transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:13] My guest today is legendary songwriter David Porter, who has a new book, The Soul Man. David, why this book, why now?

Speaker 2:
[00:22] Well, there are a couple of numbers. One is 84, and one is the clock is ticking. And so for that reason, I wanted to be sure that the wonderful experience I've had being in this business called music and what it's done for me, to me, and through me, I wanted to be sure that my fans and grandkids and family would have something to keep that signifies they would have heard it from me. And the book gave me the opportunity to do just that, Bob.

Speaker 1:
[00:56] Okay. Where do you live right now?

Speaker 2:
[01:00] I live in Memphis, Tennessee.

Speaker 1:
[01:03] So you're still in Memphis. The book goes on a lot about Memphis. Let's start with, how is Memphis different today from when you grew up?

Speaker 2:
[01:13] Well, I think with any city, there is progress. There are changes. For the most part, if you're in love with the place that you've been all of your life, you look and see the beauty. And with any city, there are challenges and circumstances that cause you to wonder. But you realize that in this too shall pass away is an old statement, but it's a lot of truth to it. So Memphis is quite different than it was when I was young. I was born in the 40s. So you can imagine what that was for a kid born in the deep south, with circumstances that were not favorable for him, yet he had to go forward. And so being a part of that kind of initial phase, the only way was up. And Memphis has shown a great deal of progress through the years. And at this particular time, it is a major progress from where it used to be in many positive ways. And then there are growths in areas outside of music that are very positive as well. So I'm really, really proud of this city and what it has done, as I mentioned earlier, for me and for those that I care about. And it's done wonderful things for many, many people. And I've seen those kind of circumstances in action as well.

Speaker 1:
[02:30] Okay, I've been to Memphis and I always rave about it. It's in Tennessee, people may or may not realize, it's across the river from Arkansas and very close to Mississippi. But it's the same state as Nashville, and they're radically different. Can you tell us what makes Memphis different from Nashville?

Speaker 2:
[02:51] Well, I'm not one to get into bashing any city, and certainly not a city that's in the state, even if there are some things inside of me that says, hmm. But I just feel that there is a soulfulness, there is a persona that is unique for Memphis, there is a spirit of samples of kind of all around. You mentioned Mississippi and Arkansas and whatever, there are samples of things all around that plays a part in the meshing, the melting pot of what makes for an interesting place. So there are things that you experience in an ongoing way that was not like yesterday, but certainly you have no way of knowing if it'll be similar to tomorrow. So Memphis affords you that kind of potential, but also the musical influence of Memphis versus what has been historically in Nashville is quite different in the respect that Memphis has never run away from the value of the blues, never run away from the value of R&B, never run away from the value of the significant contribution of blacks not only in this country, but in and through music. And so just that embracing of it, that became a factor that motivates other young kids, blacks and whites, with aspirations to do music, that that's a good area to touch upon. And so Memphis makes a vast contribution to the significance of why there is a Justin Timberlake, for instance, or Charlie Rich, for instance, or an Elvis Presley for other interests. I mean, but that's just part of the magic of what makes Memphis unique, the soulfulness that's never been compromised.

Speaker 1:
[04:45] Okay, to what degree was there racism growing up and what degree were you aware of it?

Speaker 2:
[04:54] Well, to what degree there was racism and to what degree I was... When I was very, very young, I didn't understand what to call it. I just knew for some reason that people who didn't look like me thought they were better than me. The interesting thing about that was as children or young people, you don't know how to define better, because you're living from day to day growing each and every day. But when someone gives you a spirit of non-acceptance, don't be close to me, don't touch me, or don't drink from this water fountain, that kind of thing. That tells you that they have a problem, not you, even as a kid. Because I had to scratch my head and wonder, what these people who think they're better, do they ever use the restroom? Do they know what toilet paper is? Is there a difference? It just made a young kid wonder, and not necessarily call it for what it was, because you were not clear on what it was, but you know, there was a difference. And that was the experience for quite a while growing up. And then the music on the radio, when I started listening to the radio, initially I was hearing Pat Boone and Frank Sinatra and artists of that ilk before 1947, 48, when I was like heading toward eight and nine years old, then here comes a radio station called WDIA. And that gave me a sense of significance that made me one, understand what race was, and two, understand that this radio station was playing the music that was relatable and more digestible for people who looked like me. And the other music that I was hearing that I had to adapt to and appreciate was really not necessarily for me, but it was something to hear, but I respected the value of good music. So I enjoyed that as a youngster as well, because I didn't know any better. And when I started hearing WDIA, I did know that I like WDIA. I'll put it like that.

Speaker 1:
[07:22] So how did you discover you WDIA? And tell us more about the programming, what the DJs were like and what the songs were that they were playing.

Speaker 2:
[07:31] Well, WDIA was the first African American radio station in America. They changed the format from pop country music to blues and rhythm and blues, the early stages of rhythm and blues at that particular time. And that format involved, with quite clarity, artists of the ilk of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley and Howlin Wolf, Jimmy Reid and eventually BB. King, then Bobby Blue Bland. All of the artists that you were able to listen to gave you a clear picture why most of the world was saying, y'all all look alike, you're this, you're not whatever, but this music was showing young kids and blacks in that area, that the personalities and the uniqueness that was in those artists potentially was in each every person that looked like me. So that gave that generation that I was a part of, a drive to work to find the individuality that they believe existed in them. And so that radio station was amazing in that regard for getting you to see the value of you as a person.

Speaker 1:
[08:54] Okay. So you're a little kid, you're listening to WDIA, what were a couple of records that moved you, that just blew your mind?

Speaker 2:
[09:04] Oh, it's hard to say a couple Bob, but I would look to Chuck Berry for one, Bo Dilly for another. And when I say blew my mind, the musical patterns that I'd been hearing were straight flow, there was no dynamics happening with it, the chord progressions were there, but there was no differentiating what those chord progression was saying to you in addition to what the lyric was saying. When I was beginning to hear music on WDIA, the music spoke to me in concert with the message, the personality of the artist spoke to me in concert with the uniqueness of them, and it was like music was in fact a language. I started seeing the value of that as a young kid, and it made me have aspirations to try to find what that uniqueness could possibly mean in my young life. So I started writing down lyrics and harmonies melodies as I'm listening to songs being played on it, that I was making up while I was listening to things that were being played. So it was that kind of magic with that format that WDIA was having. In addition to that, they were making an offering of engaging more directly with the community. They were having talent shows on the radio. They were having singing choirs that sang on Saturdays, the teen towns, as they used to call it, where they would perform on the radio. Now, these are kids from all different schools that would come together to rehearse to develop a format that they were being instructed by one of the radio personalities on the station of WDIA, Mr. AC. Williams. So, it was just such an unbelievable contribution of radio at that time. It was an educational platform, it was a spiritual platform on Sundays with church being played, but it also was a platform of seeing the individuality of Black talents that were heard on that station, which was amazing.

Speaker 1:
[11:17] Okay. We talk about the records on that station. You personally have been responsible for a number of hit records. Very successful records, not like today when these records were hit, everybody in America was aware of these records. You're in the studio making a record. Do you know when it's a hit or when it's not a hit?

Speaker 2:
[11:43] Let me say it to you like this, Bob, because it's interesting. I don't think there are fortune tellers out here, but I think sometimes you get fortune. And so a couple of times, I felt so comfortable, broke very little money, don't know what the platform or major success truly means, but I felt that that song was going to be successful. What that meant in actuality, we told Clarity, no, I didn't know. I was learning. But I felt that. The first song I felt that on significantly, we had been, Isaac and I had done a few records before this. But the first song I significantly felt that was a song on Sam and Dave called You Don't Know Like I Know. And when that record came out, I assumed that record would only be played on black radio stations. And it was. But I also assumed that if I'm thinking right, this music is digestible to people who don't go to church. But the spiritual significance that was innate in that particular melody and song came from the church. And I felt that that was going to do something special. And it did. And it was a chart record for Sam and Dave. And that was a roadmap for Isaac and I to cement the concept of creativity that we used for all of the hits that we did.

