David Porter

Questlove Supreme's celebration of Black Music Month continues with an extraordinary 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.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. What's Up,
Ladies and gentlemen, This is another episode h Quest Love Supreme.
I mean it's quest Love, which means the family. Uh,
we got Layah. Hello, how are you?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
I'm well?

Speaker 3 (00:22):
Hello, sir doing well?

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Yeah, you're back in LA right now?

Speaker 3 (00:25):
I am back in La.

Speaker 4 (00:27):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Gloom and Doom, Yeah, Gloom and Doom Yeah, May Gray
June Gloom. People don't know this about La. Get it,
get it into it.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Okay, it's good to hear. Fan Takeolo is uh in
the blue room? Yeah, man, yeah, man, got a new
light bulb. But I think previously you're going purple.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
Yeah, I'm going purple.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
I went blue.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
I went cool. You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 5 (00:50):
We got a legend in the building with us today,
so you know, I tried to make it cool for him.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
So yeah, that's what it is.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Sugar Steve, what's up, bro? How you doing? Hi? Everybody?

Speaker 6 (01:03):
Everything's good, Everything's good.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Thank you, Steve. Ladies and gentlemen, I will say our
guest tonight is I mean, I feel like all of
our guests are legendary, super legendary, but our guest tonight
world famous. Songwriting Hall of Fame member, having damn near
pinned over close close to two thousand joints joints in

(01:26):
his illustrious career. He is the architect, in my opinion,
the architect of the sound of Memphis, you know, a
city that has rich musical history, and you know, as
a staff member, as a writer, as a producer for
Al Bell's legendary Stax label, he is given us so
much magic over the decades, along with this songwriting partner

(01:52):
Isaac Hayes, and on his own of course. You know
he's worked with too many legends. The name they're Sam
and Dave's otis writing Barks, Carlo Thomas, the Emotions, Albert King,
Rufus Thomas and of course Johnny watch out for jo D. Taylor.
Even if those names I mentioned are slightly before your time,

(02:16):
I will say that, you know, if you're a hip
hop head, can we say that his composition might be
the musical backdrop of the East West La Beef?

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Oh man, Oh my god?

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Well no, no, no, because the word is that you know,
pop got yeah, pop sort of felt that you know
who shot you was about him, which you know, we
have clear evidence that Biggie did that rhyme with Keith
Murray for the Mary J. Blige interlude, you know, long ago.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
But the truth didn't matter at that point. The truth
didn't matter.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah, the truth didn't matter. I guess the perception was
bigger than what reality was. You know, we live in
a time where facts don't matter, and so I will
just say that, you know, between like Biggie and Wu
Tang and Kane and m P and Will Smith and
so many others have used as his work. You know,
we're we're in the presence of a legend, and we're

(03:15):
honored to have the one and only Great David Porter
on Quest Love Supreme. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yes, yes, as how.

Speaker 4 (03:24):
They reed said, how do you talk that? It's really
an honor?

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Ques, you laid the foundation. So I'm just you know,
regurgitating your your life's work. So where are you right now?
Are you still a members?

Speaker 4 (03:38):
No? I'm in New York. I was speaker at the
ai mp A summit, which I left there and came
right here. That's why I have this loud jacket on.
I was along with your fan and your friend Doug
it Fresh. He wanted me to tell you.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
How Oh okay, we had doug on the show.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah, yeah, you know. I was going to ask, like,
do you normally dressed this swinky every day?

Speaker 3 (04:06):
Now?

Speaker 4 (04:07):
A sweatsuit guy? That's me okay right now, loud jacket
on it, but he's folk. But Dougie wanted me to
be sure to tell you, and yes, there's an honor
for me to be here.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
Thank you. What you guys, can you tell us your
first musical memory?

Speaker 4 (04:25):
Well, you mentioned one of the cornerstones of those memories,
and that's Maurice. I was born on the Dating Street
in Memphis, Tennessee. My next door neighbor was a family
called the Cunninghams, and they were drummers and we sang
up the street at a church called Rosi, a Baptist
church where if you read Maurice's autobaccay, he mentioned that

(04:45):
in his Bible, but which is true? And uh, Kelly
Cunningham and Leander Cunningham were the brothers that were older them.
Carled Cunningham, who just so happened to be the drummer
that was an airplane cress with all this reading. He
was the original drum for the barricades photos up the
street on the left hand side of the street was
Maurice White and and we came together eight nine years

(05:09):
old singing a Rose Here Baptist church right on on
that same dead end street. And the stimulus for the
impressions and the motivation for creativity and people making us
thinking that we had some singing talent because they were
clapping and shouting, and we didn't realize it because they
were worshiping. We thought it was all about as young kids.

(05:30):
But the motivation to want to have the passion for
music where they stem out of that experience.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
So you were nine years old when you started playing
in your church.

Speaker 4 (05:40):
Well, actually I was before nine. We were going to church.
Uh yeah. But but actually singing in a in a
kind of a quartet is not the right kind of
where but loop heads singing together Linn Kelly and Maurice
and I was about eighty nine years old. We were
going to Rose Elementary School and and singing and church

(06:00):
on Sunday. That was the real experience of learning how
to feel good about doing that in front of people.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
And you were born in Memphis, Tennessee.

Speaker 4 (06:10):
I was born at two ninety Virginia Street, uh, up
against a building called Coal Manufacturing Company, which was the
last last house at the bottom of the hill. When
it rained, water would roll down the hill and up
against that that tin building and very close to going
into our home. And the next door neighbor was the
cunning Hams, which which Carl was the drumming and right

(06:33):
up going up the hill was Maurice And that was
it right there.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
Like I know, a lot of legends were born in Memphis.
Aretha Franklin was born in Memphis, was she not?

Speaker 4 (06:42):
She was, Yes, she was. Her father preached, Reverend Franklin
preached my father's funeral, you know, at Great Whitstone Baptist Church. Yeah.
When I first when I told Reapa that years later,
she just blew her away because she had recorded I
Take what I Want one of the compositions bizic and
I And I told then she just blew her away. Yeah. Yes,

(07:03):
she was born in Memphis, Tennessee, right there, Fourth Street.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
So just tell me, like the general, like, why is
that town so musical?

Speaker 4 (07:11):
Well, there, in nineteen forty seven forty eight, there was
a radio the first black radio station in the country
was WDA in Memphis, Tennessee. And the fact that before that,
all of the music you heard was you know, the
pop favorite kind kind of vibe. And so the energy

(07:32):
for the originality and I'm going to speak for in
just a second didn't come to bear until WDA started
playing all of those amazingly emotional, connecting music by black artists.
And the one thing that happened that was really really
meaningful and impactful on young kids during that time was
the individuality of artists or artists. You know, back then

(07:55):
you had a four piece rhythm based drums, guitar and keys,
and so in order for that kind of magic to
happen in a unique kind of way, artists that you
will listening to on the radio, one thing that is
a he had. One thing that really manifested itself to
you was the individuality of artists. You listened to Chuck
Berry and what he was doing with the guitar and
his rhythm essences of how he was doing what he

(08:16):
was doing, even though he had a rhythm of tumplment,
but the focus was his guitar playing. And you listened
to Little Richard and his piano playing and what he
was doing. The individuality, in addition to his persona as
a singer, was was his personality. Fat's Dombao with the
same piano playing. The individuality of Fats was the Fats y,
So you were you were able Jackie Wilson with the

(08:37):
range and the magic in his tones and things you
were looking at as a youngster, those kind of impressions
that were in turn motivating you to understand that the
magic happened through music. Was trying to find something that
identified you and your uniqueness, and so starting from that
kind of foundation, all of us started trying to find
that magic. So when you mentioned Al Jackson, his father

(08:59):
was a musician and a drummer, but L started finding
his own niche out of an individualistic way for himself.
And by the time we go to Stacks with the
slope floor in the room, the Stacks was an old
movie theater and the floor was sloping. We'd get in
there during our records. L would be at the bottom
of the floor. We'd be doing the vocal off the

(09:19):
top of the floor with Sam and Dave or Johnny Taylor,
Aby King or whoever. Isaac would be the mid floor
and Steve would be a little higher than that. L
heard of the lake when he would play and his
pocket was feeling where the true essence of the tempo
was with that laid back kind of essence that was
coming throughout the room. And so but everybody would work
to find the individuality because of the motivation of the

(09:40):
music that we was hearing coming from WDA. Even with
the BD King before he blew up, you know, there
was that magic that he was finding it within himself.
Bobby Blue Blind and Johnny A's and all these people
had their own persona of which was also in turn
motivating us with aspirations to do music to try to
find that for ourselves.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
I'm glad I have you now because you know, even
though it's been kind of six months since the release
of the movie. As a director, Baz Luhrmann kind of
has us at arm's length a little bit with his
You know, it's when you make Hollywood biopics, it's either like,

(10:23):
did these facts really happen? Or is this a Hollywood tale?
And I want to believe the Elvis movie, but I
got to hear from someone that was at least in proximity.
The way they portrayed it was like, you know, he
was just hanging around the way amongst the brothers and whatnot.

(10:44):
I mean, is that a fact or was that more
embellishing beers.

Speaker 4 (10:49):
Lhermann came to Limpus and asked if he could talk
to me, So he came to my studio Memphis. The
reason he came to the studio in Memphis because A
did a special called The Searcher on Elvis Presley. And
if you saw the Searcher, which they showed it for
a couple of days in a row, and it was

(11:11):
a few years ago, then you saw me talking about
Elvis on that special. The reason that I was able
to talk about elverscouse when I was a kid walking
up from the Virginia Street where I was born, up
to Beale Street, which wasn't that very far. Maurice did
the same thing. We would see people because we were
not able to go in the clubs or anything like.

(11:32):
We would just walk up the street and just see people.
I was a poor kid, like I said, from a
large family. My dad was died when I was two
years old, and so I had a little bit of
freedom of beautiful, amazing mother. So I was able to
go and just with these aspirations that want to do music,
to get those that kind of vibe. And so there
was this young kid white kid hanging around the street.

(11:52):
I didn't know it was Elvis Presley or anything like that,
nothing akin to that. But I've found out that that well,
in fact, Elvis the white boy that wanted to sing black.
And so what I did was I really told bears
where Elvis got the vine from. Elvis got divine from
Roy Hamilton. And if you saw the movie The Search It,

(12:13):
the reason that the name Roy Hamilton is mentioned in
the movie is because I told him that's where it
came from. Otis Black Whale, who was the writer who
didn't get all of the money and certainly didn't get
all this his writer credit, was a writer of so
much of the Elvis still and if you listen to
Otis if he was alive, you see where Oldis also
got it from. But but Roy Hamilton, the flavor and
the nuances of Elvers singing came from Roy Hamilton. Check

(12:36):
us out of some of Mieri to ketlog.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
I used to Yeah, I used to listen to I
think Isaac covered uh don't let right, yes, right. So
my dad, my dad used to play the Roy Hamilton version.
I always thought that was Elvis. The turntable was too
high for me to see like what was on the label?
So yeah, yeah, For the longest I thought that was
an Elvis Presley song.

