Classic Stax Single of the Week
April 27th, 2007 byJean Knight: “Mr. Big Stuff”
From the album: Mr. Big Stuff
Released March 1971
#2 Pop single, #1 R&B single
By 1969, Stax producer Al Bell had bought out Estelle Axton and essentially co-owned and co-operated the label with Jim Stewart. Bell, a Stax employee since 1965, expanded the label’s vision and operations, for better or worse, far past the Memphis city limits. One way Bell accomplished this was through distribution deals, where other labels piggybacked onto the industry network grown from the solid Stax record of solid hit records. These included Luther Ingram’s soul-searching masterpiece “(If Loving You is Wrong) I Don’t Want to be Right,” which was recorded for another small, local label (Koko Records) but rose to #3 Pop single and sold more than one million copies through the Stax distribution network.
Another way Bell expanded the Stax sound was to simply cherry-pick and purchase promising but unreleased masters made available by other labels, of which Jean Knight’s “Mr. Big Stuff” was perhaps the most successful.
Jean Wright was born in New Orleans. Early in the 1960s, while still a young singer, she recorded in and around her hometown, including sessions for Huey Meaux, who had also produced one of the city’s leading musical mojos, Dr. John. In 1970, Wright traveled to Jackson, Mississippi, to cut a track at Malaco Studios for songwriter / producer Wardell Wuezergue.
The resulting “Mr. Big Stuff” sounds nothing at all like Memphis, but bumps and grinds with the bottomless, elastic, thick and spicy Crescent City funk of New Orleans. Producer Wuezergue yanks the rhythm section - bassist Vernon Robbins and drummer James Stroud - all the way up to the front of the mix, making their strong, syncopated rhythm even stronger. Wright struts and preens, her rhythmic pauses and tumbles toying with their beat, while a local, uncredited horn section stabs out counterpoint hot and lusty as those Memphis Horns. (Dorothy Moore, who also recorded her biggest hit - “Misty Blue” - for Malaco, was one of the backing vocalists.)
It wasn’t quite as explosive as Aretha’s declarative stomp in search of “Respect,” but close enough: “Mr. Big Stuff” stayed at #2 for two weeks on the Pop singles chart, and for five weeks at #1 on the R&B singles chart, in the hot summer of 1971.
