Never To Be Forgotten: The Flip Side Of Stax 1968 – 1974

Light in the Attic created this 7″ reissue set for Record Store Day and it’s a very cool way to 1) pay tribute to one of the greatest labels in soul history and 2) break true fanatics off with 10 reissued 7″ singles, ranging from some of their better know hits (“BLind Alley”) to lesser known gems (“Them Hot Pants”). Killer packaging and a really impressive set of liner notes that features testimonials from Jim Stewart, Al Bell and others).¹ I recently rapped with Light in the Attic’s Matt Sullivan about the story behind this set:

The Stax catalog is one of the most well-compiled in the history of soul music; why choose it for the focus of a 7″ box set?

No question. Surprisingly though, there’s never been a proper 45s box of the label. In 2010, we spent a month in Memphis and fell in love with the city and the people at Stax. It was also an excuse to once again work with our favorite writer on the planet, Memphis native Andria Lisle.

Given how massive that catalog is too, how did you choose the singles that would finally go in?

It wasn’t easy and felt incredibly daunting trying to limit it to ten 45s. We chose to focus on the later half of Stax and singles that we’re more off the radar. Musician and KEXP DJ Johnny Horn helped narrow it down, picking many of his choice favorites. Patrick Montier at the Stax fan site kindly helped out as well.

Was there every a temptation to deviate from the original A/B-sides? In other words, you could have paired a different set of Emotions songs rather than reproduce the original one.

We must’ve went back and forth on that idea for months, actually well over a year. In the end, deviating from the original 45s felt a little like ‘we’re not worthy.’ Maybe we’re purists and couldn’t stomach altering the past.

Excellent liner notes and testimonials; was it difficult to get folks like Bell and Rauls to contribute?

That was pretty much all Andria. She’s close with many of the Stax alum (and the best damn tour guide in Memphis), having written about the label over the years. As for Phillip Rauls, I reached out to Phillip, who was the Promotions Manager for Stax starting in ’68 till the bankruptcy. He runs a fantastic blog where he shares memories and photos from his days in the business. Initially I contacted Phillip for permission to use his photos for the booklet, but once I spoke with him on the phone I realized that he had great stories to share, so Andria interviewed him for a separate section about the label’s ambition plan to release 27 albums and 30 singles in a 12 month period.

Why a 7″ set? Who do you see as the prime audience for this set?

We love 45s. The audience? Collectors, DJs, indie rock kids, old timers…

Along with Run DMC, the Beastie Boys were the first rap artists I ever listened to obsessively. I never thought of them as a trio of individual MCs; they always sounded to me like a group package so I can’t say MCA was “my favorite” of three. But if Ad Rock had the most elliptical voice with its droops and slurs, MCA was the hardcore anchor: rough and rugged.

It saddens me to realize how both Run DMC and the Beasties, each lost a core member far before their time. At least, in their time though, they both helped change popular music as we know it. Thanks Adam, thanks Jay.

It’s been a while since our last podcast (I have another one in the clip – Lee Fields and hopefully, Leon Michels, to be shared after they come to town in a few weeks). This one was recorded live in Los Angeles a couple of weeks back with Pat Thomas, author of the new Listen Whitey: The Sounds of Black Power 1965-75, as well as the companion CD of the same name.

Pat and I talked about how he got interested in looking at the music of the Black Power Movement, how Berry Gordy funded one of the most militant labels in that era, how the Black Panther Party had its own funk band and why Eugene McDaniels’s Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse sucks compared to Outlaw (diggers be damned).

Music in this episode (selections from the Listen Whitey CD marked by *.

• Nina Simone: Backlash Blues

• *Lumpen: Free Bobby Now
• *Amiri Baraka: Who Will Survive America?
• James Brown: Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud
• *Elaine Brown: Until We’re Free
• *John Lennon and Yoko Ono: Angela
• *Shahid Quintet: Invitation to Black Power
• *Marlena Shaw: Woman of the Ghetto (Live)
• *Dick Gregory: Black Power
• Gary Bartz w/ Andy Bey: Celestial Blues
• Eugene McDaniels: Cherrystones
• *Eddie Harris: Silent Majority (Live at Newport)
• Nina Simone: Backlash Blues

So maybe it’s only appropriate that I’d be rediscovering him on his latest album, Out of the Game…given that this effort is produced by Mark Ronson and features many of the Daptone players on. It’s definitely not an intuitive partnership (which isn’t a bad thing) and it also doesn’t sound like what you might expect it to (also not necessarily a bad thing).

