 5: no story. But but but so we're going.
Speaker 2: To ask about that too.
Speaker 5: But but but but uh, but muscle shows was so
Speaker 5: many ars, Johnny Taylor of the Staple Singers color the
Speaker 5: emotions so many that we we went to the rooman
Speaker 5: cut what Willie was doing over a high that's Andrew
Speaker 5: Love and Wayne Jackson. The horn section. A lot of
Speaker 5: the patterns, and I can show you some patterns that
Speaker 5: the guys already forgot that we had already did the
Speaker 5: patterns on the track over there, and they got into
Speaker 5: whatever on the al track. And there's a line that
Speaker 5: we did on this man, what the heck? You so?
Speaker 5: But but we were, we were so so unified and
Speaker 5: and the magic that was happening out of Memphis. There
Speaker 5: was no animosity or anger toward what WILLI was doing,
Speaker 5: nor was that coming from really what we were doing.
Speaker 5: We were just simply happy that all of the stuff
Speaker 5: was connected, and then that there was magic with our Green.
Speaker 5: The magic with our Green was reminiscent of the magic
Speaker 5: that we felt when we lost over this ring. So
Speaker 5: there was a joe and the happiness. And then when
Speaker 5: he Willie come up with a record been great, like
Speaker 5: I can't stand the rain, I mean just great, great, great,
Speaker 5: great music. So there was there was no it was
Speaker 5: in a lot. Some of the players were the same.
Speaker 5: It was that kind of spirit in Memphis during that time.
Speaker 2: At any point, was Al Green ever going to go
Speaker 2: to your direction to stacks at any point or just
Speaker 2: he immediately went to high.
Speaker 5: No, No, WILLI wi WILLI discovered L.
Speaker 2: But did you know about him before Willie discovered him?
Speaker 5: No? No, I don't think it was nobody. No, that
Speaker 5: was Willie. Willie. WILLI heard something in him and and
Speaker 5: took him to a space. L didn't believe he was.
Speaker 5: Al was a hard singer. Willie forced him to find
Speaker 5: the identity thing that I was talking about. WILLI forced
Speaker 5: l to find that thing. That thing for.
Speaker 4: The way he's singing on his first album is back
Speaker 4: up Train Yes into the.
Speaker 5: Vamp of love and Happiness, and you'll see that's where
Speaker 5: Al really is really control how Al found himself. And
Speaker 5: then when Al really found himself, then Air magnified the
Speaker 5: persona of what that should be. And that's why some
Speaker 5: of those vocals that he would do on those songs
Speaker 5: were just crazy because he was having so much fun
Speaker 5: in discovering new nonsense inside of what he was doing
Speaker 5: that was even fresher than he even imagined. I would imagine.
Speaker 5: He just he became unbelievable. The same thing was happening
Speaker 5: with Otis as well, Johnny Taylor as well.
Speaker 2: Can you tell me or recall the experience of hearing
Speaker 2: what happened to Otis Redding and the original barcas well.
Speaker 5: Let me first first said this, because this is this
Speaker 5: is this is an interesting story. When Otis came to
Speaker 5: Memphis to record on the Doctor the Bay my office
Speaker 5: at the Stacks Building. The door to the office was
Speaker 5: on the street, because by then we had bought the
Speaker 5: other location. There was a cafe next door to the theater,
Speaker 5: and there was some other things on the other side,
Speaker 5: and there was a grocery store on the other side.
Speaker 5: We had bought all of that and converted that into
Speaker 5: part of the space. Otis came into the room in
Speaker 5: my office. He said, I want you to hear a
Speaker 5: song and tell me what you think about it, because
Speaker 5: he you know, he there was a miser respect there.
Speaker 5: So he came and he sang with an acoustic guitar, openstright, acoustic,
Speaker 5: and he sang Sitting on the Dock of the Bay
Speaker 5: to me the whole song, and he said, what you think.
Speaker 5: I said, well, I think you are to make the
Speaker 5: first verse the last verse, and the last verse the
Speaker 5: first verse, because the story says so better than he
Speaker 5: really thinks he is. He went into the studio and
Speaker 5: recorded Sitting on the Doctor of the Bay. Now it
Speaker 5: was not complete because he had a plane to catch,
Speaker 5: and he then left Memphis, got on did his flight.
Speaker 5: I was, as I mentioned the vocals book of tenmg's
Speaker 5: That weekend we flew to Ohio and played a cottage
Speaker 5: up there in n OHI up there. So we had
Speaker 5: finished the gig, were in the airport. I get a
Speaker 5: call from my wife at the time. I get a
Speaker 5: call saying that first said that Otis Ready was in
Speaker 5: an airplane crash. And I said, I couldn't believe. I said, no,
Speaker 5: what do you? And I didn't believe it, and she
Speaker 5: reinforced it in a real emotional way to me. And
Speaker 5: I told the guys that I was told. When I
Speaker 5: told the guys that, and we were getting ready to
Speaker 5: catch a plane to come back to Memphis when we
Speaker 5: found out. So we were coming from a gig Otis
Speaker 5: was going they were going to another gig. In the
Speaker 5: devastation of finding out about that was when we were
Speaker 5: on another gig. Matter of fact, it's in I think
Speaker 5: I want to say it say Booker T's book. If
Speaker 5: you read Booker talks about it as well, that's that's
Speaker 5: that's when that was found out.
Speaker 2: Did you did you know James Alexander, Well, uh, the
Speaker 2: basis of the bar kays, Well.
Speaker 5: Then you don't know the story about how the record
Speaker 5: cut came about. They had a record, a track that
Speaker 5: they had and it was just a track. Isaac and
Speaker 5: I went into the room. It was a track. Jim
Speaker 5: Stood was standing over there listening to it. Didn't know
Speaker 5: what they what it was. Then called it they was.
Speaker 5: They played the track for us. Isaac Hayes came up
Speaker 5: with the title soul Finger. I said, let's put some
Speaker 5: kids on the record. I went outside and got twenty
Speaker 5: five or thirty kids. Bought him in the room, got
Speaker 5: two cases of coke, asked James, James Alexander, when you
Speaker 5: interviewed him about this story, got two cases of coke,
Speaker 5: gave him the Coca cone. I directed them like a choir.
Speaker 5: Every time I raised my hand and do this, you
Speaker 5: scream soul finger. And then when I do this, say
Speaker 5: so and and so. Isaac gave the title soul thing
Speaker 5: for the record. I put the kids on it. That's
Speaker 5: that's the record. So James Alexander definitely knows. David Porter
Speaker 5: and Isaac Cay's definitely does that the getting jigging record.
Speaker 5: But no, no, no no, I did on the barcades,
Speaker 5: gave them. I did a head range, gave them fifty
Speaker 5: percent of the song. But I came up with it.
Speaker 5: Put the kids the same thing again. I got kiss
Speaker 5: off the street. I directed him like a que and
Speaker 5: had him singing.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, and did the track of the Barcades
Speaker 2: singing dance right.
Speaker 5: The singing dance so real close to James.
Speaker 2: I've always been curious and you know he's he's definitely,
Speaker 2: he's definitely like one of our buckets, bucket list guests
Speaker 2: that we want to get. Just let me know, oh
Speaker 2: please that that's him and Jazzy fake like James.
Speaker 5: Lay on the floor in the studio if.
Speaker 2: Really yeah, do you know like how he was able
Speaker 2: to bounce back and start the group all over again,
Speaker 2: and just how he felt because I believe the story
Speaker 2: is that I don't know if it was a coin
Speaker 2: flippant or not. The thing was that only a certain
Speaker 2: amount of people could fit on the plane. I believe
Speaker 2: the legend is that James Alexander is like, look, I'll
Speaker 2: just catch a commercial flight and him.
