LOS ANGELES - The prestigious Mods & Rockers Film Festival presented annually by the American Cinematheque will honor the 50th anniversary of Stax Records with a five-film cinematic salute. The tribute will take place over the entire weekend of Saturday and Sunday July 21st and 22nd. Films being shown include legendary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker’s 2003 Only The Strong Survive together with Pennebaker’s Shake! Otis At Monterey - a film of Otis Redding’s legendary performance at the 1967 festival. This screening will be attended by D.A. Pennebaker and Sam Moore of “Sam & Dave” — one of the stars featured in Only The Strong Survive. Saturday July 21st also sees the World Premiere of Respect Yourself, a new two-hour documentary celebration of Stax Records that features a who’s who of Stax artists — including a considerable amount of long-lost vintage footage — together with interviews with fervent Stax admirers such as Bono, Elvis Costello and Chuck D. On Sunday July 22nd the festival presents the American premiere of a newly-unearthed 1967 Norwegian TV special that captured the legendary “Stax Revue” of that year - the only known full-length visual record of that tour. Rounding off the Stax tribute will be the celebrated concert film shot in L.A. in 1972 Wattstax.

Founded by Jim Stewart (the “ST”) in 1957, and co-owned by Estelle Axton (the “AX”), Stax’s contribution to popular music, both sonically and socially, continues to be felt to this day. Stax, a racially integrated label in a then notoriously segregated city, released hit after hit from such seminal soul artists as Otis Redding, Booker T & the MGs, the Bar-Kays, Isaac Hayes, Sam & Dave, the Staple Singers, Rufus and Carla Thomas, Eddie Floyd, Johnnie Taylor, and William Bell among many, many others. The Stax studio, in a cavernous former movie theatre with a sloping floor, featured an atypical layout with no directly parallel surfaces causing sound waves to “ping pong” around the room, resulting in a very live, reverberant sound. The Stax studio sonics - combined with the prominent use of horns, a heavy gospel influence, uniquely emotional vocal deliveries, and a delayed backbeat - resulted in what came to be recognized as the “Stax Sound.” The Stax Sound defined such classic compositions as “(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay,” “Respect Yourself,” “Hold On I’m Comin’,” “Mr. Big Stuff,” “Soul Man,” “Green Onions,” “Knock on Wood” and “I’ll Take You There.”

This year, on Stax’s 50th Anniversary, its new owners Concord Music Group have reactivated the label with many new signings, reissues and special events. The year started with the release of the Stax 50 two-CD set which traced the history of the label. One of SXSW’s major events this year was the Stax Reunion. The definitive Stax 50th Anniversary Reunion Concert — a benefit for the Stax Museum of American Soul Music - was held in Memphis on June 22. The Hollywood Bowl will present a Stax reunion show on July 18. And on August 1, PBS will premiere Great Performances’ Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story, a film by Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon, which as noted above, receives its theatrical premiere on Saturday, July 21 in the Mods & Rockers Film Festival in Hollywood.

Following is a synopsis of the Stax films which will be shown at the Mods & Rockers Film Festival:

Saturday July 21, 2007 - 9:00pm: Egyptian Theatre, Hollywood
RESPECT YOURSELF (2007, 115 mins, Tremolo Productions, Directed by Morgan Neville & Robert Gordon)

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Stax Records, this brand new documentary created for PBS is the authoritative history of the rise of the Memphis soul label that changed the world. The film is jammed with amazing archive rarities. Live performances, forgotten TV appearances, home movies, news footage, lost recordings of all the legendary Stax artists from Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes to Sam & Dave and the Staples Singers. The film is also the story of the civil rights movement and how the music created at Stax mirrored the glories and pains of that struggle. The film offers fresh insights from the survivors together with heartfelt testimony from Stax devotees ranging from Bono and Elvis Costello to Chuck D. Discussion following with the filmmakers

Saturday July 21, 2007 - 6:00pm: Egyptian Theatre, Hollywoood
ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE (2003, 95 mins, Pennebaker Films, Directed by D.A. Pennebaker & Chris Hegedus)

On learning that there was little or no surviving film footage or videotape of many of the greatest 60s and 70s soul artists performing on-stage, documentary filmmakers D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus (husband-and-wife team) - working with entertainment journalist (and soul music devotee) Roger Friedman - set out to capture some of the great artists on film while they were still with us. Fortunately a large number of the performers in question were still performing on a regular basis - and in great form. The film features knockout performances from such R&B legends as Wilson Pickett, Jerry Butler, Isaac Hayes, the Chi-Lights, Carla Thomas, Mary Wilson, Ann Peebles, Sam Moore (of Sam & Dave), and many more, as well as interviews in which the artists discuss the ups and downs of their careers. It includes stunning performance footage of Memphis R&B pioneer Rufus Thomas, who passed on at the age of 84 shortly after being filmed. This is a dream celebration of the artists and songs that won America’s heart . . . and filled it with soul. Special Guests at the screening - In addition to filmmakers D.A. Pennebaker & Chris Hegedus - will be Roger Friedman and “Soul Man” legend Sam Moore of Sam & Dave.