Speaker 4 (12:59):
So what with this being straight up in real there
was an authenticity about Elvis' comment being influenced by black
artists and that that was in fact true. Elvis would
come go to it was an event that wd I
would hold in Memphis called the Good Real Review. Elvis
would show backstage at the Goody Review. There are pictures

(13:19):
of Elvis with Rufus Thomas and so, but that's real now.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
So was he the only white gentleman to do that?
Is that why I feel so special?

Speaker 7 (13:28):
Because he was just by himself.

Speaker 4 (13:29):
Not listen. The individuality of black talents was a template
that American used to break talents like that them finding
ways to replicate some abnuances of black talents was the
cornerstone became whatever you want to call it, even up
into this day. So no, no, he was not. He

(13:49):
was not the only.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
One, and not the first I'm guessing either, just the
maybe the most talented.

Speaker 4 (13:55):
He just blew up, but he know he was. There
was so much magic happening on Beal Street. This is
famous fear the Street Memphis. A lot of poor people,
but people having a good time inside of what they
had to deal with, and that was the place they
would go to do it. And there were clubs and
the like on that street. That was magic. And like

(14:16):
I said, the individuality of people being proud of who
they were would manifest itself, not only in the way
people would perform on stages, but even the way a
guy who may have been working on the garment shop
were dressed for the weekend, just be having a good
time in his own world. In the bias and the
racism that was going on in that prevent time, you
could not kill the spirit of a people, and that

(14:38):
was what it was. And then there was some folks
lock in the elvis would come and hang around that
vibe and that spirit, and obviously we eventually found out
what it ended up being for.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
Well, let me ask you, so, you know, having come
of age in the mid seventies, early eighties, I'll say
that you know your average soul singer is pretty much
at this point like emulating Stevie Wonder like with this
soulful voice and whatnot. And so you know, I've I've,
of course, because I wasn't born during the time when

(15:10):
Elvis first came out, I didn't know for sand like,
so everything I learned was, you know, sort of like
later in my life. And I always knew, you know,
that the theory of like, you know, if I could
find a white boy that sings like a black guy,
I'll make a billion dollars from you know, Colonel Tom
Parker saying that. But like, in your opinion, was Elvis's
voice in your opinion as a true blue Memphis in

(15:33):
that in that era, was that the actual voice of
a black guy? Like, was it if you were to
put him more, was it sort of.

Speaker 5 (15:41):
Like Bobby Carwell, well, yeah, I know I agree with
the Roy Hamilton thing, But is that.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
Sort of snarling thing that was gonna was that the
actual voice of because if I'm thinking of that time period,
I'm thinking more like Ray Charles and whatnot. But is
it just was it just typical for black singers to
have that sort of voice that those hasn't No, No,
you got to.

Speaker 4 (16:07):
Give him a little bit of him finding what the
black brother couldn't give hi, and that's the whiteness of
who he was. And so the nuance is that that
gave him a little bit of a torch came out
of him not being able to replicate with the trueness
of what all these talents were. And you consider what
Otis was doing. Otis Blackwell, who wrote the songs I
wish you could hurt. I met this brother, and knowing

(16:29):
that there were a lot of credits that were given
to Elvis that I knew Elvis didn't write the songs
with him, But he's written the songs with Otis black Well,
things that I heard, those kinds of things. But you
can listen to him, and you can hear this guy saying,
and you can say, Evers got some of that from him.
Ever's got some of that from Roy. Evers got some
of that from him, And so he was able to
put those things together. But I also found a niche

(16:50):
that gave you a little bit of of what he
was about as well. And it became a combination of
those things. But it was magnified by the uniqueness of
the black contribution.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
He grew from fast forward justin.

Speaker 4 (17:04):
Without a doubt, right, You know. The interesting being if
you think about the seventies and before then, listen, Teddy
was Teddy, Otis was Otis. Johnny Taylor was Johnny Albert
who couldn't read, and we would whisper the lyrics. I
would be on the mic when he was singing, say

(17:24):
the line before he was singing. But the uniqueness of
Albert planning to get to us hitting the line. The
uniqueness of Albott was inside of his personality as avert.
Oh wow, only he to do those kinds of things.
You give Johnny Taylor the melody that Isaaca and I
we wrote out, got to Love Somebody's Baby because somebody

(17:45):
been loving mine. Now we wrote the song, and David
wrote a song into teachers. When Johnny sang the song,
the individuality of Johnny took it to another another kind
of a blue song, little Bluebird. We wrote that that
would listen to it. The individual reality of the artists,
even with the Hazen Porter song, would take it to

(18:06):
the persona that was the inside of their uniqueness. And
then by the time we get the Sam and David,
we're doing the church thing, which is what we're doing.
The individual of paid with the combination of David and
I would direct them like a choir. If you listen,
I think you you're gonna hear me holler at the
very intro I thank you because I make the mistake
and holler. We kept their take, But that's because I'm
on the other side of the mic directing them. But

(18:28):
I cannot give them the individuality that brings out the
uniqueness of what they were, and it became an identity
thing because they were focused on making affairs and so
that's what all of those are. So even before Stevie,
the individuality that ultimately ended up being Stevie grew out
of some of the influences that he heard as a youngster.

(18:48):
Because the first record I heard on Stevin Fingertips, I
didn't hear Stephen One like Stevie Wonder, you know, on
I heard Steven Wander like Stevie Wonder because he stopped
perfecting the uniqueness that was him and he magnified it.
And then everybody says, it's to your point, Chris, start
trying to follow that template. But those who followed the
temple never got to the strength that Steede had.

Speaker 1 (19:11):
I see, I see class for you. When do you
sort of credit the moment that you started your mission
like you're not You're come to Jesus moment with music,
but that this was something that you professionally wanted to pursue.

Speaker 4 (19:34):
I was, how real should I be with this?

Speaker 1 (19:39):
I'll super real good.

Speaker 4 (19:42):
I was so so poor, from a family of twelve
with an outdoor toilet in Memphis. I told you who
my neighbors were, and we all were that way. Maurice
and I moved from where we worked to a housing
project called them On Gardens at the same time, which
was a housemand I just felt that I had to

(20:06):
find a way to do this thing. I thought I
was a singer to do this thing, and I was
trying to find an identity and didn't know where that was.
And so here's a kid working at a grocery store,
just getting ready to graduate from high school from Booker T.
Washington High School, where Maurice White and I graduated in

(20:26):
nineteen sixty one from, and I'm working across the street
from this movie theater, which was Satellite Records. And I
would go over there because there was a little record
shop there, and I had no money to buy the records.
But there was a lady inside of there who said
they had a recording company and they had a label.

(20:48):
Asked her about it, so they said, we record country artists.
So I said, well, could you audition me. Would you
listen to me? She said, well, you can talk to
my brother, but we just RECALLD country. So I went
in there and I talked to Jim Stewart, who didn't
want to to listen to me or anything such as that.
He had a guy working with him by the name

(21:09):
of Chips Moman. If you google the name Chips Moman.
He became legendary later on, but he was the guy
that was working with Jim Stewart. Before there was no Snacks,
it was called Satellite Records, And so I got the
audition there and froze in the room on the audition,
but I bought to them. I got some of my
classmates to perform on it for me. I got Brooker T.

(21:31):
Jones to play baritone horn on the demo. I got
Andrew Love to play tennis sacks on the demo. I
got William Bell the same background along with James Austin
on the demo. Wheniam Bail became yes and my demo
was a song original song because he asked me did
I have it? Did I write songs? I told him yeah,
I didn't have any. He asked me, well, did I

(21:53):
have a band? I told him, yeah, I didn't have one,
and so he had two artists, Nick Charles and Charles
Hines Country. I convinced him to let me do an audition.
I then got the guys together to do the audition
with me and froze on the demo and flopped. It
didn't work for me, But Jim Stewart met booker T. Jones,

(22:13):
who he used to play baritone on Rufus Thomas record
William Bell. He recorded you don't miss your water to
your well run try and and the rest is history.
I mean, it's so. What it showed me was that
I had a long way to go, and I started
trying to find out who I really was if I
wanted to be this, and I realized that I couldn't

(22:33):
be the artist. I tried a couple of other records.
I recorded for Savoy Records, Little David, I recorded with
Willie Mitchell, Kenny Kane. Yes it's on Savoy Records.

Speaker 1 (22:46):
I didn't know that was the Savoy subsidiary.

Speaker 4 (22:48):
Really, no, no, No, Savoy was different. The world wasn't
Stax Records. Okay, that's that's for me, out hustling, trying
to trying to find.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
A Panthay, I get it.

Speaker 4 (22:59):
That's that's But so in trying to do that, I
get with this guy who we used to sing on
talent shows at the Palace stayed on Beal Street, by
the name of Isaac Hayes. So Isaac and I started talking.
I said, this form a writing team now to come
to Jesus. Moment was me figuring that if I'm gonna

(23:19):
get in the music business, I'd already failed with the
audition trying to sing. But I bought this guy all
this amazing talent, and so I didn't get right in.
I got with Isaac and we formed a label called
Genie Records. And there's a record on a guy by
the name of Homer Banks called Little Lady of Stone
And ain't that a lot of Love? If you find

(23:40):
that record, that's a record that I did with Isaac
before Stax Records. Then I went and Convissium Stewart to
give me an opportunity as a writer. I became the
first staff writer for Stax Records, given a six month trial.
In the rest of his history, I started building the
writing staff and all of that. What year was that,
I want to say, it's nineteen sixty three, but I

(24:02):
could be slightly slightly off because I was there in
nineteen sixty one. There's a record called The Life I
Live on Barbara Stevens Stead that I did with Marvel Thomas.
Was before even Isaac and I really connected, So it
was like I was hustling.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
You mentioned Willie Mitchell. What was it like working with
him at that time?