Speaker 5: And Carl did that another not not not Carl Kunaham,
Speaker 5: but another car. Carl Siums did that cause Carl sum
Speaker 5: was going to go with it, and James and Carlsiums
Speaker 5: did that. That's that's true, Okay, it was ah something
Speaker 5: like that, whatever the number sixs was. But James and
Speaker 5: Carl couldn't get on it, and James took a commercial flight.
Speaker 5: That's true. James was the one that was asked to go,
Speaker 5: and because the Elma didn't want to, she wasn't the
Speaker 5: most able to do it. James was the one that
Speaker 5: went to identifi Otist.
Speaker 2: I know that was such a devastating loss to the label.
Speaker 2: Like how are you guys, especially with the transition of
Speaker 2: you know, moving into the seventies and whatnot, can you
Speaker 2: explain just the feeling at the time, like especially post
Speaker 2: King by the time the seventies comes, Like what are
Speaker 2: you feeling in terms of like where music is or
Speaker 2: where STAX is as an organization, to really.
Speaker 5: Appreciate the energy that Otis brought to our environment. Otis
Speaker 5: was a driver for another guy that was being recorded
Speaker 5: at the time. Otis came in as his driver. Otis
Speaker 5: pleaded with Al Jackson's junior to would someone take a
Speaker 5: listen to him? Sing? Al told Steve give if you
Speaker 5: got a minute, man, people that already was leaving and
Speaker 5: already left, would you take a listen to this guy?
Speaker 5: He just wanted somebody to listen to him. Otis Redding
Speaker 5: saying these arms of mind with Steve cropper who is
Speaker 5: not a piano player, playing tribuus on the piano, and
Speaker 5: the rest is history for Otis. Ready then, because no
Speaker 5: one understood Oldis better than Otis, because Otis was a
Speaker 5: huge fan of Little Richard. If you listen to the
Speaker 5: B side of These Arms of Mine, you're gonna think
Speaker 5: it's Little Richard because that's where Otis was. But the
Speaker 5: These Arms of Mine song Otis showed where he was,
Speaker 5: and that was the thing that resonated inside of that room.
Speaker 5: And no one could do that but Otis, and Otis
Speaker 5: was given the lead way to show where that came from.
Speaker 5: And then Otis was the one that started really magnifying
Speaker 5: the head Arrangers kind of vibe or what ultam became
Speaker 5: the cornerstone of everything we did there. So the loss
Speaker 5: of Otis created a kind of emotional kind of devastation
Speaker 5: to all of us that it's no way to explain
Speaker 5: the level of it, because then we began to feel
Speaker 5: what could have been with the magic that was coming
Speaker 5: from this man. I mean, he would go in the
Speaker 5: studio in this like fastest get up, would be able
Speaker 5: to come up with all these parts and these tracks
Speaker 5: and just do them and then go on the mic
Speaker 5: and make up the song on the mic. That's me
Speaker 5: saying homedy with him.
Speaker 2: I was gonna ask you about that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, but that's that's im. I didn't know when
Speaker 5: it comes, he says, I said this when you're gonna
Speaker 5: come in, he said, you feel it, And it was like,
Speaker 5: but that's the magic of this this god.
Speaker 2: The thing is that Otis Redding was twenty seven when
Speaker 2: he died. Was it that typical for during the time
Speaker 2: that you guys have between the age of what twenty
Speaker 2: he came to you, twenty three or twenty four?
Speaker 5: I don't, I can't.
Speaker 2: You could be right, yeah, twenty three, twenty four.
Speaker 5: Twinters, but I can't remember.
Speaker 2: Like, were you guys saying to yourselves back then, like
Speaker 2: this guy has a way older voice than what his
Speaker 2: age allows. Or was it just the stress of living
Speaker 2: in that time just brought that age and that experience
Speaker 2: on your typical singer back then.
Speaker 5: When you listen to the B side of as mentioned,
Speaker 5: of these ums of mine and you hear Otis there,
Speaker 5: and you listen to what Otis was doing, Otis was
Speaker 5: so brilliant as far as seeming in the individuality that
Speaker 5: magnified with people, so you could talk to Otis and yeah,
Speaker 5: how you doing. Everything's fine? Then he said you can't,
Speaker 5: you know, I mean all of this was with a
Speaker 5: purpose aim at locking you in to the persona that
Speaker 5: was Otis Ready. There was no Otis didn't talk like that. Job.
Speaker 5: So that was a character you better believe it was.
Speaker 5: But he also perfected it in such a way that
Speaker 5: the uniqueness of him because he would stumble up on
Speaker 5: other things that he would do, because and he's making
Speaker 5: up things on the microphone as well. It's just.
Speaker 2: That was a character, even on tramp where he's like talking.
Speaker 5: On country like, bro's real what I'm telling you? This
Speaker 5: man was brilliant and and and the Brians were manifested
Speaker 5: in some of the patterns that the guests were able
Speaker 5: to play, which was motivating Isaac and I to get
Speaker 5: better with our patterns I Thank You. The record on
Speaker 5: I Thank You was motivated out of Otis reading I
Speaker 5: went there at Tennessee Walker horses on the drums. Now,
Speaker 5: just the magic of Otis Ready and seeing what he
Speaker 5: would do in the room was the catalyst for so
Speaker 5: much of what happened through all of us. And and
Speaker 5: so us trying to find our traction to get into
Speaker 5: the ballpark. Of that was to your point about a
Speaker 5: little bit of the decline before people were getting to
Speaker 5: find their way. That was part of it. We had
Speaker 5: lost the magic marker for for what we could ultimately
Speaker 5: be when we lost that guy.
Speaker 2: Who do you think he was trying to emulate since
Speaker 2: that wasn't his natural voice?
Speaker 5: Otis ready When I say that individuality was the cornerstone
Speaker 5: of the magic of what was happening in the stacks,
Speaker 5: I'm saying that that became the signature thought for everybody
Speaker 5: on every record. William Bale his records in the Sweetness,
Speaker 5: said Booker, and William wrote and the songs everybody loves
Speaker 5: one of those songs, that's William going into a character
Speaker 5: that's one of my best buddies to this day. That's
Speaker 5: also inside of the character of where he know his
Speaker 5: slot was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what you're saying is people there were alter egos
Speaker 3: before there were Sasha fears. That's what you're saying.
Speaker 2: You know what, I'm learning that right now because I
Speaker 2: just found an interview with Bobby Woomeck talking about Slive recording.
Speaker 2: There's a ride going on, you know, one of the
Speaker 2: questions I had about Sly was like, well, how come.
Speaker 1: The voice of slies on that record.
Speaker 2: Where he's like clear as day on his record, and
Speaker 2: Bobby was just like, man, Sly's an actor. He was
Speaker 2: just fucking around, And I see now, like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's just that to me, just that voice is so seasoned,
Speaker 2: like it just and again, like I heard that voice
Speaker 2: when I was ten, so I just thought, that's like
Speaker 2: my grandfather's voice. So when I found out he was,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm thinking twenty seven, I'm thinking, you know,
Speaker 2: like Chris Brown's voice or bad era Michael Jackson voice
Speaker 2: like sounds like young, but he just sounds so old
Speaker 2: and seasoned. I just thought that was unusual.
Speaker 5: I came from a period where people who looked like
Speaker 5: me in order to connect in a market that didn't
Speaker 5: handle all the access of internet all those kinds of things,
Speaker 5: had to find a way to make the possibilities of
Speaker 5: that more real. And the best way to do that,
Speaker 5: based on the evidence of time, was to find the
Speaker 5: individualalitor created an s's of weakness for you, And inside
Speaker 5: of that kind of thought process was the desire to
Speaker 5: find that. And in many instances when people would find that,
Speaker 5: they would find themselves and they would know where that
Speaker 5: pocket was. Bobby Womack Ship's moment left Stax Records when
Speaker 5: Stacks went Satellite turned into Stax and Ships went to
Speaker 5: a place called American Studios. And because Bobby couldn't get
Speaker 5: into Stax Records, where did he go? In Memphis, Tennessee?