In a way, Out of the Game does have a retro appeal…but not drawn from the ’60s. There’s much on this album that’s thoroughly drenched in ’70s rock: Fleetwood Mac/Eagles, and E.L.O. Rufus has described this as his most “pop” album to date which I think is half-true…if the album had come out in 1975 as opposed to, you know, now. It’s not like Ronson and company are trying to make him sound like LMFAO.

Ironically, one of my least favorite songs on the album is the one that sounds most “Ronson/Daptone-y”, “Perfect Man,” and for me, it’s because the uptempo, snappy funk style doesn’t mesh with Rufus’s more baroque vocal style. But that aside, there’s much on here I adore, no song more than “Respectable Dive”:

Rufus Wainwright performs Respectable Dive from The Greene Space @ WNYC & WQXR on Vimeo.

Maybe it’s because I’ve had my own “Respectable Dive” moments (including with the woman now my wife). Maybe it’s because I like the ambiguity of the verses.¹ Maybe it’s because it’s slow, haunting and gorgeous, like all of Rufus’s best ballads. Regardless, it’s one of my favorite Rufus songs of all time (which is saying a lot). He just has a remarkable gift for ballads with that instrument of his and while it may be an acquired taste…call me one of the acquirers.

Plus…he recorded a song about Rashida Jones.² And he recorded a lovely tune for his daughter that doubles as an elegy for his late mother (see below)…which you wouldn’t think would be so affective if not for the subtle turn in the “last act” of the song. I hate being emotionally manipulated like that but I admire the craft.

So yeah, I’m feeling the album and glad to have finally revisited him. Hope you do too.
Rufus Wainwright: Out of the Game

(Editor’s Note: James Cavicchia last contributed to us in ’09, writing about MJ, and I’m delighted to have him as a regular contributor now, beginning with this review of the new “Personal Space” compilation, curated by Dante Carfagna and released jointly by Chocolate Industries and the Numero Group. I have a review of this same album coming out on NPR in a week or so. –O.W.)

All selections below from Personal Space: Electronic Soul 1974-1984.

“Shouldn’t real freedom include freedom from memory?” – Geoffrey O’Brien

Shouldn’t the personal be able to exist outside of the historical? Shouldn’t the individual expression be allowed to be truly the work of the individual? Why should the actualization of a singular vision require so many others? Why should sonic mass and its legitimizing effect upon the occupation of the popular ear be denied the single musician? Why must “full-sounding” music come with the expense of strings, horns, choruses? Why must the black musician in particular be required to ensure that his work leaves at least a breadcrumb trail between it and The Blues, or The Church, or Jazz, or The Cause? Must there always be all these walls to get around, all these people to pay, all these ghosts to answer to?

At the spine of this astounding collection is the ostensibly unburdening effect of affordable studio technology—synthesizers, drum machines, high-quality recording—as manifested in private soul music from the mid-seventies to the mid-eighties. The irony is that while the empowerment provided by these machines of ahistorical and unindebted process does indeed allow for the expression of a more truly individual sensibility and the creation of a more intimate atmosphere, from this reduced reliance on humans comes also a reduced invocation of them. There is the inescapable sense that without the technology we would never have been able to hear such personal work, but that this same hand of technology has created within the work an alienating distance.

And every song here is to some extent a response to this central friction. The artists feed themselves into the milk teeth of a coming science to seek and find ease, velocity, and control, but they also find isolation, appetite, and a certain chill. Faced with this paradox, they dig out, sink in, or wormhole through.

At the zero point of the struggle are those records where it sounds like the artist just showed up and did what they would have done anyway—with or without computers—and let the chips fall and the tape roll. Guitar Red transmits typically spacious blues picking, trying to thread his presence through the sporadic gaps in a mounting wave of synth-thickened squall, but he’s soon Brunswicked by his gear, getting his own head above water only in moments. Jerry (J.G.) Green comes to “I Finally Found The Love I Need” with the classically styled soul vocal he’d made his bones on—a fiery, tenacious oath to at-long-last love—and sees it pushed past romance, past devotion, past even obsession, and into complete dystopia by a ceaseless minor-key throb of keyboard doom and programmed drums that steam and spit. Could this possibly be the song he wanted to make? And compelling in its utter obliviousness is Key & Cleary’s “I’m A Man,” an earnest and insistent declaration of human triumphalism that sees no problem in chugging along on little more than drum machine ricky-tick and some sort of extruded bass-tone polymer. It is the disorienting sound of John Henry testifying while backed by a steam hammer.