Speaker 1:
[13:17] Okay, let's see you use that first big Sam and Dave song as an example. When did you know you had it? When you were writing it? When you were recording it? When they were singing? Did you know from the time that it was composed? Or did you have to make a finished record to say, now I've got all of it?

Speaker 2:
[13:35] No, no. Isaac and I work from concepts. The reason we work from concepts, if you don't mind me elaborating just a little bit, the reason we work for concepts, because when we would hear music on the radio, Motown Records, we saw that Motown Records had more of an emphasis around a straight four beat, a straight four beat with amazing melodies on top of that, and flowing strings and or horns that flowed with that, and really great lyric, and they were digestible for black and white audiences very easily. Burt Bacharach and Hale David were writers of another ilk that had the most amazing melodies in their songs. And Burt would come up with some of the most intricate changes ever imaginable. I didn't understand what all of that meant, but I know what I felt, and what Isaac and I felt, what the uniqueness of that. And so we knew that we could not outdo Motown and what they were doing, and we certainly could not outdo Bacharach and David and what they were doing. So we had to find a path of creativity that led us to have our own uniqueness. Remember, I said I was being influenced, we all were in this community, by the contribution that WDIA, the radio station, was making with the individuality of black artists. So we came up with the concept of the low end, using the bass, drums, and guitar with signature patterns around that particular area that created the uniqueness for that and came up with melodies, and that was my specialty, that gave an energy to those signatures on the low end. We felt that that would separate us sonically with the sound. We didn't get so technical in the sonical aspect of how to define what all these things were. But we talked in terms of the sound of it, and we found that that was our path. What you don't know like I know, we felt that that was a validation of that. From that point on, we were able to go forward with the path that locked us into that. The next song that happened with that was a song called Hold On, I'm Comin. And it was just that ability to really define in our own minds what was going to work in a unique way for us, and then be able to say this is going to be it, which is going to be a hit or wasn't. And so we called Hold On, I'm Comin as a hit, and it was. We called Soul Man as a hit, and that was when we wrote it, not even before we recorded, when we wrote the song, we felt that. My role was to teach Sam and Dave the melodies of the song, the vocal pattern and the nuances that created the uniqueness that gave them a springboard inside of their personalities. They already had the soulfulness, they already had their vibe, they had had records before, but they were willing to let us shape an aura for them that was a little bit unique but different for them, but also merit where we were creating from. And at the time we put that together, the four of us, we didn't know it would be of the magnitude of that it ultimately ended up being. But we did know that we had found a combination that was a strength for us, that cemented the uniqueness of what we were doing versus what we were hearing at Motown and our back-of-rack in David. And so we were able to constantly churn out hits on Sam and Dave with that.

Speaker 1:
[17:47] Okay, you've written a couple of, you know, you talk about Soul Man, Hold On, I'm Comin, these are iconic numbers forever. But you've written many, many other songs.

Speaker 2:
[17:58] Right.

Speaker 1:
[17:59] So, generally speaking, do you wait for inspiration? Or do you say, well, I'm working, I better write some songs. Or do you say, an artist is coming into the studio, I better write some songs. What is the impetus of creation?

Speaker 2:
[18:17] Well, that's a good question, Bob, because eventually we got into a situation where everyone wanted songs for us, from us rather. In order to be sure that we didn't have things sounding alike, we did what I mentioned a moment ago. We would first come up with a concept and then decide on whether or not we could be a significant compliment to a particular talent that wanted to work with us. And so we were working from that level of understanding. So we would come up with a concept, get a creative direction. We live by the philosophy that there are no new emotions. You have to find fresh ways to talk about common emotions. And so we wanted to be sure that the emotion that we talked about, the love on this group, didn't bump into the emotion that we talked about, love with a Salmon Dave or a Carla Thomas or a Johnny Taylor. We had to find fresh ways to do it. And we wanted to be able to do it inside of what we were able to develop as a concept for the uniqueness of the artists that we were working with. Today, and me talking about this with you, it sounds like we were thinking in a very, very scientific, highly analytical kind of way. That's not the case. We were feeling these things, living out of the emotion of what we were feeling, and then acting upon it. And they were validating the meaning and the strength of it based on the results of them. And as the results kept coming, we kept developing even a better understanding of what we were doing. And more importantly, while we were doing what we were doing. So we were able to work different artists, different times, when it's time to work, write a song for a particular artist. We had a concept of that artist. We know what that concept was. We know what the last record we had done on him. We know we didn't want to bump into them with a similar idea with a follow up record. We knew what they had done before. We knew what was the hit on Sam or Ann or Dave or Johnny Taylor or whoever. And we knew that we didn't want to bump into any of those. And we were fortunate enough not to because we've created a vacuum around each artist that we work with that cemented that aura for them. And it drew the listener's mind to them and where they were, more so than them being aware that really every song generally is talking about the same things. You hurt me, I hurt you. We fell in love yesterday, we fell out today, the day after you, whatever. But it was able to be thought in terms of, the act of it, in terms of those ways. And even though those things ended up being quite successful, we were not that brilliant about that. We just were feeling it the right kind of way. And I'm sure you've heard the saying about, you get on a run and then things work. Well, we were on a run, coming from a space of spirituality and emotional connectivity that was hard to define, yet it was happening in such a continuum that it was creating a tremendous amount of excitement for us, for each and every artist that we worked with. Cause we were trying to outdo what we did on the last record. We never wanted to create something for any artist that we wanted to be as good as the last record that we did. We always wanted to be better than the last one that was dead. We did. And so we were the best credit one could have because we were the worst critic for criticizing what we were doing.

Speaker 1:
[22:08] Okay, there's a famous story about how you come up with the title, Hold On, I'm Comin. Okay?

Speaker 2:
[22:17] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[22:18] When you come up with that title, do you then say, oh, we should write a song? Or were you trying to write a song, you came up with the title, and then it just flew from there?