Speaker 4 (24:22):
Willie Mitchell was was was working with a company but
of High Records, that was working with London as a distributor,
and WILLI was not on the inner loop of High Records.
WILLI was working with a guy by the name a
white guy by the name of Ray Harris, and they
didn't really realize what Willie Mitchell was. And so I

(24:43):
found a way to convince them to let me make
a record there. And so Willie and I wrote a
song you can google it called Practice Makes Perfect you'll
see written by Porter Mitchell. That's Willie and I and
I'm Kenny Kine is David Porter. But this is before
they allowed Willy to be Willie and Ray Harris got

(25:04):
out of their way and Willy got the opportunity with
some kind of deal. He worked with Joe Koogie and
Nick Pacy, and those guys and became the guy that
Royal Studio became and High Records became. The rest is
hissue with Willie Mitchell. That's my comment to Jesus. Moment
of finding that writing was my in road defining a
path for this.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
So was it mostly a trial by fire in terms
of you know, even with me, like with my musical education,
a lot of my knowledge of like the first year
that I came to a studio was more or less
like what does this do? What does this do? And
you know I didn't. No one told me about sixteen

(25:46):
bar structures and you know, how to find my own sound. So,
you know, a lot of my education of music production
just came from like the first three years of trying
to see what works and whatnot. But how did these
people know to trust you? If you don't was expected

(26:06):
for you to like be accredited songwriters and have experience
of like writing out charts and knowing arrangements and all
those things, or you just are you singing to each
band members like this is what you do?

Speaker 4 (26:18):
Or yes, all of that, but we didn't do Just
Isaac Hayes did not write music. David Porter didn't either. No,
he didn't, and so we went through the whole process
of head arrangements. The great artists, the greatest creative that
was Otis Ready. If you were able to be in
a studio with Otis reading during a session, you would

(26:41):
marvel at how he would come up with the bassline,
the horn patterns, the guitar direction for Steve to play
out on those records. Isaac and I were motivated from
the Church. We realized that Motoon had to straightforth beat
with these beautiful melodies on the top of that, and
it was amazing how they did that. But we also realized,

(27:03):
because we talked strategically about how we were going to
find a path inside of this industry to do this,
we realized that if we want to have an impact,
we had to find an identity. We had records before
we did the Sam and Dave, there are quite a
few of those records, but we were trying to find
the adentity way for us to be affected, and we
realized that that opportunity came from the spirituality of the

(27:24):
Church on the lower end of things, and so we
started focusing on the bass, drums, guitar lines rather than
the straight four kind of things, and That's why they
became patterns inside of all of the songs that we
were doing. But those patterns didn't come from us writing
a chart for that came from us giving the musicians
the actual patterns. Hold On I'm Coming a perfect example

(27:48):
that the drum beat on hold On I'm Coming did
not come about with us just starting to sing and
they start playing No. I went to Alice and I
remember the record get out on the Life Woman by leaving,
may that beat play that beat? I said, Chick, that
that's the beat that we want. Hold On I'm Coming.
Isaac had the horn, just a horn lick on that.

(28:09):
That lick it put that down two or three weeks
before we even thought about hold On I'm Coming. Hold
On I'm Coming came one night late. We were we
left a club after we were jamming, went to the
studio by two thirty night. I went to the restroom.
Isaac was trying to get me the hurry out of
the restroom. I said, hold On I'm coming there and
I said, God, it came out of the room. Twenty

(28:29):
minutes later we wrote hold On I'm Coming. The drum
pattern we did all that.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
That's the movie story.

Speaker 5 (28:36):
That's the God's true.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
It is the deal I've already see that acted out
in the whole dramatic trail y Isaac.

Speaker 4 (28:46):
Of Stacks Records happened because of the inner spirits inside
of the creative juices that came not from somebody doing
sitting down and writing a charge for me, but somebody
giving people. The essence of of whether the songs were
in the end of his was only magnified through that.

Speaker 1 (29:02):
Okay, then I gotta ask you this question. Okay, you
guys have this like ten minute song on presenting Isaac
Hayes called I Want to Make Love to You, and
it is one of the most ambitious arrangements I've ever heard.
It's like part jazz, part blues, part serious soul, part comedy.

(29:22):
But there's so many parts to this song. So if
it's not notated like how for these like extravagant arrangements
that you guys are doing, because it's not just like
here's the A part, here's the B part, here's the
A part, here's the B part, here's the code of
Like you guys are writing these like extravagant arrangements, like

(29:45):
how are they able to maintain that memory of what
to do if you guys aren't notating that stuff.

Speaker 4 (29:52):
Well, first, Plase I didn't produce presenting Isaac Hayes. Okay, right,
but let me tell you, because Isaac and I worked
for as from the core, I can tell you how
the things that the core foundation of all of the
records was inside of the base patterns. Now there was
chance done on the up end of the charte. We
Isaac used and huns we'd used al warn free. I mean,

(30:14):
we use cats to put the orchestration on the top.
But that's also coming out of Isaac's head. That's not
some guy. He given the track to it said okay,
create the parts. That's not how that happened. But because
there was such an authenticity of remembering things, all of
the wrecks from hold on them coming to soul man,
you don't know those are things that of course, the

(30:36):
records was to two minutes forty seconds long. Your point is, well,
how are you gonna do this on a long, long,
long lung record. Well, on a long, long, long lung record.
If you were inside of the stacks room and you
know everybody standing up looking at Isaac, and Isaac is
directing and curing on the parts the guys are right
down four bars here, eight bars here, and the cats
would know if you hold up his hand, it's the

(30:58):
next it's the next pense, it's the next pass, whatever
it was gonna be. So I wasn't in the room
when he was doing it, but I'm sure that the
same kind of processes that I did on the Victim
of the joke abb of what you Right, the same thing,
because that's what I did.

Speaker 1 (31:12):
So what are Al Bell's basic thoughts when you guys,
and I'm going back to stacks in the sixties, but
I'm just curious, like, when this turns into enterprise and
you guys are making serious albums, what are Al Bell's
thoughts when some of these album cuts are seven minutes,

(31:32):
thirteen minutes, twenty two.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
Minutes, not right friendly at all.

Speaker 1 (31:38):
That's well, I know that the age of FM radio
was sort of like we play longer cuts when at
least you know, the first five years of the seventies,
but I mean, you guys were almost like the anti Motown,
because I know Motown's whole thing was like has to
be three minutes and thirty seconds and easily digestible, And

(31:58):
so was that by design or.

Speaker 4 (32:01):
But that's an amazing question because the truth needs to
be told. Isaac was the first to do the extended
creating of the song the very first. The way that
happened was al Ball now was being in control because
Stacks all of the masters that Stax had recorded, Atlantic

(32:21):
got those because Jim Stood had signed up one of
his funny contracts and didn't realize they'd given the catalog away.
Then Albert l got into power control of the company
and ultimately end up owning the company. And so what
L did was in order for us to get back
in the mood in the competitive way, said, listen, we
got to create product and get an abundant of product

(32:42):
to get out there. He encouraged Isaac to do the album.
He encouraged easy going, Isaac said, because we were already
in the power position. Isaac said, if I'm going to
do it, I got to do what I feel I
want to do. L had no idea that isa was
gonna take it there, because Isaac always was influenced got
jazz cats. I mean he always, but that wasn't not

(33:04):
the kind of records that we were doing. So when
he got the freedom to do it the way he
wanted to do it. We used to go to the
club called Club La Run. We would go there and
just jam before we'd go back to the studio. One
night we were jamming and singing some stuff at the
club to Run when something is Wrong with My Baby
and some of the other songs that we had written
and that they were popular songs we singing, and Isaac

(33:25):
went went into a vibe with the sustained thing on
the hammonbe three organ that was there and start talking
and he would start talking, and the message was on
a song by Glenn Cammell called by the time I
get to Phoenix, and Isaac started talking with me standing
up on the stage with him, and I know what
the heck he's doing, and him start and they were

(33:47):
getting in to listen to him, and he just start
making it longer and longer, and it came. He didn't
have it ridden out. It came to him in the
natural way that these lines I'm telling you, and the
horn Patterson came and he talked the whole thing out
and hit By the time I get the Phoenix with
the beat three loud and whatever, and the cats were
just trying to follow him, which they did and by

(34:09):
the time he got the opportunity to record and told
al al on a second because presenting Heinsac Hayes the
album did not really work. On the second he told
me to do it again. Honestly, I want to really
do it the way I want to do it. And
that's why there are four tunes on that album. And
the first motivation was that Phoenix thing that we did
at the club I run and that was what nineteen

(34:30):
minutes long as something.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
Would tape ever run out? Would would tape run out
at all?

Speaker 4 (34:36):
Well that didn't know that, but you know, Isaac would
We would have been in the studio jam and we
end up with a lot of tracks that would in
a writing songs off but later on just by the
extended park that we didn't use on the record. So
so cats would know that that and by the time
I get the Phoenix case that had to be a
new real to tape. Cats would know that he was

(34:58):
going to do extended versus they just did not know
it's going to be that law. So I don't know.
I wasn't in the room mothetics, but I okay.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
So can you explain, especially like with with the tension
that's happening in the mid to late sixties, especially in
the Civil rights movement? How was it socially, especially with
you know cats like uh, you know, Donald Duck Dunn,
Steve Cropper, like because you know the sound of stacks

(35:29):
even though it's gut bunkeet soul, gut bucket funk like this,
this is an integrated, intersectional kind of organization with men
and women, black and white, that sort of thing. So
how easy was it navigating especially with sort of I

(35:50):
guess culminating to King's assassination Like in Memphis? What is
the social atmosphere of these white musicians and black musicians
playing together?

Speaker 2 (36:02):
Like what's a work dinner looked like?

Speaker 4 (36:04):
Inside the street? Well to a question, if I think
I understand correct, this is this is the interesting thing
about that period. Racism was still rapid during that period,
It was still there, but because Stewart was smart enough
to see that the black contribution of talents were far
exceeding where Steve was and Dunk was. But these were

(36:27):
casts that were able to integrate, for lack of a
better word, into the Bible what we were doing because
they were able to listen to where we were coming
from and it was. It was showed that the possibility
of seriously making some money until they were there was
a willingness to follow the lead of the black talents.
And when I say that, when you could side, there's

(36:47):
Booker T. Jones in that in that combination of talent
we called it the Big Six. That was Al Jackson
Junr in that combination of talent. That was Isaac Hayes
in a combination of talents. That was David Porter in
the cumbination of talents. And here is Steve and Duck
and the leading parts was either coming from Booker or

(37:11):
from Isaac, or from I or from Al. As relates
to where a lot of the originality come from. The
abilities to adapt and to be affecting with it was
coming out of the rhythmic treaties that Croper would bring
to many of the songs, and Duck would was amazing
at remembery and containing the patterns and giving you the
right kunt of imagy for that.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
Like what about once y'all left the studio, Because like
you said, y'all were the leaders in the individualities, but
y'all couldn't eat in the same places, stay in the
same places.