Of course one of the hidden costs of the compositional power and convenience of these electronics is their inherent sterility and mercilessness. The foundation that comes so quick and full from behind the buttons is an airless and unwavering one, and throws into much starker relief the human flaw, the fumbled nuance, the half-baked conception. A warm, measured, professional vocal like that in T. Dyson’s “It’s All Over” can saddle the technology and come out sounding like a commercially viable record, where something like Steve Elliot’s zodiac-oiled “One More Time”, something that might have seemed less frontal and more convincingly seductive in a more organic and forgiving musical context, here against this spotless and windswept backing sees its pinched vocals and shaky back-up singing writhing uncomfortably exposed and aware, like a live animal pinned to a board.

There are records on here that are able to locate some symbiosis and reach a mutual peace with their machines–Spontaneous Overthrow’s incantatory “All About Money” recognizes with unsettling and sinister ease computer music’s repetition and hypnosis as a logical projection of human monomania (is this news made better or worse by the fact that it’s delivered with such a resinous twinkle?); Starship Commander Woo Woo’s “Master Ship” (released, if my math is right, about six years after Funkadelic’s “Atmosphere” and about three years after Yellow Magic Orchestra) goes dizzy off the architectural potential of the modular synth, just building and rebuilding and shortcutting his way to a majesty as true as it is homemade—but the ones that captivate the most are the couple that reject any kind of contented balance between the soul and the wire and instead present the struggle at its most extreme realizations.

At one end is The Makers’ “Don’t Challenge Me.” This is the complete surrender–a record that vanishes into tomorrow even as you listen to it. There is a willful abandonment of the human and a full embrace of the electronic, everything processed and pixelated into an alluring unidentifiability that magnetizes like nothing else. Elliptical lyrics keep the song a secret, Jo Ann’s machine-cooled low-register vocals make even the gender of the thing slippery, and apart from a stray drum fill and occasional eruptions of what sounds like heavily effected saxophone (or is that a melodica?), none of the instrumentation is readily recognizable from under the studio treatments. The distinction between the individual and the technological is entirely dissolved, and the absorption of the personal and the understood into the alien and the advanced becomes total. A slow kiss from a future both succulent and metallic.

At the other end is The New Year’s “My Bleeding Wound.” Whatever the truth of its origins—b-side filler or joke or both or neither—the sound it captures is terrifying. It is a crazed and frayed dismantling of the technology that birthed it. The track consists of one man’s improvisations on bass, guitar, and vocals, each recorded on its own track and then all run over one another. The bass drags through in lumpy chain-link, a piercing guitar figure lacerates endlessly, the vocal drawls a stream of bromides—“I’m a man” “Do what you do” “My love is true”—pausing only to scream its pleas for “Ecstasy! Ecstasy! Ecstasy!”, and everything is reverbed past the edge of sanity, occasionally splintering between the claws of some kind of galactic pedal effect. And even though it is the work of a single person, an autonomous creation, beholden to not another, it still manages to sound trapped, insane at the very fact of its own existence. This warped, bloody thing is not just a man getting in over his head on some new studio gear, not just a man balking at the pressure of a future for which he may not be prepared; this is a man trying to not be devoured by his own skeleton, recoiling at the realization of his own new capabilities.

Many years ago, I read an interview with Charles Wright where he talked about the personal importance of his ongoing attempts at staying abreast of whatever music production techniques were current, about having spent several of his “lost years” during the eighties experimenting with synthesized and programmed rhythms. He said that one day he went to his cardiologist and was informed that his heart had developed an alarming mass of extra muscle, that the years and years of spending hour after hour day after day listening to a drum machine had forced his heart out of its natural beat and lead it to deform itself in adjustment to the brute will of technology. Wright, fearing for his life, abandoned this line of musical exploration immediately.

