# QLS Classic: David Porter

An episode of [The Questlove Show](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1485250501), 22 Jun 2026, 1 h 43 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/86918ee4-4aa4-497b-995a-ae32006cd4b7/c7720314-f6f5-456f-8d66-b02800f207e8/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=ee132490-ba24-4965-b558-ae32006cd4c0

Questlove Supreme's celebration of Black Music Month continues with an classic David Porter interview. David is a true architect of the Memphis sound. Isaac Hayes's longtime writing and production partner tells Team Supreme about making hits with Sam & Dave, The Bar-Kays, Carla Thomas, and more. A longtime Stax Records artist, producer, songwriter, and executive, David Porter also recalls the label's glory days and its downfall and talks about his songs which have become sample staples. This interview first broadcast in 2023. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Questloft Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
[0:09] Speaker 2: So of y'all, June is Black Music Month, and every
[0:11] Speaker 2: year we use this time to acknowledge something that really
[0:15] Speaker 2: can't be overstated. Black music is one of the foundational forces.
[0:19] Speaker 1: Behind modern culture.
[0:21] Speaker 2: Now, back when Teams Supreme and I were doing the
[0:23] Speaker 2: Questlove Supreme and now on the Quest Loft Show, we've
[0:27] Speaker 2: always tried to create a space for those stories. So
[0:30] Speaker 2: for the entire month of June, we're bringing you an
[0:33] Speaker 2: episode every day focused on the history, influence, and ongoing
[0:38] Speaker 2: evolution of black music. Team and I dug through the
[0:41] Speaker 2: catalog and selected episodes that feel especially meaningful for now,
[0:46] Speaker 2: the conversations that inform, entertain and connect the dots between
[0:50] Speaker 2: where this music comes from where it's headed. Now, alongside those,
[0:55] Speaker 2: we'll be releasing four new episodes of Quest Loft Show
[0:59] Speaker 2: featuring trailblazers, innovators, and cultural connectors and visionaries who represent
[1:04] Speaker 2: the past, present, the future of black music. I want
[1:07] Speaker 2: you to enjoy this. Thank you. What's up, lazies and gentlemen.
[1:23] Speaker 2: This is another episode of Quest Love Supreme. I mean
[1:28] Speaker 2: host Questlove, which means the family. We got Layah, Hello,
[1:33] Speaker 2: how are you.
[1:34] Speaker 3: I'm well, Hello, sir doing well?
[1:36] Speaker 2: Yeah, you're back in LA right now?
[1:38] Speaker 4: I am back in La.
[1:40] Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah. Gloom and Doom.
[1:42] Speaker 2: Yeah, Gloom and Doom.
[1:44] Speaker 3: Yeah, May Gray June Gloom. People don't know this about La.
[1:47] Speaker 3: Get it, get it into it.
[1:49] Speaker 2: Okay. It's good to hear. Fan Tickeolo is in the
[1:54] Speaker 2: blue room. Yeah, man, yeah, man, I got a new
[1:57] Speaker 2: light bulb. I think previously you're going purple.
[2:00] Speaker 5: Yeah, I was on purple.
[2:01] Speaker 2: I went blue. I went cool. You know what I'm saying.
[2:03] Speaker 4: We got a legend in the building with us today,
[2:05] Speaker 4: so you know, I tried to make it cool for him.
[2:07] Speaker 4: So yeah, that is what it is.
[2:11] Speaker 2: Saga, Steve, what's up, bro?
[2:13] Speaker 6: How you doing? Hi? Everybody?
[2:15] Speaker 3: What?
[2:16] Speaker 6: Everything's good? Everything's good, Thank you, Steve.
[2:21] Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen. I will say our guest tonight is
[2:25] Speaker 2: I mean, I feel like all of our guests are legendary,
[2:27] Speaker 2: super legendary, but our guest tonight world famous Songwriting Hall
[2:31] Speaker 2: of Fame member having damn near pinned over close close
[2:36] Speaker 2: to two thousand joints joints in his illustrious career. He
[2:42] Speaker 2: is the architect, in my opinion, the architect of the
[2:46] Speaker 2: sound of Memphis, you know, a city that has rich
[2:49] Speaker 2: musical history, and you know, as a staff member, as
[2:53] Speaker 2: a writer, as a producer for Al Bell's legendary Stax label,
[2:58] Speaker 2: he is giving us so much magic over the decades,
[3:02] Speaker 2: along with this songwriting partner Isaac Hayes, and on his
[3:06] Speaker 2: own of course, you know, he's worked with too many
[3:09] Speaker 2: legends to name. Uh, there's Sam and Dave, There's Otis Wridding,
[3:13] Speaker 2: bar Kay's, Carla Thomas, the Emotions, Albert King, Rufus Thomas
[3:18] Speaker 2: and of course Johnny watch out for Jodie Taylor Eve.
[3:25] Speaker 2: Even if those names I mentioned are slightly before your time,
[3:29] Speaker 2: I will say that, you know, if you're a hip
[3:31] Speaker 2: hop head, can we say that his composition might be
[3:37] Speaker 2: the musical backdrop of the East West La beef.
[3:42] Speaker 4: O Man, Oh my god.
[3:44] Speaker 2: Well no, no, no, because the word is that you know,
[3:47] Speaker 2: Pop got yeah, Pop sort of felt that you know
[3:51] Speaker 2: who shot you was about him, which you know, we
[3:55] Speaker 2: have clear evidence that Biggie did that rhyme with Keith
[3:58] Speaker 2: Murray for the Mary j b interlude, you know, long ago.
[4:03] Speaker 4: But the truth didn't matter at that point. The truth
[4:05] Speaker 4: didn't matter.
[4:05] Speaker 2: Yeah, the truth didn't matter. I guess the perception was
[4:08] Speaker 2: bigger than what reality was. You know, we live in
[4:11] Speaker 2: a time where facts don't matter, and so I will
[4:16] Speaker 2: just say that, you know, between like Biggie and Wu
[4:18] Speaker 2: Tang and Kane and Mop and Will Smith and so
[4:22] Speaker 2: many others have used his work. You know, we're in
[4:26] Speaker 2: the presence of a legend and we're honored to have
[4:30] Speaker 2: the one and only great David Porter on Quest Love Supreme.
[4:34] Speaker 2: Welcome to the show.
[4:34] Speaker 5: Yes, yes, as how I read said, how do you
[4:39] Speaker 5: talk that? It's really.
[4:44] Speaker 2: You laid the foundation. So I'm just you know, regurgitating
[4:47] Speaker 2: your your life's work. So were you right now? Are
[4:50] Speaker 2: you still a membhers?
[4:52] Speaker 5: No, I'm in New York. I was speaker at the
[4:55] Speaker 5: ai mp A summit, which I left there, came right here.
[5:01] Speaker 5: That's why I have this loud jacket on. I was
[5:04] Speaker 5: along with your fan and your friend Doug it Fresh.
[5:07] Speaker 5: He wanted me to tell you.
[5:09] Speaker 4: How Oh okay, we had Doug on the show.
[5:13] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, you know I was going to ask, like,
[5:16] Speaker 2: do you normally dressed this swinky every day?
[5:21] Speaker 5: Now? A sweatsuit guy? That's me?
[5:23] Speaker 2: Okay right now.
[5:25] Speaker 5: Loud jacket on it. But he's folk. But Dougiees wanted
[5:28] Speaker 5: me to be sure to tell you hell and yes,
[5:30] Speaker 5: it's an honor for me to be here.
[5:32] Speaker 2: Thank you.
[5:33] Speaker 5: What you guy?
[5:34] Speaker 2: Can you tell us your first musical memory?
[5:38] Speaker 5: Well, you mentioned one of the cornerstones of those memories,
[5:42] Speaker 5: and that's Maurice. I was born on the Dating Street
[5:45] Speaker 5: in Memphis, Tennessee. My next door neighbor was a family
[5:48] Speaker 5: called the Cunninghams, and they were drummers, and we sang
[5:52] Speaker 5: up the street at a church called Rosy, a Baptist
[5:55] Speaker 5: church where if you read Maurice's autobacco, he mentioned that
[5:58] Speaker 5: in his bikle but which is true? And Kelly Cunningham
[6:03] Speaker 5: and Leander Cunningham were the brothers that were older than
[6:06] Speaker 5: Carl Cunningham, who just so happened to be the drummer
[6:10] Speaker 5: that was an airplane press with Otis Redding. He was
[6:12] Speaker 5: the original drummer for the barcades. Four to us up
[6:15] Speaker 5: the street on the left hand side of the street
[6:17] Speaker 5: was Maurice White and we came together eight nine years
[6:22] Speaker 5: old singing a rose here back to church right on
[6:26] Speaker 5: that same dead end street. And the stimulus for the
[6:29] Speaker 5: impressions and the motivation for her creativity and people making
[6:34] Speaker 5: us thinking that we had some singing talent because they
[6:36] Speaker 5: were clapping and shouting, and we didn't realize it because
[6:39] Speaker 5: they were worshiping. We thought it was all about as
[6:42] Speaker 5: young kids. But the motivation to want to have the
[6:45] Speaker 5: passion for music where they stem out of that experience.
[6:50] Speaker 2: So you were nine years old when you started playing
[6:52] Speaker 2: in your church.
[6:53] Speaker 5: Well, actually I was before nine. We were going to church.
[6:57] Speaker 5: Uh yeah, but but actually singing in a kind of
[7:01] Speaker 5: a quartet that's not the right kind of word, but
[7:04] Speaker 5: loop kids singing together Linn, Kelly and Maurice and I
[7:08] Speaker 5: was about eighty nine years old. We were going to
[7:10] Speaker 5: Rose Elementary School and singing in church on Sunday. That
[7:14] Speaker 5: was the real experience of learning how to feel good
[7:18] Speaker 5: about doing that in front of people.
[7:21] Speaker 2: And you were born in Memphis, Tennessee.
[7:23] Speaker 5: I was born at two ninety Virginia Street, up against
[7:27] Speaker 5: a building called Coal Manufacturing Company, which was the last
[7:31] Speaker 5: last house at the bottom of the hill. When it rained,
[7:34] Speaker 5: water would roll down the hill and up against that
[7:37] Speaker 5: tin building and very close to going into our home.
[7:41] Speaker 5: And the next door neighbor was the Cunninghams, which Carl
[7:44] Speaker 5: was the drumming, and right up going up the hill
[7:47] Speaker 5: was Maurice and that was it right there.
[7:51] Speaker 2: Like I know, a lot of legends were born in Memphis.
[7:53] Speaker 2: Aretha Franklin was born in Memphis.
[7:55] Speaker 5: Was she notice she was? Yes?
[7:56] Speaker 2: Okay, she was.
[7:58] Speaker 5: Her father preached Reverend Franklin preached my father's funeral, you know,
[8:02] Speaker 5: at Great Whitstone Baptist Church. Yeah. When I first when
[8:05] Speaker 5: I told her Reef that years later, it just blew
[8:07] Speaker 5: her away because she had recorded I Take what I
[8:09] Speaker 5: Want one of the compositions bizic and I and I
[8:13] Speaker 5: told her then she just blew her away. Yeah. Yes,
[8:16] Speaker 5: she was born in Memphis, Tennessee, right near Fourth Street.
[8:20] Speaker 2: So just tell me, like the general like, why is
[8:23] Speaker 2: that town so musical?
[8:25] Speaker 5: Well, there, in nineteen forty seven, forty eight, there was
[8:29] Speaker 5: a radio the first black radio station in the country
[8:32] Speaker 5: was WDA in Memphis, Tennessee. And the fact that that
[8:37] Speaker 5: before that, all of the music you heard was you know,
[8:41] Speaker 5: the pop, flavorite kind of kind of vibe. And so
[8:45] Speaker 5: the energy for the originality and I'm going to speak
[8:47] Speaker 5: for in just a second didn't come to bear until
[8:50] Speaker 5: WDIA started playing all of those amazingly emotional connecting music
[8:56] Speaker 5: by black artists. And the one thing that happened that
[8:59] Speaker 5: was really really meaningful and impactful on young kids during
[9:02] Speaker 5: that time was the individuality of artists and artists. You know,
[9:08] Speaker 5: back then you had a four piece rhythm based drums,
[9:10] Speaker 5: guitar and keys, and so in order for that kind
[9:13] Speaker 5: of magic to happen in a unique kind of way,
[9:16] Speaker 5: artists that you were listening to on the radio. One
[9:18] Speaker 5: thing that as a he had, one thing that really
[9:20] Speaker 5: manifested itself to you was the individuality of artists. You
[9:24] Speaker 5: listened to Chuck Berry and what he was doing with
[9:26] Speaker 5: the guitar and his rhythm essence of how he was
[9:28] Speaker 5: doing what he was on even though he had a
[9:30] Speaker 5: rhythm of compingment, but the focus was his guitar playing.
[9:33] Speaker 5: And you listened to Little Richard and his piano playing
[9:36] Speaker 5: and what he was doing. The individuality, in addition to
[9:39] Speaker 5: his persona as a singer was was his personality. Fats
[9:43] Speaker 5: Domino with the same piano playing. The individuality of Fats
[9:47] Speaker 5: was the Fats buy So you were you were able
[9:50] Speaker 5: Jackie Wilson with the range and the magic in his
[9:52] Speaker 5: tones and things you were looking at as a youngster,
[9:55] Speaker 5: those kind of impressions that were in turn motivating you
[9:58] Speaker 5: to understand that the magic having through music was trying
[10:02] Speaker 5: to find something that identified you and your uniqueness. And so,
[10:06] Speaker 5: starting from that kind of foundation, all of us started
[10:09] Speaker 5: trying to find that magic. So when you mentioned Al Jackson,
[10:11] Speaker 5: his father was a musician and a drummer. But L
[10:14] Speaker 5: started finding his own niche out of an individualistic way
[10:18] Speaker 5: for himself. And by the time we got to Stacks
[10:21] Speaker 5: with the slope floor in the room, the Stacks was
[10:24] Speaker 5: an old movie theater and the floor was sloping. We'd
[10:27] Speaker 5: get in there during our records. L would be at
[10:29] Speaker 5: the bottom of the floor. We'd be doing the vocal
[10:32] Speaker 5: off the top of the floor with Sam and Dave
[10:35] Speaker 5: or Johnny Taylor, Aba King or whoever. Isaac would be
[10:38] Speaker 5: the mid floor and Steve would be a little higher
[10:39] Speaker 5: than that. L heard of the lake when he would play,
[10:42] Speaker 5: and his pocket was feeling where the true essence of
[10:45] Speaker 5: the tempo was with that laid back kind of essence
[10:48] Speaker 5: that was coming throughout the room, and so but everybody
[10:51] Speaker 5: would work to find the individuality because of the motivation
[10:53] Speaker 5: of the music that we was hearing coming from Wdia,
[10:56] Speaker 5: even with BD King before he blew up. You know,
[10:59] Speaker 5: there was magic that he was finding it within himself.
[11:02] Speaker 5: Bobby Blue Blain and Johnny A's and all these people
[11:05] Speaker 5: had their own persona. Of course, was also in turn
[11:08] Speaker 5: motivating us with aspirations to do music, to try to
[11:11] Speaker 5: find that for ourselves.
[11:13] Speaker 2: Actually, I'm glad I have you now because you know,
[11:17] Speaker 2: even though it's been kind of six months since the
[11:21] Speaker 2: release of the movie. As a director, Baz Luhermann kind
[11:27] Speaker 2: of has us at arm's length a little bit with
[11:31] Speaker 2: his You know, it's when you make Hollywood biopics, it's
[11:35] Speaker 2: either like did these facts really happen? Or is this
[11:38] Speaker 2: a Hollywood tale? And I want to believe the Elvis movie,
[11:43] Speaker 2: but I gotta hear from someone that was at least
[11:48] Speaker 2: in proximity. The way they portrayed it was like, you know,
[11:52] Speaker 2: he was just hanging around the way amongst the brothers
[11:57] Speaker 2: and whatnot. I mean, is that a fact or was
[11:59] Speaker 2: that more or embellosing beers.
[12:02] Speaker 5: Lhrmann came to Memphis and asked if he could talk
[12:07] Speaker 5: to me. So he came to my studio in Memphis.
[12:10] Speaker 5: The reason he came to the studio in Memphis because
[12:13] Speaker 5: HBO did a special called The Searcher on Elvis Presley.
[12:18] Speaker 5: And if you saw the Searcher, which they showed it
[12:22] Speaker 5: for a couple of days in a row, and it
[12:24] Speaker 5: was a few years ago, then you saw me talking
[12:28] Speaker 5: about Elvis on that special. The reason that I was
[12:32] Speaker 5: able to talk about everscol So when I was a
[12:34] Speaker 5: kid walking up from the Virginia Street where I was born,
[12:38] Speaker 5: up to Beale Street, which wasn't that very far, Maurice
[12:40] Speaker 5: did the same thing. We would see people because we
[12:43] Speaker 5: were not able to go in the clubs or anything like,
[12:45] Speaker 5: we would just walk up the street and just see people.