SHAKE! OTIS AT MONTEREY (1967, 20 mins, Pennebaker Films, Directed by D.A. Pennebaker)

Pennebaker captured the entirety of Otis Redding’s legendary 1967 Monterey appearance revealing the breath-taking showmanship that thrilled the festival audience as much as the pyrotechnics-fueled Hendrix and Who. Redding and his backing band (the stunning Booker T & The MGs) were fresh from their triumphant appearances on the Stax Revue of Europe (see Sunday July 22nd - 7.30pm at The Egyptian) and in top form. This film leaves you breathless with the sheer joy of Otis Redding - and underscores the enormity of the loss we suffered by his death just 5 months later.

Sunday July 22, 2007 - 7:30pm: Egyptian Theatre, Hollywood
STAX REVUE 1967 (1967, 78 mins, Reelin’ In The Years Productions)

A platinum gem recently unearthed in the vaults of Norwegian TV and never before seen in the US! It’s the only known full-length film of the legendary 1967 Stax Revue - the European tour that sparked the soul revolution. Beautifully shot with multiple cameras in a controlled studio environment with quality sound - we get to experience the excitement that Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Arthur Conley, Booker T. & The MGs brought to Europe in that halcyon tour. The film has been digitally-restored and this is its US Premiere!

WATTSTAX (1973, 104 mins, Sony Repertory, Directed by Mel Stuart)

This is the landmark 1972 concert that teamed soul music with Black Pride - and was dubbed the “black Woodstock”. And so it was - but it’s also much more than that. Not only are there riveting performances - but the film also documents the socio-political background to the event. An emphasis on black pride and the opportunity for African-Americans to assert that - in the immortal words from Jesse Jackson’s concert prologue - “I Am Somebody”. The film presents a slew of great Stax Records artists performing at the L.A. Coliseum including: Rufus & Carla Thomas, the Staple Singers, Albert King, Johnnie Taylor Kim Weston the Bar-Kays and concert-closer Isaac Hayes. We also experience the churches, shops and streets of Watts - just seven years after the race riots that scarred the city. The film delivers what comedian Richard Pryor (who delivers hilarious scathing observations) calls “a soulful expression of the black experience.” We are showing the gloriously restored, extended 2003 version.

“Don’t Tell Your Mama” was the single released in May 1969 from Eddie Floyd’s You’ve Got to Have Eddie.

Co-written by Floyd with Stax stalwart Booker T. Jones, and co-produced by Jones with guitarist Steve Cropper, another label linchpin, “Don’t Tell Your Mama” seemed to blend together strains of Latin pop and rock that were popular earlier in the decade.

The distinct Latin feel to “Don’t Tell Your Mama” distinguished it from just about every other Stax offering of the period and helped it break into the R&B Top 20 singles chart (#18). It certainly featured more exotic instrumentation than the usual Stax soul single of the day, percolating with congas, cowbells, a scraper and other percussion, in its Latin groove. In the booklet to Volume 2 of The Complete Stax/Volt Singles, Floyd recounts, “That’s from family. On two or three albums I’ve got something with the Latin thing because of my family being from Jamaica.”

“Don’t Tell Your Mama” sort of sounds like some halfway point between Ritchie Valens’ “La Bamba” and the Beatles’ cover version of the Isley Brothers’ seminal “Twist and Shout.” If you’re going to try to put together a ’60s pop single, these are two pretty solid building blocks from which to start.

Floyd’s singing is almost TOO good, sometimes so effortless that it sounds like he should be trying harder, even if his exchanges with the backup vocalists and their repeated “Don’t tell your mama!” chant are spirited and hot. The main musical counterpoint to Floyd’s vocal, surprisingly, is a string arrangement that seems to chirp, giggle, laugh and chatter as it whirls around Floyd’s vocal when he sings, then completely takes over the arrangement when Floyd lays out in the bridge. The rhythm and production feel warm, bright and comfortable, like early morning Caribbean sunshine.

This past May, Stax Records continued its 50th anniversary celebration by releasing as digital iTunes titles five “lost” Stax titles that came out as albums but were never reissued on CD.