Speaker 5: Bobby went to American Studios. And if you go by
Speaker 5: the early music of Bobby Womack, you'll find out that
Speaker 5: Bobby Womack was in Memphis, Tennessee recording over there, Danny
Speaker 5: Thomas and Chelsea at Chips Woman Studio. Check it out.
Speaker 5: And so look when we did gigs, and I'll say this,
Speaker 5: and when we did gigs on the college circuit, and
Speaker 5: we'd go and do these gigs. Some of these white
Speaker 5: colleges would have two acts performing. Some of these appearances
Speaker 5: were book of tnmg's on one end of the floor.
Speaker 5: Because they didn't know that Booker had a vocalist, which
Speaker 5: was me. They would hire another group to sing and perform.
Speaker 5: Who did they have one of those gigs and this
Speaker 5: was a guy became a buddy of mine. They hired
Speaker 5: the Osen Brothers, who was playing good time for the
Speaker 5: brothers in these college dates, Jimmy Henry, who came to
Speaker 5: Memphis with me to try to get some gigs and
Speaker 5: sessions with me in Stat's records, Jimmy Henrix, So all
Speaker 5: of this, all of this speaks to people understanding that
Speaker 5: they had to find an individual that gave them an
Speaker 5: end to where they wanted to go. Jimmy is another
Speaker 5: essence and example of that because he was a bad mother,
Speaker 5: shit your mouth playing bro. But when he got when
Speaker 5: he got time for him to find him, he knew
Speaker 5: how to integrate those nuances that became the rock thing
Speaker 5: and going to that whole look. He knew how to
Speaker 5: do that and he did it to the bone.
Speaker 2: So you're basically saying that rap music isn't the only
Speaker 2: genre in which on one's everyday voice out sewing Carter.
Speaker 1: And jay Z is you have to be a character.
Speaker 1: I just thought that was hip.
Speaker 3: Hop, But the land of make Believe didn't start with
Speaker 3: hip hop.
Speaker 5: All nuances of what, in my opinion, many of those
Speaker 5: talents got to where they got to was realizing that
Speaker 5: James Brown seemed like sound like James Brown, and Teddy
Speaker 5: Pendergrass sounded like Teddy Pendergrass and somewhere in between that
Speaker 5: sly Stones sound like sly and somewhere in between that
Speaker 5: you go, you can go down the line. And the
Speaker 5: magic habit when people perfected the essences of who they
Speaker 5: were with the purity of an emotional connecting way to
Speaker 5: an audience, and that was where the magic was. And
Speaker 5: so I think that when you found all these records
Speaker 5: happening on the Tonic and Cat's trying to find a
Speaker 5: way to treat their boys to make themselves sound whatever
Speaker 5: they're doing, they got that undernose to them possible of
Speaker 5: the influences that came through their grandmama, the uncle or whatever,
Speaker 5: talking about how they like I like that James Brown.
Speaker 5: I was like, why y'all doing that kind of stuff?
Speaker 5: And then they found a way to make it work
Speaker 5: for them, and they make it work to the Hill
Speaker 5: and so Nas and these other kids. And they told
Speaker 5: me that that that you mentioned who shot you which
Speaker 5: which which my guy Bigger did do. But they told
Speaker 5: me biggest audition tape was a song of mine and
Speaker 5: writing I.
Speaker 2: Forget Lyone Alley Yeah came.
Speaker 5: To Memphis to interview me and he told me that
Speaker 5: I said, I, what are you talking, He said, no,
Speaker 5: his audition was I never heard that, and so so
Speaker 5: by the time I unt I heard it was who
Speaker 5: shot you? So But the point I'm just saying, they
Speaker 5: were looking for for ways to find the individuality that
Speaker 5: was uniquely them and they've perfected. So when I listened
Speaker 5: to Biggie and hear where he was coming from, and
Speaker 5: then I listened to Kendrick to say what I'm saying,
Speaker 5: this is because they all found a way to find
Speaker 5: the magic within the said you mentioned day. They all
Speaker 5: find a way to do that. Those who become effected
Speaker 5: with it. As soon as they get the pocket of money,
Speaker 5: they moved to the heels. But it's wrong with that,
Speaker 5: and not I'm wrong with that, but that's real.
Speaker 2: Well, well, let's Steve ask this question because I'm sorry.
Speaker 6: I forgot my question.
Speaker 7: The story you mentioned earlier about sitting on the dock
Speaker 7: of the bay that it was unfinished. Did you oversee
Speaker 7: the finishing of that song or how did that get finished?
Speaker 5: No, proper did that, Steve did that?
Speaker 6: So what had to be recorded after his accident.
Speaker 5: Wasn't in the session. You know, all this is that
Speaker 5: sing the song to me when he came to my office,
Speaker 5: and then I just gave him that that suggestion. Then
Speaker 5: he went in the studio and recorded. You know, I
Speaker 5: don't know to what degree it was. It was not finished.
Speaker 5: I really don't.
Speaker 7: All right, Well, I have a follow up question then
Speaker 7: about Hendrix. Why didn't Stacks sign Hendrix? Or I'm trying
Speaker 7: to imagine Jimmy Hendrix as a Stacks artist or what
Speaker 7: that would be like.
Speaker 6: Was there any talk guy?
Speaker 5: You know, he wasn't Jimmy Hendrix at the time. He
Speaker 5: was trying to get on successions. There was no essence
Speaker 5: of of of Jimmy being Jimmy at the time, gotcha, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: But and then then Steve had a lock on the studio.
Speaker 5: Being honest with you, he wasn't easy to get get
Speaker 5: in some sessions, you know, and he just came to
Speaker 5: see if he could.
Speaker 2: How many studios were in total? Rooms?
Speaker 5: Well, there eventually became three rooms in there, A B,
Speaker 5: and C, but it was a while before we got B.
Speaker 5: It was it was a while before we got that.
Speaker 2: So what's scheduling like?
Speaker 5: It was crazy. We ended up, as I mentioned before,
Speaker 5: having it to do bookings that wasn't a place in
Speaker 5: muscle shows.
Speaker 2: Muscle Okay, I get it now.
Speaker 5: Jackson, Mississippi. We did some bookings, you know, we ended
Speaker 5: up because they had so many acts to do.
Speaker 2: Was Nashville ever an option? Like was did Nashville have
Speaker 2: any potential of having flavor?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: As about that?
Speaker 2: Or nah?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 4: So do you feel that it's funny?
Speaker 3: I'm like, I know you know about the gout to
Speaker 3: ask about the Black Music Museum Becau's only one black
Speaker 3: music museum in the country, and it's in Nashville. But
Speaker 3: it's it's it's supposed to feel like a situation where
Speaker 3: to make folks come. Do you feel like that or
Speaker 3: do you feel like that it should be it should
Speaker 3: be a Memphis.
Speaker 5: It should have been Memphis. But but honestly, Henry Hicks Uh,
Speaker 5: the guy who came to message before was built, and
Speaker 5: we met on all that stuff, and I supported him
Speaker 5: in the effort because it's difficult for me to believe
Speaker 5: it actually happened in Nashville. If you know Nashville, believe that.
Speaker 5: But he pulled it off mm hmm, and he got Uh.