[12:47] Speaker 5: I was a poor kid, like I said, from a
[12:49] Speaker 5: lar's family. My dad was died when I was two
[12:52] Speaker 5: years old, and so I had a little bit of
[12:53] Speaker 5: freedom of beautiful, amazing mother. So I was able to
[12:56] Speaker 5: go and just with these aspirations that want to do music,
[13:00] Speaker 5: get that kind of vibe. And so there was this
[13:02] Speaker 5: young kid, white kid hanging around the street. I didn't
[13:05] Speaker 5: know it was Elvis especially anything like that, nothing akin
[13:09] Speaker 5: to that. But I've found out that that was, in
[13:13] Speaker 5: fact Elvis, a white boy that wanted to sing black
[13:16] Speaker 5: And so what I did was I really told bears
[13:20] Speaker 5: where Elvis got the vine from. Elvis got the vine
[13:23] Speaker 5: from Roy Hamilton. And if you saw the movie The
[13:25] Speaker 5: Search It, the reason that the name Roy Hamilton is
[13:28] Speaker 5: mentioned in the movie is because I told him that's
[13:29] Speaker 5: where it came from. Otis Blackwell, who was the writer
[13:33] Speaker 5: who didn't get all of the money and certainly didn't
[13:35] Speaker 5: get all this writer credit, was a writer of so
[13:38] Speaker 5: much of the Elvis still and if you listen to
[13:40] Speaker 5: ODIs if he was alive, you see where Oldis also
[13:43] Speaker 5: got it from. But but Roy Hamilton, the flavor and
[13:46] Speaker 5: the nuances of Elvers's singing came from Roy Hamilton. Check
[13:49] Speaker 5: us out of some MISERI to catalog.
[13:51] Speaker 2: I used to Yeah, I used to listen to I
[13:54] Speaker 2: think Isaac covered Don't Let Right, Yes right, So my dad,
[14:00] Speaker 2: my dad used to play the Roy Hamilton version. Now,
[14:02] Speaker 2: I always thought that was Elvis. The turntable was too
[14:05] Speaker 2: high for me to see, like what was on the lake.
[14:08] Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, for the longest I thought that was
[14:11] Speaker 2: an Elvis Presley song.
[14:12] Speaker 5: So what with this being straight up in real there
[14:16] Speaker 5: was an authenticity about Elvis's comment being influenced by black
[14:20] Speaker 5: artists and that that was in fact true. Elvis would
[14:24] Speaker 5: come to It was an event that WD I with
[14:27] Speaker 5: Hole in Memphis called the Good Real Review. Elvis would
[14:30] Speaker 5: show backstage at the Dead Review. There are pictures of
[14:32] Speaker 5: Elvis with Rufus Thomas and so, but that's real now.
[14:37] Speaker 3: So was he the only white gentleman to do that?
[14:40] Speaker 3: Is that why I feel so special?
[14:41] Speaker 4: Because he was just by himself?
[14:43] Speaker 5: Listen, the individuality of black talents was a template that
[14:48] Speaker 5: American used to break talents like that them finding ways
[14:52] Speaker 5: to replicate some anuances of black talents was the cornerstone
[14:57] Speaker 5: became whatever you want to call it, even up into
[15:00] Speaker 5: this day. So no, no, he was not. He was
[15:03] Speaker 5: not the only one.
[15:04] Speaker 3: And not the first I'm guessing either, just the maybe
[15:06] Speaker 3: the most talented.
[15:08] Speaker 5: He just blew up, but he, you know, he was.
[15:11] Speaker 5: There was so much magic happening around Beal Street. This
[15:15] Speaker 5: is famous street Memphis, a lot of poor people, but
[15:18] Speaker 5: we were people having a good time inside of what
[15:22] Speaker 5: they had to deal with, and that was the place
[15:24] Speaker 5: they would go to do it. And there were clubs
[15:27] Speaker 5: and the like on that street. That was magic. And
[15:30] Speaker 5: like I said, the individuality of people being proud of
[15:32] Speaker 5: who they were would manifest itself, not only in the
[15:35] Speaker 5: way people would perform on stage, but even the way
[15:37] Speaker 5: a guy who may have been working on the garments
[15:40] Speaker 5: shop were dressed for the weekend, just be having a
[15:43] Speaker 5: good time in his own world. In in the bias
[15:46] Speaker 5: and the racism that was going on in that prevalent time,
[15:48] Speaker 5: you could not kill the spirit of a people, and
[15:51] Speaker 5: that was that was what it was. And then there
[15:52] Speaker 5: was some folks lock in the Elvis would would come
[15:55] Speaker 5: and hang around that vibe and that spirit, and obviously
[15:58] Speaker 5: we eventually found out what it a being.
[16:00] Speaker 6: Friend.
[16:01] Speaker 2: Well, let me ask you, so, you know, having come
[16:04] Speaker 2: of age in the mid seventies early eighties, I'll say
[16:08] Speaker 2: that you know, your average soul singer is pretty much
[16:12] Speaker 2: at this point like emulating Stevie Wonder like with his
[16:16] Speaker 2: soulful voice and whatnot. And so you know, I've of course,
[16:21] Speaker 2: because I wasn't born during the time when Elvis first
[16:24] Speaker 2: came out, I didn't know for sand like, so everything
[16:27] Speaker 2: I learned was you know, sort of like later in
[16:30] Speaker 2: my life. And I always knew, you know, that the
[16:33] Speaker 2: theory of like, you know, if I could find a
[16:34] Speaker 2: white boy that sings like a black guy. I'll make
[16:36] Speaker 2: a billion dollars from you know, Colonel Tom Parker saying that.
[16:40] Speaker 2: But like, in your opinion, was Elvis's voice in your
[16:44] Speaker 2: opinion as a true blue Memphis in that in that era,
[16:48] Speaker 2: was that the actual voice of a black guy?
[16:51] Speaker 5: Like?
[16:51] Speaker 2: Was it if you were to put him more, was
[16:53] Speaker 2: it sort of like Bobby Carwell? Well, yeah, I know
[17:00] Speaker 2: I agree with the Roy Hamilton thing. But is that
[17:03] Speaker 2: sort of snarling thing that was gonna was that the
[17:07] Speaker 2: actual voice of because if I'm thinking of that time period,
[17:10] Speaker 2: I'm thinking more like Ray Charles and whatnot. But is
[17:13] Speaker 2: it just was it just typical for black singers to
[17:16] Speaker 2: have that sort of voice?
[17:17] Speaker 5: That isn't you got to give him a little bit
[17:21] Speaker 5: of him finding what the black brother couldn't give, and
[17:24] Speaker 5: that's the whiteness of who he was. And so the
[17:27] Speaker 5: nuance is that that gave him a little bit of
[17:29] Speaker 5: a tort came out of him not being able to
[17:31] Speaker 5: replicate with the truness of what all these talents were.
[17:35] Speaker 5: And you consider what Otis was doing. Otis Blackwell, who
[17:38] Speaker 5: wrote the songs I Wish you could hurt. I met
[17:41] Speaker 5: this brother and knowing that there were a lot of
[17:43] Speaker 5: credits that were given to Elvis that I knew Elvis
[17:45] Speaker 5: didn't write the songs with him, but he's written the
[17:48] Speaker 5: songs with Otis Black well, things that I heard, those
[17:50] Speaker 5: kinds of things. But you can listen to him, and
[17:53] Speaker 5: you can hear this guy saying and you can say, oh,
[17:55] Speaker 5: Ever's got some of that from him. Ever's got some
[17:57] Speaker 5: of that from Roy Evers got some of that from him.
[17:59] Speaker 5: And so he was able to put those things together
[18:02] Speaker 5: but also find a niche that gave you a little
[18:04] Speaker 5: bit of what he was about as well. And it
[18:08] Speaker 5: became a combination of those things. But it was magnified
[18:11] Speaker 5: by the uniqueness of the Black contribution that he grew
[18:14] Speaker 5: from fast forward justin without a doubt, right. You know.
[18:20] Speaker 5: The interesting being if you think about the seventies and
[18:23] Speaker 5: before them, listen, Teddy was Teddy, Otis was Otis. Johnny
[18:31] Speaker 5: Taylor was Johnny. Albert who couldn't read, and we would
[18:34] Speaker 5: whisper the lyrics. I would be on the mic when
[18:37] Speaker 5: he was singing, say the line before he was singing.
[18:39] Speaker 5: But the uniqueness of Albert planning to get to us
[18:42] Speaker 5: hitting the line, the uniqueness of Albert was inside of
[18:46] Speaker 5: his personality as avert. Oh wow, only he to do
[18:52] Speaker 5: those kinds of things. You give Johnny Taylor the melody
[18:55] Speaker 5: that Isaaca and I we wrote out, got love Somebody's
[18:57] Speaker 5: Baby because somebody been loving mine. Now were the song,
[19:00] Speaker 5: and Dave wrote a song and to teachers. But when
[19:04] Speaker 5: Johnny sang the song, the individuality of Johnny took it
[19:08] Speaker 5: to another another kind of a blue song, Little Bluebird.
[19:12] Speaker 5: We wrote that one listen to it. The individual reality
[19:16] Speaker 5: of the artists, even with the hazing for the song,
[19:19] Speaker 5: would take it to the persona that was the inside
[19:21] Speaker 5: of their uniqueness. And then by the time we get
[19:23] Speaker 5: the Sam and David, we're doing the church thing, which
[19:25] Speaker 5: is all we're doing the individual of Sam with the
[19:28] Speaker 5: combination of David and I would direct them like a choir.
[19:31] Speaker 5: If you listen, I think you you're gonna hear me
[19:33] Speaker 5: holler at the very intro, I thank you because I
[19:36] Speaker 5: make the mistake and holler. We kept that tape, but
[19:38] Speaker 5: that's because I'm on the other side of the mic
[19:40] Speaker 5: directing them. But I cannot give them the individuality that
[19:44] Speaker 5: brings out the uniqueness of what they were. And it
[19:46] Speaker 5: became an identity thing because they were focused on making affairs,
[19:50] Speaker 5: and so that's what all of those are. So even
[19:53] Speaker 5: before Stevie, the individuality that ultimately ended up being Stevie
[19:59] Speaker 5: grew out of some of the influences that he heard
[20:01] Speaker 5: as a youngster. Because the first record I heard on
[20:03] Speaker 5: Steven Fingertips, I didn't hear Stephen One like Stevie Wonder.
[20:07] Speaker 5: You all I heard Steven want to like Stevie Wonder
[20:10] Speaker 5: because he stopped affecting the uniqueness that was truly him
[20:14] Speaker 5: and he magnified it. And then everybody says, to your point,
[20:17] Speaker 5: chus start trying to follow that template. But those who
[20:21] Speaker 5: followed the temple never got to the strength that Stevie had.
[20:24] Speaker 2: I see, I see class for you. When do you
[20:34] Speaker 2: sort of credit the moment that you started your mission
[20:39] Speaker 2: like you're not your come to Jesus moment with music,
[20:42] Speaker 2: but that this was something that you professionally wanted to pursue.
[20:47] Speaker 5: I was, how real should I be with this?
[20:52] Speaker 2: Let's super real?
[20:55] Speaker 5: I was so so poor, from a family of twelve
[21:03] Speaker 5: with an outdoor toilet in Memphis. I told you who
[21:06] Speaker 5: my neighbors were, and we all were that way. Maurice
[21:09] Speaker 5: and I moved from where we worked to a housing
[21:11] Speaker 5: project called Lamau Gardens at the same time, which was
[21:15] Speaker 5: a housemand I just felt that I had to find
[21:20] Speaker 5: a way to do this thing. I thought I was
[21:23] Speaker 5: a singer to do this thing, and I was trying
[21:27] Speaker 5: to find an identity and didn't know where that was.
[21:30] Speaker 5: And so here's a kid working at a grocery store,
[21:34] Speaker 5: just getting ready to graduate from high school from Booker T.
[21:37] Speaker 5: Washington High School where Maurice White and I graduated in
[21:40] Speaker 5: nineteen sixty one from and I'm working across the street
[21:45] Speaker 5: from this movie theater, which was Satellite Records, and I
[21:50] Speaker 5: would go over there because there was a little record
[21:52] Speaker 5: shop there, and I had no money to buy the records.
[21:55] Speaker 5: But there was a lady inside there who said if
[21:57] Speaker 5: they had a recording company and they had a label.
[22:01] Speaker 5: Asked her about it, so they said we recorded country artists.
[22:05] Speaker 5: So I said, well, could could you audition me? Would
[22:07] Speaker 5: you listen to me? She said, well, you can talk
[22:09] Speaker 5: to my brother, but we just recalld country. So I
[22:12] Speaker 5: went in there and I talked to Jim Stewart, who
[22:15] Speaker 5: didn't want to to to listen to me or anything
[22:19] Speaker 5: such as that. He had a guy working with him
[22:21] Speaker 5: by the name of Chips Morman. If you google the
[22:24] Speaker 5: name Chips Moman. He became legendary later on, but he
[22:26] Speaker 5: was the guy that was working with Jim Stewart. Before
[22:29] Speaker 5: there was no Stacks, it was called Satellite Records. And
[22:32] Speaker 5: so I got the audition there and froze in the
[22:36] Speaker 5: room on the audition, but I bought to them. I
[22:41] Speaker 5: got some of my classmates to perform on it for me.
[22:43] Speaker 5: I got Booker T. Jones to play baritone horn on
[22:45] Speaker 5: the demo. I got Andrew Love to play tennis sacks
[22:49] Speaker 5: on the demo. I got William Bail the same background
[22:52] Speaker 5: along with James Austin on the demo. Willie Bail became yes, Yes,
[22:57] Speaker 5: and my demo was a song original song. Because he
[23:00] Speaker 5: asked me did I have it? Did I write songs?
[23:02] Speaker 5: I told him yeah, I didn't have any. He asked me, well,
[23:06] Speaker 5: did I have a band? I told him yeah, I
[23:08] Speaker 5: didn't have one, And so he had two artists, Nick
[23:11] Speaker 5: Charles and Charles Hines Country. I convinced him to let
[23:15] Speaker 5: me do an audition. I then got the guys together
[23:17] Speaker 5: to do the audition with me and Froze on the
[23:21] Speaker 5: demo and flopped. It didn't work for me, but Jim
[23:25] Speaker 5: Stewart met booker T. Jones, who used to play baritone
[23:29] Speaker 5: on Rufus Thomas record William Bell. He recorded you don't
[23:32] Speaker 5: miss your water to your well run dry, and the
[23:35] Speaker 5: rest is history. I mean, it's so. What it showed
[23:38] Speaker 5: me was that I had a long way to go,
[23:40] Speaker 5: and I started trying to find out who I really
[23:44] Speaker 5: was if I wanted to be this, and I realized
[23:46] Speaker 5: that I couldn't be the artist. I tried a couple
[23:49] Speaker 5: of other records. I recorded for Savoy Records. I was
[23:51] Speaker 5: Little David. I recorded with Willie Mitchell, Kenny Kane. Yes,
[23:57] Speaker 5: on Savoy Records.
[23:59] Speaker 2: I didn't know that this avoid subsidiary.
[24:01] Speaker 5: Really, no, no, no, So boy was different. The boy
[24:05] Speaker 5: wasn't Stax Records.
[24:06] Speaker 2: Okay, that's that's for me.
[24:08] Speaker 5: Out hustling, trying to trying to find.
[24:10] Speaker 2: A pant Okay, I get it.
[24:12] Speaker 5: Okay, that's that's report. But so in trying to do that,
[24:16] Speaker 5: I get with this guy who we we used to
[24:18] Speaker 5: sing on talent shows. It at the Palace Stade on
[24:21] Speaker 5: Beale Street, by the name of Isaac Hayes. So Isaac
[24:25] Speaker 5: and I started talking and said, let's let form a
[24:28] Speaker 5: writing team. Now to come to Jesus. Moment was me
[24:31] Speaker 5: figuring that if I'm gonna get in the music business,
[24:33] Speaker 5: I'd already failed with the audition trying to sing. But
[24:36] Speaker 5: I bought this guy all this amazing talent, and so
[24:39] Speaker 5: I didn't get right in. I got with Isaac and
[24:43] Speaker 5: we formed a label called Genie Records. And there's a
[24:46] Speaker 5: record on a guy by the name of Homer Banks
[24:49] Speaker 5: called Little Lady of Stone and ain't that a lot
[24:52] Speaker 5: of love? If you find that record, that's a record
[24:55] Speaker 5: that I did with Isaac before Stax Records. Then I
[24:58] Speaker 5: went and Convensium Stuart to get an opportunity as a writer.
[25:01] Speaker 5: I became the first staff writer for Stax Records, given
[25:05] Speaker 5: a six month trial. In the rest of his history,
[25:08] Speaker 5: I started building the writing staff and all of that.
[25:10] Speaker 4: What year was that, I want to.
[25:13] Speaker 5: Say it's nineteen sixty three, but I could be slightly
[25:16] Speaker 5: slightly off because I was there in nineteen sixty one.
[25:21] Speaker 5: There's a record called The Life I Live On Barbara
[25:23] Speaker 5: Stevenstead that I did with Marvel THOMASLF was before Evan.
