The final two entries in the first installment of the digital-only Short Stax series bring us full circle back to two of its first artists, Carla and Rufus Thomas, and the foundational days of Stax Records.

Carla Thomas’ Short Stax features her performance of “Gee Whiz” from the Wattstax festival; she introduces it as “my very first recording,” and from the sound of their response, her audience remembered and welcomed it. She sounds more womanly than the fawn-eyed teen who first recorded “Gee Whiz” in 1960, her phrasing confident and sharp, a sophisticated and accomplished entertainer much like post-Supremes Diana Ross.

Al Bell recorded “Where Do I Go?” outside of Memphis and mainly without Stax musicians, capturing a 1968 session in New York City with such soul session aces as drummer Bernard Purdie and bassist Chuck Rainey, then overdubbing Thomas’ vocal. She sounds out this song from the musical Hair as if she was singing it out from front and center of a Broadway stage, and sounds completely at home there. The first single that Stax released in (January) 1969, “I Like What You’re Doing to Me” mines country funk deep from its shuffling beat and tight, punchy arrangement; you can hear co-songwriter Homer Bank harmonize with Thomas on the chorus, and producer Don Davis playing that “swamp funk” guitar.

Rufus’ Short Stax prototypically delivers three of his famous “dance craze” singles. Thomas was 53 years young when “Funky Chicken” was broiled over the spitfire of the Bar-Kays’ inexhaustible rhythm and released in December 1969. “Funky Chicken” inaugurated Thomas’ career resurgence as the first of seven singles to chart between 1969 and ‘71, and no one has ever done profoundly silly more profoundly silly than his mid-song rap: “This is the kind of stuff that make you feel like you wanna do something nasty, like waste some chicken gravy on your white shirt right down front.”

Thomas was particularly proud of his first #1 R&B single, 1971’s “Do the Push & Pull (Part 1),” a bouncing, throbbing bassline stretched to breaking by a superelastic band and hot horn blasts that follow the command of Thomas’ barks to “Get on up” and “Get on down.” (It’s almost the exact same pattern as Thomas used for “The Breakdown,” a #2 R&B single in ‘71.)

“Walking the Dog” was also recorded in ‘71 for the album Doing the Push & Pull Live at PJ’s. The looser, live-r format showcases Thomas’ high voltage comic frontman style and also gives his guitarist and bass player freedom to scramble in hot electric blues fills.

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