Speaker 4 (37:39):
And that that is so so true, and then we
didn't make a norm of that. They would go to
a place called the Four Way Grill with us, which
was a black restaurant on the Mississippi Walker, And when
we wanted to really eat together, we would go to
the Four Way Grill. And the Four Way Grill, if
you read the history of it, that was all also

(38:00):
the place where doctor King would go. That's also a
place where Jesse Jackson would go. At the front of
the Four Way is the door people would come in
from the street, but they had a back entrance at
the back of the doors. James Brown and a lot
of foo. We would go in the back door there
and we would eat some of the best soul for
wos you ever want to have. But that was a

(38:22):
place when we would do I was a vocalist for
Boogleton MG's on the road playing in the College Circuit.
To your point, we'd get in the car. We did
this is Bookert and mgs Well, we do sessions with
we worked at the College Circum On the weekend, we'd
get in the car and go play gigs. And we
had a lot of instance where we could not get
in the hotel in a real comfortable kind of way.
We'd go and play the gig on the college State,

(38:43):
come back and be in the studio on Monday. So
it wasn't It wasn't the kind of thing where you'd
see a lot of let's go out and hang out together.
There were black clubs and they were white clubs, and
that was still going on in the Memphis by the
time you went into the Stacks rooms to do the work.
It was a unity there, but it was also a
willingness to follow the lead of the black talents who
was really making the thing. And that's why the magic

(39:05):
came from an Otis Rennie, who showed everybody what all
of that meant what I just said, because there was
no one who could do it to the degree that
Otis could do it.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
Did you personally feel some sort of way when like
your sound and your formula are being used by other
Memphis Like in other words, like if you were to
if anyone were to listen to like Let's Stay Together, Yeah,
you know the sound of the brass band in the
front and the basic gut bucket groove of that song.

(39:41):
You know, someone to say to me like, oh, that's
probably Stax Records or something like that. And you know,
even though you guys are in proximity of each other
in terms of mileage, Like I'm certain that Willie and
his organization were way different. Might be like one or
two musicians that are the same. Are you guys feeling
some sort of way that, like the sound that you

(40:02):
helped make the Blueprint Architects is sort of now being
not even outside of Memphis, because I'm certain that you know,
there's the Cats and Muscle Souls are also I'm thinking
that they too, are you know, Memphis based and whatnot, Like,
especially with the work they were doing the refit like,
did you feel some sort of way when your sound

(40:24):
is sort of like identified with that whole region but
some of those things that you had nothing to do with,
it just sounds like you did well.

Speaker 4 (40:35):
The beautiful thing about it is that we have so
many artists that we had to use other rooms to
do that. The reason that Muscle Shows sound became revered
as it did was because we sent so many artists there,
so many many artists there.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
How far was Muscle Souls from Memphis.

Speaker 4 (40:52):
Maybe a little bit more to our drive? Okay, yeah, yeah,
I mean I don't know if you're familiar with the
album that I do that that has the victim of
the joke, the song the Masquerade is over?

Speaker 1 (41:04):
Wait time out?

Speaker 3 (41:05):
All right?

Speaker 1 (41:09):
Okay, are you really asking us right now? We know
I'm afraid the Masquerade is over?

Speaker 4 (41:15):
But but but that quest that's a cute kind of
things you mentioned earlier about hair stuff. That's one of
those kinds of things. I had a mic going around
room with the head, says, going in the harmon license
to cast the play. But but but that's also one
of the dumbest mistakes I made because the second half
of it, which has nothing at all to do with
the original song which I was given, the head arranged

(41:36):
to it, and that's where all the samples came from.
Do you know how many millions of dollars I gave
away with that? All of those those how many? But
that's no story. But but but h so we're.

Speaker 1 (41:45):
Gonna ask about that too.

Speaker 4 (41:47):
But but but but uh but Muscle Shows was so
many urs. Johnny Taylor, the staple singers color the emotions
with so many that we we went to the room
in what Willie was doing over it high that's Andrew
Love and Wayne Jackson, the horn section, a lot of
the patterns, and I can show you some patterns that

(42:08):
the guys are and forgot that we already did the
patterns on the track over there, and they got into
whatever on the al track, and there's a line that
we did on Man, what the heck got so But
but we were we were so so unified and and
the magic that was happening out of Memphis. There was
no animosity or anger toward what WILLI was doing, nor

(42:31):
was that coming from willly what we were doing. We
were just simply happy that all of the stuff was connected.
And then that there was magic with our Green. The
magic with our Green was reminiscent of the magic that
we felt when we lost over this ringing. So there
was a joe and the happiness. And then when Willie
come up with a record that stupid great like I
can't stand the rain, I mean just great, great, great,

(42:52):
great music. So there was there was no It was
in a lot. Some of the players were the same.
It was that kind of spirit in Memphis during that time.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
At any point, was Al Green ever going to go
to your direction to stacks at any point or just
he immediately went to high.

Speaker 4 (43:13):
No, No, WILLI WILLI discovered L.

Speaker 1 (43:15):
But did you know about him before Willie discovered him?

Speaker 4 (43:18):
No? No, I don't think it was nobody. No, that
was Willie. Willie. WILLI heard something in him and and
took him to a space L didn't believe he was.
Al was a hard singer. WILLI forced him to find
the identity thing that I was talking about. WILLI forced
L to find that thing, that thing for am.

Speaker 5 (43:42):
The way he's singing on his first album is Backup Train.

Speaker 4 (43:45):
Yes, will listen to the vamp of Love and Happiness,
and you'll see that's where Al really is. Willy control
how L found himself. And then when Al really found himself,
then R magnified the persona what that should be. And
that's why some of those vocals that he would do
on those songs were just crazy, because he was having

(44:07):
so much fun in discovering new nonsense inside of what
he was doing that was even fresher than he even imagine.
I would imagine. He became unbelievable. The same thing was
happening with Otis as well, Johnny Taylor as well.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
Can you tell me or recall the experience of hearing
what happened to Otis Redding and the original barcas well.

Speaker 4 (44:39):
Let me first first say this, because this is this
is this is an interesting story. When Otis came to
Memphis to record Sitting on the dock of the Bay
my office at the Stacks building. The door to the
office was on the street because by then we had
bought the other location. There was a cafe next door
to the theater, and there was some other's things on

(45:00):
the other side, and there was a grocery store on
the other side. We had bought all of that and
converted that into part of the space. Otis came into
the room in my office. He said, I want you
to hear a song and tell me what you think
about it, because he you know, he there was a
misu respect there. So he came and he sang with
a acoustic guitar, openstright acoustic, and he sang Sitting on

(45:24):
the docor of the Bay to me the whole song,
and he said, what you think. I said, well, I
think you ought to make the first verse the last
verse and the last verse the first verse, because the
story says so better than me. He really thinks he is.
He went into the studio and recorded Sitting on the
Doctor of the Bay. Now it was not complete because
he had a plane to catch and he then left Memphis,

(45:49):
got on got did his flight. I was, as I
mentioned the vocals book of Tenmg's that weekend we flew
to Ohio and played a cottage up there in n
OHI up there, so I we're in. We had finished
the gig, were in the airport. I get a call
from my wife at the time, I get a call

(46:10):
saying that there said that Otis Ready was in an
airplane crash. And I said, I couldn't believe. I said, no,
what do you? And I didn't believe it, and she
reinforced it in in a real emotional way to me.
And I told the guys that I was told. When

(46:30):
I told the guys that, and we were getting ready
to catch a plane to come back to Memphis when
we found out. So we were coming from a gig
Otis was going. They were going to another gig. And
the devastation of finding out about that was when we
were on another gig. Matter of fact, it's I think
I want to say it in Booker T's book, if

(46:51):
you read Booker talks about it as well, that's that's
that's when that was.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
Found out, did you did you know, James Alexander, Well, uh,
the basis of the bar kays.

Speaker 4 (47:02):
Well, then you don't know the story about how the
record cut came about. They had a record, a track
that they had and it was just a track. Isaac
and I went into the room. It was a track.
Jim Steward was standing over there listening to it. Didn't
know what what it was. Then called it they was.
They played the track for us. Isaac Hayes came up

(47:24):
with the title soul Finger. I said, let's put some
kids on the record. I went outside and got twenty
five or thirty kids, brought him in the room, got
two cases of coke, asked James, James Elexander when you
interviewed him about this story, got two cases of coke,
gave him the Coca cone. I directed them like a choir.
Every time I raised my hand and do this, you

(47:44):
scream soul finger. And then when I do this, you
say you say so. And so Isaac gave the title
soul Finger for the record. I put the kids on it.
That's that's the record. So James Alexander definitely knows. David
Porter and Isaac Hayes definitely does that getting jigging record.
No no, I did on the Barcades, gave them I

(48:08):
did a hand range, gave them fifty percent of the song.
But I came up with it. Put the kiss the
same thing again. I got Kiss off the street. I
directed him like a que and had him sing and
did the track of the Barcades singing dance right, the
singing dance, so real close to James.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
I've always been curious and you know he's He's definitely,
he's definitely like one of our buckets, bucket list guests
that we want to get. Just let me know, oh please,
that that's him and Jazzy Fae, like James.

Speaker 4 (48:39):
Son used to lay on the floor in the studio.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
If really yeah, do you know like how he was
able to bounce back and start the group all over again,
and just how he felt. Because I believe the story
is that I don't know if it was a coin
flipp or not. The thing was that only a certain
amount of people could fit on the plane. I believe

(49:03):
the legend is that James Alexander is like, look, I'll
just catch a commercial flight and him and Carl.

Speaker 4 (49:10):
Did that another not not Carl Kunaham, but another car,
Carl Siums did that cause Carl Sum was going to
go with it and James and Carl Sums did that.
That's that's true. Okay, it was ah something like that,
whatever the number sixts was, but James and Carl couldn't
get on it, and James took a commercial flight. That's true.

(49:30):
James was the one that was asked to go, and
because Zelma didn't want to, she wasn't the most able
to do it. James was the one that went to
identify this.

Speaker 1 (49:39):
I know that was such a devastating loss to the label.
Like how are you guys, especially with a transition of
you know, moving into the seventies and whatnot, can you
explain just the feeling at the time, like especially post
King by the time the seventies comes, Like what do
you feeling in terms of like where music is or

(50:04):
where Stacks is as an organization to.

Speaker 4 (50:07):
Really appreciate the energy that Otis brought to our environment.
Otis was a driver for another guy that was being
recorded at the time. Otis came in as his driver.
Otis pleaded with Al Jackson Junior to would someone take
a listen to him, sing Al told Steve, give if

(50:32):
you got a minute, man, people that already was leaving,
Andy already left, would you take a listen to this guy?
He just wanted somebody to listen to him. Otis Redding
saying these arms of mind with Steve Cropper, who is
not a piano player, playing tributs on the piano, and
the rest is history for ODIs ready then, because no

(50:55):
one understood oldest better than Otis, because Otis was a
huge fan of Little Richard. If you listen to the
B side of these Arms of Mine, you're gonna think
it's Little Richard because that's where Otis was. But the
These Arms of Mine song, Otis showed where he was,
and that was the thing that resonated inside of that room.