[25:26] Speaker 5: Isaac and I really connected, So it was like I
[25:30] Speaker 5: was hustling.
[25:31] Speaker 4: You mentioned Willie Mitchell. What was it like working with him?
[25:35] Speaker 4: At that time?
[25:36] Speaker 5: Willie Mitchell was was working with a company but of
[25:40] Speaker 5: High Records, that was working with London as a distributor,
[25:44] Speaker 5: and WILLI was not on the inner loop of High Records.
[25:47] Speaker 5: Willie was working with a guy by the name a
[25:49] Speaker 5: white guy by the name of Ray Harris, and they
[25:52] Speaker 5: didn't really realize what Willie Mitchell was. And so I
[25:56] Speaker 5: found a way to convince them to let me make
[25:58] Speaker 5: a record there. And so Willie and I wrote a
[26:02] Speaker 5: song you can google this called practice makes Perfect you'll
[26:07] Speaker 5: see written by Porter Mitchell. That's Willie and I and
[26:10] Speaker 5: I'm Kenny Kane is David Porter so so, but this
[26:14] Speaker 5: is before they allowed Willy to be Willie and Ray
[26:17] Speaker 5: Harris got out of the way and Willy got the
[26:19] Speaker 5: opportunity with some kind of deal. He worked with Joe
[26:22] Speaker 5: Kogie and Nick Pacy and those guys and became the
[26:25] Speaker 5: guy that Royal Studio became and High Records became. The
[26:29] Speaker 5: rest is history with Willie Mitchell. That's how my coming
[26:32] Speaker 5: to Jesus, moment of finding that writing was my in
[26:36] Speaker 5: road defining a.
[26:36] Speaker 2: Path for this, So was it mostly a trial by
[26:40] Speaker 2: fire in terms of you know, even with me, like
[26:45] Speaker 2: with my musical education, a lot of my knowledge of
[26:49] Speaker 2: like the first year that I came to a studio
[26:52] Speaker 2: was more or less like what does this do? What
[26:54] Speaker 2: does this do? And you know I didn't. No one
[26:56] Speaker 2: told me about sixteen bar structure and you know, how
[27:02] Speaker 2: to find my own sound. So you know, a lot
[27:06] Speaker 2: of my education of music production just came from like
[27:11] Speaker 2: the first three years of trying to see what works
[27:13] Speaker 2: and whatnot. But how do these people know to trust
[27:16] Speaker 2: you if you don't was expected for you to like
[27:21] Speaker 2: be accredited songwriters and have experience like writing out charts
[27:25] Speaker 2: and knowing arrangements and all those things, or you just
[27:28] Speaker 2: are you singing to the each band members like this
[27:30] Speaker 2: is what you do?
[27:31] Speaker 5: Or yes, all of that, but we didn't do. Isaac
[27:35] Speaker 5: Hayes did not write music. David Border did night No,
[27:39] Speaker 5: he didn't, And so we went through the whole process
[27:44] Speaker 5: of head arrangements. The great artist, the greatest creative that
[27:48] Speaker 5: was Otis Ready. If you were able to be in
[27:51] Speaker 5: a studio with Otis reading during a session, you would
[27:55] Speaker 5: marvel at how he would come up with the baseline,
[27:58] Speaker 5: the horn patterns, the guitar direction for Steve to play
[28:03] Speaker 5: out of. On those records, Isaac and I were motivated
[28:08] Speaker 5: from the church. We realized that motoon had to straightforwth
[28:11] Speaker 5: be with these beautiful melodies on the top of that,
[28:13] Speaker 5: and it was amazing how they did that. But we
[28:16] Speaker 5: also realized, because we talked strategically about how we were
[28:19] Speaker 5: going to find a path inside of this industry to
[28:21] Speaker 5: do this, we realized that if we want to have
[28:23] Speaker 5: an impact, we had to find an identity. We had
[28:25] Speaker 5: records before we did the Sam and Dave, there are
[28:28] Speaker 5: quite a few of those records, but we were trying
[28:30] Speaker 5: to find the identity way for us to be affected,
[28:33] Speaker 5: and we realized that that opportunity came from the spirituality
[28:37] Speaker 5: of the church on the lower end of things, and
[28:40] Speaker 5: so we started focusing on the bass, drums, guitar lines
[28:44] Speaker 5: rather than the straight four kind of things. And that's
[28:46] Speaker 5: why they became patterns inside of all of the songs
[28:49] Speaker 5: that we were doing. But those patterns didn't come from
[28:53] Speaker 5: us writing a chart for that came from us giving
[28:56] Speaker 5: the musicians the extra patterns. Hold on I'm coming a
[29:01] Speaker 5: perfect example of that. The drum beat on hold On
[29:04] Speaker 5: I'm Coming did not come about with us just starting
[29:06] Speaker 5: to sing and they started playing No. I went to
[29:09] Speaker 5: Al and said, I remember the record get out on
[29:10] Speaker 5: the Life Woman by leaving play that beat. He played
[29:14] Speaker 5: that beat. I said, Chick, that that's the beat that
[29:16] Speaker 5: we want. Hold On I'm Coming. Isaac had the horn,
[29:19] Speaker 5: just a horn lit on that that lick. It put
[29:24] Speaker 5: that down two or three weeks before we even thought
[29:26] Speaker 5: about hold On I'm Coming. Hold On I'm Coming came
[29:29] Speaker 5: one night late we were We left a club after
[29:32] Speaker 5: we were jamming, went to the studio by two thirty night.
[29:35] Speaker 5: I went to the restroom. Isaac was trying to get
[29:38] Speaker 5: me the hurry out of the restroom. I said, hold
[29:40] Speaker 5: On I'm coming then, and I said God, it came
[29:42] Speaker 5: out of the room. Twenty minutes later we wrote hold
[29:44] Speaker 5: On I'm Coming. The drum pattern we did all.
[29:48] Speaker 4: That's the movie story. That's the God's true.
[29:54] Speaker 5: It is the deal.
[29:56] Speaker 3: I've already seen that acted out in a whole.
[29:59] Speaker 5: Isaac records happen because of the inner spirits inside of
[30:04] Speaker 5: the creative juices that came, not from somebody doing sitting
[30:08] Speaker 5: down and write a charge from it, but somebody giving
[30:10] Speaker 5: the people the answers or where the songs were in
[30:12] Speaker 5: the individuality was only magnified through that.
[30:15] Speaker 2: Okay, then I gotta ask you this question. Okay, you
[30:19] Speaker 2: guys have this like ten minute song on presenting Isaac
[30:22] Speaker 2: Hay's called I Want to Make Love to You, and
[30:26] Speaker 2: it is one of the most ambitious arrangements I've ever heard.
[30:29] Speaker 2: It's like part jazz, part blues, part serious soul, part comedy.
[30:36] Speaker 2: But there's so many parts to this song. So if
[30:39] Speaker 2: it's not notated, like how for these like extravagant arrangements
[30:46] Speaker 2: that you guys are doing, because it's not just like
[30:48] Speaker 2: here's the A part, here's the B part, here's the
[30:51] Speaker 2: A part, here's the B part, here's the coda. Like
[30:54] Speaker 2: you guys are writing these like extravagant arrangements, Like how
[30:58] Speaker 2: are they able to maintain that memory of what to
[31:02] Speaker 2: do if you guys aren't notating that stuff?
[31:05] Speaker 5: Well, first place I did, I didn't produce Presenting Isaac Hayes. Okay, right,
[31:10] Speaker 5: but let me tell you because Isaac and I worked
[31:12] Speaker 5: for from the core, I can tell you how the
[31:15] Speaker 5: things that the core foundation of all of the records
[31:19] Speaker 5: was inside of the base patterns. Now there was chance
[31:22] Speaker 5: done on the up end of the chante. Isaac used
[31:25] Speaker 5: and huns. We'd used al Warren Free. I mean we
[31:28] Speaker 5: used cats to put the orchestration on the top. But
[31:31] Speaker 5: that's also coming out of Isaac's head. That's not some guy.
[31:35] Speaker 5: He given the track to it said okay, create the parts.
[31:38] Speaker 5: That's not how that happened. But because there was such
[31:41] Speaker 5: an authenticity of remembering things, all of the RECs from
[31:45] Speaker 5: hold on them coming to soul man, you don't know
[31:48] Speaker 5: those are things that of course, the records was for
[31:50] Speaker 5: two minutes forty seconds long. Your point is, well, how
[31:52] Speaker 5: are you gonna do this on a long, long, long
[31:54] Speaker 5: lung record. Well, on a long, long, long lung record.
[31:57] Speaker 5: If you were inside of the stacks room and you know,
[32:00] Speaker 5: everybody's standing up looking at Isaac and isa is directing
[32:03] Speaker 5: and cueing on the parts, you guys are write down
[32:06] Speaker 5: four balls here, eight balls here, and the cats would
[32:09] Speaker 5: know if you hold up his hand, it's the next
[32:11] Speaker 5: it's the next pense, it's the next pats of whatever
[32:13] Speaker 5: was going to be. So I wasn't in the room
[32:16] Speaker 5: when he was doing it, but I'm sure that the
[32:17] Speaker 5: same kind of processes that I did on The Victim
[32:21] Speaker 5: of the Joke AB but what you rights the same
[32:24] Speaker 5: thing because that's what I did.
[32:25] Speaker 2: So what are al Bell's basic thoughts when you guys
[32:29] Speaker 2: and I'm I'm going back to Stacks in the sixties,
[32:32] Speaker 2: but I'm just curious, like, when this turns in the
[32:34] Speaker 2: Enterprise and you guys are making serious albums, what are
[32:38] Speaker 2: our Bell's thoughts when some of these album cuts are
[32:43] Speaker 2: seven minutes, thirteen minutes, twenty two minutes.
[32:49] Speaker 4: Not right friendly at all.
[32:51] Speaker 2: That's how well I know that the age of FM
[32:53] Speaker 2: radio was sort of like we play longer cuts when
[32:57] Speaker 2: I at least you know, the first five years of
[32:59] Speaker 2: this seventies. But I mean, you guys were almost like
[33:03] Speaker 2: the anti Moodtown, because I know Motown's whole thing was
[33:06] Speaker 2: like has to be three minutes and thirty seconds and
[33:09] Speaker 2: easily digestible. And so was that by design or but.
[33:15] Speaker 5: That is that is an amazing question because the truth
[33:18] Speaker 5: needs to be told. Isaac was the first to do
[33:22] Speaker 5: the extended creative of the song the very first. The
[33:25] Speaker 5: way that happened was Al bail now was being in
[33:30] Speaker 5: control because Stacks all of the masters that Stax had
[33:33] Speaker 5: recorded Atlantic got those because Jim Stood had signed one
[33:37] Speaker 5: of those funny contracts and didn't realize they'd given the
[33:39] Speaker 5: catalog away. Then Albert l got into the power control
[33:43] Speaker 5: of the company and ultimately end up owning the company.
[33:46] Speaker 5: And so what al did was in order for us
[33:50] Speaker 5: to get back in the move in a competitior Way said, listen,
[33:53] Speaker 5: we got to create product and get an abundant of
[33:55] Speaker 5: product to get out there. He encouraged Easac to do
[33:58] Speaker 5: the album. He encouraged Easa going, Isaac said, because we
[34:03] Speaker 5: were already in the power position. Isaac said, if I'm
[34:05] Speaker 5: gonna do it, I gotta do what I feel I
[34:08] Speaker 5: want to do. El had no idea that isa was
[34:11] Speaker 5: gonna take it there because Isaac always was influenced by
[34:14] Speaker 5: jazz cats. I mean he always, but that wasn't not
[34:17] Speaker 5: the kind of records that we were doing. So when
[34:19] Speaker 5: he'd have the freedom to do it the way he
[34:21] Speaker 5: wanted to do it, we used to go to the
[34:23] Speaker 5: club called Club La Run. We would go there and
[34:26] Speaker 5: just jam before we'd go back to the studio. One
[34:29] Speaker 5: night we were jamming and singing some stuff at the
[34:31] Speaker 5: club to Run. When something is wrong with My Baby
[34:34] Speaker 5: and some of the other songs that we had written
[34:35] Speaker 5: and that they were popular songs we singing, and Isaac
[34:38] Speaker 5: went into a vibe with the substained thing on the
[34:41] Speaker 5: hammonbe three organ that was there and start talking and
[34:45] Speaker 5: he would start talking and the message was on a
[34:47] Speaker 5: song by Glenn Cammell called by the time I get
[34:50] Speaker 5: to Phoenix and Isaac started talking with me standing up
[34:56] Speaker 5: on the stage with him and I knowing what the
[34:58] Speaker 5: heck he's doing, and him start and they were getting
[35:01] Speaker 5: in to listen to him, and he just start making
[35:03] Speaker 5: it longer and longer, and it case he didn't have
[35:06] Speaker 5: it hidden out. It came to him in the natural
[35:09] Speaker 5: way that these lines I'm telling you, and the horn
[35:11] Speaker 5: Patterson came in and he talked the whole thing out
[35:15] Speaker 5: and hit By the time I get the Phoenix with
[35:17] Speaker 5: the bat three loud and whatever, and the cast was
[35:20] Speaker 5: just trying to follow him, which they did. And by
[35:22] Speaker 5: the time he got the opportunity to record and told
[35:26] Speaker 5: alba Al on a second because presiding Heasac Hayes album
[35:30] Speaker 5: did not really work, so on the second he told
[35:32] Speaker 5: me to do it again. Honestly, I want to really do
[35:34] Speaker 5: it the way I want to do it, and that's
[35:35] Speaker 5: why there are four tunes on that album. And the
[35:37] Speaker 5: first motivation was that Thience thing that we did at
[35:40] Speaker 5: the club I run and that was what nineteen minutes
[35:44] Speaker 5: long as something.
[35:45] Speaker 2: Would tape ever run out? Would tape run out at all?
[35:50] Speaker 5: Well, that didn't know matter, but you know, Isaac would
[35:54] Speaker 5: we would have been in the studio jam and and
[35:56] Speaker 5: we in it with a lot of tracks that would
[35:58] Speaker 5: then and writing songs off later on, just by the
[36:01] Speaker 5: extended part that we didn't use on a record. So
[36:04] Speaker 5: so cats would know that that. And by the time
[36:07] Speaker 5: I get the Phoenix case that had to be a
[36:09] Speaker 5: new real to tape. Guests would know that he was
[36:11] Speaker 5: going to do extended verse. They just did not know
[36:12] Speaker 5: it was going to be that long. So I don't know.
[36:16] Speaker 5: I wasn't in the room on Phoenix, but I can
[36:18] Speaker 5: tell you.
[36:20] Speaker 2: So can you explain, especially like with with the tension
[36:26] Speaker 2: that's happening in the mid to late sixties, especially in
[36:30] Speaker 2: the civil rights movement, how was it socially, especially with
[36:34] Speaker 2: you know cats like uh, you know, Donald Duck Dunn,
[36:38] Speaker 2: Steve Cropper, like because you know the sound of stacks
[36:42] Speaker 2: even though it's gut bunket soul, gut bucket funk like this.
[36:47] Speaker 2: This is an integrated, intersectional kind of organization with men
[36:54] Speaker 2: and women, black and white, that sort of thing. So
[36:58] Speaker 2: how easy was it now navigating especially with sort of
[37:03] Speaker 2: I guess culminating to King's assassination like in Memphis? What
[37:09] Speaker 2: is the social atmosphere of these white musicians and black
[37:13] Speaker 2: musicians playing together?
[37:15] Speaker 5: Like what's a work dinner look like inside the street?
[37:18] Speaker 5: Well to a question, if I think I understand correct,
[37:22] Speaker 5: this is this is the interesting thing about that period.
[37:25] Speaker 5: Racism was still rapid during that period, it was still there,
[37:31] Speaker 5: but because Stewart was smart enough to see that the
[37:34] Speaker 5: black contraditional talents were far exceeding where Steve was and
[37:39] Speaker 5: dunk Walls. But these were casts that were able to integrate,
[37:43] Speaker 5: for lack of a better word, into the Bible what
[37:44] Speaker 5: we were doing, because they were able to listen to
[37:47] Speaker 5: where we were coming from. And it was it was
[37:50] Speaker 5: showed that the possibility of seriously making some money until
[37:55] Speaker 5: they were there was a willingness to follow the lead
[37:57] Speaker 5: of the black towns. And when I say say that,
[38:00] Speaker 5: when you could see there's Booker T. Jones in that
[38:03] Speaker 5: in the combination of talent, we called it the Big Six.
[38:07] Speaker 5: That was Al Jackson Junior in that combination of talent.
[38:11] Speaker 5: That was Isaac Hayes in a combination of talents. That
[38:15] Speaker 5: was David Porter in the cumination of talents. And here
[38:18] Speaker 5: is Steve and Duck. And the leading parts was either
[38:22] Speaker 5: coming from Booker or from Isaac, or from I or
[38:28] Speaker 5: from l as relates to where a lot of the
[38:30] Speaker 5: originality come from the abilities to a depth and to
[38:33] Speaker 5: be affecting with it was coming out of the rhythmic
[38:36] Speaker 5: treaties that Cropper would bring to many of the songs,
[38:39] Speaker 5: and Duck would was amazing at remembery and containing the
[38:42] Speaker 5: patterns and giving you the right kund of imagy for that.
