Attending the Stax 50th Anniversary show at The Hollywood Bowl on July 18 – a somewhat leaner version of the June 22 spectacular in Memphis, bereft of the outstanding sets by The Soul Children and Rance Allen – I was struck by what were the three artists whose performances deservedly seem to draw the most response from the audience and noted the common theme: all three – the distinguished Dr. Mable John, the amiable William Bell and neo-soul star Angie Stone – offered songs that featured what can best be described as the ‘classic soul rap.’

With Mable, it was “Your Good Thing (Is About To End),” the Hayes-Porter song that gave the Detroit native her biggest Stax hit record; with William, his perennial “I Forgot To Be Your Lover,” covered by such artists as Billy Idol and Johnnie Taylor; and Angie Stone reinterpreting Shirley Brown’s enduring “Woman To Woman.” The common thread? The trio of soulful songs had a relationship theme, Mable and Angie dealing with infidelity, William on the cost of neglect inside a partnership; and all three included truth-tellin’ spoken raps that emphasized the lyrics of each respective tune. The effect – as has always been the case whenever this particular device is used – is to elicit immediate reaction from the crowd. Cries of “I hear you,” “You better speak on it” and “Tell it!” are commonplace whenever Mable and William perform these classic ‘60s songs; while “Woman To Woman” – whether performed by Angie or its originator, Shirley – is likely to induce cries (as it did last Wednesday) of “you don’t need no man if you gotta pay his car note!” (a reference to one of the song’s spoken word opening in which the singer mentions being the one who buys her man’s clothes, provides the food he eats and pays the car note – which Angie revised to say “split”!).

The soul rap has its origins in the church: many a great gospel singer has used personal testimony in the midst of praising The Lord. It’s hard to say which R&B performer first perfected the art but certainly folks like Joe Tex and Solomon Burke immediately spring to mind. Certainly, Stax had its fair share of soul singers who liked to spice up their live shows with righteous raps – think the late Johnnie Taylor, who was particularly masterful at the art and on record The Soul Children. In the ‘70s, Millie Jackson’s appeal to a mostly black audience was based on her uncensored straight-up raps about sex and that continues to this day; go to see Ms. Jackson and you will get no-nonsense real-life sagas told with expletive-laced humor. Jazz-soul stylist Marlena Shaw had her biggest hit with “Yu Ma/Go Away Little Boy,” in which she rapped about a man she was about to throw out until he used his ‘charms’ to break down her resistance. Laura Lee, formerly a Chess artist made her mark with extensive raps on her Hotwax recordings of the ‘70s and even the sophisticated Ms. Natalie Cole still gets an immediate response from her audiences when she laces “Catching Hell” with a little soul rap!

Suffice it to say, it’s the folks like Mable John and William Bell who are past masters at the art and thankfully keep it alive when they perform. Ain’t nothin,’ as Ashford & Simpson wrote, like the real thing!

Listen to it now, apart from the context of its time, and Lou Bond sounds like a snapshot out of place, a standalone picture tumbling from a lost photo album you forgot about long ago. Singer, songwriter and acoustic guitarist Bond released this little-known eponymous set in 1974 album on an even little-r known Stax imprint called We Produce. If I said I knew if Bond or We Produce released any other records, I’d be lying.

Lou Bond is an odd record. Except for his cover of Carly Simon’s “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard it Should Be,” it seems like Bond wrote a bunch of songs in the confessional / social protest songwriting style practiced by Leonard Cohen and John Prine (both of whom, of course, reflected Dylan’s considerable shadow). But Bond (or somebody) arranged these tunes into a lush ballad style, heavily orchestrated with strings and horns but with minimal rhythm accompaniment. To be fair, Bond is fond of skipping up into his falsetto range while he’s strumming his acoustic, at which points he can sound like Curtis Mayfield. But most of the rest of Lou Bond can sound like Joni Mitchell trying to make an Isaac Hayes record, and it’s an odd mix. Even choosing to cover a tune first popularized by a white female singer-songwriter follows Hayes’ model.