Speaker 2:
[22:30] Well, first, if you allow me, Bob, to say this, there was some journalists of some folk from England. And they approached me about, we're writing bathroom stories around music. Do you have anything that could be a bathroom story from something that you guys have done? Now, as strange as that was, first place, I never would have thought that someone would have gotten me to talk about how Hold On, I'm Comin came about because I wasn't keen on wanting to tell somebody that I was in the restroom. So I'm thinking, because at the time, we were a little popular, Isaac and I, but we were not household names. So I'm just thinking, well, what is it going to hurt? I'll just let them know what happened with this. Decades later, the whole world knows about Hold On, I'm Comin and how it was created. So no, Isaac and I would quite often go to clubs just to air out, just to relax, just to take a break. And we would jam, in my book, there's a picture of Isaac and I on stage. This is before he was recording as an artist, he and I were performing together. We would do that often, leave the studio and go to a club, jam, leave there, go back to the studio, pull our coats and jackets off, put something on and go and write. This is 1.30, two o'clock in the morning. One of those nights when we were trying to come up with the follow up to You Don't Know Like I Know on Sam and Dave, we went to a club called Club La Ronne and Isaac and I jammed that night. We left there at 12.30 going on one o'clock and we came back to the studio. Well, in the Stax Studios, it was an old movie theater that Jim Stewart had converted into a recording studio, you know, with the slope floor that you walk down, sit in your seat and look up to the screen. Well, in those theaters, there was no area outside in the lobby that you would go to the restroom. No, in those theaters, in those times, you'd walk through the door to go into the theater room itself and right to the right or left would be a restroom. And because it was at that, as soon as you're walking in the door, when you would go into the restroom, people wouldn't see the light from the restroom because they've gone down the floor and they're looking up. So it was placed in such a way that it was not an intrusive thing for a restroom to be inside of a theater room. But it also was used as one of our echo chambers as well. On this particular evening, we were trying to come up with a follow-up for a record on Salmond Day. We went to the club, had a great time, came back to the studio. I said, hey man, I'm going to run to the restroom. He said, okay, go ahead. He went on down to the piano. I couldn't have been in there very long at all. So to your question, I'm thinking about creating a song even in the restroom. Isaac is thinking about us creating a song even before we even started. So I'm in the restroom, he screams out to me cuz you could hear him. Hey man, hurry up. I hadn't been in there very long. I said, man, hold on, I'm coming. And it hit me like a light went off. I walk out of the restroom, I said, Sack, Isaac, we got one. He said, what? I said, hold on, I'm coming. He said, hold on, I'm coming. What you're talking about? I said, let's come up with a rescue song, you know, like the Superman kind of thing. I said, let's come up with that and have a point counterpoint with Sam and Dave in talking about rescuing the chick. But we also wrote with double meaning. We also talk, I said, and the meaning of it would be support and support for each other as a people in the times we were living, because this is 1966. He said, well, you know what? You said Superman and rescue. He said, man, I put down a horn pattern a couple of weeks ago with Wayne Jackson and Andrew Love with Memphis Horns, they would do the sessions in Stax and we were all working together. He said, I just put this horn lick down. We call a horn lick would be maybe eight bars or 16 bars of a particular run or pattern. You never know what you're going to do with it, but it was there. He said, I said, well, let me hear it. We went up and with that time, the control room from the studio room where we were writing, Isaac put a seven and a half tape on, played da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, which sounded like a Superman flying through the air, rescuing this dance floor in the stress. I said to him, that's it, man. That'll be the signature for this song. We ought to start the song off with that. He said, yeah, because we generally when we start the song off with featuring a horn pattern. He said, yeah. So with that in mind, he now sits down at the piano. We've talked about it. He sat down at the piano. He hit a chord. I start singing right then, Bob. Don't you ever feel sad? Lean on me when times are bad. When the day comes and you're down in a river of trouble and about to drown, hold on, I'm coming. I sung it. It came right through me. In 20 minutes, we had written a song. And at the time, it was, things came to us that kind of way. We knew where we were going with Sam and Day, the point, counterpoint kind of thing that was, we'd already established that's what we're going to do with them. The church vibe is what we were also going to do, because you don't know, like I know showed us that. And that just came together that way. But it came together, not with any kind of forethought except we were ready to work, we knew we were going to capture our emotions and control the emotions, target it for the credibility of the artists that we were working with, and we stayed true to that. He knew where that was, I knew where that was, and the things just flowed organically that way.

Speaker 1:
[29:34] Okay, you talk about Isaac laying down this horn spot. You know, I realize he did it, but how much of there was there of doing that, and how would that be created? We said, oh, I have a riff in my head, I want to get it down, or I need to create some riffs. How did they create those?

Speaker 2:
[29:54] No, no, no, no, that's a great question. No, no, it was just, if he felt something, and he had the opportunity to stick it down, whether we use it or not, and we did that often. I did it, he did it, Steve Crapper did it, we all did it. Booker would do it. We just do it. And if you're working on something, thinking about something, you think you may only use something that could marry, you talk about it, you pull it out, listen to it. If it gels with what you're thinking, fine. If it doesn't, you keep going. He has had that, it had been there a couple of weeks. He never said anything to me about it. By the same token, with Hold On, I'm Comin, I already knew when we first sat down to write the song. I already knew what the beat should be, what the drum beat should be. I'm not a drummer. But here it arranges what we all do at Stacks and what we are all proficient at doing. I knew that there was a record that came out of New Orleans by an artist by the name of Lee Dorsey and he had a hit record called Get Out Of My Life Woman. The drum beat on that record, I felt was an amazing drum beat. Al Jackson Jr., the drummer at Stacks, played on all those hit records, was a genius at being given a seed of an idea of what you're thinking, and he manifest that into the aura of what you're asking him for. He knew the Get Out Of My Life Woman beat. He tweaked the beat, put that pattern down on the Hold On, I'm Comin record, and it's one of the most revered records ever on a record. When you hear the record of Hold On, I'm Comin on the radio with that horn pattern and that beat, if you listen close to that beat, you don't hear beats like that. The uniqueness of the beat of that and the individuality of the horn pattern with the melody and that feel, we knew that was going to be a number one record, and it was. But that was one of those things that, like I said, that we don't go down and say, well, we're going to write a hit today or that. No, we target what we're going to do, concept what we're going to do, stay true to that, because you got a four-piece rhythm basically. So you've got to make the same players that you're using regularly sound unique to what you're working on. The only way you can do that is have a unique forethought to begin that. Isaac and I started that working in a more significant way for the team. The artists who made that obvious thing that could be a strength for Stax Records was Otis Redding. When Otis would come to Memphis, Otis would walk around the room, hum all of the parts that he had in his head, have the guys play the parts, and everything they played sounded nothing like anything else they had played. The uniqueness of it was right there in your face, and that was the magic of what told us that the potential for them to do with every artist we worked with was inside of them, because Otis had broke them in to that. When I said them, I'm talking about Booker T., Al Jackson Jr., Doug Dunn, and Steve Cropper. And when we were working on our records, it was Isaac on the keyboards. Occasionally, we would use Booker. But that was the rhythm section. When records were being made on Albert King, or Little Milton, or Johnny Taylor, that same rhythm was used. And when we would use them on those artists' own records, songs that we were producing, we had a targeted, creative way, conceptually, that we would use them to create the individuality for those songs. But that was where the magic came about. And that was the way the magic came about inside of the Stacks facility. We never started using other core musicians and rhythm records at Stacks until years later. Initially, it was just those guys. It was what we called the Big Six. It was just us.

Speaker 1:
[34:06] Okay. Let's go back to laying down horn parts. Let's say Isaac has an idea for a horn part. And let's assume he has it outside the studio and he wants to lay it down. Are the core sticks coming every day so he knows they're going to cut it? Or does he have to call everybody up and say, you know, you got to cut this part?

Speaker 2:
[34:32] No. Every day there were sessions being held. Every day you were coming into the studio. And you know, the interesting thing about that, Bob, when you go back to the early 60s, there was not a lot of money being paid for musicians to play. The money went a long way, right? But Booker T played the baritone horn that I got him to play on the Rufus Thomas record, Cause I Love You. He made $15. That was it. And so it was easy to be able to record regularly for our core rhythm and horn section, because money was flowing in such a way that people had more access to the music, and you had more abilities to get people to play the music. And so people were able to what we call make a living at that time, that way. So sessions were going on quite regularly, and the bigger our artist's roster got, the more artists would be recording regularly. It was a long time before we got a Studio B. It was just one main studio, and we eventually had a great number of artists to work with.

Speaker 1:
[35:54] Okay. You go to the club, you put together talking and sitting there, Hold On, I'm Comin. Do you record a demo?

