Archive - August, 2007
Friday, August 31st, 2007
It’s an expression that nearly everyone knows and understands almost intuitively, with no need for explanation: “You don’t miss your water ‘till your well runs dry.”
William Bell crafted his first single from this simple, familiar homespun sentiment in 1961. Bell signed with Stax upon the recommendation of songwriter / producer Chips Moman, who first saw Bell sing as frontman for the vocal group the Del-Rios. Moman produced Bell’s “You Don’t Miss Your Water” in Bell’s first recording session as a Stax solo artist.
The sound of Otis Redding certainly comes through Bell’s homogenous vocal blend of downhome country simplicity, foundational gospel faith and blues heartache, simply delivered with no, in an almost conversational tone. For instrumental support, Moman called on a group that included bassist Lewie Steinberg and a relatively unknown (though not for much longer) Booker T. Jones on organ.
As so often happens, “You Don’t Miss Your Water” was almost never heard at all. It was originally pressed as the “B” side to another single (the long-forgotten “Formula of Love”), but once radio stations discovered and began playing the flipside, Bell’s simple tune gathered momentum and ultimately sold about 200,000 copies nationwide. “You Don’t Miss Your Water” not only gave Bell his first hit record, it helped establish Stax Records’ fledgling sound.
This original single version appears on The Soul of a Bell. But since this single was recorded in mono, the album also includes another version from the subsequent 1966 – ’67 album sessions recorded in stereo with the more familiar, standard Booker T. & the MGs lineup supplemented by Isaac Hayes and the Memphis Horns.
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Wednesday, August 29th, 2007
Just got an advance set of the three CDs now released as “Wattstax: The Living Word,” a sumptuous collection that includes material from the original Wattstax double album, as well as from its original sequel, Wattstax: The Living Word. This is the first domestic reissue of the complete Wattstax soundtrack, housed in a collectible Digipack featuring rare photographs and reproductions of vintage Wattstax-era posters. In addition to music from the concert, Stax filmed and recorded its artists all around town in clubs, churches and even in the studio. This new expanded Wattstax anthology includes the best of the live festival from Wattstax and Wattstax: The Living Word plus some 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.
My reaction? Quoting the title of a William Bell album, “Wow!” Just looking at the line-up, I am reminded of the sheer diversity of the Stax roster in 1972. Maybe only its closest ‘rival’ Motown could boast such an all-encompassing stable of artists, covering virtually every aspect of American black music. There are of course tracks from core Stax folks like Rufus and Carla Thomas and William Bell, artists who were there virtually from the start of the label – although by the time the Wattstax festival took place in Los Angeles in the summer of 1972, the musical backbone of Booker T. & The MGs and The Mar-Keys were gone. From the second wave of non-Memphis-based artists who signed with the label in the mid-‘60s, there’s Johnnie Taylor, Albert King, Eddie Floyd and the post Otis-reformulated Bar-Kays, then, with the change in distribution from Atlantic in 1968, The Staple Singers, The Emotions and The Soul Children, with later additions, Little Milton, Kim Weston, Frederick Knight, Mel & Tim, The Temprees, the Rance Allen Group and The Newcomers (best known for the wonderfully-titled, “Pin The Tail On The Donkey.”
Emerging from the cadre of songwriters and producers, Isaac Hayes and David Porter performed as artists at Wattstax, Hayes – by the summer of ’72 – the company’s best-selling hitmaker thanks to “Hot Buttered Soul” and “Shaft.” But of equal interest, there are the lesser-known names like Louise McCord, Little Sonny, Lee Sain and Deborah Manning, all of whom exemplified the desire of then-label head Al Bell to ensure that practically all facets of black music were represented on the label. Of course, had the show taken place a couple of years earlier we might have also seen the likes of Mable John (by ’72, a Raelette), Judy Clay (back at Atlantic after being ‘lent’ to Stax), The Mad Lads, Ollie & The Nightingales and Jeanne & The Darlings – but, as a true Brit deep soul man, I’d naturally wish for such!
Suffice to say that this new three-CD collection captures the essence of Stax circa ’72, with its panoply of great artists throwing down, particularly – as they did in Memphis this past June at the 50th anniversary celebration – my personal favorites, The Soul Children who are sadly missing from the film (shame, shame) because they were considered too ‘second tier’ apparently for inclusion in the movie. Well, no worries: if we didn’t get to see them, at least we can hear them - on disc 3 just before Ike’s “Shaft” with two selections (“I Don’t Know What The World Is Coming To” and “Hearsay”) that represent the ultimate in soulful delivery! Hallelujah!
David Nathan
Aka the British Ambassador Of Soul
Owner, www.soulmusic.com, www.soulmusicstore.com
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Wednesday, August 29th, 2007
I was on my way to my place of worship on Sunday (August 26) and the taxi driver (yes, I am a non-driving L.A. resident!) was playing the popular radio format known as “The Wave.” Over the years, it has morphed into the dumping ground for innocuous sax instrumentals, often indistinguishable from one another. There are “Wave” artists – Sade, Anita Baker, Dave Koz, Boney James, etc. – so it’s quite refreshing to hear something different. I was humming away to Patrice Rushen’s 1982 classic “Forget Me Nots” unsure what would follow…and it was, of all things, The Staple Singers perennial “I’ll Take You There”! Granted it was a Sunday morning but it seemed a strange segue. Not that I minded: I’ve been enjoying the music of this first family of gospel since their pre-Stax days. The group’s memorable reading of Stephen Stills’ message-driven “For What It’s Worth” circa 1967 was, as I recall, my introduction to the Staples since the little UK label I co-owned (Soul City Records) had actually licensed it from Epic Records for release in Britain.
