Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story

# Oh, she may be weary

# Them young girls, they do get weary... #

It is an epic story.

That which gave it life nearly killed it, more than once.

Innocence, naked innocence.

Good and evil, light and dark.

Black and white.

In Memphis in the '60s, people who couldn't dine together, joined together to make music.

Soul music. At a place called Stax.

We're rolling. Take one.

It was a happening, a cosmic happening.

The door opened, the wind blew in and we were smart enough not to fight it.

We were doing the kind of music that was unheard of.

Raw, gritty, gutsy soul.

We lived every day as though this was the last day we were going to get to do this.

We knew we had something - we just didn't know what.

God almighty! How many hits did we cut?

Stax had the funk.

Stax had the funk.

It didn't matter about the colour of your skin.

We weren't in there doing things to prove we were black and they were

trying to prove they were white, we were in their proving that music is the sentiment of a man's soul.

You had segregation in the City of Memphis but you could come in to the doors of Stax Records, where you

had freedom, harmony, people working together and not making a difference between black and white.

After Dr King was assassinated, things began to deteriorate.

We were reduced to our irreducible essence. Naked against the world.

We're still somebody.

So much blood, sweat and tears went into that company, from so many of us.

You've got an environment of camaraderie, the spirit of love and

then you're going to let some people come, guns strapped on their sides and push people around.

There was a hole in the boat that wouldn't have sunk the boat without outside influences.

Truth crushed to the earth shall rise again.

Once you're part of the music,

it's till you die.

-Stax.

-Stax.

-Stax Records.

-Stax.

Stax Records.

I am somebody.

Jim Stewart was a banker by day and a country fiddle player at night.

His sister Estelle was a former schoolteacher whose main exposure to music was through her teenage son.

In 1960, they pooled their money

to rent an old movie theatre in a black Memphis neighbourhood,

hoping to record country songs.

Stax Records was an accident.

Jim Stewart moved into this theatre

and nature threw him a curve.

And a flower garden started to grow,

composed of many different colours and they all came in.

My sister mortgaged her house

to set up the recording studio there,

in that building, which was on McLemore.

Word got around the neighbourhood and we started getting people coming in,

musicians, singers, whatever.

They would come to the studio

and we'd listen to them - talk with them.

Robert Talley came by my house and said there was a new recording studio.

Over down McLemore and College.

# I done take Very best girl of mine

-# Yeah

# I done take

# Very best girl of mine... #

He said, you want to go?

And I said, yeah, let's go see what it's like.

And that - it was just that simple.

# The way you lied about me

# You lied about Louie's too

-# Oh no, oh no

-Yeah... #

When the flowers began to play their music

and to demonstrate their creativity, Jim said, I could get into this.

And Estelle said, welcome.

HE PLAYS RIFF FROM "CAUSE I LOVE YOU"

That's the part I play on the baritone sax.

I told them that day I could also play the piano.

He was just a kid, about 15 or 16 years old.

We needed a baritone saxophone, he said, I can play the baritone.

I knew he could play guitar and trombone, all of this.

So we gave him the baritone sax and he had that one line...

HE SINGS

At that time, really,

I thought nothing

about white folk.

I think that all white folk are the same.

I'm trying to get my talent out there and they were the ones to give me that chance to expose my talent.

-So, I shared it, that black-white thing at Stax.

-We never looked at colour.

We looked at people, their talent.

What Stax was doing, right there in Memphis, which was right there at the crossroads of the south,

the north, the black, the white, and the blues and the folk,

was really the axis by which everything turned.

Now if you can imagine,

nobody's ever heard R&B music before,

white kids had never heard it. And you can imagine what that did to us.

It was like going to another planet, a real good planet, you know.

The band that I had out of high school, all we wanted to play was rhythm and blues.

This guy come up to me,

that I didn't have any classes with, so I didn't really know him.

He introduced himself and "Hey man, I hear you guys have a good band."

"I'd like to be in your band."

And I said, well, we're not looking for anybody, what you do?

He said, I play saxophone.

I said, how long have you been playing? He said, I've been taking lessons for three months.

Somewhere in that conversation he told me his uncle had a recording studio,

which actually turned out to be a couple of microphones

and a machine in a garage, but hey, in those days it was a recording studio.

