[JPL] Cutting a Tumultuous Era’s Soul Soundtrack

[r durfee]

August 1, 2007
Television Review | 'Respect Yourself'
Cutting a Tumultuous Era’s Soul Soundtrack 
By GINIA BELLAFANTE
One day in the early 1960s, a young man who worked as
driver and baggage handler for a group called Johnny
Jenkins and the Pinetoppers lugged its instruments
into the studios of Stax Records in Memphis, where the
band was scheduled for a recording session. As it
happened, the young man sang too — in a husky tenor —
and spent his idle hours that afternoon begging people
to hand him a mike.

By the end of the day, no one had given him a shot,
and the label’s founder Jim Stewart felt guilty. Mr.
Stewart was simply that kind of guy. The task of
hearing out the eager aspirant fell begrudgingly to
Steve Cropper, guitarist for Booker T. & the MGs, one
of the label’s popular bands. As Mr. Cropper tells it
in “Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story,” a
“Great Performances” documentary tonight on PBS: “He
started singing ‘These Arms of Mine,’ and I know my
hair lifted out about three inches. I couldn’t believe
this guy’s voice.” It belonged to Otis Redding. 

Redding’s death in a plane crash in Wisconsin in 1967
— he was just 26 — was one of the many setbacks the
Stax label would endure. Ill-conceived distribution
deals and the ouster of Clive Davis at CBS, with whom
Stax had a fortunate relationship, were others. By the
mid-1970s, the label was in bankruptcy and fated for
an undeserved obscurity among the wider world beyond
the fans of R&B. 

Stax, eventually owned by the marketing innovator Al
Bell, gave birth to the Memphis Sound — a funkier,
less refined analogue to Detroit soul — and some of
the most influential recordings of the 1960s: “Soul
Man,” “Respect” (written by Redding), “(Sittin’ on)
the Dock of the Bay” and “Who’s Making Love?,” among
many others. It has not, however, shared Motown
Records’ sustained celebrity. That this constitutes
one of the crimes of American music history is an
argument “Respect Yourself” makes by the pure virtue
of its narrative.

The label came to life in the late 1950s when Mr.
Stewart, a white bank teller, and his sister Estelle
Axton took over an old movie theater in a Memphis
neighborhood that was becoming predominantly
African-American, with plans to use it as a studio.
Mr. Stewart’s interest in music initially did not
extend beyond country. But, as he points out here,
“The wind blew in, and we were smart enough not to
fight it.” 

The wind came in the form of R&B, and Stax helped
create a hurricane. Stax completely ignored
segregation in a city where the public pool chose to
shut down rather than abide by an order to allow
blacks and whites to swim together. Booker T. & the
MGs was a marriage between Booker T. Jones and other
black musicians and the white members of the Mar-Keys.
They met and began talking at the Stax record shop,
run by Ms. Axton, which operated next to the studio in
what had been the movie theater’s concession stand.

With the exceptions of people like Otis Redding and
Isaac Hayes, many of the Stax artists remain
unfamiliar to the public now, a problem that cannot be
explained solely by the label’s twisted financial
fortunes. While Carla Thomas and her father, Rufus,
for instance, are fairly well known, many Americans
would be hard pressed to cite a single one of their
songs or identify either of them in an MTV lineup. 

There is a poignant story to be told in the absence of
these artists from our collective cultural memory and,
regrettably, “Respect Yourself” leaves it aside.
Still, this documentary provides an essential account
of auteurism in one of American music’s greatest eras.


RESPECT YOURSELF

The Stax Records Story

On most PBS stations tonight (check local listings).

David Horn, executive producer; Robert Gordon and
Morgan Neville, producers/directors; John Walker,
series producer for music; Bill O’Donnell, director of
program development. Produced by Tremolo Productions,
Concord Music Group and Thirteen/WNET New York.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/arts/television/01resp.html?ref=music

Roy Durfee
P.O. Box 40219
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87196-0219
rdurfee2003 at yahoo.com


       
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