Speaker 2:
[36:07] What's the demo, Bob? No. No. We actually write the song, get the artists, Sam and Dave did not live in Memphis. They would come to Memphis, I would teach them the song, and tell them directionally where we're going. Then we would get ready, because they were only in town for two or three days, we get ready to do the section the next day. They got paper on the stand, looking at the paper. Now, that means that you gotta be very compelling in your discussion to get them to understand the direction of the song. Well, how do you do that? Well, when we recorded Sam and Dave, I would teach them the song. Now, the Stax Studio was a slope, old movie theater floor. We would be way at the top of the room, almost like you walk in the door at the movie theater. There would be a baffle between us and the rhythm section on the floor. There would be a mic on the guitar amp, a mic on a bass amp, mics on the piano. Horns are standing behind a baffle, all standing in the room after we've taught them the song, them being everybody. Now, in order to secure that the imagery and attitude is not compromised with every act, including Carla Thomas, I would be on the opposite side of the microphone, directing them like a choir director. They would be on the mic, looking at the paper and following those cues. When people realized that that's how those records were recorded, they were surprised because we didn't go around telling people, well, when Sam and Dave recorded Soul Man, they had to look at me as I direct them to do the squall or whatever on Soul Man, whatever, but that's how it was done. So no one was going out talking about what our processes were. We were just marveling in the fact that these people all over everywhere thought we were geniuses. We knew we were not genius. We just knew how to do what we knew how to do.

Speaker 1:
[38:11] Okay, let's stay with Hold On, I'm Comin for a second. So you guys write Hold On, I'm Comin. You obviously write down the lyrics. You have the riff for the horn. Do you write anything else down so you can remember the song?

Speaker 2:
[38:28] No.

Speaker 1:
[38:29] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[38:31] We knew, well, the musicians, the musicians, those guys, they would put numbers down if they wanted to look at a piece of paper, numbers, not notes, numbers. And so if they wanted to. But by and large, when we get in the room, we're teaching patterns. So more so than just musical notes, they had to learn the pattern. Duck had to learn the bass pattern. Steve had to learn the guitar pattern. Al Jackson knew what the drum pattern was. So each song, they were inside a capsule of understanding of the pattern. And the pattern goes to whatever that pattern is for four bars or two bars, then it goes to the five, and it goes to go back to the times to the one. I mean, they were numbers, but you're knowing what the patterns are. So no, there was no writing down the music and this kind of thing. Now, when we got into orchestration years later, when Isaac got into that kind of thing, Isaac did not write music. He didn't know how to write music. But Isaac knew how to create the parts by talking to an arranger guy that could copy out his melodies. And if he want a chord spread or 135, or he wanted suspensions or whatever, he could say, give me a spread on it. And that guy would show him what that chord spread sonically would sound like. And he said, yeah, that or no. And they would write that out for the string players or the horn players or the flute players who come in on the session day. So but no, we never function by, let's write out the music charts for the songs we were going to record. That never happened.

Speaker 1:
[40:23] Okay, let's stay with Hold On, I'm Comin. You write the song in the middle of the night. You know it's a hit. Okay. How long after that do you actually get CM and Dave in the studio? And you know you have a hit so much that you're telling everybody, you gotta get them in soon, or you say, hey, we'll wait until their schedule opens up.

Speaker 2:
[40:45] No, no, no, no. At that time, when we were dealing with Sam and Dave, Otis, Carla Thomas, Johnny Taylor, I think Albert King, Booker T and the MGs, we had Gene and the Darlings, we didn't have a big artist rusting at that time. So it was easy for us to say, we're ready for Sam and Dave, Jim, because Jim had a relationship with Atlantic Records. Sam and Dave were action artists on Atlantic Records with Jerry Wexler. There was a relationship between Atlantic and New York and Stax. During that time, Jerry Wexler was smart enough to utilize our environment as much as he could. So he would get Wilson Pickett to come down to record, he would get Don Colvay to come down to record, and it was that kind of thing. So sessions being scheduled, and artists being asked to come in, was quite easy because it wasn't that big huge roster that we eventually got, and you were able to say, I'm ready, and two or three days the artists would come in, because they hadn't exploded yet. After You Don't Know Like I Know, that was when Sam and they just started doing quite a few gigs. They had just started that. So because they wanted their career to continue to explode, all we had to say was, we need you in next week. Whatever they had, they would reschedule that if they had to and be in that studio next week. And I'd be teaching them a song. Three days later, we'd have the song recorded.

Speaker 1:
[42:24] Okay, you have the song. You get Sam and Dave to the studio. A, do you work with the rhythm section beforehand, or are you working with the vocalist the same time in the rhythm section? In addition, once you teach everybody their song and they work out their parts, how many takes, how many channels, how long does it take?

Speaker 2:
[42:52] When we start with Sam and Dave, there are four people in the room, Sam and Dave and Isaac and I. I'm teaching them the song. We're creating now semen in the structure for the song. In some instances, we would think that X would go where Y is, but then we would change that and we would see where Y is. We would create the structure based on what we were hearing coming out of them, and the marriage of the transition that we felt worked effective for them, and we would do that. We would get them, because it's all fresh to them, they're just learning the song. To us, we know we made some drastic changes, but they don't. What they're taught is what they know. To them, it's much, much easier for them to feel and contain it, than it would be for us because Isaac and I would have lived with it for three or four days, sometime a week. And so we would be able to understand what we were doing and why we were doing, and they would be able to place close attention to everything they were hearing. So we would teach them the song. And then when we schedule for the session, we would bring the horns and the rhythm in. And we would have the horns sitting outside until we ready for them to come in, but they would be there and we work out the rhythm with the four rhythm cats. And we work out the parts right there. And as I mentioned, they were parts, they were lines, musical lines. And they would get those and they would, they were so used to being together and working together. It was not as, you know, Motown, I'm sure, had the same kind of system where folks were able to feel each other, trust each other and go with it and know it would be right. And we had the same thing. But that was the advantage of having the same people that you're working with who trusted each other, who felt each other, and he knew how to create the nuances necessary to communicate whatever the producer wanted from the song.

Speaker 1:
[44:58] Okay. Sam and Dave are brought in. You teach them the song. How many days later till the rhythm section and the horns are there, the rhythm section works it out. Then what do you do with the horn section? At what point do you start recording?

Speaker 2:
[45:16] We bring the horns in when we get the rhythm, when the guys are comfortable with the rhythm. Now we bring the horns into the studio. We've got the rhythm. Now the horns are hearing the rhythm. Generally, when we would have those records, the guys, because those sections would be really locked together, the guys in the horn will be pumped to want to play it because it sounded interesting. All of the songs sounded interesting to these guys because they knew they were part of something magical. They didn't know to what extent the magic was magic until it was done. Then we talked about the nuances, the auras inside of the lines and the kind of energy that we want on the lines. We go through all of that. Now they're ready to do it with the rhythm, the full of the rhythm and we run the whole song down. We don't have Sam and Dave screaming, trying to sing the song at that particular time. We got them listening and learning what the music is doing. Now they still know where the melody is because I'm talking to them about where the sections are. Now this is before we go back to the back for them to sing. Now the horns and the rhythm lock and when the rhythm lock, we're ready. Now we go to the microphone and the guys, the rhythm and the horns hadn't heard Sam and Dave blast yet. Now they hear Sam and Dave blast. And so when they start singing on the microphone, the energy escalates immediately in that room. That's in every song because it fits like a glove. The concept that Isaac and I had for what we were doing and the way we went about accomplishing that, always made the guys trust that it was going to be what we wanted it to be because we knew what we were doing. But it really was we knew who we could trust and we could trust them.

Speaker 1:
[47:11] Okay. So now everybody knows their parts. How many tracks are you recording to? Is everybody playing at the same time? And how many takes do you go before you were convinced you got it?

Speaker 2:
[47:25] Well, I won't go back to when we first started. I won't go back to the four track days with The Life I Live On, because we started with four track. Then we went to eight track. Then we went to 16 track. Then to 24 track. So the eight track was a fascinating time, because a gentleman by the name of Tom Dowd, who was in New York with Atlantic Records, a genius, was one of the greatest minds in studio environment, and that could ever be, I believe. He came down and straightened up so many things that were going wrong inside of our facility. We didn't even know what it was. Jim Stewart didn't even know at that particular time that he should change the transistors in the little console. Tom Dowd changed the transistors in the console, and if you listen to the record, you don't know like I know. You will hear the pristine sound of that record comparison to the records that followed on Sam and Dave and others because those transistors were just put in that console. So you can hear, you don't know like I know, and it's just like crystal clear. You could tell if somebody tells you to listen closer and you compare the record, you can say, what was that? No, it's the same room, but those little things that we didn't know what the heck we were listening to that Tom Dodd came and said, well, you guys need to change this and change this and whatever. It was magical for us, but it was common knowledge for this guy who was a wizard at that kind of thing.