Everybody in that band loved the same music,

in the Mar-Keys, everybody loved black guys' music.

Here was a bunch of white guys

trying to do a bunch of black guys' music.

But we started getting some attention and,

and we started to get some notoriety.

The first time I walked into a recording studio,

I cut an number-one record and that was Last Night.

You hear fresh people having a great time, they got invited to a party they didn't even know existed

and they were paying us and we just couldn't get over it how much fun we were having.

Poor old Jim, it was life and death to him.

He had to sell records and get that groove, man.

Miss Axton felt Last Night was a hit record and nobody else did.

And they didn't want to put it out.

She got her way about it and within three weeks it was through the roof.

Atlantic Records out of New York heard about Cause I Love You,

they purchased the master and

from there it just sort of mushroomed.

Maybe it was some chord changes, maybe it was a lick,

maybe it was a song,

but they started playing it.

So, my God, this is fantastic.

And I made a distribution arrangement for it.

SLOW PIANO INTRODUCTION

# In the beginning

# You really loved me

# But I was too blind

# And I couldn't see... #

'When I came down here'

and was listening to the radio and turning on TV,

it was like turning back the hands of time 15 or 20 years

from what I was accustomed to in New York.

People down here were living like in this little sheltered world

and they were growing up in an era that had already gone by.

# Now I sit and wonder

# So how can this be? #

I couldn't conceive of what would be here, I couldn't imagine when I pulled up in front of a theatre with

a record store in what used to be the lobby, I thought, well, this has got to be something else. And it was.

Estelle Axton had turned the theatre's concession stand into the Satellite record shop,

welcoming anyone who wanted to buy something or just listen.

Her store soon became THE neighbourhood hangout.

During the summer time she'd put a little speaker thing out there

on the door so you can hear it.

And we'd dance out on the sidewalk.

Before that I had to drive twenty minutes to Sears to

look at records and all the records out there were only country records.

Mrs Axton had a pulse on the creativity.

She knew what the dance beats were, she knew what sound was popular back then.

She wasn't involved in production in terms of being in the studio,

but all of her influence went on in the record shop.

Hey, you guys need to listen to this, this is the hot new dance,

this is the hot beat, this is the kind of song we're going for.

That's how you learn in the music business.

You talk to that person that's buying that product.

And that means you know what to make.

# You don't miss your water

# Till your well runs dry-y-y-y. #

When I came to Memphis, everything in Memphis

was segregated.

There was not one thing integrated.

Nothing.

From the cradle to the grave was segregated

in Memphis, Tennessee, 1959 when I moved here.

And I never really understood why the graveyards had to be

segregated because dead people get along well, they don't bother nobody.

I found my solace, if you will, when we could go inside of Stax,

you know and those doors closed and not be a part of that.

At 926 East McLemore, forget skin tone.

The only tone that mattered came out of your instrument.

Two white Mar-Keys and two black neighbourhood musicians became

the greatest recording unit in soul music, Booker T and the MG's.

The one unit

which recorded just about all of the Stax product, Steve and Duck and Booker T and Al Jackson.

I knew Cropper because he was the clerk at Satellite

and he waited while I listened to tons of records for hours.

I wound up doing odd jobs like marking tapes and sweeping the

floor and cleaning the bin and doing whatever I could.

Every now and then I'd hear music come from behind the curtain.

I knew there was a theatre back there. I didn't know there was a recording studio.

ELECTRONIC KEYBOARD PLAYS

That was the blues that we were playing, that we thought would make a record that would sell for us.

That was the one we were excited about.

Jim said if we decide to put this out have you got anything you can put on the B-side?

So I happen to remember a riff Booker played me a week or two

prior to that session - it was a pretty good riff.

ORGAN PLAYS

I went through the front doors of the theatre into the Stax studios

and around to studio A and opened the door.

And I witnessed something that I had never experienced before,

that these two black guys and these two white guys

were playing music together and I was awestruck.

Booker is the musician in the group, always has been.

Duck and I we know how to pat our foot,

and we know how to dance, we can keep the groove going,

Booker can do that too but he's the musician, always has been.

And Booker would look at me sometimes like,

you don't know that?

It wasn't about the notes of the music or the melody of the song, it was about the groove.

If you could adapt that song, whatever it was and get it

with Al Jackson he'd put it in the pocket, that's where the song started to happen.