(51:17):
And no one could do that but Otis, and Otis
was given the lead way to show where that came from.
And then Otis was the one that started really magnifying
the head arranges kind of vibe or what of became
the cornerstone of everything we did there. So the loss
of Otis created a kind of emotional kind of devastation

(51:39):
to all of us that it's no way to explain
the level of it, because then we begin to feel
what could have been with the magic that was coming
from this man. I mean, he would go in the
studio in this like fastest get up, we'll be able
to come up with all these parts and these tracks
and just do them and then go on to mic

(52:01):
and make up the song on the mic. That's me
singing homedy with him.

Speaker 1 (52:08):
I was gonna ask you about that.

Speaker 4 (52:09):
Yeah, yeah, but that's im. I didn't know when the
times he says I said this, when you gonna come in,
he said, you feeling it was like, but that's the
magic of this this god.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
The thing is that Otis Redding was twenty seven when
he died. Was it that typical for during the time
that you guys have between the age of what twenty
he came to you, twenty three or twenty four?

Speaker 4 (52:36):
I don't, I can't.

Speaker 1 (52:38):
You could be right, yeah, twenty three, twenty four, very twitters,
but I can't remember, Like, were you guys saying to
yourselves back then, like this guy has a way older
voice than what his age allows. Or was it just
the stress of living in that time just brought that
age and that experience on your typical singer back.

Speaker 4 (52:57):
Then when you listen to the b side, as mentioned
of these ums of mine, and you hear Otis there,
and you listen to what Otis was doing. Otis was
so brilliant as far as seeming in the individuality that
magnified with people. So you could talk to Otis and
I was, yeah, how you doing, Everything's fine? But then

(53:18):
he said, you can't get that, you know, I mean,
all of this was with a purpose aim at locking
you in to the persona that was Otis. Ready, there
was no Otis didn't talk like that. Job. That was
a character you better believe it was. But he also
perfected it in such a way that that the uniqueness
of him, because he would stumble up on other things

(53:40):
that he would do, because and he's making up things
on the microphone as well. It's just.

Speaker 1 (53:46):
That was a character man, even on trimp where he's
like talking on countries like.

Speaker 4 (53:52):
Bro, it's real what I'm telling you. This man was brilliant.
And and and and the Brians were manifested in some
of the patterns that the guests were able to play,
which was motivating Isaac and I to get better with
our patterns. I thank you the record on I think
you was motivated out of Otis reading. I went there,

(54:13):
answer right, Tennessee Walker horses on the drums. Now, just
the magic of Otis Ready and seeing what he would
do in the room was the catalyst for so much
of what happened through all of us, and so us
trying to find our traction to get into the ballpark
of that was to your point about a little bit

(54:36):
of the decline before people were beginning to find their way.
That was part of it. We had lost the magic
marker for what we could ultimately be when we lost
that guy.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
Who do you think he was trying to emulate? Since
that wasn't his natural voice.

Speaker 4 (54:50):
Otis Ready. When I say that individuality was the cornerstone
of the magic of what was having in their stacks,
I'm saying that that became the signature thought for everybody
on every record. William Bale his records in the Sweeteness,
said Booker, and William wrote and the songs everybody loves.
One of those songs, that's William going into a character
that's one of my best buddies to this day. That's

(55:12):
also inside of the character of where you know his
slot was. Yeah, what you're saying is people.

Speaker 2 (55:19):
There were alter egos before there were Sasha fears. That's
what you're saying, you know what.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
I'm living that right now because I just found an
interview with Bobby Woomeck talking about Slid recording. There's a
ride going on, and you know, one of the questions
I had about Sly was like, well, how come the
voice of slies on that record where he's like clear
as day on his record, And Bobby was just like, man,

(55:48):
SLID's an actor. He was just fucking around.

Speaker 6 (55:52):
And.

Speaker 1 (55:54):
I see now, like I don't know, it's just said
to me, just that voice is so seasoned, like it
just and again, like I heard that voice when I
was ten, So I just thought that's like my grandfather's voice.
So when I found out he was, you know, I'm
thinking twenty seven, I'm thinking, you know, like Chris Brown's

(56:15):
voice or bad era Michael Jackson voice like sounds like young,
but he just sounds so old and seasoned. I just
thought that was unusual.

Speaker 4 (56:26):
I came from a period where people who looked like me,
in order to connect in a market that didn't handle
all the access of internet all those kind of things,
had to find a way to make the possibilities of
that more real, and the best way to do that,
based on the evidence of time, was to find the
individuality that created an essence of uniqueness for you. And

(56:48):
inside of that kind of thought process was the desire
to find that. And in many instance, when people would
find that, they would find themselves and they would know
where that pocket was. Bobby Wallman Ship's moment left Stax
Records when Stacks, when Satellite turned into Stax and Chips
went to a place called American Studios. And because Bobby

(57:08):
couldn't get into Stax Records, where did he go? In Memphis, Tennessee.
Bobby went to American Studios. And if you go by
the early music of Bobby Womack, you'll find out that
Bobby Womack was in Memphis, Tennessee, recording over there, Danny
Thomas and Chelsea at Chips Woman Studio. Check it out.
And so look when we did gigs, and I'll say this,

(57:30):
and when we did gigs on the on the college circuit,
and we'd go and do these gigs. Some of these
white colleges would have two acts performing. Some of these
appearances were book of ten emg's on one end of
the floor because they didn't know that Booker had a vocalist,
which was me, they would hire another group to sing

(57:53):
and perform. Who did they have one of those gigs
and this was a guy became a buddy of mine
behind the Oser Brothers who was playing guitarme for the
Brothers at these college dates. Jimmy who came to Memphis
with me to try to get some gigs and sessions
with me in Stacks Records. Jimmy Henrix. So all of this,

(58:14):
all of this speaks to people understanding that they had
to find an individual alder that gave them an end
to where they wanted to go. Jimmy is another essence
and example of that because he was a bad mother
shits your mouth playing bro. But when he got time,
when he got time for him to find him, he
knew how to integrate those nuances that became the rock

(58:35):
thing and going that whole look. He knew how to
do that and he did it to the bone.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
So you're basically saying that rap music isn't the only
genre in which someone's everyday voice outlive Sean Carter and
jay z is you have to be a character. I
just thought that was hip hop.

Speaker 4 (58:59):
The Land of Lead didn't start with hip hop nuances.
Of what, in my opinion, many of those talents got
to where they got to was realizing that James Brown
saying like sound like James Brown, and Teddy Pendergrass sounded
like Teddy Pendergrass, and somewhere in between that sly Stones

(59:22):
sound like sly and somewhere in between that you go,
you can go down the line and the magic habit
when people perfected the essences of who they were with
the purity of an emotional connecting way to an audience,
and that was where the magic was. And so I
think that when you found all these records happening on

(59:44):
the Tonic and Cat's trying to find a way to
trick their voice to make themselves sound whatever they're doing,
they got that undernoess to them possible of the influences
that came through their grandmama and the uncle whatever talking
about how they like I like that James Brown. I
was like, why y'all doing that kind of stuff? And
then they found a way to make it work for them,
and they make it work to the Hill and so
Nas and these other kids, and they told me that

(01:00:06):
that that you mentioned who shot you? Which? Which? Which
my guy Bigger did, But they told me biggest audition
tape was a song of mine and put us writing.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
I Forget Bone Alley, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:00:19):
Came to Memphis to interview me and he told me that.
I said, I what are you talking? He said no,
His audition was I've never heard that and so so
by the time I thing I heard was who shot you?
So but the point I'm just saying, they were looking
for ways to find the individuality that was uniquely them,
and they've perfected them. So when I listened to Biggie

(01:00:42):
and hear where he was coming from, and then I
listened to Kendrick to said what I'm saying, this is
stupid stuff because they all find a way to find
the magic within them, says you mentioned Jay, They all
find a way to do that. Those who become affected
with it as soon as they get the pocket of money,
they moved to the hills. But hey, it's wrong with that,
and that I'm wrong with that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
But real well, well, lets Steve ask this question because
I'm sorry I forgot my question. Question.

Speaker 6 (01:01:12):
The story you mentioned earlier about sitting on the dock
of the bay, that it was unfinished. Did you oversee
the finishing of that song or how did that get finished?

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
No?

Speaker 4 (01:01:22):
Proper did that? Steve?

Speaker 6 (01:01:25):
So what had to be recorded after his accident.

Speaker 4 (01:01:30):
In session? You know, all was just saying the song
to me when he came to my office, and then
I just gave him that that suggested. Then he went
in the studio and recorded. You know, I don't know
to what degree he was it was not finished. I
really don't.

Speaker 6 (01:01:44):
All right, Well, I have a follow up question then
about Hendrix. Why didn't Stacks sign Hendrix? Or I'm trying
to imagine Jimmy Hendricks as a Stax artist, what that
would be like? Was there any talk blues guy?

Speaker 4 (01:01:58):
You know, he wasn't entries at the time. He was
trying to get on some sessions. There was no essence
of jim and being Jimmy at the time, gotcha, Yeah, yeah,
But and then then Steve had a lock on the studio.
Being honest with you, he wasn't easy to get get
in some sessions, you know, and he just came to

(01:02:21):
see if he could.

Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
How many studios were in total rooms?

Speaker 4 (01:02:25):
Well, there eventually became three rooms in there, A B,
and C. But it was a while before we got
b it was it was a while before we got that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
So what's scheduling like?

Speaker 4 (01:02:37):
It was crazy? We ended up, as I mentioned before,
having to do bookings that it wasn't a place in
muscle shows.

Speaker 1 (01:02:43):
Okay, I get it now.

Speaker 4 (01:02:44):
Goats in Mississippi. We did some bookings, you know, we
we ended up because we had so many acts to do.

Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
Was Nashville ever an option? Like was did Nashville have
any potential of having flavor?

Speaker 4 (01:03:00):
Yeah? Asked about that?

Speaker 1 (01:03:02):
Or nah?

Speaker 4 (01:03:04):
No?

Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
So do you feel that it's funny?

Speaker 2 (01:03:09):
I'm like, I know you know about the guy to
ask about the Black Music Museum. It's only one black
music museum in the country, and it's in Nashville. But
it's it's it's supposed to feel like a situation where
to make folks come. Do you feel like that or
do you feel like that it should be Memphis?

Speaker 4 (01:03:26):
It should have been Memphis. But but honestly, Henry Hicks
Uh the guy who came to Mestage before it was built,
and we met on all that stuff, and I supported
him in the effort because it's difficult for me to
believe it actually happened in Nashville. If you know, Nashville
believe that. But he pulled it off and he got uh.