Speaker 5: He honored Patty Leabell, Teddy Rodder, Kirk Franklin and myself
Speaker 5: as a program that we did there several years ago
Speaker 5: as he was bringing note the ride and disability to it,
Speaker 5: he would bring several artists that talk about Nashville or whatever,
Speaker 5: and that's and that was part of the surprise for
Speaker 5: me to see that he was a brother that was
Speaker 5: really believing he was gonna pull it together and he did.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah him and quite a few people shouts at
Speaker 3: Deanna Williams too, and Big John Platt is a nice
Speaker 3: community of folks that are involved in Yeah, that play
Speaker 3: special and where it's placed, like right in downtown in
Speaker 3: the face of like the opre it's like you we
Speaker 3: here right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I give I give I give those guys
Speaker 5: credit for pulling off something that one I found a
Speaker 5: difficult believe that would ever be, but also the level
Speaker 5: of it being that that it is. I mean, it's beautiful.
Speaker 4: I want to ask you, David about you You talk
Speaker 4: about characters and you know, the singers and everybody wanted
Speaker 4: to be individual. Rufus Thomas, man, what was what was
Speaker 4: he like? I thought I loved him. I mean, I
Speaker 4: watch Stacks was all I saw him on. But yeah,
Speaker 4: what was he like?
Speaker 2: Just as an.
Speaker 5: Read it book, if you told Rufus Thomas that he
Speaker 5: wasn't an artist. He'd cut you out. Rufus knew that
Speaker 5: he could go into a song that really magnified marketability
Speaker 5: for himself. If you try to get in the saying
Speaker 5: saying he was not what you think in terms of that.
Speaker 5: But when he was saying one of his original compositions,
Speaker 5: he could sing say because no one could do it
Speaker 5: better than he could, and he could sell it in
Speaker 5: such a way that that was it was magic. He was.
Speaker 5: He was extremely confident man. He was up in age
Speaker 5: when he started recording. He was, but he was extremely confident,
Speaker 5: and he also felt that he wanted to be able
Speaker 5: to compete with Sam Dave or ODIs or whoever was
Speaker 5: on the stage. So he was he found a way
Speaker 5: to get outfits even though he wasn't getting paid the
Speaker 5: kind of money the others were getting paid on the gigs.
Speaker 5: But you can tell that because every time he hit
Speaker 5: the stage, he'd be shoppings, sharp could beat and when
Speaker 5: he going too his thing, he could do it to him.
Speaker 5: And so but that was because he just he just
Speaker 5: knew where his niche was and he refected us. We
Speaker 5: talked about earlier, the individuality that was powerful for.
Speaker 4: Him Carla was his daughter?
Speaker 5: Correct, Carla was his daughter?
Speaker 4: How was it when she came along? How did that work?
Speaker 5: Well? Carla came along at a time when when Jimster
Speaker 5: recorded Rufus and Colin or a record called Cass I
Speaker 5: Love It, which they said it was a hit, but
Speaker 5: it really was the marginal kind of record. But Jim
Speaker 5: saw something in Carla and asked her if she had
Speaker 5: any original songs, and she had a song called Gee Whiz,
Speaker 5: and Coler paid a little piano and Cola recorded Ge Whiz.
Speaker 5: It really became the dome the for stacks and the
Speaker 5: relationship with Atlantic Records. That initiated the really power of
Speaker 5: the deal for us, and that was what that was.
Speaker 5: And then Isaaca and I had the biggest record on
Speaker 5: Calling because we wrote a song called b A b
Speaker 5: Y and we produced that on Calling and that was
Speaker 5: her biggest record. But yeah, no, she she was. She
Speaker 5: did some some some stuff and the record with as
Speaker 5: quest mentioned with Trump, was she oldest? Brought out another
Speaker 5: kind of person on that. It's very fact.
Speaker 2: We talked about soul Man, but there's a whole like
Speaker 2: barge of classic songs. I'm just gonna name something. Can
Speaker 2: you recall the stories of how or tell me what
Speaker 2: the songwriting processes for some of these songs, like when
Speaker 2: Something's Wrong with My Baby?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was. I was. I was a managed boy
Speaker 5: and got a girl pregnant high school and my mama said,
Speaker 5: you got married, and I married? Uh, nineteen years old,
Speaker 5: I married him. And so I'm living been with a
Speaker 5: kid and fantasizing as I'm trying to get the music
Speaker 5: bus as an effective way. I'm about love and what
Speaker 5: would be the power love? Because the young lady didn't
Speaker 5: love me and I didn't love her, but but we
Speaker 5: had a kid, and so I would dream about babies
Speaker 5: and so just I would have a pad up under
Speaker 5: the bed, which I still do that when a right.
Speaker 5: And sometimes I'd wake up with a thought and the
Speaker 5: idea and I would write it down. When something is
Speaker 5: Wrong with my Baby was one of those ideas that
Speaker 5: I woke up in the dream, wrote, wrote the title down,
Speaker 5: got up, wrote the whole song out. Carl Isaac. We
Speaker 5: couldn't get into the studio, As I mentioned, we didn't
Speaker 5: have a lot of rooms at this time. Couldn't get
Speaker 5: in the studio. We went over to Sidney Kirk's house
Speaker 5: one of Isaac's friend got his piano wrote when Something
Speaker 5: Is Wrong with My Baby in about twenty five thirty
Speaker 5: minutes because they had the melody already in the head.
Speaker 5: And the rest is history with that song. But that
Speaker 5: was like when I mentioned the titles Isaac, he said, man,
Speaker 5: I love that, and we wrote it. So Man came
Speaker 5: about just as equally because Isaac heard something out of
Speaker 5: Detroit and said, man, we need to write a song
Speaker 5: called soul Man, and then here comes sol Man. We're
Speaker 5: talking us. We wanted to be a motivational song for
Speaker 5: our community. So I talked about getting an education. I
Speaker 5: was educated at Woodstock. I was brought up on the science.
Speaker 5: We talked about. I'm the beginning the whole manifestation of
Speaker 5: motivating people, the double meaning of soul Man in the
Speaker 5: Woodstock line in there. That was before the festival Woodstock,
Speaker 5: and when Bluci and Akro was saying, people thought that
Speaker 5: we had Woodstock. Woodstock was a county school in Memphis.
Speaker 5: But but all of those things came about with us
Speaker 5: trying to think of ways to make ideas that people
Speaker 5: can relate to, but also a motivational for people inside
Speaker 5: of the subliminal message in our writings, and that's what
Speaker 5: we were.
Speaker 4: Doing when you and when you and Isaac worked together.
Speaker 4: How did y'all work?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 4: Did you were you on piano? Was he on piano?
Speaker 4: Or were you more lyrics Isaac.
Speaker 5: Was on piano. I started out as allows the trumpet player,
Speaker 5: to start trying to play trumpet in high school and
Speaker 5: wanted to be a singing star. Mauric went the drama
Speaker 5: in high school and Booker was below us in high school,
Speaker 5: and so I started thinking I was this great great
Speaker 5: singing and put down the instruments. And so by the
Speaker 5: time Isaac and I got together, I understood melodically how
Speaker 5: to do exactly what we needed to do lyrically how
Speaker 5: to do that. And Isaac we started out, I just
Speaker 5: started up playing trippers on the piano before we started,
Speaker 5: just stretching himself to do all he could do. And
Speaker 5: all of a sudden, he started discovering things that he
Speaker 5: would hear inside of his head, which is where the
Speaker 5: head arrange the came. And I started finding things I
Speaker 5: would hear inside of my head. And then when we would
Speaker 5: sit down to write a song or come up with
Speaker 5: an idea, if we had to put some piece of
Speaker 5: something down on another tape to use it as a
Speaker 5: reference for something possibility. We would then sit down and
Speaker 5: create the songs right from stretch. Right at that point
Speaker 5: we'd schedule or writing. We'd go and do a gig
Speaker 5: at a club or something like that and come to
Speaker 5: the studio and just start writing, and we would do
Speaker 5: that artist to artist, song to song individualities and being
Speaker 5: a blue song on Johnny Taylor, a blue song on Abbath,
Speaker 5: king of a Lover, song on a Soul Children, a
Speaker 5: pretty song on the Emotions, a flat down song on
Speaker 5: Sam and that. We focused on doing it the way
Speaker 5: we felt the inside of the room. But it was Jilly,
Speaker 5: Isaac and I were sitting at the piano, me coming
Speaker 5: up with the melodies and the lyrics of the song,
Speaker 5: singing the song, and we're coming up with a musical
Speaker 5: direction that we would go inside of that. The head
Speaker 5: arranging part of that comes, so we would go into
Speaker 5: the room. We talk about the concept of it if
Speaker 5: we wanted to hold on them coming. It was one
Speaker 5: of those examples where he had had had a horn
Speaker 5: pattern down weeks before and we talked about coming up
Speaker 5: with this idea. After I came out of the restroom,
Speaker 5: and then we talked about an idea about Superman, a
Speaker 5: resking kind of thing and a motivation for people, and
Speaker 5: that was what the thought was. And once we said that,
Speaker 5: twenty minutes later we had the song don't you Ever
Speaker 5: Feel Sad? But you know, I mean when the times
Speaker 5: of bad to day comes, you're down trouble in about
Speaker 5: the drown hold on I'm coming. And we talked about
Speaker 5: the unity and the bond between people with that.