The records collected here can be seen as the hearts of those who didn’t. As the liner notes lament, so little of this deeply affecting and forward-looking music ever saw release, and so little of what did ever found any kind of audience. In the canopic jars of these recordings, however, they are preserved and sealed—as they once were in small studios, home studios, basement studios, bedroom studios, plugged in at the kitchen table with oversized ornamental teak forks and spoons hanging on the wall, wherever, any place with four walls and an outlet and where no one else can hear—and their misshapen forms are allowed to move into the future by themselves, of themselves, insulated from external sensibilities, protected from the imperatives of history, and because theirs is a thread that was never taken up, protected from memory. In this, they are free. –James Cavicchia

All selections above from Personal Space: Electronic Soul 1974-1984.

I have an inexplicable habit of constantly under-regarding Dusty’s catalog…it’s as if every time I discover a cool new track by her I try to remind myself, “this is Dusty Springfield. She’s only one of the greatest soul artists in UK history. She probably has more stuff worth checking for.” But inevitable, I forget this small little point. This LP is just the latest reminder that I should pay closer attention, especially since its “sister” album is something I reviewed, uh, six years ago.

It’s closer to a comp than an LP, mostly because Philips more or less cobbled it together two years after half the principle cuts had already been recorded. There’s something like 8 producers at work here – including the Atlantic powerhouse trio of Wexler, Mardin and Dowd – and even once Philips finally put it out, it was never released in the U.S.

There’s some decent ballads on here but what caught my attention are the two funk covers, both backed by Derek Wadsworth’s orchestra. “Crumbs Off the Table” finds Dusty taking on “Crumbs Off the Table,” a song most probably associate with Laura Lee but Dusty actually recorded her cover two years before Lee; both women were covering Glass House’s original from ’69. For my money, the instrumental track from Dusty’s crushes here, even more so than Glass House’s original. So ill. And Dusty brings it rather hard here (well, for her at least).

The other cover I was drawn to was Dusty taking on Betty Wright’s “Girls Can’t Do What Boys Can.” I don’t think Springfield touches the source material here but we’re talking about one of Wright’s greatest tunes from the ’60s but that said, I love hearing Dusty over this particular vocal arrangement. It’s unlike most of the songs I associate with her but she sounds completely at home with it. Far as I know, neither one of these were ever released on single; pity!

Phirpo y sus Caribes: Comencemos (Let’s Start)
From Parrilla Caliente (Phillips, 1973)

I recently got an email from the conguero of Jungle Fire, a L.A.-based Afro/Latin-funk band and he was kind enough to send along a couple of new tracks for me to peep. I just hit play without checking the song title and realized, “holy sh–, they’re covering Phirpo!” ¹

Given that I think the Phirpo LP is pretty much the best Latin funk album ever, it’s cool to hear a contemporary tackling them…and doing it so well, with all the verve and ferocity of its source material. I don’t know if Jungle Fire plans on releasing this on 7″ but for my sake, I hope they do.

Dizzy Gillespie: Matrix
From The Best of Perception & Today Records (BBE, 2012)

The new anthology, The Best of Perception & Today Records, opens with Dizzie Gillespie’s “Matrix”, a song penned by Gillespie’s pianist, Mike Longo. Gillespie’s rendering is harder, funkier than Longo’s original and that may be why artists like the Beatnuts and others lifted it as sample fodder. It’s also likely the only Gillespie song to ever anchor a Gap ad.

The compilation — released by BBE and compiled by DJ Spinna — isn’t just recognizable samples however; it covers the short but expansive history of Perception Productions, who, along with its subsidiary Today, ran for a mere five years as the ‘60s entered the ‘70s yet supported an impressive hodgepodge of acts in such a short run. Along the way, they captured both marquee names in the twilight of their craft and young, bold musicians who’d forge full careers thereafter. Giants like Gillespie and Astrud Gilberto certainly added acclaim but also added equally big recordings; Gilberto’s revered “Gingele” is an obvious standout as is the fluttering, mid-tempo funk number, “Alligator” where we hear Gillespie in a rare, contemporary setting.