Lou Bond is the sound of a 1970s man feeling abandoned to pick through broken pieces of the dreams of peace and love that once helped breathe vitality into the ’60s. “Why Must Our Eyes Always Be Turned Backwards” laments social protest during a time that provided no shortage of topics: Racial inequality, poverty and hunger in a land of affluence, the Pakistan/India conflict (which continues, thirty years later), the North / South Vietnam conflict, conflict in the Middle East (which….well, you know), and the Catholic / Protestant conflict in Northern Ireland. “To the Establishment” continues the theme, moving from its great opening line, “I might give out, but I’ll never give in.”

Set to include Performances by Stax luminaries Isaac Hayes, Staple Singers, Carla Thomas, Rufus Thomas, Albert King, Little Milton, Johnnie Taylor, Bar-Kays, William Bell, Eddie Floyd, David Porter, The Emotions, The Soul Children, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – In the summer of 1972, Stax Records had an idea that was larger than life. Stax’s co-owner, Al Bell, had wanted to expand the soul label’s West Coast presence and develop its Stax Films arm. The ideal way to do both was to stage the biggest soul concert in history — termed by one former staff member “the black Woodstock” — right in the center of South Central Los Angeles, a vast portion of which had been destroyed by fire in the Watts Riots. The concert, called Wattstax, proved a crowning moment for Stax as 112,000 people united at the Los Angeles Coliseum in a spirit of joy, pride and celebration. The resultant movie was a blockbuster and plays to this date in many music film festivals. And now the original two-LP soundtrack has been expanded to three CDs, including material from the original Wattstax album (which sold seven million copies in the SoundScan era alone) as well as from its sequel, Wattstax: The Living Word, along with samplings from Wattstax-related individual artist albums released in 1972-73.
 
On August 28, Stax Records — reactivated by new owner Concord Music Group — will release the first domestic reissue of the complete Wattstax soundtrack, housed in a collectible Digipack featuring rare photographs and reproductions of vintage Wattstax-era posters. The package also contains a multi-page booklet on the story of Wattstax by noted soul music historian Rob Bowman. List price is $24.98. Digitally remastered from the original tapes, the package is one of the highlights of Stax’s 50th anniversary celebration, which has also featured live concerts, a film to be premiered on PBS, a film festival and an array of reissues and DVDs.
 
The expanded Wattstax volume features many Stax artists whose careers were surging in the early ‘70s: namely Isaac Hayes, The Staple Singers, Carla Thomas, Rufus Thomas, Johnnie Taylor, Eddie Floyd, William Bell, The Bar-Kays, The Emotions, Albert King, Little Milton, The Rance Allen Group, David Porter, The Soul Children, Mel & Tim, Fredrick Knight, Deborah Manning, Little Sonny and Richard Pryor. The set includes such hits as “Respect Yourself,” “I’ll Take You There,” “Gee Whiz,” “Theme from Shaft,” “Son of Shaft,” “Do The Funky Chicken,” “Backfield in Motion,” “Knock On Wood,” “Steal Away” and more — 47 songs in all on three CDs.
 
In addition to music from the concert, Stax filmed and recorded its artists all around town in clubs, churches and even in the studio. The expanded Wattstax anthology includes the best of the live festival from Wattstax and Wattstax: The Living Word plus a slew of previously unreleased festival performances, selected tracks from the club and church recordings staged during the week of the festival, and selected bits by comedian Richard Pryor that were recorded at the Summit Club in Los Angeles. Pryor’s contributions were originally used in the Wattstax film to connect the music performances with man-on-the-street commentary on issues that were then pertinent to black America. Included also is an introduction by the Rev. Jesse Jackson – himself a Stax spoken-word recording artist at the time.
 
Wattstax was hoped to be the first step in a series of urban festivals and movies to be produced by Stax, but sequels were never to materialize. The festival hit the zeitgeist of black America at that point in time. And 35 hot summers after the festival, the music sounds as fresh as ever.
 