Speaker 1:
[49:08] So would you record the act all at once or would record the vocal separate from the rhythm and separate from the horns?

Speaker 2:
[49:16] What? What do you, who, when? No, one, two, three, four, downbeat on the one, everybody's got to be right. When the one happens, when that count off happens, everybody has to be locked in, in every kind of way possible with the right kind of energy, the right amount of energy, the right conviction for the section that they would come. If you don't do that, we got to do it again. But because you're blowing your heart out on every cut, you can't afford to do it again. So everybody's locking in because you got to remember the patterns every time the pattern comes. So each time that count off happens, and when the one hits, everybody is locked. The singers locked, the musicians locked, Isaac and I locked in the production part of it, and we bring it off. And so we never had 30 cuts, or 40 cuts of anything. I don't know, I wouldn't even know how to count up to that. We never did anything like that. Because the emotional connectivity was on every track every time. That's what made the magic and the beauty of Albert King so unique. Every time Albert King played on a record, his guitar parts, the records that were out, and hits and standards on Albert King, every one of the outtakes, it was the same thing. But that was with everybody. Everybody would give it all every take, every cut. So, and it was all done at once.

Speaker 1:
[51:03] Okay. So generally speaking, how many times would you cut a track? And once you got it, did you fix anything or that was it?

Speaker 2:
[51:16] There was a thing called splicing. Taking a razor blade and cutting the tape, and putting it together to make the section shorter, or a little bit longer, or whatever. That was something that was done. But generally, I mean, no. You had to be on point and folk were on point. Very seldom, we didn't get into things such as overdubbing and those kinds of things until we got into 16 track and 24 track.

Speaker 1:
[51:58] Okay. They cut it a certain number of times. You wrote the song with Isaac. You guys know what you're looking for. Is it making them play? You talk about how on they were. Could an alternative take been the hit or were you looking for the one?

Speaker 2:
[52:21] Always looking for the one. I think everyone who does what they do in an ongoing way, we look for the one. You're looking for the one right now. You want the quality of your podcast to be on par to the highest level of everything that you do. So if something is not that as good as someone you make feel when you're doing it, you're going to find a way to make it right. And that's the same thing with making records. Those of us who are in the arts, we know what the art is. And so we are looking for that. And we're not open to something. When we hear funny notes or read a squeak on the sax or something, in the middle of a pattern that sounded good, we got to do it again. We got to do it again.

Speaker 1:
[53:07] Okay. You have this gigantic hit with Hold On, I'm Comin. What do you know? You know that people are looking for another Sam and Dave record. Sam and Dave want to work with you guys again because they had all this success. To what degree do you feel the pressure and how do you come up with Soul Man?

Speaker 2:
[53:29] Well, to be honest, we're young and Isaac and I didn't feel any pressure. Now, that's strange to say right now because having lived, as long as I've lived, to say that, I'm saying, wow, and I know that's true. But why didn't we feel any pressure? Because we were so in love with what we were doing. We were so comfortable in what our gifts were, and we knew that we had to do it tomorrow. And so we were so comfortable that tomorrow it would come, and we would do it till we didn't feel anything. We just were enjoying the journey. Now, we had to understand what we were doing and why we were doing it. That's why the theory that I mentioned earlier about coming up with concepts with those that we work on was so extremely important. If we were just writing and creating off the cuff, then yeah, you're talking about pressure. But we didn't have any of that, because we were not creating off the cuff. If we're going to do a Sam and Dave record, we know why we were doing Sam and Dave, and we know what we had to do, and we know where we were going with it. If we were going to do a Carla Thomas record, we know why we were doing, when we recorded B-A-B-Y on Carla, we knew what we were looking for with the record. Now, generally, we have every pattern that we're looking for on a record, on every song that we would do, on B-A-B-Y. We didn't have the bass pattern that we were satisfied with. Now, we're working on it in the studio with the musicians, and we didn't have the bass pattern, but we knew we didn't, because we said, let's try it again, let's try it again, because we were trying to get the rhythm to lock on it. Booker T. Jones, and I will forever get Booker credit for this, and it's in my book as well. Booker T said, what about this pattern? And he played the pattern that you hear on B-A-B-Y, on a bass pattern, and we said, man, we like that pattern. So we used that bass pattern on B-A-B-Y, and that was given to us by Booker T. And I say that because that was the energy that was inside of the Stax Room. Generally, it was Isaac and I giving away parts and lines and things like that for other people's records. But that was one time that one was given to us by the great Booker T. Jones on a major hit record.

Speaker 1:
[56:06] Let's start with B-A-B-Y. You have success with that record, use your process. And then in the late 70s, Rachel Sweet comes out with a cover. What did you think about her aid doing it? And if you remember what you thought of her version?

Speaker 2:
[56:24] Well, let me be honest with you. One, I was complimented that she was doing. Two, I had no idea that would have the connection in the marketplace that it did. Because in my mind, no one could top Carla Thomas version of it. And Carla did it so effortlessly. So I didn't think that anyone could be that relaxed doing a song like that. And he'd come off that way, but it did. And so when I heard that, I mean, it was just a surprise to me. But what it told me was that we had written a good song. And a good song on a good artist with a good combination of players can make a good record. And so I just felt, wow, surprise but pleased. And I hadn't heard anything else. He said, I remember Rachel by name, but I don't know any other records by her.

Speaker 1:
[57:24] Well, that was her one big record.

Speaker 2:
[57:25] Right.

Speaker 1:
[57:26] But going back to Otis, the legend is that Otis was the driver. And he asked to sing late in the evening. Is that legend true?

Speaker 2:
[57:39] Without a doubt. Otis was the driver for a guy by the name of Johnny Jenkins, who I was there when Jim was trying to record him. And Johnny Jenkins was really not that talented in the studio. He was doing what we call it, comedy called freezing in the studio. And that was Johnny Jenkins. And Otis was asking Al Jackson to get someone to take a listen to him. Because Otis would be in the room lying on the floor when they were trying to cut Johnny Jenkins. And there was no magic happening with that. And so at the end of that, everybody was ready to go. And finally, Al Jackson was the one who got Steve to say something, to Jim to listen to Otis. And he agreed to listen in the rest of his history.

Speaker 1:
[58:37] How did Al know that Otis was good?

Speaker 2:
[58:40] He didn't. He was just trying to get rid of it. No one knew Otis was good. No one knew that he was singing with Johnny Jenkins. He was the driver of bringing it. No one knew.

Speaker 1:
[58:54] Okay. So he starts to sing. Does the light bulb immediately go off over your head?

Speaker 2:
[59:01] Not over my head, over Steve Cropper's head, Al Jackson's head, and Jim Stewart's head. Because I'm just listening, but I'm not, I'm sorry. I'm not just, I wasn't in the room on that, when he was singing that song. They were just listening. And Steve has said many, many times that the hair on his arm just stood up when Otis starts singing These Arms of Mine. And Steve was the one playing piano. And Steve is not a piano player at all. So what he was doing was playing triplets on the piano. Because he was, he's not a piano player. But Otis made his triplet playing sound magical because of his tone and the imagery that he was doing inside of his vocals. Otis was special from day one, but no one knew that.

Speaker 1:
[59:50] Okay. So what was your experience of working with Otis?