[38:44] Speaker 3: Like what about once y'all left the studio, Because like
[38:46] Speaker 3: you said, y'all were the leaders in the individualities, but
[38:49] Speaker 3: y'all couldn't eat in the same places, stay in the
[38:52] Speaker 3: same places, and that.
[38:53] Speaker 5: That is so so true, And then we didn't make
[38:56] Speaker 5: a norm of that. They would go to a place
[38:59] Speaker 5: called the Four Way Green with us, which was a
[39:01] Speaker 5: black restaurant on the Mississippi Walker. And when we wanted
[39:06] Speaker 5: to really eat together, we would go to the Four
[39:09] Speaker 5: Way Grill, and in the Four Way Grill, if you
[39:12] Speaker 5: read the history of it, that was also the place
[39:14] Speaker 5: where doctor King would go. That's also a place where
[39:17] Speaker 5: Jesse Jackson would go. At the front of the four
[39:21] Speaker 5: Way is the door. People would come in from the street,
[39:24] Speaker 5: but they had a back entrance at the back of
[39:26] Speaker 5: the door. James Brown and a lot of folk we
[39:29] Speaker 5: would go in the back door there and we would
[39:32] Speaker 5: eat some of the best soul for which you ever
[39:34] Speaker 5: want to have. But that was a place when we
[39:36] Speaker 5: would do I was a vocalist Boogleton MG's on the
[39:39] Speaker 5: road playing the College Circuit. To your point, we'd get
[39:41] Speaker 5: in the car. We didn't this is booker ten MG's well,
[39:44] Speaker 5: we do sessions with We worked at the College Circum.
[39:46] Speaker 5: On the weekend, we'd get in the car and go
[39:48] Speaker 5: play gigs and we had a lot of This is
[39:50] Speaker 5: where we could not get in the hotel in a
[39:53] Speaker 5: in a real comfortable kind of way. We'd go and
[39:54] Speaker 5: play the gig on the College State, come back and
[39:57] Speaker 5: be in the studio on Monday. So it wasn't it
[39:59] Speaker 5: wasn't kind of thing where you'd see a lot of
[40:02] Speaker 5: let's go out and hang out together. There were black
[40:05] Speaker 5: clubs and they were white clubs, and that was still
[40:07] Speaker 5: going on in Memphis by the time you went into
[40:09] Speaker 5: the Stax rooms to do the work. It was a
[40:11] Speaker 5: unity there, but it was also a willingness to follow
[40:14] Speaker 5: the lead of the black talents who was really making
[40:16] Speaker 5: the thing. And that's why the magic came from an
[40:19] Speaker 5: Otis Redding, who showed everybody what all of that meant
[40:22] Speaker 5: what I just said, because there was no one who
[40:25] Speaker 5: could do it to the degree that Otis could do it.
[40:32] Speaker 2: Did you personally feel some sort of way when like
[40:36] Speaker 2: your sound and your formula are being used by other
[40:41] Speaker 2: Memphis Like in other words, like if you were to
[40:44] Speaker 2: if anyone were to listen to like Let's Stay Together, Yeah,
[40:47] Speaker 2: you know, the sound of the brass band in the
[40:49] Speaker 2: front and the basic gut bucket groove of that song.
[40:54] Speaker 2: You know, someone to say to me like, oh, that's
[40:56] Speaker 2: probably Stax Records or something like that. And you know,
[40:59] Speaker 2: even though you guys are in proximity of each other
[41:01] Speaker 2: in terms of mileage, like I'm certain that Willie and
[41:06] Speaker 2: his organization were way different. Might be like one or
[41:08] Speaker 2: two musicians that are the same. Are you guys feeling
[41:11] Speaker 2: some sort of way that, like the sound that you
[41:15] Speaker 2: helped make the Blueprint Architects is sort of now being
[41:20] Speaker 2: even outside of Memphis, because I'm certain that you know,
[41:23] Speaker 2: there's the Cats and Muscle Souls are also I'm thinking
[41:28] Speaker 2: that they too, are you know, Memphis based and whatnot, Like,
[41:32] Speaker 2: especially with the work they were doing with the Refit like,
[41:34] Speaker 2: did you feel some sort of way when your sound
[41:37] Speaker 2: is sort of like identified with that whole region but
[41:42] Speaker 2: some of those things that you had nothing to do with,
[41:44] Speaker 2: it just sounds like you did.
[41:48] Speaker 5: Well. The beautiful thing about it is we have so
[41:50] Speaker 5: many artists that we have to use other rooms to
[41:53] Speaker 5: do that. The reason that Muscle showed a sound became
[41:57] Speaker 5: revered as it did was because we sent so many
[41:59] Speaker 5: arts this there so many many artists there.
[42:03] Speaker 2: How far was Muscle Souls from Memphis?
[42:05] Speaker 5: Maybe maybe a little bit more than to our drive?
[42:08] Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, yeah, I mean, I.
[42:11] Speaker 5: Don't know if you're familiar with the album that I
[42:13] Speaker 5: did that that has the victim of the joke, the
[42:16] Speaker 5: song the Masquerade is over.
[42:18] Speaker 1: Wait time out all right?
[42:22] Speaker 2: Okay, are you really asking us right now? We know
[42:25] Speaker 2: I'm afraid the Masquerade is over.
[42:28] Speaker 5: But but but that quest that's a huge kind of
[42:32] Speaker 5: things you mentioned earlier about hair stuff. That's one of
[42:35] Speaker 5: those kind of things. I had a mic going around
[42:37] Speaker 5: room with the head says going in the home and
[42:38] Speaker 5: lincense to catch the play. But but but that's also
[42:42] Speaker 5: one of the dumbest mistakes I made because the second
[42:45] Speaker 5: half of it, which has nothing at all to do
[42:46] Speaker 5: with the original song which I was given the head
[42:49] Speaker 5: arranged to and that's where all the samples came from.
[42:51] Speaker 5: Do you know how many millions of dollars I gave
[42:52] Speaker 5: away with that? All of those those how many that's
[42:56] Speaker 5: no story. But but but so we're going.
[42:59] Speaker 2: To ask about that too.
[43:00] Speaker 5: But but but but uh, but muscle shows was so
[43:05] Speaker 5: many ars, Johnny Taylor of the Staple Singers color the
[43:10] Speaker 5: emotions so many that we we went to the rooman
[43:13] Speaker 5: cut what Willie was doing over a high that's Andrew
[43:16] Speaker 5: Love and Wayne Jackson. The horn section. A lot of
[43:19] Speaker 5: the patterns, and I can show you some patterns that
[43:21] Speaker 5: the guys already forgot that we had already did the
[43:24] Speaker 5: patterns on the track over there, and they got into
[43:27] Speaker 5: whatever on the al track. And there's a line that
[43:30] Speaker 5: we did on this man, what the heck? You so?
[43:32] Speaker 5: But but we were, we were so so unified and
[43:37] Speaker 5: and the magic that was happening out of Memphis. There
[43:40] Speaker 5: was no animosity or anger toward what WILLI was doing,
[43:43] Speaker 5: nor was that coming from really what we were doing.
[43:46] Speaker 5: We were just simply happy that all of the stuff
[43:48] Speaker 5: was connected, and then that there was magic with our Green.
[43:51] Speaker 5: The magic with our Green was reminiscent of the magic
[43:54] Speaker 5: that we felt when we lost over this ring. So
[43:56] Speaker 5: there was a joe and the happiness. And then when
[43:58] Speaker 5: he Willie come up with a record been great, like
[44:01] Speaker 5: I can't stand the rain, I mean just great, great, great,
[44:05] Speaker 5: great music. So there was there was no it was
[44:09] Speaker 5: in a lot. Some of the players were the same.
[44:11] Speaker 5: It was that kind of spirit in Memphis during that time.
[44:14] Speaker 2: At any point, was Al Green ever going to go
[44:20] Speaker 2: to your direction to stacks at any point or just
[44:23] Speaker 2: he immediately went to high.
[44:26] Speaker 5: No, No, WILLI wi WILLI discovered L.
[44:29] Speaker 2: But did you know about him before Willie discovered him?
[44:32] Speaker 5: No? No, I don't think it was nobody. No, that
[44:35] Speaker 5: was Willie. Willie. WILLI heard something in him and and
[44:40] Speaker 5: took him to a space. L didn't believe he was.
[44:42] Speaker 5: Al was a hard singer. Willie forced him to find
[44:45] Speaker 5: the identity thing that I was talking about. WILLI forced
[44:48] Speaker 5: l to find that thing. That thing for.
[44:55] Speaker 4: The way he's singing on his first album is back
[44:58] Speaker 4: up Train Yes into the.
[45:00] Speaker 5: Vamp of love and Happiness, and you'll see that's where
[45:03] Speaker 5: Al really is really control how Al found himself. And
[45:09] Speaker 5: then when Al really found himself, then Air magnified the
[45:12] Speaker 5: persona of what that should be. And that's why some
[45:15] Speaker 5: of those vocals that he would do on those songs
[45:17] Speaker 5: were just crazy because he was having so much fun
[45:22] Speaker 5: in discovering new nonsense inside of what he was doing
[45:25] Speaker 5: that was even fresher than he even imagined. I would imagine.
[45:28] Speaker 5: He just he became unbelievable. The same thing was happening
[45:30] Speaker 5: with Otis as well, Johnny Taylor as well.
[45:34] Speaker 2: Can you tell me or recall the experience of hearing
[45:45] Speaker 2: what happened to Otis Redding and the original barcas well.
[45:52] Speaker 5: Let me first first said this, because this is this
[45:54] Speaker 5: is this is an interesting story. When Otis came to
[45:57] Speaker 5: Memphis to record on the Doctor the Bay my office
[46:03] Speaker 5: at the Stacks Building. The door to the office was
[46:06] Speaker 5: on the street, because by then we had bought the
[46:09] Speaker 5: other location. There was a cafe next door to the theater,
[46:12] Speaker 5: and there was some other things on the other side,
[46:14] Speaker 5: and there was a grocery store on the other side.
[46:16] Speaker 5: We had bought all of that and converted that into
[46:18] Speaker 5: part of the space. Otis came into the room in
[46:22] Speaker 5: my office. He said, I want you to hear a
[46:24] Speaker 5: song and tell me what you think about it, because
[46:26] Speaker 5: he you know, he there was a miser respect there.
[46:30] Speaker 5: So he came and he sang with an acoustic guitar, openstright, acoustic,
[46:36] Speaker 5: and he sang Sitting on the Dock of the Bay
[46:38] Speaker 5: to me the whole song, and he said, what you think.
[46:41] Speaker 5: I said, well, I think you are to make the
[46:43] Speaker 5: first verse the last verse, and the last verse the
[46:45] Speaker 5: first verse, because the story says so better than he
[46:48] Speaker 5: really thinks he is. He went into the studio and
[46:51] Speaker 5: recorded Sitting on the Doctor of the Bay. Now it
[46:54] Speaker 5: was not complete because he had a plane to catch,
[46:58] Speaker 5: and he then left Memphis, got on did his flight.
[47:04] Speaker 5: I was, as I mentioned the vocals book of tenmg's
[47:07] Speaker 5: That weekend we flew to Ohio and played a cottage
[47:10] Speaker 5: up there in n OHI up there. So we had
[47:14] Speaker 5: finished the gig, were in the airport. I get a
[47:18] Speaker 5: call from my wife at the time. I get a
[47:22] Speaker 5: call saying that first said that Otis Ready was in
[47:28] Speaker 5: an airplane crash. And I said, I couldn't believe. I said, no,
[47:34] Speaker 5: what do you? And I didn't believe it, and she
[47:37] Speaker 5: reinforced it in a real emotional way to me. And
[47:40] Speaker 5: I told the guys that I was told. When I
[47:44] Speaker 5: told the guys that, and we were getting ready to
[47:48] Speaker 5: catch a plane to come back to Memphis when we
[47:51] Speaker 5: found out. So we were coming from a gig Otis
[47:55] Speaker 5: was going they were going to another gig. In the
[47:57] Speaker 5: devastation of finding out about that was when we were
[48:00] Speaker 5: on another gig. Matter of fact, it's in I think
[48:03] Speaker 5: I want to say it say Booker T's book. If
[48:04] Speaker 5: you read Booker talks about it as well, that's that's
[48:08] Speaker 5: that's when that was found out.
[48:10] Speaker 2: Did you did you know James Alexander, Well, uh, the
[48:13] Speaker 2: basis of the bar kays, Well.
[48:16] Speaker 5: Then you don't know the story about how the record
[48:18] Speaker 5: cut came about. They had a record, a track that
[48:21] Speaker 5: they had and it was just a track. Isaac and
[48:25] Speaker 5: I went into the room. It was a track. Jim
[48:28] Speaker 5: Stood was standing over there listening to it. Didn't know
[48:31] Speaker 5: what they what it was. Then called it they was.
[48:33] Speaker 5: They played the track for us. Isaac Hayes came up
[48:37] Speaker 5: with the title soul Finger. I said, let's put some
[48:40] Speaker 5: kids on the record. I went outside and got twenty
[48:44] Speaker 5: five or thirty kids. Bought him in the room, got
[48:46] Speaker 5: two cases of coke, asked James, James Alexander, when you
[48:50] Speaker 5: interviewed him about this story, got two cases of coke,
[48:53] Speaker 5: gave him the Coca cone. I directed them like a choir.
[48:55] Speaker 5: Every time I raised my hand and do this, you
[48:57] Speaker 5: scream soul finger. And then when I do this, say
[49:00] Speaker 5: so and and so. Isaac gave the title soul thing
[49:04] Speaker 5: for the record. I put the kids on it. That's
[49:06] Speaker 5: that's the record. So James Alexander definitely knows. David Porter
[49:12] Speaker 5: and Isaac Cay's definitely does that the getting jigging record.
[49:15] Speaker 5: But no, no, no no, I did on the barcades,
[49:20] Speaker 5: gave them. I did a head range, gave them fifty
[49:23] Speaker 5: percent of the song. But I came up with it.
[49:25] Speaker 5: Put the kids the same thing again. I got kiss
[49:27] Speaker 5: off the street. I directed him like a que and
[49:29] Speaker 5: had him singing.
[49:30] Speaker 2: No, no, no, and did the track of the Barcades
[49:33] Speaker 2: singing dance right.
[49:34] Speaker 5: The singing dance so real close to James.
[49:38] Speaker 2: I've always been curious and you know he's he's definitely,
[49:42] Speaker 2: he's definitely like one of our buckets, bucket list guests
[49:45] Speaker 2: that we want to get. Just let me know, oh
[49:49] Speaker 2: please that that's him and Jazzy fake like James.
[49:53] Speaker 5: Lay on the floor in the studio if.
[49:55] Speaker 2: Really yeah, do you know like how he was able
[50:01] Speaker 2: to bounce back and start the group all over again,
[50:05] Speaker 2: and just how he felt because I believe the story
[50:08] Speaker 2: is that I don't know if it was a coin
[50:11] Speaker 2: flippant or not. The thing was that only a certain
[50:14] Speaker 2: amount of people could fit on the plane. I believe
[50:17] Speaker 2: the legend is that James Alexander is like, look, I'll
[50:19] Speaker 2: just catch a commercial flight and him.
[50:22] Speaker 5: And Carl did that another not not not Carl Kunaham,
[50:26] Speaker 5: but another car. Carl Siums did that cause Carl sum
[50:29] Speaker 5: was going to go with it, and James and Carlsiums
[50:32] Speaker 5: did that. That's that's true, Okay, it was ah something
[50:37] Speaker 5: like that, whatever the number sixs was. But James and
[50:39] Speaker 5: Carl couldn't get on it, and James took a commercial flight.
[50:42] Speaker 5: That's true. James was the one that was asked to go,
[50:45] Speaker 5: and because the Elma didn't want to, she wasn't the
[50:48] Speaker 5: most able to do it. James was the one that
[50:50] Speaker 5: went to identifi Otist.
[50:52] Speaker 2: I know that was such a devastating loss to the label.
[50:57] Speaker 2: Like how are you guys, especially with the transition of
[51:02] Speaker 2: you know, moving into the seventies and whatnot, can you
[51:05] Speaker 2: explain just the feeling at the time, like especially post
[51:09] Speaker 2: King by the time the seventies comes, Like what are
[51:12] Speaker 2: you feeling in terms of like where music is or
[51:17] Speaker 2: where STAX is as an organization, to really.
[51:21] Speaker 5: Appreciate the energy that Otis brought to our environment. Otis
[51:25] Speaker 5: was a driver for another guy that was being recorded
[51:29] Speaker 5: at the time. Otis came in as his driver. Otis
[51:33] Speaker 5: pleaded with Al Jackson's junior to would someone take a
[51:38] Speaker 5: listen to him? Sing? Al told Steve give if you
[51:45] Speaker 5: got a minute, man, people that already was leaving and
[51:47] Speaker 5: already left, would you take a listen to this guy?