(01:03:48):
He honored Pattel, La Belle, Teddy Rodder, Kirk Franklin, and
myself as a program that we did there several years ago.
As he was bringing note the ride and disability to it,
he bring several artists that talk about Nashville or whatever,
and that's and that was part of the surprise for
me to see that he was a brother that was

(01:04:10):
really believing he was gonna pull it together and he did.

Speaker 2 (01:04:12):
Oh yeah him and quite a few people shouts at
Deanna Williams too, and Big John Platt is a nice
community of folks that are.

Speaker 4 (01:04:17):
Involved in Yeah, in that place special.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
And where it's placed, like right in downtown in the
face of like the opre It's like.

Speaker 5 (01:04:23):
You we here right in the face of the Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:04:27):
So I give I give I give those guys credit
for pulling off something that one I found a difficult
lee that would ever be, but also the level of
it being that that it is. I mean it, it's beautiful.

Speaker 5 (01:04:43):
I wanted to ask you, David about you You talk
about characters and uh, you know, the singers, and everybody
wanted to be individual.

Speaker 3 (01:04:49):
Rufus Thomas, man, what was what was he like?

Speaker 5 (01:04:51):
I thought I loved him. I mean I watched Tacks
was all I saw him on. But yeah, what was
he like?

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
Just as a dude, go read book?

Speaker 4 (01:05:04):
If you told Rufus Thomas that he wasn't an artist,
he'd cutsh you out. Rufus knew that he could go
into a sona that really magnified marketability for himself. If
you try to get in the saying saying, he was
not what you think in terms of that, but when
he was saying one of his original compositions, he could

(01:05:26):
saying saying because no one could do it better than
he could, and he could sell it in such a
way that that was it was magic. He was. He
was extremely confident man. He was up in age when
he started recording. He was, but he was extremely confident.
And he also felt that he wanted to be able
to compete with Sam and Dave or Oldis and whoever

(01:05:48):
was on the stage. So he would he found a
way to get outfits even though he wasn't getting paid
the kind of money the others were getting paid on
the gigs. But you can tell that because every time
he hit the stage, he'd be sharp as sharp could be,
and when he go into this thing, he could do
it to him. And so but that was because he
just he just knew where his niche was and he
perfected us. We talked about earlier the individuality that was

(01:06:09):
powerful for him.

Speaker 3 (01:06:11):
Carla was his daughter.

Speaker 4 (01:06:12):
Correct, Carla was his daughter?

Speaker 3 (01:06:14):
How was it when she came along? How did that work?

Speaker 4 (01:06:16):
Well? Cala came along at a time when when Jim
still recorded Rufus and Colin or a record called cass
I Love It, which they said it was a hit,
but it really was the marginal kind of record. But
Jim saw something in Carla and asked her if she
had any original songs, and she had a song called
Gee Whiz, and Coler paid a little piano and Cala

(01:06:36):
recorded Ge Whiz. It really became the dome the for
stacks and the relationship with Atlantic Records. That initiated the
really power of the deal for us. And so that
was what that was. And then Isaaca and I had
the biggest record on Caller because we wrote a song
called b A d Y and we produced that on
Calling and that was her biggest record. But yeah, no,

(01:06:58):
she she was shed some some stuff, and director with
Quest mentioned with trump was she oldest? Brought out another
kind of person? This is very effective.

Speaker 1 (01:07:09):
We talked about soul Man, but there's a whole like
barge of classic songs. I'm just gonna name something. Can
you recall the stories of how or tell me what
the songwriting processes for some of these songs, like when
Something's Wrong with My Baby?

Speaker 4 (01:07:29):
Yeah, I was, I was. I was a man's boy
and got a girl pregnant high school and my mama said,
you got married, and I married? Uh, nineteen years old,
I married, And so I'm living with a kid and

(01:07:49):
fantasizing as I'm trying to get in the music in
as an effective way. I'm about love and what is
would be the power love? Because the young lady didn't
love me and I didn't love her, but we had
a kid, and so I would dream about babies and
so just I would have a pad up under the bed,
which I still do that when a right, and sometimes

(01:08:11):
I'd wake up with a thought and the idea and
I would write it down. When something is wrong with
my Baby was one of those ideas that I woke
up in the dream, wrote wrote the title down, got up,
wrote the whole song out called Isaac. We couldn't get
into the studio, as I mentioned, we didn't have a
lot of rooms at the time. Couldn't get in the studio.
We went over to Sidney Kirk's house. One of Isaac's

(01:08:31):
friend got his piano, wrote when Something Is Wrong with
My Baby in about twenty five thirty minutes because they
had the melody already in the head. And the rest
is history with that song. But that was like when
I mentioned the titles Isaac, he said, man, I love that,
and we wrote it and so man came about just
as equally because Isaac heard something out of Detroit and said, man,

(01:08:51):
we need to write a song called soul Man. And
then here comes sol mad We're talking. We wanted to
be a motivational song our music. So I talked about
getting an education. I was educated at Woodstock. I was
brought up on the science. We talked about I'm the
beginning the whole manifestation of motivating people, the double meaning
of soul Man in the Woodstock line in there. That

(01:09:13):
was before the festival Woodstock, and when Bulusi and Akro
was saying, people thought that we had Woodstock as Woodstock
was a county school in Memphis. But but all of
those things came about with.

Speaker 8 (01:09:24):
Us trying to think of ways to make ideas that
people can relate to, but also motivational for people inside
of the subliminal message in our writings.

Speaker 4 (01:09:34):
And that's what we were.

Speaker 3 (01:09:36):
Doing when you and when you and Isaac worked together.
How did y'all work? Like? Did you? Were you on piano?
Was he on piano? Were you more lyrics?

Speaker 4 (01:09:44):
Isaac was on piano. I started out as a lousy
trumpet player to start trying to play trumpet in high
school and wanted to be a singing star. Recent was
the drama in high school, and Booker was below us
in high school, and so I started thinking I was
this great trace singing and put down the instruments. And
so by the time Isaac and I got together, I
understood melodically how to do exactly what we needed to

(01:10:07):
do lyrically, how to do that. And Isaac we started out.
I just started up playing trippers on the piano before
we started, just stretching himself to do all he could do,
and all of a sudden, he started discovering things that
he would hear inside of his head, which is where
the head arrangement came, and I started finding things I
would hear inside of my head. And then when we
would sit down to write a song or come up
with an idea, if we had to put some piece

(01:10:29):
of something down on another tape to use it as
a reference for something possibility, we would then sit down
and create the songs right from stretch. Right at that
point we'd schedule or writing. We'd go and do a
gig at a club or something like that and come
to the studio and just start writing. And we would
do that from artists to artist, song to song individualities

(01:10:50):
and be it a blue song on Johnny Taylor, a
blue song on Elbath King, a lover song on a
soul children, a pretty song on the Emotions, a flat
down song on Sam and that we focused on doing
it the way we felt that inside of the room.
But it was Jilly, Isaac and I sitting at the piano,
me coming up with the melodies and the lyrics of

(01:11:12):
a song, singing the song, and we're coming up with
a musical direction that we would go inside of that.
The head arranging part of that comes and we would
go into the room we talk about the concept of
it if we wanted to hold on them coming. It
was one of those examples where where he had had
had a horn pattern down weeks before, and we talked
about coming up with this idea after I came out
of the restroom, and then we talked about an idea
about Superman, a resking kind of thing and a motivation

(01:11:36):
for people, and that was where the thought was. And
once we said that, twenty minutes later we had the
song don't you ever feel sad? You know me, when
times are bad, the day comes, you're down and river
troubling about to drown, Hold on, I'm coming. And we
talked about the unity and the bond between people with that.
But when you saw rom.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
When you were recalling the story of Something's Wrong with
My Baby, for half a second, I was like, oh God,
this isn't a love song. He's talking about his newborn
kid being sick. And I was like, wait, where's he
about to go with this story? Like that's what it
means literally a baby?

Speaker 4 (01:12:17):
No. Now, I was trying to think about what it'd
be like they had a real woman that I could
really feel all of that for.

Speaker 1 (01:12:23):
I feel you, I believe in ninety one ninety two,
back when the idea of a box set was a
novel idea, These eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve CD sets
like a history of a label started happening for the
record industry, because literally, if you buy the Stacks box
set from nineteen ninety one, you can hear the entire
history of the Wu Tang clan. I want to know,

(01:12:46):
have you ever met the Riza and what were your
initial thoughts in the mid nineties when suddenly the thing
about Riza and his sampling method is it was even jarring.
I don't know if I can speak for Liah, Steve
or Fante, but his level of sampling was really jarring,

(01:13:09):
Like like, I'm very familiar with the sweet inspirations like
Why Mary and all that stuff, and so just the
just the very unorthodox way that he sampled that Why
Mary is a criminology.

Speaker 2 (01:13:24):
I knew it was always different with Riza.

Speaker 3 (01:13:26):
I knew it was never you can't it ain't easy.
It was never easy. That's and he wasn't. He wasn't
afraid to use voices either, like he would a lot.

Speaker 5 (01:13:33):
Generally, when you would chop samples, you would try to
get out of the vocal.

Speaker 3 (01:13:37):
You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 5 (01:13:38):
He would almost intentionally like incorporate the vocal use.

Speaker 1 (01:13:42):
Yeah, it was very so when you're hearing like or
I guess you know you have to get permission. I
don't know what the process is like if your publisher
just says, hey, I give a permission, or they gotta
go to the songwriter. Sometimes we got to have a
conversation with the songwriter. Sometimes it's just like, yeah, you
could clear it. But when when your work starts getting

(01:14:04):
a lot of traction in the early to mid nineties
with Biggie with Uh even Mop with Annie up Soul
Sister Brown Sugar, I believe yeah, yeah, Like what are
you feeling? Is are you feeling like to change I'm back?
Or is it like wait, I didn't intend my songs

(01:14:25):
to sound like this, Like what are they doing?

Speaker 4 (01:14:29):
The respect for the creative process was something that I
marveled at, I know Isaac marvel at, and the fact
that I just simply felt good. They found an interesting
way to interpret something that I was part of the
creation of. When Rizza and I met, Rizzi met, we've met,
I've even introduced him on some shows and stuff, and

(01:14:50):
he's kind of my studio and just the level of
respect that those guys head for the catalog was just
amazing to me. But also find the interesting ways they
found to interpret the song like cream, I mean, like
I mean, come on, you know, wait, let.

Speaker 1 (01:15:09):
Me inter it up to you, because I got a
question with as long as I Got You, maybe maybe
like four five years ago. Actually, I think during the
Motions episode I played it. The Emotions have a version
of as Long as I Got You, which is even funkier.
It sounds like a demo. Why wasn't that version ever.

Speaker 4 (01:15:30):
Released because it probably sounded like the demo that you're
talking about. You know, I really, I really don't even
remember the Emotion's version, do you know? Not embarrassed that
is for me to say that, because you.