WATTSTAX TRACK LIST

Disc One
Salvation Symphony - Dale Warren & The Wattstax ’72 Orchestra
Introduction - Rev. Jesse Jackson
Lift Every Voice And Sing - Kim Weston
Heavy Makes You Happy (Sha-Na-Boom-Boom) - The Staple Singers
Are You Sure? - The Staple Singers
I Like The Things About Me - Staple Singers
Respect Yourself - The Staple Singers
I’ll Take You There - The Staple Singers
Precious Lord, Take My Hand - Deborah Manning
Better Get A Move On - Louise McCord
Them Hot Pants - Lee Sain
Wade In The Water - Little Sonny
I Forgot To Be Your Lover - William Bell
Explain It To Her Mama - The Temprees
I’ve Been Lonely (For So Long)  - Frederick Knight
The Newcombers - Pin The Tail On The Donkey
Knock On Wood - Eddie Floyd

Disc Two
Peace Be Still - The Emotions
Old Time Religion - The Golden 13
Lying On The Truth -The Rance Allen Group
Up Above My Head -The Rance Allen Group
Son of Shaft/Feel It - The Bar-Kays
In The Hole -The Bar-Kays
I Can’t Turn You Loose - The Bar-Kays
Introduction - The David Porter Show
Ain’t That Loving You (For More Reasons Than One) - David Porter
Can’t See You When I Want To - David Porter
Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand) - David Porter
Niggas - Richard Pryor
Arrest/Lineup - Richard Pryor
So I Can Love You - The Emotions
Group Introduction / Show Me How - The Emotions

Disc Three
Open The Door To Your Heart - Little Milton
Backfield In Motion - Mel & Tim
Steal Away - Jonnie Taylor
Killing Floor - Albert King
Pick Up The Pieces - Carla Thomas
I Like What You’re Doing (To Me) - Carla Thomas
B-A-B-Y - Carla Thomas
Gee Whiz (Look At His Eyes) - Carla Thomas
I Have A God Who Loves - Carla Thomas
The Breakdown - Rufus Thomas
Do The Funky Chicken - Rufus Thomas
Do The Funky Penguin - Rufus Thomas
I Don’t Know What This World Is Coming To - The Soul Children
Hearsay - The Soul Children
Theme From Shaft - Isaac Hayes

If it wasn’t for the digital revolution, an album like At the Drive-in might have been forever lost in history. But since Stax made it available as one of its five digital iTunes titles, originally released on vinyl but never before available on CD, you can walk with it into musical history, circa 1972.

At the Drive-in is a great example of how seemingly circumstantial “happy accidents” can contribute to the magic of music. Freddy Robinson was a Chess Records session ace who played bass and guitar behind Little Walter and Howlin’ Wolf in the late 1950s, into the 1960s. Around this same time, Monk Higgins was also working as a Chess session saxophonist, arranger and producer.

Robinson moved on to play in Jerry “The Iceman” Butler’s band for most of the 1960s, then relocated to Los Angeles to work for several years with Ray Charles. From this LA base, Robinson hooked back up with Higgins and signed with the Stax subsidiary imprint Enterprise Records, in the early 1970s.

Originally released on Enterprise, At the Drive-in whips up a layered soul mélange. Recording at United Artists studios in LA gave Robinson and Higgins access to rhythm players Wilton Felder (bass) and Joe Sample (keyboards), founding members of the West Coast’s leading electric soul-jazz band, the Crusaders. Their combined results present a curious, curiously refreshing, mixture of straight-up blues and blues-based music.

Exploring such a wide range of styles might feel forced if it did not flow so naturally. Robinson proves a warm, wry storyteller in two more or less “talking blues”: He pieces his “Bluesology” narrative together by demonstrating the guitar, harmonica and vocal techniques comprising Chicago’s trademark “Windy City” electric blues, then, with gentle hilarity, recounts borrowing money to go on a date, only to get the brush-off, “At the Drive-in.”

On the other hand, “It’s the Real Thing” and “Creepin’ Lightly” sound closer to soul-jazz fusion (the sound of George Benson’s CTI era), while “I Wonder What It Is” sounds like a protean Crescent City rock ‘n’ roller that you might have heard Lloyd Price shout. 

“I Found My Soul Last Night,” this set’s ultimate hybrid of funk, soul and blues, cuts a groove that’s rock solid and deep; Robinson somehow manages to play with one foot each in the jazz and blues camps, and though I dig their work to death, The Beastie Boys can still only dream of playing something this organically, naturally groovin’.

At the Drive-in is a colorful coming together of all these different musical personalities and styles, and yet it was almost never heard. Just as Robinson was recording At the Drive-in for Enterprise, parent company Stax began to wind down operations, so almost none of the music that Robinson recorded for Enterprise was widely distributed or heard until this digital re-release.