Speaker 2:
[59:56] Well, you have to know that to me, one of the greatest minds, lyrical minds, that I'd ever seen was Otis Redding. Otis could take the most simplest of lyrics, say it in the most abstract way, words that don't link up in a digestible, understandable way with each other at all, and make you understand with told clarity the meaning of it. How do you do that? He could do things with his voice and with his tone that would make you feel the emotion of what he was trying to convey through a lyric that was abstract to the lyric line that he was doing. That speaks volumes about artistry, and he was just magical with that. Then if you would ask him, what are you here with that? He would have the part in his head that he could tell you what to play. And it wasn't that he had thought long and hard about that part. It's just that when he was called for it, it just flowed out of it. And so that would that just said, trust, magic, confidence, and all of that wrapped in one. And Otis was that. He was magical like that.

Speaker 1:
[61:28] Okay, one of the stories I loved in the book was the creation of Soulfinger, which is a song I always loved. Can you tell that story?

Speaker 2:
[61:37] Well, this was during the time where I'm still trying to get my way into the fold in a locked-in way with Stax Records. So I'm up there working, not getting any money, but working, trying to convince them to bring me on, because now I'm still selling, I'm selling insurance at that time. And so they had a rhythm track of these kids that went to Booker T. Washington High School, which is the high school that I went to, with James Alexander, Ben Carlin, and Jimmy King, those guys. And I walk in the room where they're playing this rhythm riff. I being me and Isaac, we go in there, and we hear this rhythm riff. Well, Jim is standing in the floor, they're standing, and they don't know what to do with this. And so I said, you mind if I try an idea? I paraphrase it now, because I asked for the chance to try an idea on the track. Now you must understand that because no one knew what to do with this rhythm track, they were open to that. Isaac said, he said, Soulfinger. Now James Alexander needs to tell his story because he knows it's true. Isaac came up with the title Soulfinger. When I heard that, I went outside, went to the grocery store, next door, I bought two cases of Coca-Cola, asked kids that were on the street if they would come inside of the studio, because they had never been in the studio. I said, Y'all want to come in the studio? I got them to come in the studio. They're all in the studio. We're all on the floor there. Just them. I said, you want to do something for me? Would you like to be on a record? These are young kids, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve years. They start screaming. I said, listen, I'm going to direct you like a choir. Every time I wave my fingers like this, I want you to scream as loud as you can. You want me to scream? I said, yes. I said, but when the music is playing, I want you guys to talk to each other and have fun. Have fun? Yes. I said, but listen, each time I bring my arms down, I want you to say soul finger. So, soul finger every time I do that. So they thought that would be fun. Jim set up microphones around the room. They still don't know what this is. And be quite honest with you, I don't know how I'm going to direct them to do anything. So it's going to happen organically, and I'm not thinking analytical about organically. I'm just thinking I want to try something. And Bob, it was just, I want to try something. Isaac came up with the title, I want to try something. The only person that was out of any money was me for the two cases of coke. Because Jim is not paying me yet now. So I get the kids screaming, and then, whole finger, and soul, and then scrap. And when they heard that, they being, Jim heard that, there were no records even anywhere remotely close to anything like that. And because it was nothing remotely close to anything like that, and because it was soul finger, and Jim, who I love, doesn't know what the soul finger is. Isaac does. But, so, and the public doesn't. So, we put that on the record. They released the record. Now, the horns, which Ben Carley, and I forget who the sax player, when they heard this kid screaming, they put the horns down on it, on soul finger. They put the horn down on it. And Ben Carley, who was the actual trumpet player of the barcade, had a signature sound with his horns. And so, they were just having fun. They had no idea to know that that horn riff, the way Ben was playing it, along with the tenor sax, that riff was going to even more signature that record. Cause no trumpet player would play a riff, a lick like that on a record. And so, because it was so filled with uniqueness, the record exploded. And here it is, decades and decades later, still lives like that.

Speaker 1:
[66:14] I gotta ask, I think I know the answer, but if you made that record today, there'd be somebody running around with releases for all the kids to sign.

Speaker 2:
[66:25] Right, that's right.

Speaker 1:
[66:26] You didn't do any of that, right?

Speaker 2:
[66:28] Not at all. Not at all. The same thing with Will Smith getting jiggy with it. The kids on getting jiggy with it with na-na-na-na-na-na. Those were the same kids at 926 East Macklemore that I got to put on a record called Sang and Dance on the Bar Cays. I wrote and produced that record for the Bar Cays. That's years later, right before Stax closed. That's where that came from, those kids.

Speaker 1:
[67:02] Okay. You finally get on the payroll, you're on a roll, you're working with Isaac, you're going to clubs, you're working in the middle of the night. How do you maintain a relationship? You got a wife, you got kids. I mean, there's only 24 hours in a day.

Speaker 2:
[67:22] In my book, if you read all the way to the end, I talk about the sacrifice, not only that the creatives make, but the family make. And even they don't know they're making a family. They're just quite sad that they don't have the bond of a family unit because their father is working his you-know-what off to try to make something happen that's meaningful in a constructive way for them. So you make a conscious decision as to what you're going to do if you're going to do this thing called music. And what that means is that you have to make a conscious decision of how much you're willing to give up to give yourself a legitimate chance to be successful at doing it. And if by chance you don't succeed at doing it, there is a possibility that you will have lost your family. If by chance you become successful, there is a possibility they may feel a semblance of some value from you. And or if by chance there was so much dissension and anger because it just didn't work in a synergistic way, you got kids that don't think well of the family and the family's splintered, whatever, and that's the sin, for lack of a better word, that this thing called music can do to you when you're passionate about working and making sure that you give yourself a legitimate chance to be successful in it. And in the book, I say that the greatest sacrifice that could be made is the sacrifice that a family makes to endure that from someone who asks to find out if they have it or not.

Speaker 1:
[69:25] Okay. You come from a family of 12 kids. Your father dies when you're extremely young. You're living your life, you know, doing various things. You have sexual intercourse with a woman on her porch. She gets pregnant and you marry her. A, what's going through your mind during all that? And two, how do you keep your mind focused on a music career when that happens?

Speaker 2:
[69:56] I have. I'm in high school. I'm in the 11th grade in high school. I, in the book, I disclose it. We don't really know each other. And as I mentioned, my father passed when I was very, very young, two years old, as a matter of fact. And I don't know enough about the birds and the bees to know what I should or shouldn't do. And so I did something that I shouldn't have done. And I get a girl pregnant because I don't know what to do. And I'm in the 11th grade, she has to drop out of school. By the time I finished, I'm in 11th, I finished the 11th grade, I start the 12th grade because I'm determined to finish high school. I wanted to go to college, I had no money, but I wanted to make something happen with my life. And so I go to school. This is during the time that I didn't think I was the father, because I didn't think I could get a girl pregnant by doing what I did. That shows you how brilliant I was about The Birds and The Bees. And so that's really what happened. So the music, I was still passionate about it, I was singing on talent shows and all of that, but nothing had started happening for me at that particular time. By the time I finished high school, I graduated from 12th grade, June the 6th. My son was born June the 26th. And I wasn't sure he was mine. And my mother told me that if you had sex with her, you have to marry her. And this is before there was anything like DNA or anything like that. But I come from a period of time, when you do what you did, you don't have a choice, you have to marry the girl. And so that's what I did. And so it was that kind of situation. And I was just coming out of high school, and that's when I started working at a grocery store to take care of the kid. Two grocery stores, trying to hang around Beale Street to learn more about music, and trying to make some money to pay whatever little bills I could pay. This is before I even got a place to stay. So that's where that was. It was no success. By the time my career started going in a successful way, I was not with the mother of my children.

Speaker 1:
[72:47] So how do you get yourself into Stax?