That's when we said, OK, that's a take, guys.

Next song.

I think our family grew just from us being in the studio

and it just grew over the years of us spending time in the studio, eating lunch together, eating dinner

and it became a family that grew around the music.

When a band arrived from Georgia in the fall of 1962, no one could

have known that Stax's biggest star would walk in carrying the gear for somebody else's session.

I remember them pulling up - Johnny Jenkins and the Pinetoppers is who they were.

This big tall guy gets out of the driver's seat,

gets the keys, goes around to the trunk, he starts pulling amplifiers

and microphones and guitars out of the truck, it was like he was setting up for a gig, you know.

During the session we were having a playback break and Al Jackson says, you know, the guy who was driving,

Johnny, he's been bugging me to death wanting me to hear him sing.

Would you take some time and get this guy off my back and listen to him?

Everybody was tired and a couple of musicians had already left, so it was like well we've got to do this,

the guy has been sitting here waiting all day, let's see what he sounds like.

So he played church chords, we call them.

And we started playing and he started singing These Arms Of Mine.

And I know my hair lifted out about three inches.

I couldn't believe this guy's voice.

# These arms of mine

# They are lonely

# Lonely and feeling blue

# These arms of mine... #

That moment,

Otis Redding singing that song...

When you're in a moment like that, you're not thinking that it's going

to sell a lot of records, you're thinking...

you're, you're...

It's all heart.

It's all heart and the experience of the moment.

Time gets frozen there when you're involved in something like that.

They started working on These Arms Of Mine, and everybody - secretaries, people came out

of the record shop - everybody got up and came, and was looking inside.

And when he finished it,

they had another artist!

Otis became that power-packed, raw, gutsy, emotional, serious performer.

I mean, you felt him. You heard the tear in his voice.

And that captivated me.

And when I went on the radio to play records, it was Otis Redding and me.

We were having an affair on the air!

# Fa fa fa fa-fa fa-fa fa fa

# Fa fa fa fa-fa fa-fa fa

# I keep singing them sad, sad songs y'all

# Sad songs is all I know... #

But he would come in the door with the whole song, the whole recording

in his mind, and be able to tell all of us what he wanted.

He'd come over and sing to us, # Da-da-da-da! #

And get right in your face and do that to you.

# Anybody can sing it any old time... #

He put a spark under Stax. There's no question about it.

He never ran out of ideas.

Otis going to help you get to a different place because Otis is

going to come in, Otis is going to hum the horn parts, the bass parts,

and give you the parts, then go up on the microphone

and he's going to start stomping pigeon-toe

and knocking it dead. I mean, he was just unbelievable.

These were, like, during the '60s, all of the Black Power movement,

marches and all these things were coming along.

Otis wrote Respect for that, and he put it

in the sense of a love relationship but it was about life, really.

# What you want Honey you've got it

# What you need Baby you've got it

# All I'm asking

# Is for a little respect when I come home

# Yeah Hey hey hey

# Oh Lord

# Do me wrong Honey if you want to

# Do me wrong While I'm gone

# All I'm asking

# For a little respect when I come home

# Hey little girl

# You're sweeter than honey

# And I'm about to give you all of my money

# All I'm asking, hey

# Is a little respect when I come home, yeah, yeah, yeah

# Hey, hey

# Oh, Lord

# R-E-S-P-E-C-T Find out what it means to me

# R-E-S-P-E-C-T Take care TCB

# Respect Respect is what I want

# Respect is what I need

# Got to got to have it

# Got to got to have it Got to got to have it

# Give it to me baby Give it to me baby... #

I grew up in a neighbourhood

that was obviously segregated, and there was one man

who had a fruit stand,

and he raised pedigree bull dogs.

And that's a place where I was able to go

and make a little money cleaning up after those filthy bulldogs.

He said, "Niggers can't do nothing but sing and dance.

"For some odd reason."

I realised, "Wait a minute.

Singing and dancing, you make a lot of money.

"So that's not a problem.

That's a positive! That's an opportunity!"

After high school in Little Rock, Al Bell attended Southern Christian

Leadership Conference workshops with Martin Luther King, but Bell's vision was economic empowerment.

He became a top DJ on the east coast before returning south to take a job at Stax.