It was significant that my own intro to Pops, Mavis, Yvonne, Cleotha and Pervis would come with a ‘message’ song: once signed to Stax Records in 1968, the group began recording material that for the most part continued that tradition. Their debut (produced by Steve Cropper of the MGs), “Soul Folk In Action” was awash with such – tunes like “Long Walk To DC,” “People, My People,” “Got To Be Some Changes Made” and “We’ve Got To Get Ourselves Together.” The 1970 follow-up “We’ll Get Over” had its own share of material in a similar vein: “When Will We Be Paid,” “Give A Damn,” “God Bless The Children” and “The Challenge,” all prime examples of the pointed lyrical messages that the Staples espoused.
For whatever reason, neither of these first two LPs, as good as they are, resonated sales-wise. When Stax executive Al Bell took over production for the group’s crucial third album, 1971’s “Staples Swingers” set, it was a pop-flavored cover of Bobby Broom’s “Heavy Makes You Happy” that landed the group with their first charted single.
However, it was the Staples’ fourth Stax album “Be Altitude: Respect Yourself” that took the family over the edge to mainstream international recognition. With Bell in the production seat once again, the title cut caught fire but it was the follow-up, “I’ll Take You There” that put The Staple Singers on the map and to this day, Mavis cannot perform without including the song as a required part of her repertoire.
As I was listening to “I’ll Take You There” that Sunday morning, I was struck by a couple of things: firstly, the fact that the Stax promotion machine had done such an incredible job with the record in 1972 that it actually topped the pop and R&B charts, an amazing feat given the perception of The Staples as a ‘gospel’ team!
Then, as I whistled along, I became aware of the highly improvisational nature of the track itself. I don’t know if the original template for the Al Bell-composed tune called for Mavis to give shout outs to the musicians on the recording (“Barry, play your, play your piano, now” she calls out to, we assume, Barry Beckett, before asking her ‘Daddy’ to join in before exhorting ‘little David,’ the uncredited bass player at the Muscle Shoals studio to ‘play on it’!). It is in fact a soulful jam with the added element of the call-and-response church tradition with which the Staples were intimately familiar. If you really listen, the song has little formal structure: it was its non-stop groove and upbeat message (of promised salvation) that ensured that the song would be indelibly etched into the public consciousness, reprised years later by BeBe & CeCe Winans and used in all manner of soundtracks for television and film.
It may been an odd choice for ‘The Wave’ but it sure set my day off to a good start…have mercy!
David Nathan
Aka the British Ambassador Of Soul
Owner, www.soulmusic.com, www.soulmusicstore.com
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Tuesday, August 28th, 2007
I often speak of how the best Stax Records blended together different strains of gospel, country blues, urban blues, and rhythm and blues music into a “new sound of southern soul.” But I eventually realized that such terms don’t really exist in the world of sound but exist only in the minds of the folks listening to these sounds. In a very real and profound way, all music flows from and returns to the same source. (The fact that the only way to discuss music is to use such terms is an entirely different, etymological discussion.)
Songwriter and singer William Bell put this knowledge into good practice during the nine years he recorded for Stax and his exemplary debut The Soul of a Bell seems to capture all that was great about the label. Bell recorded this debut during the label’s 1966 – ’67 heyday with the quintessential Stax band – Booker T. & the MGs as Bell’s rhythm machine, supplemented with vocals, arrangements and gospel piano from Isaac Hayes, plus the Memphis Horns.
Like many Stax albums, The Soul of a Bell compiles a litany of individually-recorded singles under one convenient cover. And like many Stax artists, Bell reinterprets several familiar tunes into this “new sound of southern soul.” These include the Casinos’ breakout hit “Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye” and “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man,” the B-side of Aretha Franklin’s first single and subsequently a hit on its own. But Bell’s most glorious reading is his smoldering interpretation of “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now),” which matches the intense spiritual agony of Otis Redding’s classic original.
The leadoff track “Everybody Loves a Winner,” a soulful lament with strings, became a Top 20 single; the album also features stereo re-recordings of two other singles, “Any Other Way” and Bell’s first hit, 1961’s “You Don’t Miss Your Water.”
The glorious blending of soulful vocals, gospel piano, bluesy guitar and heartfelt rhythms on The Soul of a Bell show that William Bell knew that music was music and that labels were just words that folks used to talk about it. “I think I was the original pop artist that Stax had because a lot of the stuff that I did was crossing over,” he once mused. “But Stax was noted as basically a rhythm and blues company. So it was like I was straddling the fence for awhile. I was a good balladeer but not a lot on uptempo products. Because of the gospel influence, the ballads would go rhythm and blues, but when I’d do uptempo stuff it came up pop.”
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