Speaker 2:
[72:52] Well, I'm working at the grocery store across the street. And I see that they're doing construction across the street. In this building, I go over there just to see what it was. And in the building, I see a man with a hammond thing. And I see they got what looks like a room that they're gonna have somebody in with some equipment. And I see this wide open space, which was the live room for Studio A. I didn't know that at the time. And he's almost finished with the studio room. And I inquire about what it was. And he said that they moved from another part in the city, but they're doing country records there. That's what they're gonna be doing. Well, this community that he just was moving, it was doing this studio in, was just converting over to a black community. The white citizenry was moving out of the community and more and more blacks were moving into it. Additionally, I'm working at the grocery store across the street. Additionally, there was a record shop that Jim Stewart's sister opened right next to the entrance inside of the studio. So I just went into the record store and started asking her about who she was and she told me who she was and they were part of that. And I started developing a rapport with her because I was able to go over there. I couldn't buy the records, but I could hear records playing on my breaks. But I also could talk to her about is there any possibilities that her brother would give me an audition? And it was her that convinced him to give me an audition. That didn't happen right away. But when he got the urge to pay a little bit more attention to me, I was already hanging around. Every opportunity I could get, I'd walk over there and hang around her. So I was finding out where their sensibilities were as it relates to doing music and changing because they were not having any success with the two artists they had doing country.

Speaker 1:
[75:00] Okay. But at the time you saw yourself as a singer more than a songwriter, right?

Speaker 2:
[75:05] Right.

Speaker 1:
[75:06] So how did you ultimately realize songwriter was the way for you to really get in?

Speaker 2:
[75:11] Well, before he let me in, I had also developed a relationship with Isaac. Isaac went to a rival high school, Manassas High School. I went to Booker T. Washington High School. We used to go to Beale Street on Wednesday nights and sing on talent shows. I from Booker T. Washington, I had a group called The Marquettes. Isaac from Manassas High School had a group called The Teen Tones. He sang bass in the group. He wasn't even a lead singer. So we would rival on Wednesday nights trying to win $3, which was the prize for first place. That's how we met. So here it comes, I graduate from high school. I'm hanging around the studio across the street. I want to do music. I got a family started. I'm trying to find a way to do that while I'm trying to work crazy hours, two and three jobs to take care of that. Isaac and I start talking, he's got a family. He has no money either. So I come up, I'm one of those kids that's a little bit aggressive in the respect that I believe that when I make my mind up that I want to do something, I would go for it. So I said, well, let's start a record company. Now, mind you, I don't know anything about a record company. But I can't get into the Stax Studios. And I don't know how to do a record company, but I know how to make a record because I've made a record called Farewell, right as I graduated from high school with a shyster that had recorded me and skipped left town. I never saw anything after that. I heard it on the radio, but I never saw anything. So I was already being proactive with working toward making something happen. So Isaac agreed with me, let's do something. Well, I've been selling insurance in addition to working at a grocery store. And one of the instances of selling insurance, I met and made a relationship with a gentleman by the name of GE. Patterson. So I said, we can make this record. My classmate, Homer Banks, who sings, he had just graduated and I love his tone. Mind you, I've been hearing these tones of individuality from these artists from WDIA. So I know that if you got something that sounds just like you, there's a chance that something can happen. So I'm not thinking about making me a star at that time, I'm thinking about, here's a guy that's got a really unique sound. So I said, okay, how are we going to do it? I said, well, let me see. So I go and I talk to a gist jockey and convince him to go into partnership with Isaac and I. Now mind you, this is illegal and I don't know it's illegal. And I'm telling him, I will give you 25% of the record company that we have. And he says, okay. So now I go to Chips Momin who had been at Stax, but who had left right before the name changed, right as the name was changed. Chips left because he didn't want to do the music they were doing, and they were going to do, and he left and started his own thing. So Chips had this building over in North Memphis. Because Chips knew me, I went and talked to Chips. I said, Chips, would you let me have some studio time? I'll give you part ownership of this record. He said, what record? I said, we're cutting, recording this artist right here. He heard the guy's tone, he liked his tone. We hadn't even recorded the songs yet. He says, well, what are we talking about? I said, 25%. Okay, mind you, I don't know how to negotiate. So now Isaac has 25%, I have 25%, Chips has 25%, and a disc jockey by the name of Hal Atkins has 25% and we give, we take 3% from each of us and give the artist 12% royalty. So I borrowed money from a gentleman that I met while selling him insurance. I borrowed $500 and we record Little Lady of Stone on one record and Sweetie Pie on the back B-side in another record called Ain't That A Lot Of Love. Now, while I'm trying to figure out how to get into the stacks, I not only do that record which didn't make any money, I do another record at High Studios under the pseudonym of Kenny Kane. I record that and I do another record of Savoy Records in New Jersey by a gentleman by the name of Fred Mendelson, none of which I get anything from. But I'm hustling trying to make something happen. By now, I'm getting more experience. So while all of that's going on, Jim Stewart is now trying to record Rufus and Carla Thomas, because I'm still hanging around there. He doesn't know how to put a band together for Rufus and Carla for that record. But I knew who Booker T. Jones was because I skipped over this. But Estelle had convinced Jim to do an audition for me. I did the audition. I bought William Bell singing background on my audition, Andrew Love playing tenor sax on my audition, Booker T. Jones playing baritone horn on my audition, and I sang the song, got a rhythm session, got a piano player by the name of Bob Talley to play for me, and I stopped because I froze in the studio. But I bought what eventually became some of the cornerstones of Stax Records on that audition. Beyond that, we moved forward to when they were trying to put a band together for the Rufus and Collar record, Cause I Love You, I went and got Booker T. Jones to play baritone horn on that record. The signature sound on Cause I Love You by Rufus and Collar, that's Booker T. Jones. If you listen to the record, that's a high school senior by the name of Booker T. Jones, that I went and got to play on that record. I got some other musicians to play on the Cause I Love You record as well. That's before I even get into Stax. But that is the kind of, and I talk about this in my book, that is the kind of out there kind of spirit that I had that got me in the mix of a lot of things, including Stax.

Speaker 1:
[82:12] Okay. Generally speaking, for a creator, all the money in music is in the publishing. So, you started in an era where writers didn't tend to own the publishing, the publishing was owned by somebody else. So, how did the ownership work with your songs, and do you own them today?

Speaker 2:
[82:37] Well, let's be honest, years and years ago, talents were not given the information about what their rights were. So consequently, people who owned their music when they wrote it, did not know that they owned two pieces of that music, two pieces of every music piece. So they think when they wrote the song, that was the money. They're not realizing, cause they were never told, me included, that there is the writer position and the publisher position. Some of these people who know that are taking advantage of us as green as we were, and take the publishing part of that. And so we ended up agreeing to sign away the songwriter contract, which in that contract, you're signing away your publisher rights. Isaac Hayes, David Porter, William Bell, Booker T, all of us did that. We did that because the information was never disclosed to us about what our actual rights were in that regard. Well, that was the nature of the business during that particular time. That was how it was done. We all eventually learned more about the business, including how not to allow that to happen in an ongoing way. But by then, the bulk of the magical songs were already controlled by someone else. The only thing about that was that at some point, that material publishing side of it and in writers would revert back to the writer. But by now, you find that information out. So there are people that's trying to get you to even sign that away. But if you know better, you do better. So I, like so many other folk, knew better and I did better and I got all of mine back.

Speaker 1:
[84:54] So today, you own all your songs?

Speaker 2:
[84:59] Well, let me just say it like this. Universal Music own all of my songs. I own all of the money that I'll ever need the rest of my life for my songs.

Speaker 1:
[85:13] Okay, just to make it clear in this era, you sold your rights to Universal for a lump of money? Yes. Okay. So, you co-wrote a lot of this stuff with Isaac.

