“The Other Stax House Band”
March 27th, 2007 byBooker T. & the MGs served as the Stax rhythm section for most of their early 1960s hits. But sometime during the ’60s, someone must have realized that if the MGs were in the studio cutting the next Stax hit record, they could not also be on the road selling tickets to performances in support of other Stax hit records. Two reliable rhythm ensembles would be better for Stax music, and for Stax business, than one.
Enter the Bar-Kays: Carl Cunningham (drums), James Alexander (bass), Ronnie Caldwell (organ), Jimmy King (guitar), Phalon Jones (saxophone) and Ben Cauley (trumpet). Patterned after the Mar-Keys and the MGs, and specializing in the same type of instrumental soul and funk, this new local group tore up the Memphis music scene until Stax / Volt brought them onboard in 1967. The Bar-Kays were simultaneously groomed to serve as that second ensemble, upon which the label could rely to keep that Stax machine humming while Booker T. & The MGs were otherwise occupied, and to record their own material.
The Bar-Kays’ debut Stax single “Soul Finger” advanced a new sound for instrumental R&B, a melody led by synthesizer doubled up by Cauley’s trumpet. “Soul Finger” made it to #3 in the R&B charts and cracked the Pop top twenty (#17). Just as important, the Bar-Kays so impressed Otis Redding that in the summer of ‘67 he made them his regular backup band.
Most of the Bar-Kays perished when the plane carrying Otis Redding and entourage crashed en route to a Wisconsin performance on December 10, 1967. Trumpeter Cauley somehow survived the crash; bassist Alexander was not on the flight.
Together, Alexander and Cauley began rebuilding the Bar-Kays. By 1969, the reformed group included Michael Toles (guitar), Roy Cunningham and Willie Hall (drums), Ronnie Gordon (keyboards) and Harvey Henderson (saxophone). Whatever chart momentum “Soul Finger” might have gathered two years earlier was mostly gone. The Bar-Kays nurtured their own music while also working on other Stax productions.
This turned out to be a true blessing when the rhythmic and instrumental support of these reconstituted Bar-Kays helped turned several late 1960s - ’70s Stax releases into major musical milestones. Trapped within Alexander’s deep bass undertow, they throbbed and moaned underneath Albert King’s stinging electric blues in the guitarist’s 1972 blues-funk masterwork I’ll Play the Blues for You. And on three of Isaac Hayes’ best solo recordings - Hot Buttered Soul, …To Be Continued and the landmark Shaft: Music from the Motion Picture - the Bar-Kays’ complex swirling instrumental passages often stole the show from the baddest soul music mojo-maker of his day, no small feat.
On Hot Buttered Soul, the Bar-Kays helped to break one more R&B / soul music model: Consisting of four extended songs with not even a nod toward a “three minute radio single,” Hot Buttered Soul sold over one million copies as one of the first genuine R&B albums, and not a collection of singles filled out with other tracks, and significantly changed the industry landscape.
Five Bar-Kays albums were released on Stax. The hit single provided the title track to the album Soul Finger, released in the summer of ‘67. 1969’s Gotta Groove moved the band closer to the psychedelic pop culture of the time, bowing with “Don’t Stop Dancing (to the Music)” toward R&B / rock crossover sensations Sly & The Family Stone, a rock-soul crossover direction which 1971’s Black Rock continued.
Do You See What I See? (1972) redeployed the familiar Stax formula of instrumental and vocal covers of songs with proven longevity, including Stevie Wonder’s “I Was Made to Love Her” and “Your Good Thing (Is About to End),” written six years earlier by Hayes and David Porter for Stax vocalist Mable John. (I am the proud owner of a mono copy with the funky old lightning bolt label on that thick Volt vinyl that feels like it weighs about seven pounds.) Coldblooded closed out the Bar-Kays’ chapter on Stax in 1974, and they signed with Mercury Records in 1976.
