"Here in the 50 th anniversary year of STAX in 2007, Great Performances has assembled another couple hours of fun and sometimes even breathtaking television."
Bill Gardner
Morning Radio Personality,
KOOL 94.5
Phoenix Billboard Major Market Air Personality of the Year
Radio & Records finalist 2002 Air Personality of the Year
Airline Transport Pilot/Instructor Airline Ground Schools
It’s my opinion that any radio show, or any evening, or come to think of it, any thing that starts with Otis Redding singing “Try A Little Tenderness” is probably off to a great start, and “Respect Yourself: The STAX Records Story” is a another example. Here in the 50th anniversary year of STAX in 2007, Great Performances has assembled another couple hours of fun and sometimes even breathtaking television.
I’ve always considered myself pretty fortunate to have been a radio disc jockey in big American cities during the era when we’d get to play brand new songs on the radio by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Booker T & the MG’s, and Eddie Floyd, to name a few. But not too long ago on my morning radio show in the studios of 94.5 KOOL-FM Phoenix, we had the privilege of a visit with Valley of the Sun hometown legend Sam Moore, the heart and soul of Sam and Dave. Sam and I turned the volume up, and listened again to their classic “Hold On, I’m Comin’.” And in the middle, when Sam belts out “…Hold On,” the STAX studio horn players Wayne Jackson and Al Love were supposed to “answer” Sam’s vocals with those six horn notes we all know, after each and every two words that Sam sung. But instead of singing that title line twice as they’d agreed upon, Sam sang “Hold On, I’m Comin’ “ a third time while the recording rolled, which surprises the horn players and on the hit recording we all know, the horn section then surprises Sam with their silence! Then on the fourth time, the horn section joins back in and “answers” Sam. It’s a small mistake, but it’s left on original recording. Today, we’d have never heard it.
With that, we hear that wonderful difference between STAX Records and Motown. As polished, shiny, and professional as Motown always was, STAX was just as soulful and the music just as passionate and beautiful, but a touch more edgy, rough, and real!
As Samuel L. Jackson says in the opening narration, “In Memphis in the 60’s, people who couldn’t dine together, joined together to make music, at 926 East McLemore Street, Memphis Tennessee. Soul music.”
Former bank teller Jim Stewart and his school teacher sister Estelle Axton pooled their resources and bought a former movie theater. Original studio musicians started with guitarist Steve Cropper and bass player Donald “Duck” Dunn, two white members of local group the Mar-Keys; and horn and keyboard guy Booker T. Jones and drummer Al Jackson, two black neighborhood musicians who all four became “Booker T & the MG’s.”
Great Performances has great insider stories. Like the arrival at STAX from Georgia in the Fall of 1962 of Johnny Jenkins & the Pine Toppers, and their band mate and driver Otis Redding, “the big kid” who unloaded all the musical equipment from the trunk, and who couldn’t wait to show them his talent after pleading his case to Al Jackson all day.
Wonderful interviews, rare archive footage and stills, many I’ve never seen before. Like an early color video of Otis Redding’s original version of “Respect,” which of course he wrote. A black and white clip of Sam & Dave performing “Soul Man”. A 21st century interview with recollections of Otis, from his widow Zelma Redding who talks about the phone call she received on the morning when she’d never hear from him again. Otis Redding’s incredible onstage “live” performance of “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” at the Monterrey Pop Festival in 1967.
How big was STAX Records? As Donald “Duck” Dunn remembers, “STAX Records replaced cotton as the biggest industry of Memphis Tennessee.”
Great Performances "Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story" airing Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2007 at 9 p.m. on Eight/KAET.
