In the summer of 1967, Otis Redding performed in front
of a 200,000-strong, mainly white, crowd at the Monterey Pop Festival.
Five years after walking into Stax Records studio in Memphis as an
unknown singer, he was now breaking into the mass white market and seducing
its counter culture without diluting his sound.
Soul Deep follows both Redding's rise, as he became
the embodiment of Sixties soul music, and that of Stax Records as it
crossed the racial divide at a time of segregation.
Founded by two white southerners - brother and sister Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton - black and
white musicians came together at Stax to create gritty, passionate soul.
"Stax Records was an oddity - it was like an oasis in the desert. Both
black and white musicians became friends because of what they did. It
was wonderful. But right outside those doors it stopped," comments Stax musician Marvell Thomas.
Redding's triumphs at Stax encouraged other labels to look for this
new-style raw talent. The local Gold Wax label signed an incredible
talent - James Carr.
One of his rare, previously unseen television performances features
in Soul Deep. Classics include Love Attack and At The Dark End Of The
Street.
"The roar, the depth of soul that we hear when James opens his mouth
is the voice of the south. It's that depth of pain and longing for something
better," comments Wayne Jackson, Stax musician.
The sound of the south began to influence other labels. New York-based
Atlantic Records' Jerry Wexler would bring his musicians south whenever
they needed inspiration.
Wilson Pickett's huge hit In the Midnight Hour resulted
from a night in Memphis' Lorraine Motel with Stax songwriter Steve Cropper
and a bottle of "Jack".
After Wexler teamed performers Sam and Dave up with Stax writers Isaac Hayes and David Porter,
classic hits included Soul Man and Hold On, I'm Comin'.
Wexler was soon alerted to another southern record company – Rick Hall's
Fame Studio in sleepy Muscle Shoals - where Percy Sledge
cut southern soul's first number one pop hit, When a Man Loves A Woman.
It was here that Wexler brought a new artist he had just signed – Aretha
Franklin. "It was so evident to me that she was a blazing genius.
She was so far ahead of the pack.
"She made a lot of beautiful records for Columbia but they were
all over the place - they had no focus, no direction," explains Wexler.
Fame studio musician Dan Penn describes Franklin's dramatic entrance.
"She sat down by the piano and played this unknown chord and the musicians
were just like little bugs running for their instruments."
That day she recorded her number one hit I Never Loved A Man The Way
I Loved You.
Her next monster hit was with Redding's Respect. Imbuing it with a
new social relevance, it became an anthem and she an icon.
In 1968, in a strange twist of fate, Martin Luther King was murdered
in the same Memphis motel where Pickett and Cropper penned In the Midnight
Hour a few years before.
His death heralded the end of an extraordinary era of hope as black
attitudes hardened. "The fraternalism between black musicians and white
musicians seemed to suffer," explains Wexler.
A new black sound was on it way...
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