4GBs

If you have more than a passing interest in popular music, go read Peter Guralnick’s Sweet Soul Music.  For more than five years, Guralnick interviewed the major players in the emergence of Southern Soul music in the late 50s, 60s, and early 70s.  It’s a compelling story of three southern cities: Memphis, the birthplace of Stax/Volt Records and Booker T. & the M.G.’s; Macon; home of Otis Redding and famed booked agent Phil Walden; and Muscle Shoals, Alabama, a geographical area formed by four small to mid-size towns that became a hotbed of Southern Soul through the efforts of, among others, Rick Hall of Fame Recording.  What happened down there, through a combination of effort, naiveté, luck, talent, and ambition, created music that is destined to be enjoyed for quite some time.

Watching from Atlantic Records in New York, arch businessman Jerry Wexler recognized a pipeline of truly authentic R&B and Soul when he saw one.  Wexler funneled the Southern-fried sounds through the Atlantic distribution network and out into the world while adding other essential ingredients to the stew, particularly Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin.  Of course, as Guralnick points out, Wexler was subsequently credited with both the tremendous successes of Soul in the 1960s and, to some degree, the eventual backlash in the wake of MLK Jr.’s assassination in Memphis against largely white record executives by black artists. 

The sense of both competition and brotherhood between performers Redding, Franklin, James Brown, Solomon Burke, Joe Tex, Rufus Thomas, Al Green, Percy Sledge, Arthur Conley, and Sam & Dave, producers Wexler, Hall, Jim Stewart, Estelle Axton, Al Bell, and Chips Moman, songwriters Isaac Hayes, David Porter, William Bell, Dan Penn, and Spooner Oldham, and many others, pours out from Guralnick’s narrative. 

Some got famous while others languished in obscurity.  A few got rich while others never got paid.  Paranoia, greed, payola, ill will, scandal, pettiness, all of the dirty music business stuff we’ve heard about – happened.  Regardless, the music is some of the best stuff ever put down on tape.  It will outlive us all. 

I can’t help but believe that the xenophobia and isolation shared by Southern Soul artists in Memphis, Macon, and Muscle Shoals were at least partly responsible for the integrity of the music they produced.  Few of the musicians, songwriters, or studio founders, it seems, ever dreamed that full-blown commercial and financial success was a possibility.  They simply wanted to have a life in music.  Not an extravagant, over-blown life full of riches and fame, but rather a way to earn a living doing what came naturally.  Trumpet players, Guralnick shows, didn’t make buckets of money, but amazingly they could afford to buy houses, cars, and groceries for themselves and their families.  Blowing a horn.  Donald “Duck” Dunn considered himself to be a salaried employee, not a rock star.  He worked at his job to support his wife and family.  He just happened to play the bass.

Guralnick’s description of the European tour of a selection of Stax artists in early 1967, which featured Booker T. & the M.G.’s, Otis Redding, Arthur Conley (not a Stax recording artist but a discovery of Redding), Sam & Dave, Eddie Floyd, and others, is worth retelling here. 

The Stax group, who had toiled in Memphis to produce hit after hit, had little idea how popular they were to the outside world.  When they got off a plane in Europe, however, they were treated like pop idols.  To a lesser degree, of course, the reception they received was comparable to the Beatles’ landing on American soil.  The Stax-ers learned that they were the subjects of countless European Fanzines devoted to documenting their every musical lick, phrase, and inflection.

Later that year, Otis Redding was invited to perform at the Monterey Pop Festival by Andrew Oldham, the manager of the Rolling Stones, and he brought Booker T. & the M.G.’s and the Mar-Keys horn section with him as his band.  (The complete performance is available on DVD).  Somewhat out of place with the “Love” crowd, as Guralnick explains, the M.G.’s wore lime-green suits and short hair, and they played their tough brand of R&B furiously through amplifiers that were dwarfed by those used by rock acts such as the Jefferson Airplane, who preceded them.  Otis’ success at Monterey, however, is now the stuff of legend, and led the way towards further crossover success for Redding and Southern Soul Music with white audiences.  One is struck, however, by how provincial and honest the M.G.’s and Otis seem when compared to the glitz of the some of the other, less earthy acts at Monterey.

It’s an interesting exercise to fantasize about emulating the past to produce the next batch of truly authentic music.  Let’s say you are a thirty-something commercial banker who’s always had an interest in music, but you never had the talent – or the inclination – to pursue it as more than a diversion.  Lease a deserted movie house or a vacant office or warehouse building and buy a tape machine and some cheap mikes.  Team yourself up with semi-retired Boomer with a penchant for business who’s also been a longtime patron of the arts.  Start a mom-and-pop record company, recording studio, and CD store.  Recruit a few local high school rock stars and give them a safe, comfortable place to rehearse after school.  Staple some egg crates to the walls, and don’t forget to man the tape machine. 

When something sounds good, produce your own CD and sell them in the movie theater lobby.  Take some time to talk to your customers, however, about the kinds of music they like.  It’s not all going to be gold, but it will be authentically human.  In other words, do what brother-sister team Jim Stewart (“St”) and Estelle Axton (“Ax”) did in 1960: form your own Stax Records.

In the meanwhile, pick up a copy of Sweet Soul Music, along with the following CDs, and get inspired.

Listen:

Otis Redding, Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul (1966)

Sam & Dave, The Best of Sam & Dave (1969)

Booker T. & the M.G.’s, Melting Pot (1971)

Aretha Franklin, The Very Best of Aretha Franklin: The 60’s (1994)

Watch:

Jimi Plays Monterey/Shake! Otis at Monterey – Criterion Collection (DVD – 2006)

Stax/Volt Revue Live In Norway 1967 (DVD – 2007)

Respect Yourself!  The Stax Story (DVD).

Read:

Peter Guralnick, Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom (Back Bay Books, 1999 – Paperback edition).