Speaker 2: When you were recalling the story of Something's Wrong with
Speaker 2: My Baby, for half a second, I was like, oh God,
Speaker 2: this isn't a love song. He's talking about his newborn
Speaker 2: kid being sick. And I was like, wait, where's he
Speaker 2: about to go with this story? Like that's what it
Speaker 2: means literally a baby?
Speaker 5: No. Now, I was trying to think about what it'd
Speaker 5: be like they had a real woman that I could
Speaker 5: really feel all of that for.
Speaker 2: I feel you, I believe. In ninety one ninety two,
Speaker 2: back when the idea of a box set was a
Speaker 2: novel idea, these eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve CD sets
Speaker 2: like a history of a label started happening for the
Speaker 2: record industry because literally, if you buy the Stacks box set,
Speaker 2: from nineteen ninety one. You can hear the entire history
Speaker 2: of the Wu Tang clan. I want to know, have
Speaker 2: you ever met the Riza and what were your initial
Speaker 2: thoughts in the mid nineties when suddenly the thing about
Speaker 2: Riza and his sampling method is it was even jarring.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I can speak for Liah, Steve
Speaker 2: or Fante, but his level of sampling was really jarring,
Speaker 2: Like like, I'm very familiar with the sweet inspirations like
Speaker 2: Why Mary and all that stuff, and so just the
Speaker 2: just the very unorthodox way that he sampled that Why
Speaker 2: Mary is a criminology.
Speaker 4: I knew it was always different with Rizza.
Speaker 3: I knew it was never you can't it ain't easy.
Speaker 4: It was never easy.
Speaker 2: That's and he wasn't.
Speaker 4: He wasn't afraid to use voices either, like he would
Speaker 4: a lot generally when you would chop samples, you would
Speaker 4: try to get out of the vocal. You know what
Speaker 4: I'm saying. He would almost intentionally like incorporate the vocal use.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was very so when you're hearing like or
Speaker 2: I guess you know that you have to get permission.
Speaker 2: I don't know what the process is like if your
Speaker 2: publisher just says, hey, I give a permission, or they
Speaker 2: got to go to the songwriter. Sometimes we got to
Speaker 2: have a conversation with the songwriter. Sometimes it's just like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you could clear it. But when when your work starts
Speaker 2: getting a lot of traction in the early to mid
Speaker 2: nineties with Biggie, with even Mop, with Annie Up Soul,
Speaker 2: Sister Brown Sugar, I believe yeah, yeah, Like what are
Speaker 2: you feeling? Is are you feeling like to change I'm back?
Speaker 2: Or is it like wait, I didn't intend my songs
Speaker 2: to sound like this, Like what are they doing?
Speaker 5: The respect for the creative process was something that I'm
Speaker 5: marveled at. I know Isaac marvel it and the fact
Speaker 5: that I just simply felt good they found an interesting
Speaker 5: way to interpret something that I was on the creation of.
Speaker 5: When Rizza and I met Rizza Mett, I've been even
Speaker 5: introduced him on some shows and soff and he's come
Speaker 5: to my studio and everything, and just the level of
Speaker 5: respect that those guys head for the catalog was just
Speaker 5: amazing to me. But also find the interesting ways they
Speaker 5: found to interpret the song like Cream, I mean, like
Speaker 5: I mean, come on, you know, wait, let me.
Speaker 2: Inter up to you because I got a question with
Speaker 2: as long as I Got You? Maybe maybe like four
Speaker 2: five years ago actually, I think during the Motions episode
Speaker 2: I played it. The Emotions have a version of as
Speaker 2: Long as I Got You, which is even funkier. It
Speaker 2: sounds like a demo. Why wasn't that version ever released?
Speaker 5: Because it probably sounded like the demo that you're talking about.
Speaker 5: You know, I really, I really don't even remember the
Speaker 5: Emotion's version. You know how embarrassed that is for me
Speaker 5: to say that, because I'm you.
Speaker 4: Got too ate over two thousand songs, like we will forgive
Speaker 4: you for forgetting one.
Speaker 5: Remember everything's say here.
Speaker 2: But again, you you've done over two thousand songs, so
Speaker 2: you can forget a few.
Speaker 5: But but the version that we did with the Chameles,
Speaker 5: Isaac was was uh. I don't want to bust him out,
Speaker 5: but he was. He was a little romandoumly fascinated with
Speaker 5: one of the girls with that. Because we weren't even
Speaker 5: they were not looked upon it as an act that
Speaker 5: we're gonna let's go into and we're gonna record this
Speaker 5: s group called the Chameles. We knew them Mary and
Speaker 5: And and Milk. We knew them, but when Isaac come
Speaker 5: he said, man, we ought to record record them? He said,
Speaker 5: what he said, Well, so we did. And one of
Speaker 5: the banner things that we did, the one banner thing
Speaker 5: that we did that I just s marvel. It was
Speaker 5: as long as I got you. And that was also
Speaker 5: one of those things that we naturally felled the power of.
Speaker 5: And when we just wrote the song and then Barbara,
Speaker 5: who is the least singer of it, her text on
Speaker 5: it was amazing. Isaak is singing background on some of
Speaker 5: the parts in the record. Wow, that's not all the
Speaker 5: girl was saying, so so so it's it's It was
Speaker 5: one of those things that I was shocked at how
Speaker 5: it ended up being sampled so much. Even the Nicole
Speaker 5: bus sample of it. I mean, that's Barbara singing that
Speaker 5: part of it on the record. That's the actual record
Speaker 5: on on you on the cod Okay section of it.
Speaker 2: You know, we gotta mention you've also worked with the
Speaker 2: legendary Cissy Houston and the Sweet Inspirations.
Speaker 5: Not Cissy but but the Sweetest Races because Sissy wasn't.
Speaker 2: She left the group at the time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, she left the group at the time. Yeah, if
Speaker 5: it was three of them at the time. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: Sissy wasn't with them, and and wishes and dishes and
Speaker 5: and you're wrong when you're don't get it at the
Speaker 5: home of those songs and sisters not on that.
Speaker 2: So were the Emotions the only group that weren't necessarily
Speaker 2: quote unquote homegrown. Was the main protocol of Stax Records
Speaker 2: to just have like Memphis Homegroom talent or like, how
Speaker 2: did do you know how the Emotions came to the
Speaker 2: label and what was it like working with them?
Speaker 5: Hervis Staples bought the Emotions to us.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, all right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and he brought him to Isaac and I and
Speaker 5: they were very very young, sixteen years old, very very young.