We weren't a professional company

before Al. We didn't have big business going on.

We had big music going on, but we didn't know how to do it.

Jim didn't know how to do it. Jim was a banker.

Al Bell had a beard, and he was announcing blackness, which, you know, wasn't done very much then.

To sit in that office with this white man, sharing the same telephone,

sharing the same thoughts, and being treated like an equal human being, was a breath of fresh air for me.

Al was very creative, but Al, of course, took

more and more responsibility, not only the promotion but business.

He's beautiful. He can make anything...

I mean, the bigger the numbers, the more Al liked it.

If you'd said, "Al, a billion dollars,"

he probably would have lit up and shot out the roof, like a rocket!

He said, "I'm going to make a graph, I'm going to make a thermometer."

And he says, "At the end of the week's sales, when I get

"the weekly report, I'm going to colour in the thermometer."

And that the very top of the thermometer, I had where

it would explode and out into what I called heaven.

And that was after we'd achieved a million.

So, we couldn't wait to come in on Monday morning and see where that mark was going to be.

They'd come in, and just see that thermometer just increasing, increasing, increasing.

And as it increased, the morale increased, people got more excited and all of that.

And eventually it exploded into heaven.

Stax never suspected that one of the greatest songwriting teams in history

was developing at their doorstep.

Isaac Hayes and David Porter, who would ride the highs

and lows with Stax, were two neighbourhood kids scraping by, hoping to make it in music.

Isaac lived with his grandmother.

For some reason, he was an orphan, and sometimes he'd sleep over in the back seat of a car. And David,

he sold instruments, and he sacked groceries across the street from Stax.

I was working at a grocery store, singing at a club,

under the name of Little David, at night.

Just trying to get in, selling life insurance,

and I had an old raggedy car. And he didn't have a car.

And we would ride down the street, and...

You could tell where we'd been, because we'd leave a trail

of foam from his seat cushion, falling out the bottom of his car!

They'd see us with our cases and they'd tease us,

"Hey, hit makers, how many hits y'all write today?"

But we just kept trudging on, you know, relentlessly.

After years of not finding their own sound, Sam and Dave signed

with Jerry Wexler at Atlantic, who sent them to the hinterland of Memphis to record at Stax.

Sam and Dave were sure it was the end of their career.

The tears started streaming down my face.

I looked at Dave and I said, "Oh my God...

"How could Atlantic do this to us?"

# You don't know like I know

# What that woman has done for me

# Now in the morning... #

Sam and Dave are the dynamic duo.

And I'd also like to refer to Isaac and David as being the dynamic duo of writers.

That's one of the greatest things that ever happened.

# ..I ever had

# I got her back and like a miracle

# Now everything is all right

# You don't know like I know

# What that woman has done for me

# In the morning, she's my water

# And in the evening she's my cup of tea

# Nobody knows, nobody knows

# Nobody knows like I know

-# You don't know

-You don't know

-# You don't know

-Nobody knows

-# Nobody knows

-My baby don't know

-# Nobody, yeah

-Nobody... #

Because that was a chemistry.

Sam and Dave,

Hayes and Porter. That chemistry works.

And right behind the song You Don't Know Like I Know.

We knew we had found ourselves,

and so that's when it changed for us.

And we became extremely comfortable in her own skin to do hits on anybody, and we got cocky with it.

They would send these masters up north, and I'd say, "Praise Jesus!"

Stax threw open its doors to capture the sound of the street.

Feeling was all that mattered.

Meanwhile, up north in Detroit, another label was packaging R&B for crossover appeal.

There was no comparison.

You know, there was only one Joe Lewis, only one Muhammad Ali,

there's only one Motown.

# I got sunshine

# On a cloudy day

# When it's cold outside

# I've got the month of May... #

And Motown was, like, THE company for me.

Because Berry Gordy was doing what I wanted to see done

in the marketplace with the record company,

in terms of how the company was perceived

and accepted by the larger segment of society.

When we were cutting hit records,

we had a factory with multiple amount of producers and writers.

We had an assembly-line type procedure.

But Stax and me had that funky stuff....

Whoom-bop-whoom...

That big bass thing that come out at you.

Reached out and grab you. Whoom-a-boom...

That was the difference between Stax and Motown.

Motown had the sweet,

but Stax had the funk.