[51:50] Speaker 5: He just wanted somebody to listen to him. Otis Redding
[51:56] Speaker 5: saying these arms of mind with Steve cropper who is
[52:00] Speaker 5: not a piano player, playing tribuus on the piano, and
[52:05] Speaker 5: the rest is history for Otis. Ready then, because no
[52:09] Speaker 5: one understood Oldis better than Otis, because Otis was a
[52:12] Speaker 5: huge fan of Little Richard. If you listen to the
[52:15] Speaker 5: B side of These Arms of Mine, you're gonna think
[52:18] Speaker 5: it's Little Richard because that's where Otis was. But the
[52:21] Speaker 5: These Arms of Mine song Otis showed where he was,
[52:27] Speaker 5: and that was the thing that resonated inside of that room.
[52:31] Speaker 5: And no one could do that but Otis, and Otis
[52:34] Speaker 5: was given the lead way to show where that came from.
[52:37] Speaker 5: And then Otis was the one that started really magnifying
[52:40] Speaker 5: the head Arrangers kind of vibe or what ultam became
[52:44] Speaker 5: the cornerstone of everything we did there. So the loss
[52:47] Speaker 5: of Otis created a kind of emotional kind of devastation
[52:52] Speaker 5: to all of us that it's no way to explain
[52:56] Speaker 5: the level of it, because then we began to feel
[53:00] Speaker 5: what could have been with the magic that was coming
[53:03] Speaker 5: from this man. I mean, he would go in the
[53:06] Speaker 5: studio in this like fastest get up, would be able
[53:10] Speaker 5: to come up with all these parts and these tracks
[53:12] Speaker 5: and just do them and then go on the mic
[53:15] Speaker 5: and make up the song on the mic. That's me
[53:18] Speaker 5: saying homedy with him.
[53:21] Speaker 2: I was gonna ask you about that.
[53:22] Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, but that's that's im. I didn't know when
[53:26] Speaker 5: it comes, he says, I said this when you're gonna
[53:27] Speaker 5: come in, he said, you feel it, And it was like,
[53:32] Speaker 5: but that's the magic of this this god.
[53:35] Speaker 2: The thing is that Otis Redding was twenty seven when
[53:38] Speaker 2: he died. Was it that typical for during the time
[53:45] Speaker 2: that you guys have between the age of what twenty
[53:47] Speaker 2: he came to you, twenty three or twenty four?
[53:50] Speaker 5: I don't, I can't.
[53:51] Speaker 2: You could be right, yeah, twenty three, twenty four.
[53:54] Speaker 5: Twinters, but I can't remember.
[53:55] Speaker 2: Like, were you guys saying to yourselves back then, like
[53:59] Speaker 2: this guy has a way older voice than what his
[54:02] Speaker 2: age allows. Or was it just the stress of living
[54:06] Speaker 2: in that time just brought that age and that experience
[54:08] Speaker 2: on your typical singer back then.
[54:11] Speaker 5: When you listen to the B side of as mentioned,
[54:14] Speaker 5: of these ums of mine and you hear Otis there,
[54:17] Speaker 5: and you listen to what Otis was doing, Otis was
[54:20] Speaker 5: so brilliant as far as seeming in the individuality that
[54:25] Speaker 5: magnified with people, so you could talk to Otis and yeah,
[54:29] Speaker 5: how you doing. Everything's fine? Then he said you can't,
[54:33] Speaker 5: you know, I mean all of this was with a
[54:35] Speaker 5: purpose aim at locking you in to the persona that
[54:39] Speaker 5: was Otis Ready. There was no Otis didn't talk like that. Job.
[54:43] Speaker 5: So that was a character you better believe it was.
[54:46] Speaker 5: But he also perfected it in such a way that
[54:50] Speaker 5: the uniqueness of him because he would stumble up on
[54:53] Speaker 5: other things that he would do, because and he's making
[54:55] Speaker 5: up things on the microphone as well. It's just.
[55:00] Speaker 2: That was a character, even on tramp where he's like talking.
[55:04] Speaker 5: On country like, bro's real what I'm telling you? This
[55:10] Speaker 5: man was brilliant and and and the Brians were manifested
[55:15] Speaker 5: in some of the patterns that the guests were able
[55:17] Speaker 5: to play, which was motivating Isaac and I to get
[55:21] Speaker 5: better with our patterns I Thank You. The record on
[55:24] Speaker 5: I Thank You was motivated out of Otis reading I
[55:26] Speaker 5: went there at Tennessee Walker horses on the drums. Now,
[55:32] Speaker 5: just the magic of Otis Ready and seeing what he
[55:35] Speaker 5: would do in the room was the catalyst for so
[55:38] Speaker 5: much of what happened through all of us. And and
[55:42] Speaker 5: so us trying to find our traction to get into
[55:46] Speaker 5: the ballpark. Of that was to your point about a
[55:49] Speaker 5: little bit of the decline before people were getting to
[55:51] Speaker 5: find their way. That was part of it. We had
[55:54] Speaker 5: lost the magic marker for for what we could ultimately
[55:57] Speaker 5: be when we lost that guy.
[55:59] Speaker 2: Who do you think he was trying to emulate since
[56:01] Speaker 2: that wasn't his natural voice?
[56:03] Speaker 5: Otis ready When I say that individuality was the cornerstone
[56:07] Speaker 5: of the magic of what was happening in the stacks,
[56:09] Speaker 5: I'm saying that that became the signature thought for everybody
[56:14] Speaker 5: on every record. William Bale his records in the Sweetness,
[56:17] Speaker 5: said Booker, and William wrote and the songs everybody loves
[56:20] Speaker 5: one of those songs, that's William going into a character
[56:23] Speaker 5: that's one of my best buddies to this day. That's
[56:26] Speaker 5: also inside of the character of where he know his
[56:29] Speaker 5: slot was.
[56:30] Speaker 3: Yeah, what you're saying is people there were alter egos
[56:34] Speaker 3: before there were Sasha fears. That's what you're saying.
[56:39] Speaker 2: You know what, I'm learning that right now because I
[56:43] Speaker 2: just found an interview with Bobby Woomeck talking about Slive recording.
[56:47] Speaker 2: There's a ride going on, you know, one of the
[56:49] Speaker 2: questions I had about Sly was like, well, how come.
[56:53] Speaker 1: The voice of slies on that record.
[56:55] Speaker 2: Where he's like clear as day on his record, and
[57:00] Speaker 2: Bobby was just like, man, Sly's an actor. He was
[57:03] Speaker 2: just fucking around, And I see now, like, I don't know,
[57:10] Speaker 2: it's just that to me, just that voice is so seasoned,
[57:15] Speaker 2: like it just and again, like I heard that voice
[57:18] Speaker 2: when I was ten, so I just thought, that's like
[57:20] Speaker 2: my grandfather's voice. So when I found out he was,
[57:23] Speaker 2: you know, I'm thinking twenty seven, I'm thinking, you know,
[57:26] Speaker 2: like Chris Brown's voice or bad era Michael Jackson voice
[57:32] Speaker 2: like sounds like young, but he just sounds so old
[57:36] Speaker 2: and seasoned. I just thought that was unusual.
[57:39] Speaker 5: I came from a period where people who looked like
[57:43] Speaker 5: me in order to connect in a market that didn't
[57:46] Speaker 5: handle all the access of internet all those kinds of things,
[57:48] Speaker 5: had to find a way to make the possibilities of
[57:50] Speaker 5: that more real. And the best way to do that,
[57:54] Speaker 5: based on the evidence of time, was to find the
[57:57] Speaker 5: individualalitor created an s's of weakness for you, And inside
[58:02] Speaker 5: of that kind of thought process was the desire to
[58:05] Speaker 5: find that. And in many instances when people would find that,
[58:08] Speaker 5: they would find themselves and they would know where that
[58:11] Speaker 5: pocket was. Bobby Womack Ship's moment left Stax Records when
[58:16] Speaker 5: Stacks went Satellite turned into Stax and Ships went to
[58:19] Speaker 5: a place called American Studios. And because Bobby couldn't get
[58:22] Speaker 5: into Stax Records, where did he go? In Memphis, Tennessee?
[58:26] Speaker 5: Bobby went to American Studios. And if you go by
[58:29] Speaker 5: the early music of Bobby Womack, you'll find out that
[58:31] Speaker 5: Bobby Womack was in Memphis, Tennessee recording over there, Danny
[58:36] Speaker 5: Thomas and Chelsea at Chips Woman Studio. Check it out.
[58:40] Speaker 5: And so look when we did gigs, and I'll say this,
[58:43] Speaker 5: and when we did gigs on the college circuit, and
[58:48] Speaker 5: we'd go and do these gigs. Some of these white
[58:50] Speaker 5: colleges would have two acts performing. Some of these appearances
[58:55] Speaker 5: were book of tnmg's on one end of the floor.
[58:59] Speaker 5: Because they didn't know that Booker had a vocalist, which
[59:02] Speaker 5: was me. They would hire another group to sing and perform.
[59:06] Speaker 5: Who did they have one of those gigs and this
[59:09] Speaker 5: was a guy became a buddy of mine. They hired
[59:11] Speaker 5: the Osen Brothers, who was playing good time for the
[59:14] Speaker 5: brothers in these college dates, Jimmy Henry, who came to
[59:19] Speaker 5: Memphis with me to try to get some gigs and
[59:21] Speaker 5: sessions with me in Stat's records, Jimmy Henrix, So all
[59:26] Speaker 5: of this, all of this speaks to people understanding that
[59:31] Speaker 5: they had to find an individual that gave them an
[59:34] Speaker 5: end to where they wanted to go. Jimmy is another
[59:37] Speaker 5: essence and example of that because he was a bad mother,
[59:39] Speaker 5: shit your mouth playing bro. But when he got when
[59:43] Speaker 5: he got time for him to find him, he knew
[59:46] Speaker 5: how to integrate those nuances that became the rock thing
[59:49] Speaker 5: and going to that whole look. He knew how to
[59:51] Speaker 5: do that and he did it to the bone.
[59:53] Speaker 2: So you're basically saying that rap music isn't the only
[59:56] Speaker 2: genre in which on one's everyday voice out sewing Carter.
[1:00:04] Speaker 1: And jay Z is you have to be a character.
[1:00:10] Speaker 1: I just thought that was hip.
[1:00:11] Speaker 3: Hop, But the land of make Believe didn't start with
[1:00:14] Speaker 3: hip hop.
[1:00:16] Speaker 5: All nuances of what, in my opinion, many of those
[1:00:21] Speaker 5: talents got to where they got to was realizing that
[1:00:26] Speaker 5: James Brown seemed like sound like James Brown, and Teddy
[1:00:30] Speaker 5: Pendergrass sounded like Teddy Pendergrass and somewhere in between that
[1:00:35] Speaker 5: sly Stones sound like sly and somewhere in between that
[1:00:38] Speaker 5: you go, you can go down the line. And the
[1:00:41] Speaker 5: magic habit when people perfected the essences of who they
[1:00:46] Speaker 5: were with the purity of an emotional connecting way to
[1:00:49] Speaker 5: an audience, and that was where the magic was. And
[1:00:52] Speaker 5: so I think that when you found all these records
[1:00:56] Speaker 5: happening on the Tonic and Cat's trying to find a
[1:00:59] Speaker 5: way to treat their boys to make themselves sound whatever
[1:01:02] Speaker 5: they're doing, they got that undernose to them possible of
[1:01:05] Speaker 5: the influences that came through their grandmama, the uncle or whatever,
[1:01:09] Speaker 5: talking about how they like I like that James Brown.
[1:01:10] Speaker 5: I was like, why y'all doing that kind of stuff?
[1:01:12] Speaker 5: And then they found a way to make it work
[1:01:14] Speaker 5: for them, and they make it work to the Hill
[1:01:16] Speaker 5: and so Nas and these other kids. And they told
[1:01:19] Speaker 5: me that that that you mentioned who shot you which
[1:01:22] Speaker 5: which which my guy Bigger did do. But they told
[1:01:25] Speaker 5: me biggest audition tape was a song of mine and
[1:01:28] Speaker 5: writing I.
[1:01:29] Speaker 2: Forget Lyone Alley Yeah came.
[1:01:33] Speaker 5: To Memphis to interview me and he told me that
[1:01:36] Speaker 5: I said, I, what are you talking, He said, no,
[1:01:37] Speaker 5: his audition was I never heard that, and so so
[1:01:43] Speaker 5: by the time I unt I heard it was who
[1:01:44] Speaker 5: shot you? So But the point I'm just saying, they
[1:01:47] Speaker 5: were looking for for ways to find the individuality that
[1:01:51] Speaker 5: was uniquely them and they've perfected. So when I listened
[1:01:54] Speaker 5: to Biggie and hear where he was coming from, and
[1:01:57] Speaker 5: then I listened to Kendrick to say what I'm saying,
[1:01:59] Speaker 5: this is because they all found a way to find
[1:02:03] Speaker 5: the magic within the said you mentioned day. They all
[1:02:06] Speaker 5: find a way to do that. Those who become effected
[1:02:08] Speaker 5: with it. As soon as they get the pocket of money,
[1:02:10] Speaker 5: they moved to the heels. But it's wrong with that,
[1:02:14] Speaker 5: and not I'm wrong with that, but that's real.
[1:02:19] Speaker 2: Well, well, let's Steve ask this question because I'm sorry.
[1:02:22] Speaker 6: I forgot my question.
[1:02:26] Speaker 7: The story you mentioned earlier about sitting on the dock
[1:02:29] Speaker 7: of the bay that it was unfinished. Did you oversee
[1:02:32] Speaker 7: the finishing of that song or how did that get finished?
[1:02:35] Speaker 5: No, proper did that, Steve did that?
[1:02:38] Speaker 6: So what had to be recorded after his accident.
[1:02:43] Speaker 5: Wasn't in the session. You know, all this is that
[1:02:46] Speaker 5: sing the song to me when he came to my office,
[1:02:48] Speaker 5: and then I just gave him that that suggestion. Then
[1:02:50] Speaker 5: he went in the studio and recorded. You know, I
[1:02:53] Speaker 5: don't know to what degree it was. It was not finished.
[1:02:56] Speaker 5: I really don't.
[1:02:57] Speaker 7: All right, Well, I have a follow up question then
[1:03:00] Speaker 7: about Hendrix. Why didn't Stacks sign Hendrix? Or I'm trying
[1:03:06] Speaker 7: to imagine Jimmy Hendrix as a Stacks artist or what
[1:03:08] Speaker 7: that would be like.
[1:03:10] Speaker 6: Was there any talk guy?
[1:03:12] Speaker 5: You know, he wasn't Jimmy Hendrix at the time. He
[1:03:15] Speaker 5: was trying to get on successions. There was no essence
[1:03:19] Speaker 5: of of of Jimmy being Jimmy at the time, gotcha, Yeah, yeah,
[1:03:24] Speaker 5: But and then then Steve had a lock on the studio.
[1:03:27] Speaker 5: Being honest with you, he wasn't easy to get get
[1:03:30] Speaker 5: in some sessions, you know, and he just came to
[1:03:34] Speaker 5: see if he could.
[1:03:35] Speaker 2: How many studios were in total? Rooms?
[1:03:38] Speaker 5: Well, there eventually became three rooms in there, A B,
[1:03:41] Speaker 5: and C, but it was a while before we got B.
[1:03:45] Speaker 5: It was it was a while before we got that.
[1:03:47] Speaker 2: So what's scheduling like?
[1:03:50] Speaker 5: It was crazy. We ended up, as I mentioned before,
[1:03:52] Speaker 5: having it to do bookings that wasn't a place in
[1:03:55] Speaker 5: muscle shows.
[1:03:56] Speaker 2: Muscle Okay, I get it now.
[1:03:58] Speaker 5: Jackson, Mississippi. We did some bookings, you know, we ended
[1:04:01] Speaker 5: up because they had so many acts to do.
[1:04:05] Speaker 2: Was Nashville ever an option? Like was did Nashville have
[1:04:10] Speaker 2: any potential of having flavor?
[1:04:13] Speaker 5: Yeah?
[1:04:13] Speaker 6: As about that?
[1:04:16] Speaker 2: Or nah?
[1:04:18] Speaker 1: No?
[1:04:19] Speaker 4: So do you feel that it's funny?
[1:04:22] Speaker 3: I'm like, I know you know about the gout to
[1:04:24] Speaker 3: ask about the Black Music Museum Becau's only one black
[1:04:26] Speaker 3: music museum in the country, and it's in Nashville. But
[1:04:30] Speaker 3: it's it's it's supposed to feel like a situation where
[1:04:33] Speaker 3: to make folks come. Do you feel like that or
[1:04:35] Speaker 3: do you feel like that it should be it should
[1:04:38] Speaker 3: be a Memphis.
[1:04:39] Speaker 5: It should have been Memphis. But but honestly, Henry Hicks Uh,
[1:04:44] Speaker 5: the guy who came to message before was built, and
[1:04:48] Speaker 5: we met on all that stuff, and I supported him
[1:04:51] Speaker 5: in the effort because it's difficult for me to believe
[1:04:54] Speaker 5: it actually happened in Nashville. If you know Nashville, believe that.