Speaker 5: Sheila was younger than sixteen. Well I think Wonder was
Speaker 5: the oldest one, I believe, right. But Purvis bought them
Speaker 5: to Isaac and I take a listen to and their
Speaker 5: father was Joe was like a little guitar player. He
Speaker 5: wanted to be a part of the group. He was
Speaker 5: their father. And so we listened to them and we
Speaker 5: said that Joe wanted to be a part of the
Speaker 5: group because he was impressed with you know, Pop Staples.
Speaker 5: You know with the Staples, and so we said if
Speaker 5: we would do them, we'd have to do just the girls,
Speaker 5: and so we did the Girl but but purpose was
Speaker 5: the one that brought them to us. Wow.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you you mentioned it earlier. I was saving
Speaker 2: it for now, but you gotta tell me, like, what
Speaker 2: is the story behind I'm afraid the Masquerade is over?
Speaker 1: Because every time I.
Speaker 2: Yo, every time I have a breakup, like just that
Speaker 2: is one of the saddest songs ever. And now and
Speaker 2: that's another example of like they're crazy arrangements in that song.
Speaker 2: And now that you're telling me that you guys are
Speaker 2: going on phillion and all that stuff.
Speaker 5: And iterant, I'm walking around the room to tell what was.
Speaker 1: The genesis of that song?
Speaker 5: Actually behind the second album which had hang On Sloopy
Speaker 5: on it. I don't know if you ever heard that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: but I didn't quite hit the mark with hang On Sloopy,
Speaker 5: But I like the concept that I had would hang
Speaker 5: on stupid. So when I came up with the concept
Speaker 5: of creating acting scenes inside of the next project, I
Speaker 5: knew I was going to create something different. So I
Speaker 5: wanted to have acting scenes.
Speaker 2: Who is who's the woman? Who's the woman that was one.
Speaker 5: Of my secretary but also my wife. My second wife
Speaker 5: was also in that. That's that when the card scene,
Speaker 5: I come up running, Uh, that's my second wife. The
Speaker 5: girl I'm talking to about the girl, yeah that I'm
Speaker 5: fascinated with the girl that was actually my wife.
Speaker 2: Wait time, now there's two women on that song.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Well, if you go to the very beginning not
Speaker 5: note on that song. If you go to the very beginning.
Speaker 2: Of the album, yes, I don't know that I want yes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And and I go you open the door, and
Speaker 5: I go into this party and I'm talking, well, the
Speaker 5: girl that's talking to me about the other girl that
Speaker 5: was my way. I wrote off the story as I
Speaker 5: would go, and I then selected the songs that would
Speaker 5: fit the concept of where I was going to take
Speaker 5: the story to. If you noticed the last song on
Speaker 5: it was Airplane Ticket Bus Ride, Can I Borrow Your Car?
Speaker 5: I wrote that at the last minute because I had
Speaker 5: gone through the whole storyline and didn't have the closed
Speaker 5: out song. But the Masqueraders overcame about where I wanted
Speaker 5: to create something that gave the essences of all the
Speaker 5: things that are having prior to that period in the
Speaker 5: album where this acting scenes. So if you notice the
Speaker 5: breakdown comes and I started rapping, well, I didn't have
Speaker 5: it written out. I knew the concept. I didn't have
Speaker 5: the rap written out on that song. I knew the
Speaker 5: concept and I talked the concept after I did the
Speaker 5: head arrangers for the parts.
Speaker 2: So you're singing it as the band sort of reading
Speaker 2: your face at the same time.
Speaker 5: No, no, I did the track first. In my mind,
Speaker 5: I'm looking at I'm going through the motion of this,
Speaker 5: feel inside of the various transitions. That's why the piano
Speaker 5: part that's running playing the piano, I'm humming the piano
Speaker 5: part for running to play the signature has been saving
Speaker 5: all this time. That's one of those things where a
Speaker 5: piano player and that's what we want to play more.
Speaker 5: Just play that and stop just that and when I
Speaker 5: clue you stop on that. That's what that was. But
Speaker 5: so so after that was done, now I get rid
Speaker 5: of the sing the song. Now I do the rap,
Speaker 5: and I'm feeling where the parts are before I do
Speaker 5: the horns, and I'm feeling all of that and I'm
Speaker 5: making I promise you, I'm making it up come to
Speaker 5: an extended part, not the actually gotter song. I'm making
Speaker 5: it up the whole time because I know where the
Speaker 5: storyline is going to ultimately end up and where it's
Speaker 5: gonna lead to make song.
Speaker 1: But not that I ever counted bars.
Speaker 2: But in your mind you're like, Okay, we're gonna do
Speaker 2: thirty two bars of a break and I'll figure out
Speaker 2: something to say in these thirty two bars. No, and
Speaker 2: then it's over, like you.
Speaker 5: Know now what I know? By kind Bob, we do that,
Speaker 5: but not on this song. I said you got. I'm
Speaker 5: walking around the room talking in the microphone, directing cats
Speaker 5: in the microphone. I'm going around the room while the
Speaker 5: track is while I've got the bed foundation of the
Speaker 5: track right, Oh my mama, I'm telling you this how
Speaker 5: this was done. I'm walking around the room harming the parts.
Speaker 5: I don't know how many bars I'm gonna make this.
Speaker 5: I just want to make the emotional connectivity be a
Speaker 5: finif enough for me to feel something I need to
Speaker 5: feel when it's time to make the transition. That's why
Speaker 5: you hear some call flops and things inside of the track. Listen.
Speaker 5: I know, you know, you know, that's why you hear
Speaker 5: some of that. But after this of it a lot
Speaker 5: of that.
Speaker 2: Listeners of QLs. Right now, I'm doing the Jim Carrey
Speaker 2: dumb and dumber realization.
Speaker 1: Jeff, I can't believe this.
Speaker 2: Wow. Okay, I was.
Speaker 4: Asked, David, were you a fan by chance of David Axelrod?
Speaker 2: Did you listen to any of his stuff?
Speaker 4: Really?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 4: I just both of y'all always like, oh yeah, both
Speaker 4: of you guys, y'all kind of have like this really
Speaker 4: dark yeah, dramatic, like big uh, Like it's it's big
Speaker 4: and like beautiful, but it's also kind of dark and
Speaker 4: kind of a Carver as well. And it's really classy.
Speaker 4: It's elegant, but it's really like dark and it can
Speaker 4: be like, oh you listen to that, listen to it
Speaker 4: in the dark, you might be freaked out little bit,
Speaker 4: but really beautiful stuff. Man. I just I just wondered
Speaker 4: if y'all were fans of each other.
Speaker 5: Well, well, you know what I would tell you this, man,
Speaker 5: I am. I feel that I've been so blessed because
Speaker 5: what come has come through me is the grace of
Speaker 5: the man upstairs. Because I have a nonprofit program where
Speaker 5: I teach songwriting, record producing, record all of that called
Speaker 5: the constroint MT it's ten years old. A lot of
Speaker 5: what you get coming out of ificent kids that have
Speaker 5: gone through my program in songwriting. All this's got got
Speaker 5: one hundred.
Speaker 8: And thirty some videos with everybody Stevie Baries, Philip Bailey,
Speaker 8: Jimmy jam Bobby Womag, Edie le Verge I mean, let usy,
Speaker 8: I mean on video talking about their concepts of the
Speaker 8: creating process.