Speaker 5 (01:15:45):
Got too made over two thousand songs, like we will forgive
you for forgetting one everything.

Speaker 4 (01:15:52):
But.

Speaker 1 (01:15:53):
Again you you've done over two thousand songs, so you
can forget a few.

Speaker 4 (01:15:57):
Yeah. But but the version that we did to Charmel's
Isaac was was uh. I don't want to bust him out,
but he was he was a little romandously fascinated with
one of the girls with that because we weren't even
they were not looked upon as an act that we're
gonna let's go into We're gonna record this s group
called the Chamels. We knew that, Mary and and Milton,

(01:16:21):
we knew them. But when Isaac come he said, man,
we ought to record record them? He said what he said, Well,
so we did. And one of the banner things that
we did, the one banner thing that we did that
I just marvel. It was as long as I got you.

(01:16:42):
And that was also one of those things that we
naturally felt the power of. And when we just wrote
the song and then Barbara, who is the least singer
of it, her text on it was amazing. Isaac is
singing background on some of the parts of the record. Wow,
that's not all the girl was saying. So so it's

(01:17:03):
it was one of those things that I was shocked
at how it ended up being sampled so much. Even
the Nicole bus sample of it. I mean, that's Barbara
singing that part of it on the record. That's the
actual record on you on the cod Okay section of it.

Speaker 1 (01:17:22):
You know, we gotta mention You've also worked with the
legendary Cissy Houston and the Sweet inspirations.

Speaker 4 (01:17:30):
Not Cissy, but but the sweetest verses because Sissy wasn't.

Speaker 1 (01:17:33):
So she left the group at the time.

Speaker 4 (01:17:35):
Yeah, she left the group at the time. Yeah, if
it was three of them at the time, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Sissy wasn't with them. And wishes and dishes and and
your role when you don't get it at the home
of those songs, Sis's not on that.

Speaker 1 (01:17:50):
So were the Emotions the only group that weren't necessarily
quote unquote homegrown. Was the main protocol of Stax Records
to just have like Memphis home Groom talent or like,
how did do you know how the Emotions came to
the label and what was it like working with them?

Speaker 4 (01:18:07):
Hervis Staples bought the Emotions to us.

Speaker 1 (01:18:10):
Oh okay, all right.

Speaker 4 (01:18:11):
Yeah, and he brought him to Isaac and I and
they were very very young, sixteen years old, very very young.
Sheila was younger than sixteen. Well, I think Wonder was
the oldest one, I believe, right. But Purvis bought them
to Isaaca and I take a listen to. And their
father was Joe was like a little guitar player. He

(01:18:31):
wanted to be a part of the group. He was
their father, and so we listened to them, and we
said that Joe wanted to be a part of the
group because he was impressed with you know, pop staples,
you know with the Staples, and so we said, if
we would do them, we'd have to do just the girls,
and so we did the girl But Purvis was the

(01:18:53):
one that brought them to us. Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:18:56):
Okay, so you you mentioned it earlier. I was saving
it for now, but you gotta tell me, like, what
is the story behind I'm afraid the masquerade is over?
Because every time I have a break up, Yo, every
time I have a breakup, like just that is one
of the saddest songs ever. And now and that's another

(01:19:18):
example of like they're crazy arrangements in that song. And
now that you're telling me that you guys are going
on phillion and all that stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:19:26):
And it I'm walking around the room to.

Speaker 1 (01:19:30):
Tell what was the genesis of that song?

Speaker 4 (01:19:33):
Actually behind the second album which had hang On Sloopy
on it. I don't know if you ever heard that
that's I know, yeah, yeah, but I didn't quite hit
the mark with hang On Sloopy, But I like the
concept that I had would hang on Sloopy So when
I came up with the concept of creating acting scenes

(01:19:54):
inside of the next project, I knew I was going
to create something different, So I wanted to have thing
sing who is she?

Speaker 1 (01:20:01):
Who's the woman? Who's the woman that was one.

Speaker 4 (01:20:05):
Of my secretary but also my wife. My second wife
was also in that. That's that when the card scene,
I come up running, Uh, that's my second wife. The
girl I'm talking to about the girl. Yeah, I'm fascinated
with the girl. Man, that was actually my wife.

Speaker 1 (01:20:25):
Wait time, now there's two women on that song.

Speaker 4 (01:20:27):
Yeah. Well, if you go to the very beginning, not
not on that song, if you go to the very
beginning of the album, yes, I know that I want Yes, yeah,
and and and I go. You open the door, and
I go into this party and I'm talking, Well, the
girl that's talking to me about the other girl, Uh,

(01:20:47):
that was my wife. I wrote out the story as
I would go, and I then selected the songs that
would fit the concept of where I was going to
take the story to. If you notice the last song
on it was Airplane Ticket Bus Ride, Can I Borrow
Your Car? I wrote that at the last minute because
I had gone through the whole storyline and didn't have

(01:21:09):
the closed out song. But the Masqueraders overcame about where
I wanted to create something that gave the essences of
all the things that are having prior to that period
in the Apple where it's acting scenes. So if you
notice the breakdown comes and I start rapping, well that

(01:21:30):
was I didn't have it written out. I knew the concept.
I didn't have the rap written out on that song.
I knew the concept and I talked the concept after
I did the head arrangers for the parts.

Speaker 1 (01:21:42):
So you're singing it as the band sort of reading
your face at the same time.

Speaker 4 (01:21:46):
No, no, I did the track first. In my mind,
I'm looking at I'm going through the emotion of this
inside of the various transitions. That's why the piano part
that's running playing the piano, I'm humming the piano part
for running to play. The signature has been saying all
this sun. That's one of those things where a piano player,

(01:22:07):
that's what we want to play more right, just play
that and stop just that and when I clue you
stop on that. That's what that was. But so so
after that was done, now I get rid of the
single song. Now I do the rap, and I'm feeling
where the parts are before I do the horns, and

(01:22:27):
I'm feeling all of that and I'm making I promise you,
I'm making it up come to an extended part, not
the actually good song. I'm making it up the whole
time because I know where the storyline is gonna ultimately
end up and where it's gonna lead to make songs.

Speaker 1 (01:22:44):
But not that I ever counted bars. But in your
mind you're like, Okay, we're gonna do thirty two bars
of a break and I'll figure out something to say
in these thirty two bars. No, and then it's over,
Like you know.

Speaker 4 (01:22:58):
Now what I know? By kn't Bob? We do that?
But not on this song. I so you got. I'm
walking around the room talking in the microphone, directing cats
in the microphone. I'm going around them while the track
is while I've got the bed foundation of the track.
Oh my mama, I'm telling you this how this was done.

(01:23:20):
I'm walking around the room harming the parts. I don't
know how many bars I'm going to make this. I
just want to make the emotional connectivity be a finick
enough for me to feel something. I need to feel
when it's time to make the transition. That's why you
hear some call flops and things inside of the track. Listen.

(01:23:40):
I know, you know, you know, that's why you hear
some of that. But after this of it was why
I kept a lot of that.

Speaker 1 (01:23:48):
The wronger saying listeners of QLs Right now, I'm doing
the Jim Carrey dumb and dumber realization, Jeff, I can't
believe this. Wow. Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:24:06):
I was asked, David, were you a fan by chance
of David Axelrod? Did you listen to any of his stuff? Really? Okay?
I just both of you, y'all.

Speaker 5 (01:24:16):
I always like, oh, yeah, both of you guys. Y'all
kind of have like this really dark yeah, dramatic, like
big uh, Like it's it's big and like beautiful, but
it's also kind of dark and kind of a carver
as well, and it's really classy. It's elegant, but it's
really like dark and it can be like, oh you

(01:24:37):
listen to that, listen to it in the dark. You
might be freaked out a little bit, but really beautiful stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:24:43):
Man.

Speaker 3 (01:24:44):
I just I just wondered if y'all were fans of
each other.

Speaker 4 (01:24:47):
Well, well, you know, what I would tell you this
man I am. I feel that I've been so blessed
because what come has come through me is the grace
of a man upstairs. Because I have a nonprofit program
where I teach songwriting, recorproducing all of that called the
Constroining MT. It's ten years old. A lot of what

(01:25:08):
you get coming out of ificent kids that have gone
through my program in songwriting. All this's got got one
hundred and thirty some videos with everybody Stevie Bariz, Philip Bailey,
Jimmy jam Bobby Womag, Edite la Verge I mean, let
usy I mean on video talking about their concepts of
the creating process. So all of this, I had to

(01:25:29):
come up with a set way to understand how I
do what I do for the success of those things
to come out of that, Because if I was relying
totally on how I felt, people don't care about how
you feel. They care about how you make them feel.
So I had to find a way to make the
magic of that be resonating to others. And I had

(01:25:49):
to also know in order to replicate it again, find
some way to understand it. And part of what Isaac
and I would talk about and sometimes he would think
I was crazy because I was so far end of that.
But it was a gift and Maurice White and I
came from Virginia Street. Maurice, if you read this book,
you see that he talked about me being one of

(01:26:10):
the first persons he ran the name earth Winning firedown
to why I flew to La. I was at hot
producer Maurice's with Ramsay planning the Hong Kong by the
Cindy Plaza Hotel. I flew to La because he wanted
to tell me something he did to gig. The next
day were walking up sunset. He's going to tell you
a concept I got. Maurice created the earth Wind and
Fire off of a concept in the direction that he

(01:26:31):
had from the gift go and knew exactly what he
was going to go in and the creative process because
he knew he wanted to have an identity that created
a uniqueness that was totally him. That is the essence
of what comes out of Memphis in such unique ways
that no one can can understand it, including me, and
say if it's a god given gift?

Speaker 1 (01:26:52):
Was was Maurice's uh metaphysical direction? Was it jar to
you at the time, because you know, what Marius was
trying to convey with earth, wind and fire was like
the spirit which which is kind of the exact opposite
of even though he was using gospel overturns in the

(01:27:14):
Southern Church, but he's really using metaphysics and things outside
of Westernized Christianity. Was that a little weird for you
at the time, like what you get into Marius? Like, like,
how did you perceive this, this kind of spirituality that

(01:27:35):
Marius was was conveying with with the band.

Speaker 4 (01:27:38):
We're walking up the street and we he said, tell
me what you think about this earth when in fire?
Consider the time period that we're talking about, Ohio players,
mm hmm. All I meant you couldn't go down.

Speaker 7 (01:28:00):
He comes a guy says, earth when in fire, and
this is the concept David, and then I'm gonna fuse jazz.

