In 1969, Stax seemed focused on incorporating into their “Memphis sound” the styles and sounds from urban music centers such as Detroit and Chicago, an expansion primarily masterminded by producer turned co-owner William Bell, who imported, among others, former Motown producer Don Davis to Stax. But even in the midst of this stylistic expansion, Stax released an album that couldn’t fit more squarely in the label’s traditional soul, blues and gospel music pocket, Johnnie Taylor’s ‘69 set Raw Blues.

Precious little documentation exists for these sessions, except for songwriting credits. But from what we know through other sources about this time in Stax history, the house band that provided Taylor’s instrumental support was most likely a combination of the Bar-Kays and the MGs sans Booker T. Isaac Hayes may have stepped up on piano - whoever this pianist was sure rolled out the blues, especially in the hot first verse to the first tune, “Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire.”

“That’s Where It’s At” provides a useful point of reference: This Sam Cooke tune was also a hit for Lou Rawls, a singer who may have had an entirely different type of voice but used it the same way as Taylor, simmering into a rich and deep blend of gospel, soul and blue funk. A beautiful, almost hymn-like melody and uncredited harmony vocals bring similar gospel power to “You’re Good For Me.”

And some tunes sound more blue than others. “Part Time Love” is for real, sure ’nuff blues in form and content. So is “Where Can A Man Go From Here,” a portrait of a pained man poised on that all too familiar emotional tripwire: “Too hurt to smile/ Too proud to cry/ Afraid to stay with you/ Can’t tell you goodbye/ Now where does that leave me/ And where can a man go from here?”

Not one single was released from Raw Blues, although “Sundown” became one of Taylor’s concert staples (which you can hear on last year’s release of Live at the Summit Club).

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Soul man Eddie Floyd’s first new album in six years, titled Eddie Loves You So, marks his return to the Stax Records logo. The singer who scored a monster soul classic with “Knock on Wood” in 1967 has returned to his Southern roots for the new CD. Included are 10 original songs written for fellow soul artists in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Some date back to Floyd’s years with the seminal proto-soul group The Falcons; others are some previously unheard gems. The new CD hits the streets on July 29, 2008 on Stax Records through the Concord Music Group.
 
Eddie Loves You So was produced by the Boston team of Michael Dinallo (known for his work with the Radio Kings and Barrence Whitfield) and Ducky Carlisle (who’s worked with Susan Tedeschi, Buddy Guy and Graham Parker).
 
The album, while newly recorded, takes the listener back to the R&B origins of the Montgomery, Ala.-born Floyd. He was a member of The Falcons in the late ‘50s, which also featured Joe Stubbs, later of the Contours and 100 Proof Aged in Soul. From that era, Floyd has re-recorded “You’re So Fine,” the group’s breakthrough 1959 hit, plus “Never Get Enough of Your Love,” which he recorded on Al Bell’s Safice Records between his Falcons and Stax years. There’s also a previously unreleased Falcons song, “Since You’ve Been Gone,” which was demoed but never recorded until now.
 
The album contains songs that Floyd wrote for other Stax artists but never recorded himself: “’Til My Back Ain’t Got No Bone,” a hit for William Bell and later cut by Esther Phillips; “I Will Always Have Faith In You,” a #11 hit for Carla Thomas; and “You Don’t Know What You Mean To Me,” a co-write with Steve Cropper that label mates Sam & Dave who took to #20 on the R&B chart. All have been recorded by Floyd for the album, as was “I Don’t Want to Be With Nobody But You,” a Floyd song that Malaco artist Dorothy Moore recorded on her 1976 Misty Blue album.
 
The new album also contains “Consider Me,” a classic Stax Eddie Floyd ballad that was an album track but never a single, plus two newer compositions: “Close to You” and “Head to Toe.”

“Working with Eddie and getting to know him by making this record has been a complete joy,” says co-producer Dinallo. “Eddie’s energy and enthusiasm has been and continues to be incredibly inspiring. Ducky and I were floored when he started singing. The sound of his voice coming back over the speakers gave us chills and made us howl with delight. In choosing the songs for this record, it hit me that I was surveying the history of soul music by digging through Eddie’s catalog of the past 50 years. With current neo-soul movement, it is only appropriate that one of the genre’s most important and influential songwriter and performer steps to the front with this record.”

The closing third of Soulsville Sings Hitsville stitches together many of the seemingly disparate musical threads that gave Stax Records their recognizable sound.

It features the Soul Children’s splendid, stripped- and slowed-down gospel blues take on “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” (Stevie Wonder) discussed in a previous Soul Children blog. This slow-boiling pot of soul keeps Stevie’s tune cooking hot.

It also features the first CD release of “Ask the Lonely” (The Four Tops) by John Gary Williams, who sang in the Stax vocal group the Mad Lads before engaging as a solo performer. Williams renders a warm version in his light and buoyant - and often falsetto - vocal, sounding quite like Marvin Gaye in the cuddling mood.  (Barbara Lewis also sang this tune on the one album she recorded for Stax.)

Frederick Knight’s version of “Someday We’ll Be Together” (The Supremes) first appeared on his Stax album named after his biggest hit, I’ve Been Lonely for So Long. However, Knight doesn’t sing it in the falsetto that made “Lonely” famous but down lower in his singing register, where his voice is warm and rough and plenty fine enough and his impassioned phrasing and vamps (especially in the bridge and closing, repeated choruses) radiate the heat of Marvin’s most torrid gospel-soul testimony.

O.B. McClinton had a mellow, down-home voice perfect for country music, plus the fortitude to stand among country music’s few African-American singers (I can name you Charlie Pride and…that’s about it). His country take on “I Wish It Would Rain” (The Temptations), recorded in Nashville instead of Memphis and served with twangy pedal steel guitar and loping country two-step bassline, sounds first-rate yet incongruous.

Soulsville Sings Hitsville closes with a previously unreleased Bar-Kays black-rock freakout through “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” (Marvin Gaye, Gladys Knight & the Pips), a twelve minute vamp that overflows with psychedelic electric guitar and keyboards and, like many other Bar-Kays studio jams, cries out for editing.

Boy, does a collection like this set your mind spinning with other Stax-Motown cover versions that might have been. How great would Otis Redding sound romping through Marvin’s “Ain’t That Peculiar,” for example, or Johnnie Taylor in Junior Walker’s “Shake and Finger Pop”?