Speaker 2:
[85:30] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[85:31] Was Isaac in agreement with you on all these rights and what? And then Isaac died, what about his heirs?

Speaker 2:
[85:39] Well, Isaac's position was protected by his heirs and by him. So, he had his position concrete, because we were 50% owners of everything that we did. And I had my position concrete. I took my position and acted up on it in a sound beneficial way. I always looked out for Isaac when he got sick and all of that, and was very close to him, even to the point of his passing. I was in the hospital with him when he had passed. So, I was very close. But he had his ownership position, and I had mine.

Speaker 1:
[86:31] Okay. How did Isaac end up being an act?

Speaker 2:
[86:37] Well, that's an interesting story, because when Jim Stewart made the relationship with Atlantic Records, that relationship was one that Jim didn't have told clarity of, because the contract that Jerry Wexler got Jim Stewart to sign, Jim forfeited ownership of all of the masters, of all of that music that we had done. I mean, naturally, the Sam and Dave, because that was the artist that Atlantic bought there. But all of it. And Jim had signed away that ownership to Atlantic Records. And we had no masters. When Atlantic came out of the deal, Jim got out of the relationship. And so we started from scratch. Al Bell, who I give credit to being the god sin for all of us, ended up making some magical things happen for Stax. Jim was beginning to fade back. Al took over an ownership position at Stax. The six of us, six being Steve Cropper, Doug Dunn, Isaac Hayes, Booker T. Jones, Al Jackson Jr. and myself, were given an ownership position by Al Bell. What Al wanted to do was build up the catalog of the company again because we had no masters. He came up with this novel idea of recording 27 or 8 albums, and flooding the marketplace with albums. Now, this was during a time where it was not known the album sales would be astronomical as they ultimately became. But that was an idea that Al had. So Al was trying to get any and everybody to record albums, and he gave Isaac the opportunity to do that. Now, mind you, Isaac and I were still producing. He gave him the opportunity to do that. Isaac took advantage of that. The first album Isaac recorded was an album called Presenting Isaac Hayes, which sold about 2,000 albums. It was not successful at all. But that's what he did. Then, because Al was still trying to get album product, Isaac said, well, do you want me to do another album? Al said yes, because he's trying to get more product. He said, well, if I did one, I'd have to do it the way I want to do it. Al agreed to let him do it the way he wanted to do it. Now, mind you, Al Bell did not know what he was saying, because Isaac recorded the next album called Hot-Birded Soul with four songs on it. Nineteen Minutes Long was a song. Never in the history of the music business had there ever been anything like that. Additionally, he didn't write the song, but he took a thing that we did at the clubs when we would go and jam, and come back from the clubs to write songs. He took a song that we did at the club by the time I get to Phoenix by Glenn Campbell, and he came up with a concept for that song that ended up being the staple for the album Hot Butter Soul. It sold the album 19 minutes, and it exploded Isaac's career. Now, Isaac then crystallized the concept of the chain look and the look that he had. He knew about staging and he knew about concept. And he merged all of that into what he was doing. And the rest is history. Well, by then, now, I'm producing the acts, because Isaac had to go on the road and he was making stupid money, crazy money at that time. And I'm producing artists. But in the meantime, I get the feeling, well, I'm going to record an album myself. So I recorded an album. The album sold about 150, 200,000 albums. Now, in the scheme of things in proportion to Isaac, that small potato has been in proportion to money. That's great money for Stax Records. That's a lot of money. So, but I don't get the notoriety as an artist. Isaac does, which I'm happy for. Now I record a second album with Hang On Sloopy on it, which I covered a song. That sells another 200,000 plus albums, but I don't get the notoriety, but people know about them. So now I go on a tour with Isaac, and we played an example, Philadelphia Spectrum, which is in my book, the picture of that poster is in my book, that Miles Davis is the opening act for us, and we have a sellout on Thursday night in Philadelphia with Isaac Hayes and special guest star David Porter, Miles Davis. I still didn't want to go on the road as a regular. So now I'm still producing artists in the studio. Isaac is traveling all over the world, doing amazingly well. I decided to cut one more album, a concept album called Victim of the Joke, an opera with acting scenes, sound effect, the whole nine yards. It becomes a cult album. One of the most sample pieces of product imaginable is that album. So many records have sample from the album, Victim of the Joke. But it's amazing. Years later, just me personally, about 500 samples of stuff that's directed to me, which is crazy. Isaac is a global superstar all over the world. And I decided to put all of this inside of the story, inside of a book and let people know with clarity, more about me, who I was comfortable and not disclosing all of what I was about, who I was or anything such as that. And certainly not comfortable in talking about my life to the extent that I have, but I wanted to make sure that I use this opportunity to let people know. Because they are hearing music that was done by me. And that's on records. Megan Stallion had a record last year, that's a sample of David Porter's song. I mean, it's just amazing what it's been. And the fact that I wanted to share my life experience with the people through this book was something. But that speaks to what was happening at Stax and why even with a bank attempting to close it down, why years later, even when they thought they'd close it down, the music catalog still explodes. After Stax closed, Bob, I think, I know you know, but I don't know how much of your audience would know. After Stax was closed, where they thought that they had destroyed Stax, there were major hit stars from Stax. Johnny Taylor had a record on CBS, figure this, called Disco Lady. The first multi-platinum single, you can Google this, in history, was Disco Lady. The staple singers had Let's Do It Again, number one record, Pop Charts, all of that. Johnny Taylor, the same, all of that. I mean, so many other artists, the Bar Cays, many, many gold albums that they did for Mercury. The artists that were a part of the spirit of what Stax was, kept living on and survived, and still played a pertinent part inside of the fabric of music appreciation all over the world. It was just a magical kind of thing to just to get the opportunity to talk about as I'm going with you today.

Speaker 1:
[95:14] Well, I have to tell my audience, you're a great storyteller. There are these stories and more in your book. You know, you've already left your mark. You're letting more people know about the details of this situation, fleshing out the story of Stacks Volt, which has gotten some of its undue status in the last 10 or 15 years with documentaries. David, I could talk to you all day. Thanks so much for taking this time and talking to my audience.

Speaker 2:
[95:45] Bob, I have such great respect for you and I certainly thank Surefire for media, for connecting us and vast appreciation for what they've done in much respect to you. Thank you so much for sharing this.

Speaker 1:
[95:58] Oh yeah, I love hearing these stories, these details. This is what I live for.

Speaker 2:
[96:03] I'm fine didn't telling them. I'm fortunate enough to be able to still be around.

Speaker 1:
[96:08] Well, as I say, you got all your marbles and you tell a good story. Not everybody could still do that. Or listen, unfortunately, a lot of people are no longer here. So it's good that you laid this stuff down now.

Speaker 2:
[96:21] Well, I laid it down and I feel quite fortunate. I started a nonprofit, Bob, several years ago. Matter of fact, 14 years ago, called the Consortium MMT, the Consortium MMT, which stands for Memphis Music Town, which gives creative instincts for songwriting, music production, and recording artists' instincts to them, to learn about some of us, older guys and ladies who played a role in the fabric of American music, how we did what we did and how we went about that. And I have in video 130 plus videos of some of everyone from Stevie Wonder to have a booklet from Maurice White, who Maurice is my best friend, we grew up together, to Jimmy Jam, the producer, to Steve Jordan, who's with the Stones now, to Ray Parker Jr., who just all of these great, great talents, so many, Eric Benet and Letticey and Valerie Simpson, so many amazing talents. I get them to tell their stories of the creative process and their exceptional skill levels of their focus. And I'm able to give this free to applicants who enter the program, the Consortium MMT program, and they get that free. And I feel so honored, as you say, to have the marbles to still do things like that. It's a special, special gift.

Speaker 1:
[97:53] Giving back. You've given back today. Till next time, this is Bob Lefsetz.