Speaker 4 (01:28:10):
But he ran all of that down to me. He's
gonna fuse that inside of it. What I thought was
he's gonna make something work, because we always talked about
how I stumbled from the spirituality of what I was
doing to make it work, and I just believe he
was gonna make it work. I just didn't know how
he was going to accomplish it in the climate that

(01:28:31):
we were living in, because he was it was going
to be so innovative. It had to be. But when
I heard the sound of what he did, because he
had a group before or when the fire, when I
heard the sound of what he did with the group,
it was it was over. And we stayed like this.
I was I would fly to la when he when

(01:28:52):
Maurice had to Parkinsons, just to get him in the
car and ride in the street because he was through touring.
We were that close and we talked of and he
left it so his thought about what he was going
to do, because he had that thought about what those
processes was going to be and what the musician was
going to be before he put it together. The only
thing he told me differently while we were on sun

(01:29:12):
So he said, I'm going to bring verdein out here
to California. He told me that. But other than that,
he was going to put all of those ingredients together
and he did it. But yeah, I just because we
worked off of concepts in the direction and identity and
all of those things we lived off of that. I

(01:29:32):
just didn't know he would put it off he did it.
I believed in him.

Speaker 1 (01:29:41):
There is one important question I forgot to ask, as
a kid that grew up in a three thousand album household,
and especially a kid that was afraid of clowns. Dog,
who was the artistic visionary behind the album cover for

(01:30:05):
Victim of the Joke?

Speaker 4 (01:30:09):
When he says you can't handle the truth? Listen, that's
a joke. That's a joke. I didn't know how smart
I was. I just thought that because I had some
Tennessee Walker horses out in Shelby Farms. I just thought,
I want to do this cover, and I want to
have a clown outfit on and I want to be
I want to sit on a drum because I want

(01:30:31):
to make this an opera. Called it Victim of the Joke?
I wanted to be, and I want to make it
like Who's the clown? Well and so, but this is
before I wrote out the script. I had that. So
that was one of those things where becuse. It's just
it came from another kind of space, just like when
something is wrong came from another kind of space. Hold

(01:30:53):
on coming came from another kind of space. The toilet
was there, but it was somewhere else. But it's just
it's from another kind of space.

Speaker 1 (01:31:02):
When was the ending of Stacks as we knew it.

Speaker 4 (01:31:05):
The ending of Stacks happened with Isaac still there, me
still in charge of five labels ahead of A and RM.
Steve Cropper was gone, Doug Dunn was gone, Al Jackson Jr.
Was there, and so it was. It was a situation
where we didn't know what was going on with the

(01:31:26):
business part of the company, but we knew that al
bail that became such a revered person, certainly after the
White Stacks that we did, which was amazing within itself,
until it was almost I had the feeling that the
business white community where the biggest work. When they found

(01:31:47):
out that because we had a line of credit with
a particular bank there, when they found out that this
this black man was was what he was was doing
what he was doing, that it was almost they called
the line and came at us in such a way
that they got al Bill indicted eighteen indictment and tried
to destroy him, foreclosed on the company. And the last

(01:32:11):
thing we knew was Isaac couldn't get any money. His money,
which it was millions of dollars there and the company
actually folded because of foreclosure. Isaac then left Stacks when
it was foreclosed and then signed with the other labor.
But he didn't, he didn't sign with another label before

(01:32:32):
Stacks closed, and so but it was it was an
attack on destroying a powerful company that was creating a
great amount of jobs and a tremendous amount of notoriety
for Memphis, Tennessee. And you put that with what Willie
Mitchell was doing. We were a power base in a
city that was seaked in a in a kind of

(01:32:54):
bigger fee that was not in its own interest because
the credibility that we was bringing to the city was
was tremendous in itself.

Speaker 5 (01:33:01):
They were you around when Al Bell formed Bellmark, his
his indie label that they put out they end up
putting out there it is, but uh.

Speaker 4 (01:33:10):
Yeah, he l moved to California when he did that.
You know, he had an office building on Hollywood there.
You know, I was definitely wrong when Al when Stax
was over and everybody thought Al was over, Ali ended
up you know, creating bail Mark. As you said, wait
a minute, he was. He was still in a brilliant mind.

Speaker 3 (01:33:32):
Yeah, and I think he did.

Speaker 4 (01:33:33):
He did.

Speaker 3 (01:33:33):
Prince most beautiful girl in the world.

Speaker 5 (01:33:35):
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, I forgot in Motown and Motown.

Speaker 4 (01:33:40):
Say what al Bell worked with Barry Gordy at Motown.

Speaker 3 (01:33:45):
For them bells, them bells. I'm trying to.

Speaker 4 (01:33:49):
Check that out, Joe. You know, I'm gonna say, I've
listened to you guys, and I just muddled and how
much information Wasn't it was.

Speaker 1 (01:33:59):
Fantasy at all associated with al Bell? Because there was
a period in the early Arts, like in two thousand
and whatnot, in which ah damn, see, I'm messing up
right now. One of the executives that used to work
at Geffen who signed me, went to Fantasy and was like, yes,
we have all the Fantasy masters and all the Stacks masters.

Speaker 4 (01:34:21):
Like can I can I say? Of course? Was that
was that Erny Singleton?

Speaker 1 (01:34:27):
I know any Singleton, but no, it was not him.

Speaker 4 (01:34:29):
No, okay, okay, because I only worked for Fantasy period.

Speaker 1 (01:34:32):
Okay, but okay, So I guess they connected in the
early arts.

Speaker 4 (01:34:37):
Well you're not a Fantasy deal happened? Right?

Speaker 1 (01:34:39):
No, I don't know, okay.

Speaker 4 (01:34:42):
STAXX closed was totally closed in seventy six. Here comes
to People came to me and asked me would I
create a seven and a half tape of what the
was in the Stacks library? And when I do that,
because they didn't know what it was, the bankhead or
closed us and they were just trying to figure out

(01:35:03):
how to get rid of stuff and they didn't know
what they had. And so what happened was they had
to pay me one hundred thousand dollars to put seven
and a half takes together for about forty five minutes.
And Fantasy Records came to me after that and asked
me what I had up the label for them. What

(01:35:24):
they wanted was to release the catalog of the music,
and they wanted me to move to Berkeley, California. I said,
I would not move to Berkeley, California. If you insted
me doing it, I would have to do it in Memphis,
and I also would have to have the right to
sign some of the artists to the label, and you
release records on We said, we don't really want to

(01:35:46):
do I said, well then I'm not interested. Well, they
would not have known what to do with the catalog,
so they made the deal with me Ernie Singleton, who
later became the president of MCA, And that's why we
closed to this day was working for fantas Said Records.
Another guy by the name of Bob Orsche was working there.
I released the record on the Emotions. They had a
record called Shouting Out Love. I released the record I

(01:36:08):
have on Isaac called hot Bed. I released a record
on the Barcade called Holy Ghosts. I released the record
on the Soldier and called Can't Give Up a Good Thing.
I had another act by the name of Shown Up.
And if you go seven eight should be and you
google seven eight Billboard magazine, you'll see there were four
or five records on the national charts of with stax

(01:36:31):
Fantasy on it. And then when I told the guy,
we have an opportunity to be successful, he says, no,
I don't want I said, we can be big. I
said I don't want to be big, and then I
left the deal because I realized what time that was.

Speaker 1 (01:36:44):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (01:36:45):
I won't go deeper than that anyway. I wasn't interested
in that, So that's what happened. So after that, whoever
signed with Fantasy I left in seventy eight after those
records were released. If those records that I mentioned holy
they hit on the bar That was after Staxic clue.
I was going to.

Speaker 1 (01:37:02):
Ask what was the because they were Mercury at the time,
Like was that in their that was just in the
vaults or something that was.

Speaker 4 (01:37:10):
I got that out of the bault, I got the
help out of Asac, out of the bowl, I got
the help out of the emotions out of the boat. Ah.
I recalled it an.

Speaker 1 (01:37:20):
Ah see. But because the thing is the barks era
I want to know about is again the posts, you know,
the seventies barks But maybe you know the answer with
the exception of Holy Ghost, why is every song they
ever released like derivative of someone else's hit? Like did

(01:37:46):
they not think that we wouldn't put you and two together?
That shine was you know, earth wind fires on your
face or you know, shake it from the front might
be Shining Star, or like were they just the type
of seventies band that would just get the forty five

(01:38:08):
of the moment, study that forty five and figure out, Okay,
what's our formula for that? Because literally Holy Ghost is
probably like even even on stacks, like a song like
it's on the Cold Blooded records, like one of my
favorite Barkas Joint, which is basically kind of derivative of

(01:38:28):
when the World's at Peace by the OJ's It's Wow. No, literally,
Jimmy jam and I like pretty much kept a record
of every song that the bar Ks has ever created.
Oh there's a song called a fighting fire with Fire
or the Stacks era Barkays, which you know is also

(01:38:50):
a popular sample for hip hop. But there's almost one
element in every I mean even on those earlier records,
like they're sliding in family Stones, dance to the music,
and it's like, don't stop, dance to the music. Don't stop.
Like were they not afraid that one day they might
get caught in sort of litigation with.

Speaker 4 (01:39:12):
Being well, you understand, the guy who would ended up
taking them over in total, who didn't have the control
of Stax Records and then being kept in a particular
direction that records could be so long was a guy
by the name of work with Us, by the name
of Alan Jones. Okay, Alan Jones became the producer, the
only producer and the manager of the Barcades, and he

(01:39:37):
came up with the direction that they were going to go.
In matter of fact, I'm going to be sure to
get James so you can interview this.

Speaker 1 (01:39:43):
Yeah, please do us that salad. He's that solid. Please
please please, It's done.

Speaker 4 (01:39:48):
But so Alan was the one who was giving them this,
this particular direction, and I would rather I won't butch
it up. I'm gonna get James and he'll he would
tell you ask them about it. Jones and Larry Dotson,
who was versatile and his vocal could could immolate those
be the players or whoever.

Speaker 1 (01:40:08):
Larry Dodson is probably one of the most underrated soul cats,
still in fine form with it with his but yeah,
the legendary Alan Jones, who you know, I forgot to
ask about cold Feet with Albert King and I'll play
the blues for you and all that stuffy legendary legendary man.
This this is such an honor to just to talk

(01:40:30):
to you and finally get some in depth stories from you,
because we've never seen any feature linked article on you
or or anything. And you're You're just a genius and
a gentleman. And we thank you for being on our show.

Speaker 5 (01:40:45):
Yeah, straight up man. Yeah, shout out to DJ Khalil too.
I put this together again.

Speaker 1 (01:40:50):
Thank you. We appreciate you doing this. Unpaid Bill Bruh,
you missed, you missed the masterpiece of an episode I
Gotta let you know yo on behalf of Sugar, Steve
and font Ticolo and Laya and Unpaid Phil and the
Great David Porter. Thank you so much. It's another classic

(01:41:10):
episode of Quest Love Supreme and we will see you
guys on the next go round. Thank you much. Love
Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts

(01:41:35):
from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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