[1:04:58] Speaker 5: But he pulled it off mm hmm, and he got Uh.
[1:05:02] Speaker 5: He honored Patty Leabell, Teddy Rodder, Kirk Franklin and myself
[1:05:08] Speaker 5: as a program that we did there several years ago
[1:05:11] Speaker 5: as he was bringing note the ride and disability to it,
[1:05:13] Speaker 5: he would bring several artists that talk about Nashville or whatever,
[1:05:17] Speaker 5: and that's and that was part of the surprise for
[1:05:20] Speaker 5: me to see that he was a brother that was
[1:05:23] Speaker 5: really believing he was gonna pull it together and he did.
[1:05:25] Speaker 3: Oh yeah him and quite a few people shouts at
[1:05:27] Speaker 3: Deanna Williams too, and Big John Platt is a nice
[1:05:29] Speaker 3: community of folks that are involved in Yeah, that play
[1:05:32] Speaker 3: special and where it's placed, like right in downtown in
[1:05:35] Speaker 3: the face of like the opre it's like you we
[1:05:37] Speaker 3: here right.
[1:05:40] Speaker 5: Yeah, So I give I give I give those guys
[1:05:43] Speaker 5: credit for pulling off something that one I found a
[1:05:45] Speaker 5: difficult believe that would ever be, but also the level
[1:05:48] Speaker 5: of it being that that it is. I mean, it's beautiful.
[1:05:56] Speaker 4: I want to ask you, David about you You talk
[1:05:58] Speaker 4: about characters and you know, the singers and everybody wanted
[1:06:01] Speaker 4: to be individual. Rufus Thomas, man, what was what was
[1:06:04] Speaker 4: he like? I thought I loved him. I mean, I
[1:06:07] Speaker 4: watch Stacks was all I saw him on. But yeah,
[1:06:10] Speaker 4: what was he like?
[1:06:11] Speaker 2: Just as an.
[1:06:14] Speaker 5: Read it book, if you told Rufus Thomas that he
[1:06:20] Speaker 5: wasn't an artist. He'd cut you out. Rufus knew that
[1:06:25] Speaker 5: he could go into a song that really magnified marketability
[1:06:29] Speaker 5: for himself. If you try to get in the saying
[1:06:31] Speaker 5: saying he was not what you think in terms of that.
[1:06:35] Speaker 5: But when he was saying one of his original compositions,
[1:06:39] Speaker 5: he could sing say because no one could do it
[1:06:40] Speaker 5: better than he could, and he could sell it in
[1:06:43] Speaker 5: such a way that that was it was magic. He was.
[1:06:47] Speaker 5: He was extremely confident man. He was up in age
[1:06:52] Speaker 5: when he started recording. He was, but he was extremely confident,
[1:06:56] Speaker 5: and he also felt that he wanted to be able
[1:06:58] Speaker 5: to compete with Sam Dave or ODIs or whoever was
[1:07:01] Speaker 5: on the stage. So he was he found a way
[1:07:03] Speaker 5: to get outfits even though he wasn't getting paid the
[1:07:05] Speaker 5: kind of money the others were getting paid on the gigs.
[1:07:07] Speaker 5: But you can tell that because every time he hit
[1:07:10] Speaker 5: the stage, he'd be shoppings, sharp could beat and when
[1:07:13] Speaker 5: he going too his thing, he could do it to him.
[1:07:15] Speaker 5: And so but that was because he just he just
[1:07:18] Speaker 5: knew where his niche was and he refected us. We
[1:07:21] Speaker 5: talked about earlier, the individuality that was powerful for.
[1:07:24] Speaker 4: Him Carla was his daughter?
[1:07:25] Speaker 5: Correct, Carla was his daughter?
[1:07:27] Speaker 4: How was it when she came along? How did that work?
[1:07:29] Speaker 5: Well? Carla came along at a time when when Jimster
[1:07:32] Speaker 5: recorded Rufus and Colin or a record called Cass I
[1:07:35] Speaker 5: Love It, which they said it was a hit, but
[1:07:37] Speaker 5: it really was the marginal kind of record. But Jim
[1:07:40] Speaker 5: saw something in Carla and asked her if she had
[1:07:44] Speaker 5: any original songs, and she had a song called Gee Whiz,
[1:07:47] Speaker 5: and Coler paid a little piano and Cola recorded Ge Whiz.
[1:07:50] Speaker 5: It really became the dome the for stacks and the
[1:07:54] Speaker 5: relationship with Atlantic Records. That initiated the really power of
[1:07:58] Speaker 5: the deal for us, and that was what that was.
[1:08:01] Speaker 5: And then Isaaca and I had the biggest record on
[1:08:03] Speaker 5: Calling because we wrote a song called b A b
[1:08:06] Speaker 5: Y and we produced that on Calling and that was
[1:08:08] Speaker 5: her biggest record. But yeah, no, she she was. She
[1:08:13] Speaker 5: did some some some stuff and the record with as
[1:08:15] Speaker 5: quest mentioned with Trump, was she oldest? Brought out another
[1:08:19] Speaker 5: kind of person on that. It's very fact.
[1:08:23] Speaker 2: We talked about soul Man, but there's a whole like
[1:08:28] Speaker 2: barge of classic songs. I'm just gonna name something. Can
[1:08:32] Speaker 2: you recall the stories of how or tell me what
[1:08:36] Speaker 2: the songwriting processes for some of these songs, like when
[1:08:41] Speaker 2: Something's Wrong with My Baby?
[1:08:42] Speaker 5: Yeah, I was. I was. I was a managed boy
[1:08:46] Speaker 5: and got a girl pregnant high school and my mama said,
[1:08:52] Speaker 5: you got married, and I married? Uh, nineteen years old,
[1:08:57] Speaker 5: I married him. And so I'm living been with a
[1:09:01] Speaker 5: kid and fantasizing as I'm trying to get the music
[1:09:05] Speaker 5: bus as an effective way. I'm about love and what
[1:09:08] Speaker 5: would be the power love? Because the young lady didn't
[1:09:10] Speaker 5: love me and I didn't love her, but but we
[1:09:12] Speaker 5: had a kid, and so I would dream about babies
[1:09:16] Speaker 5: and so just I would have a pad up under
[1:09:20] Speaker 5: the bed, which I still do that when a right.
[1:09:23] Speaker 5: And sometimes I'd wake up with a thought and the
[1:09:26] Speaker 5: idea and I would write it down. When something is
[1:09:29] Speaker 5: Wrong with my Baby was one of those ideas that
[1:09:31] Speaker 5: I woke up in the dream, wrote, wrote the title down,
[1:09:34] Speaker 5: got up, wrote the whole song out. Carl Isaac. We
[1:09:36] Speaker 5: couldn't get into the studio, As I mentioned, we didn't
[1:09:39] Speaker 5: have a lot of rooms at this time. Couldn't get
[1:09:41] Speaker 5: in the studio. We went over to Sidney Kirk's house
[1:09:44] Speaker 5: one of Isaac's friend got his piano wrote when Something
[1:09:47] Speaker 5: Is Wrong with My Baby in about twenty five thirty
[1:09:49] Speaker 5: minutes because they had the melody already in the head.
[1:09:52] Speaker 5: And the rest is history with that song. But that
[1:09:55] Speaker 5: was like when I mentioned the titles Isaac, he said, man,
[1:09:58] Speaker 5: I love that, and we wrote it. So Man came
[1:10:01] Speaker 5: about just as equally because Isaac heard something out of
[1:10:04] Speaker 5: Detroit and said, man, we need to write a song
[1:10:06] Speaker 5: called soul Man, and then here comes sol Man. We're
[1:10:09] Speaker 5: talking us. We wanted to be a motivational song for
[1:10:13] Speaker 5: our community. So I talked about getting an education. I
[1:10:15] Speaker 5: was educated at Woodstock. I was brought up on the science.
[1:10:19] Speaker 5: We talked about. I'm the beginning the whole manifestation of
[1:10:21] Speaker 5: motivating people, the double meaning of soul Man in the
[1:10:25] Speaker 5: Woodstock line in there. That was before the festival Woodstock,
[1:10:28] Speaker 5: and when Bluci and Akro was saying, people thought that
[1:10:30] Speaker 5: we had Woodstock. Woodstock was a county school in Memphis.
[1:10:35] Speaker 5: But but all of those things came about with us
[1:10:38] Speaker 5: trying to think of ways to make ideas that people
[1:10:41] Speaker 5: can relate to, but also a motivational for people inside
[1:10:45] Speaker 5: of the subliminal message in our writings, and that's what
[1:10:49] Speaker 5: we were.
[1:10:49] Speaker 4: Doing when you and when you and Isaac worked together.
[1:10:52] Speaker 4: How did y'all work?
[1:10:53] Speaker 6: Like?
[1:10:53] Speaker 4: Did you were you on piano? Was he on piano?
[1:10:56] Speaker 4: Or were you more lyrics Isaac.
[1:10:58] Speaker 5: Was on piano. I started out as allows the trumpet player,
[1:11:01] Speaker 5: to start trying to play trumpet in high school and
[1:11:04] Speaker 5: wanted to be a singing star. Mauric went the drama
[1:11:07] Speaker 5: in high school and Booker was below us in high school,
[1:11:11] Speaker 5: and so I started thinking I was this great great
[1:11:13] Speaker 5: singing and put down the instruments. And so by the
[1:11:15] Speaker 5: time Isaac and I got together, I understood melodically how
[1:11:19] Speaker 5: to do exactly what we needed to do lyrically how
[1:11:22] Speaker 5: to do that. And Isaac we started out, I just
[1:11:24] Speaker 5: started up playing trippers on the piano before we started,
[1:11:27] Speaker 5: just stretching himself to do all he could do. And
[1:11:29] Speaker 5: all of a sudden, he started discovering things that he
[1:11:31] Speaker 5: would hear inside of his head, which is where the
[1:11:33] Speaker 5: head arrange the came. And I started finding things I
[1:11:35] Speaker 5: would hear inside of my head. And then when we would
[1:11:37] Speaker 5: sit down to write a song or come up with
[1:11:40] Speaker 5: an idea, if we had to put some piece of
[1:11:42] Speaker 5: something down on another tape to use it as a
[1:11:45] Speaker 5: reference for something possibility. We would then sit down and
[1:11:48] Speaker 5: create the songs right from stretch. Right at that point
[1:11:51] Speaker 5: we'd schedule or writing. We'd go and do a gig
[1:11:53] Speaker 5: at a club or something like that and come to
[1:11:55] Speaker 5: the studio and just start writing, and we would do
[1:11:59] Speaker 5: that artist to artist, song to song individualities and being
[1:12:04] Speaker 5: a blue song on Johnny Taylor, a blue song on Abbath,
[1:12:07] Speaker 5: king of a Lover, song on a Soul Children, a
[1:12:11] Speaker 5: pretty song on the Emotions, a flat down song on
[1:12:14] Speaker 5: Sam and that. We focused on doing it the way
[1:12:18] Speaker 5: we felt the inside of the room. But it was Jilly,
[1:12:21] Speaker 5: Isaac and I were sitting at the piano, me coming
[1:12:23] Speaker 5: up with the melodies and the lyrics of the song,
[1:12:26] Speaker 5: singing the song, and we're coming up with a musical
[1:12:28] Speaker 5: direction that we would go inside of that. The head
[1:12:30] Speaker 5: arranging part of that comes, so we would go into
[1:12:32] Speaker 5: the room. We talk about the concept of it if
[1:12:34] Speaker 5: we wanted to hold on them coming. It was one
[1:12:36] Speaker 5: of those examples where he had had had a horn
[1:12:38] Speaker 5: pattern down weeks before and we talked about coming up
[1:12:42] Speaker 5: with this idea. After I came out of the restroom,
[1:12:44] Speaker 5: and then we talked about an idea about Superman, a
[1:12:47] Speaker 5: resking kind of thing and a motivation for people, and
[1:12:50] Speaker 5: that was what the thought was. And once we said that,
[1:12:54] Speaker 5: twenty minutes later we had the song don't you Ever
[1:12:56] Speaker 5: Feel Sad? But you know, I mean when the times
[1:12:58] Speaker 5: of bad to day comes, you're down trouble in about
[1:13:00] Speaker 5: the drown hold on I'm coming. And we talked about
[1:13:04] Speaker 5: the unity and the bond between people with that.
[1:13:09] Speaker 2: When you were recalling the story of Something's Wrong with
[1:13:13] Speaker 2: My Baby, for half a second, I was like, oh God,
[1:13:17] Speaker 2: this isn't a love song. He's talking about his newborn
[1:13:21] Speaker 2: kid being sick. And I was like, wait, where's he
[1:13:27] Speaker 2: about to go with this story? Like that's what it
[1:13:29] Speaker 2: means literally a baby?
[1:13:31] Speaker 5: No. Now, I was trying to think about what it'd
[1:13:33] Speaker 5: be like they had a real woman that I could
[1:13:35] Speaker 5: really feel all of that for.
[1:13:36] Speaker 2: I feel you, I believe. In ninety one ninety two,
[1:13:40] Speaker 2: back when the idea of a box set was a
[1:13:43] Speaker 2: novel idea, these eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve CD sets
[1:13:47] Speaker 2: like a history of a label started happening for the
[1:13:49] Speaker 2: record industry because literally, if you buy the Stacks box set,
[1:13:53] Speaker 2: from nineteen ninety one. You can hear the entire history
[1:13:56] Speaker 2: of the Wu Tang clan. I want to know, have
[1:13:59] Speaker 2: you ever met the Riza and what were your initial
[1:14:02] Speaker 2: thoughts in the mid nineties when suddenly the thing about
[1:14:09] Speaker 2: Riza and his sampling method is it was even jarring.
[1:14:15] Speaker 2: I don't know if I can speak for Liah, Steve
[1:14:18] Speaker 2: or Fante, but his level of sampling was really jarring,
[1:14:22] Speaker 2: Like like, I'm very familiar with the sweet inspirations like
[1:14:25] Speaker 2: Why Mary and all that stuff, and so just the
[1:14:30] Speaker 2: just the very unorthodox way that he sampled that Why
[1:14:33] Speaker 2: Mary is a criminology.
[1:14:38] Speaker 4: I knew it was always different with Rizza.
[1:14:39] Speaker 3: I knew it was never you can't it ain't easy.
[1:14:41] Speaker 4: It was never easy.
[1:14:42] Speaker 2: That's and he wasn't.
[1:14:43] Speaker 4: He wasn't afraid to use voices either, like he would
[1:14:45] Speaker 4: a lot generally when you would chop samples, you would
[1:14:48] Speaker 4: try to get out of the vocal. You know what
[1:14:51] Speaker 4: I'm saying. He would almost intentionally like incorporate the vocal use.
[1:14:55] Speaker 2: Yeah, it was very so when you're hearing like or
[1:14:59] Speaker 2: I guess you know that you have to get permission.
[1:15:02] Speaker 2: I don't know what the process is like if your
[1:15:03] Speaker 2: publisher just says, hey, I give a permission, or they
[1:15:06] Speaker 2: got to go to the songwriter. Sometimes we got to
[1:15:08] Speaker 2: have a conversation with the songwriter. Sometimes it's just like, yeah,
[1:15:11] Speaker 2: you could clear it. But when when your work starts
[1:15:16] Speaker 2: getting a lot of traction in the early to mid
[1:15:21] Speaker 2: nineties with Biggie, with even Mop, with Annie Up Soul,
[1:15:27] Speaker 2: Sister Brown Sugar, I believe yeah, yeah, Like what are
[1:15:31] Speaker 2: you feeling? Is are you feeling like to change I'm back?
[1:15:35] Speaker 2: Or is it like wait, I didn't intend my songs
[1:15:39] Speaker 2: to sound like this, Like what are they doing?
[1:15:42] Speaker 5: The respect for the creative process was something that I'm
[1:15:47] Speaker 5: marveled at. I know Isaac marvel it and the fact
[1:15:52] Speaker 5: that I just simply felt good they found an interesting
[1:15:54] Speaker 5: way to interpret something that I was on the creation of.
[1:15:57] Speaker 5: When Rizza and I met Rizza Mett, I've been even
[1:16:01] Speaker 5: introduced him on some shows and soff and he's come
[1:16:04] Speaker 5: to my studio and everything, and just the level of
[1:16:07] Speaker 5: respect that those guys head for the catalog was just
[1:16:11] Speaker 5: amazing to me. But also find the interesting ways they
[1:16:15] Speaker 5: found to interpret the song like Cream, I mean, like
[1:16:19] Speaker 5: I mean, come on, you know, wait, let me.
[1:16:22] Speaker 2: Inter up to you because I got a question with
[1:16:25] Speaker 2: as long as I Got You? Maybe maybe like four
[1:16:29] Speaker 2: five years ago actually, I think during the Motions episode
[1:16:32] Speaker 2: I played it. The Emotions have a version of as
[1:16:36] Speaker 2: Long as I Got You, which is even funkier. It
[1:16:40] Speaker 2: sounds like a demo. Why wasn't that version ever released?