Speaker 5: So all of this, I had to come up with
Speaker 5: a set way to understand how I do what I
Speaker 5: do for the success of those things to come out
Speaker 5: of that, because if I was relying totally on how
Speaker 5: I felt, people don't care about how you feel. They
Speaker 5: care about how you make them feel. So I had
Speaker 5: to find a way to make the magic of that
Speaker 5: be resonating to others. And I had to also know
Speaker 5: in order to replicate it again, find some way to
Speaker 5: understand it. And part of what Isaac and I would
Speaker 5: talk about, and sometimes he would think I was crazy
Speaker 5: because I was so far into that, but it was
Speaker 5: a gift and Maurice White and I came from Virginia Street. Maurice,
Speaker 5: if you read this book, you see that he talked
Speaker 5: about me being one of the first persons he ran
Speaker 5: the name earth Winn in firedown too. Why I flew
Speaker 5: to La I was a hot producer. Maurice's with Ramsay
Speaker 5: planned the Hong Kong by the Cintray Plaza hotel. I
Speaker 5: flew to La because he wanted to tell me something
Speaker 5: he did to give. The next day we walking up sunset.
Speaker 5: He's going to tell your concept. I gat Maurice created
Speaker 5: earth Wind and off of a concept in the direction
Speaker 5: that he had from the gift go and knew exactly
Speaker 5: what he was going to go in and the creative
Speaker 5: process because he knew he wanted to have an identity
Speaker 5: that created a uniqueness that was totally him. That is
Speaker 5: the essence of what comes out of Memphis in such
Speaker 5: unique way. He said, no one can can understand it,
Speaker 5: including me. Is say, if it's a God given gift?
Speaker 2: Was was Marius's uh metaphysical.
Speaker 1: Direction?
Speaker 2: Was it jarring to you at the time, because you
Speaker 2: know what Marius was trying to convey with earth Wind
Speaker 2: and Fire was like the spirit, which which is kind
Speaker 2: of the exact opposite of even though he was using
Speaker 2: gospel overturns in the Southern Church, but he's really using
Speaker 2: metaphysics and things outside of westernized Christianity. Was that a
Speaker 2: little weird for you at the time, Like what you
Speaker 2: get into Marius? Like, like, how did you perceive this,
Speaker 2: this kind of spirituality that Marius was was conveying with
Speaker 2: with the band.
Speaker 5: We're walking up the street and when he said, tell
Speaker 5: me what you think about this earth when in fire?
Speaker 5: Consider the time period that we're talking about, Ohio players,
Speaker 5: mm hmm. All of the men go down there. He
Speaker 5: comes a guy says, earth when in fire, and this
Speaker 5: is the concept David, And then I'm gonna fuse jazz.
Speaker 5: But he ran all of that down to me. He's
Speaker 5: gonna fuse that inside of it. What I thought was
Speaker 5: he's gonna make something work, because we always talked about
Speaker 5: how I stumbled up from the spirituality of what I
Speaker 5: was doing to make it work. And I just believe
Speaker 5: he was gonna make it work. I just didn't know
Speaker 5: how he was going to accomplish it in the climate
Speaker 5: that we were living in. Because he was it was
Speaker 5: going to be so innovative, it had to be. But
Speaker 5: when I heard the sound of what he did, because
Speaker 5: he had a group before or winning fire, when I
Speaker 5: heard the sound of what he did with the group
Speaker 5: he was, it was over and we stayed like this.
Speaker 5: I was I would fly to la when when Maurice
Speaker 5: had the parkass just to get him in the car
Speaker 5: and ride in the street because he was through touring.
Speaker 5: We were that close and we talked up and toil
Speaker 5: he left it so his thought about what he was
Speaker 5: going to do because he had that thought about what
Speaker 5: those processes was going to be and what the musician
Speaker 5: was going to be before he put it together. The
Speaker 5: only thing he told me differently while we were on
Speaker 5: suns he said, I'm going to bring verdein out here
Speaker 5: to California. He told me that. But other than that,
Speaker 5: he was going to put all of those ingredients together
Speaker 5: and he did it. But yeah, I just because we
Speaker 5: worked off of concepts in the direction and identity and
Speaker 5: all of those things we lived off of that. I
Speaker 5: just didn't know he would put it off. He did.
Speaker 5: I believed in.
Speaker 2: There is one important question I forgot to ask as
Speaker 2: a kid that grew up in a three thousand album household,
Speaker 2: and especially a kid that was afraid of clowns dog,
Speaker 2: who was the who was the artistic visionary behind the
Speaker 2: album cover for Victim of the Joke?
Speaker 5: And when he says you can't handle the truth, Listen,
Speaker 5: that's a joke. That's a joke. I didn't know how
Speaker 5: smart I was. I just thought that because I had
Speaker 5: some Tennessee walker horses out in Shelby Farms. I just thought,
Speaker 5: I want to do this cover and I want to
Speaker 5: have a clown outfit on and I want to be
Speaker 5: I want to sit on a drum because I want
Speaker 5: to make this an opera. Called it victim of the
Speaker 5: joke I wanted to be, and I want to make
Speaker 5: it like who's the clown? Well and so, but this
Speaker 5: is before I wrote out the script. I had that.
Speaker 5: So that was one of those things whereuse its just said,
Speaker 5: it came from another kind of space, just like when
Speaker 5: something is wrong, came from another kind of space. Hold
Speaker 5: on coming came from another kind of space. The toilet
Speaker 5: was there, but it was somewhere else. When it's just
Speaker 5: it's from another kind of space.
Speaker 2: When was the ending of Stacks as we knew it?
Speaker 5: The ending of Stacks happened with Isaac still there, me
Speaker 5: still in charge of five labels ahead of an RM.
Speaker 5: Steve Cropper was gone, Doug Dunn was gone. Al Jackson Jr.
Speaker 5: Was there, and so it was. It was a situation
Speaker 5: where we didn't know what was going on with the
Speaker 5: business part of the company, but we knew that al
Speaker 5: bail It became such a revered person, certainly after the
Speaker 5: watch Stacks that we did, which was amazing within itself,
Speaker 5: until it was almost I had the feeling that that
Speaker 5: the business white community where the biggest were when it
Speaker 5: found out that because we had a line of credit
Speaker 5: with a particular bank there, when they found out that
Speaker 5: this this black man was was what he was was doing,
Speaker 5: what he was doing, that it was almost they called
Speaker 5: the line and came at us in such a way
Speaker 5: that they got al Bill indicted eighteen indicting it and
Speaker 5: tried to destroy him foreclothes on the company. And the
Speaker 5: last thing we knew was Isaac couldn't get any money
Speaker 5: his money which he it was millions of dollars there
Speaker 5: and the company actually folded because of foreclosure. Isaac then
Speaker 5: left Stacks when it was foreclosed and then signed with
Speaker 5: the other label, but he didn't he didn't sign with
Speaker 5: another label before Stacks closed. Wow, And so but it
Speaker 5: was it was an attack on destroying a powerful company
Speaker 5: that was creating a great amount of jobs and a
Speaker 5: tremendous amount of notoriety for Memphis, Tennessee. And you put
Speaker 5: that with what Willie Mitchell was doing. We were a
Speaker 5: power base in a city that was seaked in a
Speaker 5: in a kind of bigoty that was not in its
Speaker 5: own interest because the credit bills that we was bringing
Speaker 5: to the city was tremendous in itself.
Speaker 4: They were you around when Al Bell formed Bellmark, his
Speaker 4: his indie label that they put out they ended up
Speaker 4: putting out there it is, but.
Speaker 5: Uh yeah, he l moved to California when he did that.
Speaker 5: You know, he had an office building on Hollywood there.
Speaker 5: You know, I was definitely wrong when Al when Stax
Speaker 5: was over and everybody thought Al was over. Al he
Speaker 5: ended up, you know, creating baill Mark. As you said,
Speaker 5: Wait a minute, he was. He was still in a
Speaker 5: brilliant mind.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think he did. He did Prince the
Speaker 4: most Beautiful Girl in the World.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, I forgot in Motown and Motown
Speaker 3: say what Al.
Speaker 5: Bell worked with Barry Guardy in Motown.
Speaker 4: For the Bells, them Bells. I'm trying to check that.