Astrud Gilberto: Gingele
From The Best of Perception & Today Records (BBE, 2012)

Having towering figures aboard were surely something of a coup but small acts recruited for ‘one-off’ releases were equally exuberant. Wanda Robinson, a Baltimore-based poet recorded for the label in which “Instant Replay” and “A Possibility (Back Home)” are included. “Find The One Who Loves You” by the Eight Minutes, a group aiming to ape the sound and success of the Jackson 5 ultimately made slower, intimate songs as the label tried cornering markets other than jazz. Pop singer Bobby Rydell’s “Honey Buns” is a bright spot and apparently unlike any of Rydell’s previous work. Swooping, stabbing strings on “I Keep Asking You Questions” by Black Ivory, a group fronted by a young Leroy Burgess, lend their own take on the emerging Philadelphia Sound.

Bobby Rydell: Honey Buns
From The Best of Perception & Today Records (BBE, 2012)

More great moments are peppered throughout. Julius Brockington’s version of “Rock Steady” by Aretha Franklin is a surprise and one of the comp’s strongest cuts. The signing of Bill Curtis, legendary drummer for the Fatback Band, adds “Dance Girl” and “Nijia (Nija) Walk” to the selections. Others like Debbie Taylor’s “Too Bad To Tell”, Tyrone Washington’s “Submission”, and James Moody’s “Heritage Hum” round out the already stout release.

Tyrone Washington: Submission
From The Best of Perception & Today Records (BBE, 2012)¹

With jazz, soul, and funk (and overlaps of the three) coming from such a diverse cast, it’s hard to tell you’re essentially hearing a jazz label adapt to shifting musical trends. Later releases stubbornly held on with undercurrents of jazz but the majority of the songs defined its makers and certainly are some of the finest of its era.

–Dave Ma of Nerdtorious

The T.S.U. Tornadoes: Got To Get Through To You
From 7″ (Atlantic, 1969). Also on One Flight Too Many.

A few recent 7″s that have stuck in heavy rotation for me…

I first heard “Pretty Baby” by the C.O.D.’s on a deep soul mix years ago but had largely forgotten about it until recently, when I was hanging at my man Hua’s crib in BK and this was in his stack of new arrivals. So good. Seriously, this absolutely hits that sweet spot for me with the falsetto harmonies and the backing track. Love, love, love this. ¹ Best yet: this is a stupendously cheap 7″; you can get a mint copy for $10-15 which is an insane steal for a song this good.

Speaking of deep soul, Ann Sexton’s cover of Jean Wells’s “Have a Little Mercy On Me” is also on my current list of “best things ever.” I don’t want to start a fight in saying that I actually prefer Sexton’s version over Wells’s, even though I think the horns are pretty killer on the OG. But Sexton sells the anguish on this version better for me and both songs make strong use of a bassline that drags you into the emotional murk.

On a slightly more uptempo note, we have Lionel Robinson’s rare-ish first single, “Steppin’ Out.” Super-solid early ’70s gutbucket funk with an opening breakbeat (extended into 8 bars for DJing purposes; the original is just 1 bar) and slick bass work before the chicken-scratch guitar and Robinson’s vocals drop in. The instrumental version replaces the vocals with some sizzling organ work.

Last, we have the killer crossover tune, “Got TO Get Through To You” by the TSU Tornadoes. I know the band is better known for their funkier stuff but this is, by far, the best thing I’ve yet heard from their catalog. It wields a lovely verve, doesn’t it? Not quite joyful but practically giddy in its energy.

Los Ladrones: Butta Fingas
From Montana Rusa (Giant Step, 2004)

Honestly, I have no idea what took me so long to track down a copy of the original “Batucada Por Favor.” I originally heard it on this 1998 comp from Mr. Bongo and for many years, when I was DJing in S.F., I would always keep this cut close by. But strangely, I didn’t remember to find an original copy until relatively recently (it doesn’t show up that often but it’s also not that obscure).

Ok, enough with the boring “procurement” details. Here’s all you have to know: this song kick ass and if it doesn’t turn your party out at the top of the night, you need to question your crowd. The genius with this song is how it builds the tempo quite steadily, using the whistle breaks as an excuse to jack up the BPMs until the song hits this fever pitch/pace…then the band slows it all the way back down, only to rebuild it again, but this time at a quicker rate. It’s basically a DJ set in a single song.

Notably, Azzam’s original was also the inspiration for Los Ladrones’ 2004 cut which is a slightly more modern take on the tune, though listening to these two side by side, the energy of Azzam’s totally smashes on the rather smoothy-smooth style of Los Ladrones. OG wins again.