[1:16:45] Speaker 5: Because it probably sounded like the demo that you're talking about.
[1:16:49] Speaker 5: You know, I really, I really don't even remember the
[1:16:52] Speaker 5: Emotion's version. You know how embarrassed that is for me
[1:16:57] Speaker 5: to say that, because I'm you.
[1:16:59] Speaker 4: Got too ate over two thousand songs, like we will forgive
[1:17:03] Speaker 4: you for forgetting one.
[1:17:04] Speaker 5: Remember everything's say here.
[1:17:06] Speaker 2: But again, you you've done over two thousand songs, so
[1:17:09] Speaker 2: you can forget a few.
[1:17:11] Speaker 5: But but the version that we did with the Chameles,
[1:17:15] Speaker 5: Isaac was was uh. I don't want to bust him out,
[1:17:20] Speaker 5: but he was. He was a little romandoumly fascinated with
[1:17:24] Speaker 5: one of the girls with that. Because we weren't even
[1:17:26] Speaker 5: they were not looked upon it as an act that
[1:17:28] Speaker 5: we're gonna let's go into and we're gonna record this
[1:17:30] Speaker 5: s group called the Chameles. We knew them Mary and
[1:17:32] Speaker 5: And and Milk. We knew them, but when Isaac come
[1:17:37] Speaker 5: he said, man, we ought to record record them? He said,
[1:17:41] Speaker 5: what he said, Well, so we did. And one of
[1:17:46] Speaker 5: the banner things that we did, the one banner thing
[1:17:50] Speaker 5: that we did that I just s marvel. It was
[1:17:53] Speaker 5: as long as I got you. And that was also
[1:17:56] Speaker 5: one of those things that we naturally felled the power of.
[1:18:00] Speaker 5: And when we just wrote the song and then Barbara,
[1:18:03] Speaker 5: who is the least singer of it, her text on
[1:18:06] Speaker 5: it was amazing. Isaak is singing background on some of
[1:18:10] Speaker 5: the parts in the record. Wow, that's not all the
[1:18:13] Speaker 5: girl was saying, so so so it's it's It was
[1:18:17] Speaker 5: one of those things that I was shocked at how
[1:18:21] Speaker 5: it ended up being sampled so much. Even the Nicole
[1:18:24] Speaker 5: bus sample of it. I mean, that's Barbara singing that
[1:18:27] Speaker 5: part of it on the record. That's the actual record
[1:18:31] Speaker 5: on on you on the cod Okay section of it.
[1:18:35] Speaker 2: You know, we gotta mention you've also worked with the
[1:18:39] Speaker 2: legendary Cissy Houston and the Sweet Inspirations.
[1:18:43] Speaker 5: Not Cissy but but the Sweetest Races because Sissy wasn't.
[1:18:47] Speaker 2: She left the group at the time.
[1:18:48] Speaker 5: Yeah, she left the group at the time. Yeah, if
[1:18:51] Speaker 5: it was three of them at the time. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah,
[1:18:55] Speaker 5: Sissy wasn't with them, and and wishes and dishes and
[1:18:59] Speaker 5: and you're wrong when you're don't get it at the
[1:19:00] Speaker 5: home of those songs and sisters not on that.
[1:19:03] Speaker 2: So were the Emotions the only group that weren't necessarily
[1:19:07] Speaker 2: quote unquote homegrown. Was the main protocol of Stax Records
[1:19:12] Speaker 2: to just have like Memphis Homegroom talent or like, how
[1:19:16] Speaker 2: did do you know how the Emotions came to the
[1:19:18] Speaker 2: label and what was it like working with them?
[1:19:21] Speaker 5: Hervis Staples bought the Emotions to us.
[1:19:23] Speaker 1: Oh okay, all right.
[1:19:24] Speaker 5: Yeah, and he brought him to Isaac and I and
[1:19:27] Speaker 5: they were very very young, sixteen years old, very very young.
[1:19:31] Speaker 5: Sheila was younger than sixteen. Well I think Wonder was
[1:19:34] Speaker 5: the oldest one, I believe, right. But Purvis bought them
[1:19:39] Speaker 5: to Isaac and I take a listen to and their
[1:19:41] Speaker 5: father was Joe was like a little guitar player. He
[1:19:45] Speaker 5: wanted to be a part of the group. He was
[1:19:46] Speaker 5: their father. And so we listened to them and we
[1:19:50] Speaker 5: said that Joe wanted to be a part of the
[1:19:52] Speaker 5: group because he was impressed with you know, Pop Staples.
[1:19:55] Speaker 5: You know with the Staples, and so we said if
[1:19:59] Speaker 5: we would do them, we'd have to do just the girls,
[1:20:03] Speaker 5: and so we did the Girl but but purpose was
[1:20:06] Speaker 5: the one that brought them to us. Wow.
[1:20:09] Speaker 2: Okay, so you you mentioned it earlier. I was saving
[1:20:12] Speaker 2: it for now, but you gotta tell me, like, what
[1:20:15] Speaker 2: is the story behind I'm afraid the Masquerade is over?
[1:20:18] Speaker 1: Because every time I.
[1:20:22] Speaker 2: Yo, every time I have a breakup, like just that
[1:20:28] Speaker 2: is one of the saddest songs ever. And now and
[1:20:31] Speaker 2: that's another example of like they're crazy arrangements in that song.
[1:20:36] Speaker 2: And now that you're telling me that you guys are
[1:20:38] Speaker 2: going on phillion and all that stuff.
[1:20:39] Speaker 5: And iterant, I'm walking around the room to tell what was.
[1:20:44] Speaker 1: The genesis of that song?
[1:20:46] Speaker 5: Actually behind the second album which had hang On Sloopy
[1:20:52] Speaker 5: on it. I don't know if you ever heard that. Yeah, yeah,
[1:20:56] Speaker 5: but I didn't quite hit the mark with hang On Sloopy,
[1:21:00] Speaker 5: But I like the concept that I had would hang
[1:21:03] Speaker 5: on stupid. So when I came up with the concept
[1:21:04] Speaker 5: of creating acting scenes inside of the next project, I
[1:21:09] Speaker 5: knew I was going to create something different. So I
[1:21:12] Speaker 5: wanted to have acting scenes.
[1:21:14] Speaker 2: Who is who's the woman? Who's the woman that was one.
[1:21:18] Speaker 5: Of my secretary but also my wife. My second wife
[1:21:23] Speaker 5: was also in that. That's that when the card scene,
[1:21:26] Speaker 5: I come up running, Uh, that's my second wife. The
[1:21:30] Speaker 5: girl I'm talking to about the girl, yeah that I'm
[1:21:34] Speaker 5: fascinated with the girl that was actually my wife.
[1:21:38] Speaker 2: Wait time, now there's two women on that song.
[1:21:41] Speaker 5: Yeah. Well, if you go to the very beginning not
[1:21:43] Speaker 5: note on that song. If you go to the very beginning.
[1:21:45] Speaker 2: Of the album, yes, I don't know that I want yes.
[1:21:48] Speaker 5: Yeah, And and I go you open the door, and
[1:21:51] Speaker 5: I go into this party and I'm talking, well, the
[1:21:56] Speaker 5: girl that's talking to me about the other girl that
[1:22:01] Speaker 5: was my way. I wrote off the story as I
[1:22:04] Speaker 5: would go, and I then selected the songs that would
[1:22:08] Speaker 5: fit the concept of where I was going to take
[1:22:11] Speaker 5: the story to. If you noticed the last song on
[1:22:13] Speaker 5: it was Airplane Ticket Bus Ride, Can I Borrow Your Car?
[1:22:17] Speaker 5: I wrote that at the last minute because I had
[1:22:20] Speaker 5: gone through the whole storyline and didn't have the closed
[1:22:23] Speaker 5: out song. But the Masqueraders overcame about where I wanted
[1:22:28] Speaker 5: to create something that gave the essences of all the
[1:22:31] Speaker 5: things that are having prior to that period in the
[1:22:35] Speaker 5: album where this acting scenes. So if you notice the
[1:22:39] Speaker 5: breakdown comes and I started rapping, well, I didn't have
[1:22:45] Speaker 5: it written out. I knew the concept. I didn't have
[1:22:48] Speaker 5: the rap written out on that song. I knew the
[1:22:50] Speaker 5: concept and I talked the concept after I did the
[1:22:53] Speaker 5: head arrangers for the parts.
[1:22:55] Speaker 2: So you're singing it as the band sort of reading
[1:22:58] Speaker 2: your face at the same time.
[1:22:59] Speaker 5: No, no, I did the track first. In my mind,
[1:23:02] Speaker 5: I'm looking at I'm going through the motion of this,
[1:23:05] Speaker 5: feel inside of the various transitions. That's why the piano
[1:23:08] Speaker 5: part that's running playing the piano, I'm humming the piano
[1:23:12] Speaker 5: part for running to play the signature has been saving
[1:23:17] Speaker 5: all this time. That's one of those things where a
[1:23:19] Speaker 5: piano player and that's what we want to play more.
[1:23:22] Speaker 5: Just play that and stop just that and when I
[1:23:26] Speaker 5: clue you stop on that. That's what that was. But
[1:23:30] Speaker 5: so so after that was done, now I get rid
[1:23:33] Speaker 5: of the sing the song. Now I do the rap,
[1:23:36] Speaker 5: and I'm feeling where the parts are before I do
[1:23:39] Speaker 5: the horns, and I'm feeling all of that and I'm
[1:23:42] Speaker 5: making I promise you, I'm making it up come to
[1:23:47] Speaker 5: an extended part, not the actually gotter song. I'm making
[1:23:50] Speaker 5: it up the whole time because I know where the
[1:23:53] Speaker 5: storyline is going to ultimately end up and where it's
[1:23:55] Speaker 5: gonna lead to make song.
[1:23:57] Speaker 1: But not that I ever counted bars.
[1:24:00] Speaker 2: But in your mind you're like, Okay, we're gonna do
[1:24:02] Speaker 2: thirty two bars of a break and I'll figure out
[1:24:05] Speaker 2: something to say in these thirty two bars. No, and
[1:24:07] Speaker 2: then it's over, like you.
[1:24:10] Speaker 5: Know now what I know? By kind Bob, we do that,
[1:24:14] Speaker 5: but not on this song. I said you got. I'm
[1:24:17] Speaker 5: walking around the room talking in the microphone, directing cats
[1:24:23] Speaker 5: in the microphone. I'm going around the room while the
[1:24:26] Speaker 5: track is while I've got the bed foundation of the
[1:24:28] Speaker 5: track right, Oh my mama, I'm telling you this how
[1:24:32] Speaker 5: this was done. I'm walking around the room harming the parts.
[1:24:37] Speaker 5: I don't know how many bars I'm gonna make this.
[1:24:41] Speaker 5: I just want to make the emotional connectivity be a
[1:24:44] Speaker 5: finif enough for me to feel something I need to
[1:24:47] Speaker 5: feel when it's time to make the transition. That's why
[1:24:50] Speaker 5: you hear some call flops and things inside of the track. Listen.
[1:24:54] Speaker 5: I know, you know, you know, that's why you hear
[1:24:57] Speaker 5: some of that. But after this of it a lot
[1:25:01] Speaker 5: of that.
[1:25:03] Speaker 2: Listeners of QLs. Right now, I'm doing the Jim Carrey
[1:25:08] Speaker 2: dumb and dumber realization.
[1:25:11] Speaker 1: Jeff, I can't believe this.
[1:25:17] Speaker 2: Wow. Okay, I was.
[1:25:19] Speaker 4: Asked, David, were you a fan by chance of David Axelrod?
[1:25:23] Speaker 2: Did you listen to any of his stuff?
[1:25:26] Speaker 4: Really?
[1:25:27] Speaker 2: Okay?
[1:25:28] Speaker 4: I just both of y'all always like, oh yeah, both
[1:25:34] Speaker 4: of you guys, y'all kind of have like this really
[1:25:36] Speaker 4: dark yeah, dramatic, like big uh, Like it's it's big
[1:25:41] Speaker 4: and like beautiful, but it's also kind of dark and
[1:25:44] Speaker 4: kind of a Carver as well. And it's really classy.
[1:25:46] Speaker 4: It's elegant, but it's really like dark and it can
[1:25:49] Speaker 4: be like, oh you listen to that, listen to it
[1:25:52] Speaker 4: in the dark, you might be freaked out little bit,
[1:25:55] Speaker 4: but really beautiful stuff. Man. I just I just wondered
[1:25:58] Speaker 4: if y'all were fans of each other.
[1:26:00] Speaker 5: Well, well, you know what I would tell you this, man,
[1:26:03] Speaker 5: I am. I feel that I've been so blessed because
[1:26:07] Speaker 5: what come has come through me is the grace of
[1:26:11] Speaker 5: the man upstairs. Because I have a nonprofit program where
[1:26:15] Speaker 5: I teach songwriting, record producing, record all of that called
[1:26:18] Speaker 5: the constroint MT it's ten years old. A lot of
[1:26:21] Speaker 5: what you get coming out of ificent kids that have
[1:26:23] Speaker 5: gone through my program in songwriting. All this's got got
[1:26:26] Speaker 5: one hundred.
[1:26:26] Speaker 8: And thirty some videos with everybody Stevie Baries, Philip Bailey,
[1:26:31] Speaker 8: Jimmy jam Bobby Womag, Edie le Verge I mean, let usy,
[1:26:35] Speaker 8: I mean on video talking about their concepts of the
[1:26:39] Speaker 8: creating process.
[1:26:40] Speaker 5: So all of this, I had to come up with
[1:26:43] Speaker 5: a set way to understand how I do what I
[1:26:47] Speaker 5: do for the success of those things to come out
[1:26:49] Speaker 5: of that, because if I was relying totally on how
[1:26:52] Speaker 5: I felt, people don't care about how you feel. They
[1:26:55] Speaker 5: care about how you make them feel. So I had
[1:26:57] Speaker 5: to find a way to make the magic of that
[1:27:00] Speaker 5: be resonating to others. And I had to also know
[1:27:03] Speaker 5: in order to replicate it again, find some way to
[1:27:06] Speaker 5: understand it. And part of what Isaac and I would
[1:27:10] Speaker 5: talk about, and sometimes he would think I was crazy
[1:27:12] Speaker 5: because I was so far into that, but it was
[1:27:15] Speaker 5: a gift and Maurice White and I came from Virginia Street. Maurice,
[1:27:20] Speaker 5: if you read this book, you see that he talked
[1:27:22] Speaker 5: about me being one of the first persons he ran
[1:27:24] Speaker 5: the name earth Winn in firedown too. Why I flew
[1:27:26] Speaker 5: to La I was a hot producer. Maurice's with Ramsay
[1:27:30] Speaker 5: planned the Hong Kong by the Cintray Plaza hotel. I
[1:27:32] Speaker 5: flew to La because he wanted to tell me something
[1:27:36] Speaker 5: he did to give. The next day we walking up sunset.
[1:27:38] Speaker 5: He's going to tell your concept. I gat Maurice created
[1:27:41] Speaker 5: earth Wind and off of a concept in the direction
[1:27:44] Speaker 5: that he had from the gift go and knew exactly
[1:27:47] Speaker 5: what he was going to go in and the creative
[1:27:49] Speaker 5: process because he knew he wanted to have an identity
[1:27:53] Speaker 5: that created a uniqueness that was totally him. That is
[1:27:57] Speaker 5: the essence of what comes out of Memphis in such
[1:27:59] Speaker 5: unique way. He said, no one can can understand it,
[1:28:01] Speaker 5: including me. Is say, if it's a God given gift?
[1:28:05] Speaker 2: Was was Marius's uh metaphysical.
[1:28:11] Speaker 1: Direction?
[1:28:12] Speaker 2: Was it jarring to you at the time, because you
[1:28:15] Speaker 2: know what Marius was trying to convey with earth Wind
[1:28:19] Speaker 2: and Fire was like the spirit, which which is kind
[1:28:21] Speaker 2: of the exact opposite of even though he was using
[1:28:25] Speaker 2: gospel overturns in the Southern Church, but he's really using
[1:28:32] Speaker 2: metaphysics and things outside of westernized Christianity. Was that a
[1:28:37] Speaker 2: little weird for you at the time, Like what you
[1:28:40] Speaker 2: get into Marius? Like, like, how did you perceive this,
[1:28:44] Speaker 2: this kind of spirituality that Marius was was conveying with
[1:28:50] Speaker 2: with the band.
[1:28:51] Speaker 5: We're walking up the street and when he said, tell
[1:28:54] Speaker 5: me what you think about this earth when in fire?
[1:29:02] Speaker 5: Consider the time period that we're talking about, Ohio players,
[1:29:08] Speaker 5: mm hmm. All of the men go down there. He
[1:29:13] Speaker 5: comes a guy says, earth when in fire, and this
[1:29:20] Speaker 5: is the concept David, And then I'm gonna fuse jazz.