You’ve Got to Have Eddie from Eddie Floyd is among these first five digital only titles. Originally released in 1969, it paints a powerful portrait of the state of Stax at that point in post-Otis, pre-Isaac time: It’s spread out all over the place if sometimes a bit thinly, reaching out beyond the traditional Stax sound for music that sometimes suits Floyd’s voice and sometimes does not.

Two of the best, most fully realized pieces, the powerful hurtful “Satisfy My Hunger” and “I Sowed Love (And Reaped a Heartache)” where Floyd matches the tone and force of his singing to the confusion and frustration in the lyrics, would not sound out of place among the other soul-seeking missiles from the Otis Redding catalog.

The rippling organ and guitar runs, and percussion that churns up the beat in the break, bring “Non-Stop to Midnight” closest to “the Memphis sound,” although its lyric speaks of stolen pleasures far more universal: “While others sleep, oh baby, we tiptoe through the night/ Doing things in the dark that we wouldn’t do in the light…”

“Proud Mary” sounds written to flatter Floyd’s soulful voice, a combination of backwoods country and urban blues, and arranged with horns that wash like waves over Floyd’s repeating “rolling, rolling, rolling on the river” refrain. To be kind, “It’s Not Unusual” does not; Floyd seems to hold back on the throttle just a bit, as if he’s concerned that ripping off his usual powerhouse vocal might blow through and topple this Tom Jones hit like a house built from cards.

“Seagull,” a tranquil ballad at a soft tempo with almost no rhythmic movement, is a very different sound from Floyd AND Stax, and may be the only song in the entire Stax catalog with no drummer.

Hayes, his vocal chords and his ensemble are well warmed up by, and stretch out on, the second half of this set. If you liked hearing all those original Isaac Hayes hits on disc one, note that Hayes performs even one fewer on disc two, halving that number, yet every arrangement consistently and profoundly transforms “other peoples’ music” into Hayes’ own sound.

Hayes opens with Carole King’s “It’s Too Late,” directing each horn, string and rhythm role in a musical drama that ends with Hayes worrying the title phrase to soulful depths. He then steers his fine-running, sleek music machine up into a pair of familiar blues. “Now we’re going down home,” he muses aloud, introducing more than just the next tune to the audience - introducing himself. “I was born and raised in the southern part of this country, in the state of Tennessee, behind the cotton curtain,” he explains as he eases into “Rock Me Baby” and then “Stormy Monday Blues.”

Hayes returns to his own catalog to thump out the two-fisted piano rhythm of “Type Thang,” but this relatively obscure tune is the last of his original music here.

An epic and gorgeous “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” cues up the four-song run that brings Sahara Tahoe home. Hayes slows the melody down and stretches it out with rich notes that hang like a canopy of night over acoustic guitar and piano accompaniment that sparkles like evening stars against that vocal. Singing like he’s in front of a massed choir and yet like he’s alone with one very special woman, Hayes turns out his best vocal of the set.

“Ike’s Rap VI” picks up and twists this theme into the tale of a friend who lost his mind when he lost that woman. Hayes shifts the band with hard piano in between the beats, churning new rhythmic momentum that propels the groove into large ensemble Latin soul-funk for the second Bill Withers tune, “Ain’t No Sunshine.” Just as the music blossoms ripe and full, Hayes superbad-ly shuts it all down, and sings the last lines dramatically and unaccompanied.
 
Next comes perhaps the most (in)famous music on Sahara Tahoe, as Hayes plays alto saxophone “back against himself” by blowing brief phrases through an echoplex, a device that bounces each phrase directly back as echo for Hayes to play over (or against) again. It’s almost de rigueur in performances now, but sure seemed rather cool in 1973. (On the other hand, this same vocal and saxophone passage is, apparently, also one of the most annoying parts of Sahara Tahoe for folks who don’t care for this sort of thing, or at least it is around our house. Don’t forget irritating, my daughter helpfully points out.)

“Feelin’ Alright,” Dave Mason’s triumphant signature tune for British progressive rockers Traffic, might seem like a curious choice to end this set - another Hayes original would certainly not have been unwelcome - until you hear Hayes’ sanctified and funkified piano call this congregation to order and they clean this mother out.

Isaac Hayes Live at the Sahara Tahoe marked a genuine watershed moment in my personal musical history because it led me to discover the joys of other truly great R&B and soul live performance recordings. Their names come tumbling through my keyboard like wonderful old lifelong friends that I could never forget: Bill Withers’ timeless Live at Carnegie Hall, the Tower of Power’s Live & in Living Color and the Isley Brothers’ set for Buddha Records, The Isleys Live, for starters. This was a great introduction to what became some of my favorite music.