Speaker 5: Out, Joe. You know, I'm gonna say I've listened to
Speaker 5: you guys, and I just muddled and how much information
Speaker 5: Wasn't it.
Speaker 2: Was Fantasy Records at all associated with al Bell because
Speaker 2: there was a period in the in the early Arts,
Speaker 2: like in two thousand and whatnot, in which ah damn,
Speaker 2: see I'm messing up right now. One of the executives
Speaker 2: that used to work at Geffen who signed me, went
Speaker 2: to Fantasy and was like, yes, we have all the
Speaker 2: Fantasy masters and all the Stacks masters.
Speaker 5: Like can I can I say? Of course? Was that
Speaker 5: was that Erny Singleton?
Speaker 2: I know any Singleton? But no it was not him.
Speaker 5: No, okay, okay, because I only worked for Fantasy period.
Speaker 2: Okay, but okay, So I guess they connected in the
Speaker 2: early arts.
Speaker 5: Well you know how to Fantasy deal happened? Right?
Speaker 2: No, I don't know, okay.
Speaker 5: Stax's closed was totally closed in seventy six. Here comes
Speaker 5: to people to me and asked me, would I create
Speaker 5: a seven and a half tape of what was in
Speaker 5: the Stacked library? And would I do that? Because they
Speaker 5: didn't know what it was. The bank had foreclosers and
Speaker 5: they were just trying to figure out how to get
Speaker 5: rid of stuff, and they didn't know what they had,
Speaker 5: and so what happened was they had to pay me
Speaker 5: one hundred thousand dollars to put seven and a half
Speaker 5: takes together for about forty five minutes. And Fantasy Records
Speaker 5: came to me after that and asked me what I
Speaker 5: had up the label for them. What they wanted was
Speaker 5: to release the catalog of the music, and they wanted
Speaker 5: me to move to Berkeley, California. I said, I would
Speaker 5: not move to Berkeley, California if you answered me doing it.
Speaker 5: I would have to do it in Memphis, and I
Speaker 5: also would have to have the right to sign some
Speaker 5: of the artists to the label and you release records
Speaker 5: on them. We said, we don't really want to do
Speaker 5: I said, well then I'm not interested. Well, they would
Speaker 5: not have known what to do with the catalog, so
Speaker 5: they made the deal with me. Ernie Singleton, who later
Speaker 5: became the president of MCA, and that's why we close
Speaker 5: to this day, was working for Fantasy Records. Another guy
Speaker 5: by the name of Bob Orshey was working there. I
Speaker 5: released the record on the Emotions. They had a record
Speaker 5: called Shouting Out Love. I released a record I have
Speaker 5: on ISAAC called hot Bed. I released a record on
Speaker 5: the barcade called Holy Ghosts. I released a record on
Speaker 5: the Soldier and called Can't give Up a Good Thing.
Speaker 5: I had another act by the name of Shown Up.
Speaker 5: And if you go seventy eight should be and you
Speaker 5: google seven eight Billboard magazine, you'll see there were four
Speaker 5: or five records on the national charts of with Stax
Speaker 5: Fantasy on it. And then when I told the guy,
Speaker 5: we have an opportunity to be successful, he says, no,
Speaker 5: I don't want I said we can be big. I
Speaker 5: said I don't want to be big, and then I
Speaker 5: left the deal because I realized what time that was. Wow.
Speaker 5: I won't go deeper than that anyway. I wasn't interested
Speaker 5: in that. So that's what happened. So after that, whoever
Speaker 5: signed with Fantasy I lift in seventy eight, after those
Speaker 5: records were released. If those records that I mentioned, Holy
Speaker 5: ghost they hit on the barcades, that was after Saxic Clue.
Speaker 2: I was going to ask what was it because they
Speaker 2: were Mercury at the time, Like was that in their
Speaker 2: that was just in the vaults or something that was.
Speaker 5: I got that out of the vault, I got the
Speaker 5: help out of Issa out of the bolt. I got
Speaker 5: the help out of the emotions out of the vault. Ah,
Speaker 5: I recalled it an ah see.
Speaker 2: But because the thing is the Barks era I want
Speaker 2: to know about is again the posts, you know, the
Speaker 2: seventies barcades. But maybe you know the answer, with the
Speaker 2: exception of Holy Ghost, why is every song they ever
Speaker 2: released like derivative of someone else's hit? Like did they
Speaker 2: think that we wouldn't put you and two together? That
Speaker 2: shine was you know, earth wind fires on your face
Speaker 2: or you know, shake your rump to the front might
Speaker 2: be shining star, or like, were they just the type
Speaker 2: of seventies band that would just get the forty five
Speaker 2: of the moment, study that forty five and figure out, Okay,
Speaker 2: what's our formula for that? Because literally Holy Ghost is
Speaker 2: probably like even even on Stacks, like a song like
Speaker 2: it's on the Cold Blooded records, like one of my
Speaker 2: favorite Barkay's Joint, which is basically kind of derivative of
Speaker 2: when the World's at Peace by the OJ's It's Wow.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 2: Literally, Jimmy jam and I like pretty much kept a
Speaker 2: record of every song that the Barks has ever created.
Speaker 2: Oh this is a song called a fighting fire with
Speaker 2: fire or the Stack era Barcas, which you know it's
Speaker 2: also a popular sample for hip hop. But there's almost
Speaker 2: one element in every I mean even on those earlier records,
Speaker 2: like they're sliding and family Stones dance to the music,
Speaker 2: and it's like, don't stop, dance to the music. Don't stop.
Speaker 2: Like were they not afraid that one day they might
Speaker 2: get caught in the sort of litigation with.
Speaker 5: Being well, you understand, the guy who would ended up
Speaker 5: taking them over in total, who didn't have the control
Speaker 5: of Stax Records and then being kept in a particular
Speaker 5: direction that records could be sold on was a guy
Speaker 5: by the name of Work with Us, by the name
Speaker 5: of Alan Jones. Okay, Alan Jones became the producer, the
Speaker 5: only producer and the manager of the Barcades, and he
Speaker 5: came up with the direction that they were going to go.
Speaker 5: In matter of fact, I'm going to be sure to
Speaker 5: get James so you can interview that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, please do us that salad, please please please.
Speaker 5: It's done. But but so Alan was the one who
Speaker 5: was giving them this this particular direction, and I would
Speaker 5: rather I won't butch it up. I'm gonna get James
Speaker 5: and he'll he'll, he would tell you asking about Alan
Speaker 5: Jones and Larry Dobson, who was versatile and his vocal
Speaker 5: could could immolate those be the Oklaha players or whoever.
Speaker 2: Larry Donson is probably one of the most underrated soul cats,
Speaker 2: still in fine form with it with his but yeah,
Speaker 2: the legendary Alan Jones, who you know, I forgot to
Speaker 2: ask about cold feet with Albert King and I'll play
Speaker 2: the blues for you and all that stuff. Yes, legendary,
Speaker 2: legendary man. This this is such an honor to just
Speaker 2: to talk to you and finally get some in depth
Speaker 2: stories from you, because we've never seen any feature linked
Speaker 2: article on you or or anything. And you're You're just
Speaker 2: a genius and a gentleman, and we thank you for
Speaker 2: being on our show. Yeah, straight up man.
Speaker 4: Shout out to DJ Khalil too. I'm put this together again.
Speaker 2: Thank you. We appreciate you doing this. Unpaid Bill bruh,
Speaker 2: you missed a you missed the masterpiece of an episode.
Speaker 2: I gotta let you know you're on behalf of Sugar
Speaker 2: Steve and font Ticcolo and Laya and Unpaid Phil and
Speaker 2: the great David Porter.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: It's another classic episode of Quest Love Supreme and we
Speaker 2: will see you guys on the next go around. Thank you.
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