[1:29:23] Speaker 5: But he ran all of that down to me. He's
[1:29:27] Speaker 5: gonna fuse that inside of it. What I thought was
[1:29:31] Speaker 5: he's gonna make something work, because we always talked about
[1:29:36] Speaker 5: how I stumbled up from the spirituality of what I
[1:29:38] Speaker 5: was doing to make it work. And I just believe
[1:29:41] Speaker 5: he was gonna make it work. I just didn't know
[1:29:42] Speaker 5: how he was going to accomplish it in the climate
[1:29:45] Speaker 5: that we were living in. Because he was it was
[1:29:47] Speaker 5: going to be so innovative, it had to be. But
[1:29:50] Speaker 5: when I heard the sound of what he did, because
[1:29:53] Speaker 5: he had a group before or winning fire, when I
[1:29:55] Speaker 5: heard the sound of what he did with the group
[1:29:58] Speaker 5: he was, it was over and we stayed like this.
[1:30:03] Speaker 5: I was I would fly to la when when Maurice
[1:30:05] Speaker 5: had the parkass just to get him in the car
[1:30:08] Speaker 5: and ride in the street because he was through touring.
[1:30:11] Speaker 5: We were that close and we talked up and toil
[1:30:13] Speaker 5: he left it so his thought about what he was
[1:30:15] Speaker 5: going to do because he had that thought about what
[1:30:19] Speaker 5: those processes was going to be and what the musician
[1:30:21] Speaker 5: was going to be before he put it together. The
[1:30:23] Speaker 5: only thing he told me differently while we were on
[1:30:25] Speaker 5: suns he said, I'm going to bring verdein out here
[1:30:27] Speaker 5: to California. He told me that. But other than that,
[1:30:32] Speaker 5: he was going to put all of those ingredients together
[1:30:34] Speaker 5: and he did it. But yeah, I just because we
[1:30:39] Speaker 5: worked off of concepts in the direction and identity and
[1:30:43] Speaker 5: all of those things we lived off of that. I
[1:30:46] Speaker 5: just didn't know he would put it off. He did.
[1:30:49] Speaker 5: I believed in.
[1:30:54] Speaker 2: There is one important question I forgot to ask as
[1:30:57] Speaker 2: a kid that grew up in a three thousand album household,
[1:31:02] Speaker 2: and especially a kid that was afraid of clowns dog,
[1:31:11] Speaker 2: who was the who was the artistic visionary behind the
[1:31:16] Speaker 2: album cover for Victim of the Joke?
[1:31:20] Speaker 5: And when he says you can't handle the truth, Listen,
[1:31:26] Speaker 5: that's a joke. That's a joke. I didn't know how
[1:31:28] Speaker 5: smart I was. I just thought that because I had
[1:31:32] Speaker 5: some Tennessee walker horses out in Shelby Farms. I just thought,
[1:31:36] Speaker 5: I want to do this cover and I want to
[1:31:39] Speaker 5: have a clown outfit on and I want to be
[1:31:41] Speaker 5: I want to sit on a drum because I want
[1:31:44] Speaker 5: to make this an opera. Called it victim of the
[1:31:47] Speaker 5: joke I wanted to be, and I want to make
[1:31:49] Speaker 5: it like who's the clown? Well and so, but this
[1:31:54] Speaker 5: is before I wrote out the script. I had that.
[1:31:57] Speaker 5: So that was one of those things whereuse its just said,
[1:32:01] Speaker 5: it came from another kind of space, just like when
[1:32:04] Speaker 5: something is wrong, came from another kind of space. Hold
[1:32:07] Speaker 5: on coming came from another kind of space. The toilet
[1:32:09] Speaker 5: was there, but it was somewhere else. When it's just
[1:32:13] Speaker 5: it's from another kind of space.
[1:32:15] Speaker 2: When was the ending of Stacks as we knew it?
[1:32:18] Speaker 5: The ending of Stacks happened with Isaac still there, me
[1:32:22] Speaker 5: still in charge of five labels ahead of an RM.
[1:32:26] Speaker 5: Steve Cropper was gone, Doug Dunn was gone. Al Jackson Jr.
[1:32:32] Speaker 5: Was there, and so it was. It was a situation
[1:32:36] Speaker 5: where we didn't know what was going on with the
[1:32:39] Speaker 5: business part of the company, but we knew that al
[1:32:43] Speaker 5: bail It became such a revered person, certainly after the
[1:32:47] Speaker 5: watch Stacks that we did, which was amazing within itself,
[1:32:53] Speaker 5: until it was almost I had the feeling that that
[1:32:56] Speaker 5: the business white community where the biggest were when it
[1:33:00] Speaker 5: found out that because we had a line of credit
[1:33:01] Speaker 5: with a particular bank there, when they found out that
[1:33:04] Speaker 5: this this black man was was what he was was doing,
[1:33:06] Speaker 5: what he was doing, that it was almost they called
[1:33:09] Speaker 5: the line and came at us in such a way
[1:33:13] Speaker 5: that they got al Bill indicted eighteen indicting it and
[1:33:19] Speaker 5: tried to destroy him foreclothes on the company. And the
[1:33:24] Speaker 5: last thing we knew was Isaac couldn't get any money
[1:33:28] Speaker 5: his money which he it was millions of dollars there
[1:33:32] Speaker 5: and the company actually folded because of foreclosure. Isaac then
[1:33:39] Speaker 5: left Stacks when it was foreclosed and then signed with
[1:33:42] Speaker 5: the other label, but he didn't he didn't sign with
[1:33:44] Speaker 5: another label before Stacks closed. Wow, And so but it
[1:33:49] Speaker 5: was it was an attack on destroying a powerful company
[1:33:53] Speaker 5: that was creating a great amount of jobs and a
[1:33:56] Speaker 5: tremendous amount of notoriety for Memphis, Tennessee. And you put
[1:33:59] Speaker 5: that with what Willie Mitchell was doing. We were a
[1:34:02] Speaker 5: power base in a city that was seaked in a
[1:34:07] Speaker 5: in a kind of bigoty that was not in its
[1:34:09] Speaker 5: own interest because the credit bills that we was bringing
[1:34:12] Speaker 5: to the city was tremendous in itself.
[1:34:14] Speaker 4: They were you around when Al Bell formed Bellmark, his
[1:34:18] Speaker 4: his indie label that they put out they ended up
[1:34:21] Speaker 4: putting out there it is, but.
[1:34:22] Speaker 5: Uh yeah, he l moved to California when he did that.
[1:34:26] Speaker 5: You know, he had an office building on Hollywood there.
[1:34:30] Speaker 5: You know, I was definitely wrong when Al when Stax
[1:34:33] Speaker 5: was over and everybody thought Al was over. Al he
[1:34:37] Speaker 5: ended up, you know, creating baill Mark. As you said,
[1:34:41] Speaker 5: Wait a minute, he was. He was still in a
[1:34:45] Speaker 5: brilliant mind.
[1:34:45] Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think he did. He did Prince the
[1:34:47] Speaker 4: most Beautiful Girl in the World.
[1:34:48] Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, I forgot in Motown and Motown
[1:34:53] Speaker 3: say what Al.
[1:34:55] Speaker 5: Bell worked with Barry Guardy in Motown.
[1:34:58] Speaker 4: For the Bells, them Bells. I'm trying to check that.
[1:35:03] Speaker 5: Out, Joe. You know, I'm gonna say I've listened to
[1:35:05] Speaker 5: you guys, and I just muddled and how much information
[1:35:10] Speaker 5: Wasn't it.
[1:35:12] Speaker 2: Was Fantasy Records at all associated with al Bell because
[1:35:16] Speaker 2: there was a period in the in the early Arts,
[1:35:18] Speaker 2: like in two thousand and whatnot, in which ah damn,
[1:35:22] Speaker 2: see I'm messing up right now. One of the executives
[1:35:25] Speaker 2: that used to work at Geffen who signed me, went
[1:35:29] Speaker 2: to Fantasy and was like, yes, we have all the
[1:35:32] Speaker 2: Fantasy masters and all the Stacks masters.
[1:35:34] Speaker 5: Like can I can I say? Of course? Was that
[1:35:38] Speaker 5: was that Erny Singleton?
[1:35:40] Speaker 2: I know any Singleton? But no it was not him.
[1:35:42] Speaker 5: No, okay, okay, because I only worked for Fantasy period.
[1:35:46] Speaker 2: Okay, but okay, So I guess they connected in the
[1:35:49] Speaker 2: early arts.
[1:35:50] Speaker 5: Well you know how to Fantasy deal happened? Right?
[1:35:53] Speaker 2: No, I don't know, okay.
[1:35:55] Speaker 5: Stax's closed was totally closed in seventy six. Here comes
[1:35:59] Speaker 5: to people to me and asked me, would I create
[1:36:04] Speaker 5: a seven and a half tape of what was in
[1:36:07] Speaker 5: the Stacked library? And would I do that? Because they
[1:36:11] Speaker 5: didn't know what it was. The bank had foreclosers and
[1:36:14] Speaker 5: they were just trying to figure out how to get
[1:36:17] Speaker 5: rid of stuff, and they didn't know what they had,
[1:36:19] Speaker 5: and so what happened was they had to pay me
[1:36:23] Speaker 5: one hundred thousand dollars to put seven and a half
[1:36:25] Speaker 5: takes together for about forty five minutes. And Fantasy Records
[1:36:29] Speaker 5: came to me after that and asked me what I
[1:36:33] Speaker 5: had up the label for them. What they wanted was
[1:36:39] Speaker 5: to release the catalog of the music, and they wanted
[1:36:43] Speaker 5: me to move to Berkeley, California. I said, I would
[1:36:47] Speaker 5: not move to Berkeley, California if you answered me doing it.
[1:36:49] Speaker 5: I would have to do it in Memphis, and I
[1:36:51] Speaker 5: also would have to have the right to sign some
[1:36:54] Speaker 5: of the artists to the label and you release records
[1:36:57] Speaker 5: on them. We said, we don't really want to do
[1:37:00] Speaker 5: I said, well then I'm not interested. Well, they would
[1:37:02] Speaker 5: not have known what to do with the catalog, so
[1:37:05] Speaker 5: they made the deal with me. Ernie Singleton, who later
[1:37:08] Speaker 5: became the president of MCA, and that's why we close
[1:37:10] Speaker 5: to this day, was working for Fantasy Records. Another guy
[1:37:14] Speaker 5: by the name of Bob Orshey was working there. I
[1:37:16] Speaker 5: released the record on the Emotions. They had a record
[1:37:19] Speaker 5: called Shouting Out Love. I released a record I have
[1:37:22] Speaker 5: on ISAAC called hot Bed. I released a record on
[1:37:25] Speaker 5: the barcade called Holy Ghosts. I released a record on
[1:37:30] Speaker 5: the Soldier and called Can't give Up a Good Thing.
[1:37:32] Speaker 5: I had another act by the name of Shown Up.
[1:37:34] Speaker 5: And if you go seventy eight should be and you
[1:37:38] Speaker 5: google seven eight Billboard magazine, you'll see there were four
[1:37:41] Speaker 5: or five records on the national charts of with Stax
[1:37:44] Speaker 5: Fantasy on it. And then when I told the guy,
[1:37:47] Speaker 5: we have an opportunity to be successful, he says, no,
[1:37:49] Speaker 5: I don't want I said we can be big. I
[1:37:51] Speaker 5: said I don't want to be big, and then I
[1:37:53] Speaker 5: left the deal because I realized what time that was. Wow.
[1:37:58] Speaker 5: I won't go deeper than that anyway. I wasn't interested
[1:38:01] Speaker 5: in that. So that's what happened. So after that, whoever
[1:38:05] Speaker 5: signed with Fantasy I lift in seventy eight, after those
[1:38:09] Speaker 5: records were released. If those records that I mentioned, Holy
[1:38:12] Speaker 5: ghost they hit on the barcades, that was after Saxic Clue.
[1:38:15] Speaker 2: I was going to ask what was it because they
[1:38:17] Speaker 2: were Mercury at the time, Like was that in their
[1:38:21] Speaker 2: that was just in the vaults or something that was.
[1:38:23] Speaker 5: I got that out of the vault, I got the
[1:38:25] Speaker 5: help out of Issa out of the bolt. I got
[1:38:27] Speaker 5: the help out of the emotions out of the vault. Ah,
[1:38:31] Speaker 5: I recalled it an ah see.
[1:38:34] Speaker 2: But because the thing is the Barks era I want
[1:38:38] Speaker 2: to know about is again the posts, you know, the
[1:38:43] Speaker 2: seventies barcades. But maybe you know the answer, with the
[1:38:47] Speaker 2: exception of Holy Ghost, why is every song they ever
[1:38:53] Speaker 2: released like derivative of someone else's hit? Like did they
[1:39:01] Speaker 2: think that we wouldn't put you and two together? That
[1:39:04] Speaker 2: shine was you know, earth wind fires on your face
[1:39:10] Speaker 2: or you know, shake your rump to the front might
[1:39:14] Speaker 2: be shining star, or like, were they just the type
[1:39:18] Speaker 2: of seventies band that would just get the forty five
[1:39:21] Speaker 2: of the moment, study that forty five and figure out, Okay,
[1:39:24] Speaker 2: what's our formula for that? Because literally Holy Ghost is
[1:39:28] Speaker 2: probably like even even on Stacks, like a song like
[1:39:35] Speaker 2: it's on the Cold Blooded records, like one of my
[1:39:37] Speaker 2: favorite Barkay's Joint, which is basically kind of derivative of
[1:39:41] Speaker 2: when the World's at Peace by the OJ's It's Wow.
[1:39:46] Speaker 5: No.
[1:39:47] Speaker 2: Literally, Jimmy jam and I like pretty much kept a
[1:39:51] Speaker 2: record of every song that the Barks has ever created.
[1:39:56] Speaker 2: Oh this is a song called a fighting fire with
[1:39:58] Speaker 2: fire or the Stack era Barcas, which you know it's
[1:40:03] Speaker 2: also a popular sample for hip hop. But there's almost
[1:40:07] Speaker 2: one element in every I mean even on those earlier records,
[1:40:12] Speaker 2: like they're sliding and family Stones dance to the music,
[1:40:15] Speaker 2: and it's like, don't stop, dance to the music. Don't stop.
[1:40:19] Speaker 2: Like were they not afraid that one day they might
[1:40:21] Speaker 2: get caught in the sort of litigation with.
[1:40:26] Speaker 5: Being well, you understand, the guy who would ended up
[1:40:29] Speaker 5: taking them over in total, who didn't have the control
[1:40:33] Speaker 5: of Stax Records and then being kept in a particular
[1:40:36] Speaker 5: direction that records could be sold on was a guy
[1:40:39] Speaker 5: by the name of Work with Us, by the name
[1:40:40] Speaker 5: of Alan Jones. Okay, Alan Jones became the producer, the
[1:40:45] Speaker 5: only producer and the manager of the Barcades, and he
[1:40:50] Speaker 5: came up with the direction that they were going to go.
[1:40:53] Speaker 5: In matter of fact, I'm going to be sure to
[1:40:55] Speaker 5: get James so you can interview that.
[1:40:57] Speaker 2: Yeah, please do us that salad, please please please.
[1:41:01] Speaker 5: It's done. But but so Alan was the one who
[1:41:05] Speaker 5: was giving them this this particular direction, and I would
[1:41:08] Speaker 5: rather I won't butch it up. I'm gonna get James
[1:41:11] Speaker 5: and he'll he'll, he would tell you asking about Alan
[1:41:13] Speaker 5: Jones and Larry Dobson, who was versatile and his vocal
[1:41:18] Speaker 5: could could immolate those be the Oklaha players or whoever.
[1:41:22] Speaker 2: Larry Donson is probably one of the most underrated soul cats,
[1:41:25] Speaker 2: still in fine form with it with his but yeah,
[1:41:29] Speaker 2: the legendary Alan Jones, who you know, I forgot to
[1:41:32] Speaker 2: ask about cold feet with Albert King and I'll play
[1:41:35] Speaker 2: the blues for you and all that stuff. Yes, legendary,
[1:41:38] Speaker 2: legendary man. This this is such an honor to just
[1:41:43] Speaker 2: to talk to you and finally get some in depth
[1:41:46] Speaker 2: stories from you, because we've never seen any feature linked
[1:41:49] Speaker 2: article on you or or anything. And you're You're just
[1:41:54] Speaker 2: a genius and a gentleman, and we thank you for
[1:41:57] Speaker 2: being on our show. Yeah, straight up man.
[1:42:00] Speaker 4: Shout out to DJ Khalil too. I'm put this together again.
[1:42:04] Speaker 2: Thank you. We appreciate you doing this. Unpaid Bill bruh,
[1:42:08] Speaker 2: you missed a you missed the masterpiece of an episode.
[1:42:13] Speaker 2: I gotta let you know you're on behalf of Sugar
[1:42:15] Speaker 2: Steve and font Ticcolo and Laya and Unpaid Phil and
[1:42:20] Speaker 2: the great David Porter.
[1:42:22] Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
[1:42:23] Speaker 2: It's another classic episode of Quest Love Supreme and we
[1:42:26] Speaker 2: will see you guys on the next go around. Thank you.
[1:42:40] Speaker 1: M'ST Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio. For
[1:42:47] Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
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