Everybody, sing it out loud. # Hey, hey, hey... #

One more time.

# Hey, hey, hey

# Mmm, yeah, yeah, oh

# I don't need no money

# All I need is my friend

# I got all the riches, baby

# One big man can claim

# Oh-h-h-h, I guess... #

For Otis Redding to get a shot at Motown...

No, they did not have an open-door policy at Motown records. Never.

# ..talkin' 'bout my girl

# I got sunshine... #

They took great pride in saying, "Hitsville USA!"

And so, in my mind, I thought something should be done to distinguish us

from Motown, then people would have to look at us as,

"Oh, this is the one that's different from Hitsville.

"This is Soulsville."

As late as 1970, the City of Memphis closed public pools

rather than abide by court ordered integration.

But you wouldn't know that at the Lorraine Motel, where Stax artists

found a refuge for swimming, for socialising and for song-writing.

The Lorraine was just the hotel.

It was the hotel for blacks in Memphis.

Everyone stayed at the Lorraine Hotel.

If you wanted to meet your friends, any time you went to the Lorraine,

somebody was there.

When it was too hot in the summer, we didn't have air-conditioning, and we'd live by the pool.

Mr Berry would bring us fried chicken, and we'd eat ice-cream and all this kind of stuff.

And we'd just frolic until the sun goes down. Let's go back to work.

I'd go in, take my horn out, sit on the edge of the bed...use a mute,

so that I wouldn't wake up people on another floor.

We're at the Lorraine Hotel on a night that's raining and storming.

The lightning was...

-All of that.

-A funny thing when I was writing songs with Eddie Floyd,

he'd give us the honeymoon suite if he didn't have it booked!

It was all this plush red velvet stuff everywhere. It was great!

And I told him the story of when I was a kid, from Montgomery Alabama.

When it was storming, we used to hide under the bed.

And we'd be frightened.

He said, "That's it! That's it!

"It's like thunder, lightning..."

# The way you love me is frightening

# I better knock...on wood

# Yeah... #

I'm gonna knock on some wood

Everybody over here.

# Knock

# Oh, yeah

# Knock... #

Everybody.

# All right

# Oh, yeah... #

While people fought for integration on the streets of America, at Stax,

"race," in the words of one musician, "was what you did on the way to the bank."

Because really Dr King was preaching what we were about inside of Stax.

We didn't stop to think about it, but that's what he was preaching,

where you judge a person by the content of their character rather than the colour of their skin.

The first time we ever stopped at this Dairy Queen,

it had "coloured only"

picture on the side of the building.

You know, "coloured only". And the white in the front.

We pulled up in the gravel, and when the dust cleared,

I started to get out, and I saw "coloured only", and I thought,

"Oh my God, if I go up there with my friends, I'm going to make all these rednecks mad.

"And if I go up there to the white window, all my friends...

I had to ride home with a bunch of hornets real mad at me!

I said, "Here Andrew, take this 5, bring me a cheeseburger and a milkshake.

"I'll wait for you right here!" And stayed in the car!

That was during the time when there was a lot of racial unrest in this country, and...

All the black businesses, if they write "soul"

on their business, they'll bypass it.

And I thought about the night of the Passover in the Bible, the blood of the lamb on the door.

The first-born is spared. I said, "Soul, that's just pride."

Soul! Soul man.

Soul man!

Yeah! So I called David, and I said, "I got one, man."

# I'm coming to ya on a dust road

# Good lovin' I got a truckload

# And when you get it You got somethin'

# So don't worry cos I'm comin'

# I'm a soul man

# I'm a soul man

# I'm a soul man

# I'm a soul man... #

I was a part of that group of African Americans

that did not have that "let me hold my head down"

and "yessir, boss" and that kind of crap. I wasn't down for that.

# I'm a soul man

# I'm a soul man

# Yes, I am, I'm a soul man

# I'm a soul man... #

I always smiled with everybody, but I'd kick your ass.

There was a pinnacle part of segregation going out.

I'm a soul man. I'm thinking, "I'm a black man,

"I'm going to..." No, he didn't mean that.

It means that whatever your hardship in your life, if you're able to get up and you...keep moving...

You could see the crowd building, you know. The society was gonna change.

You could feel it building. Even my group, you know, the integrated, er,

instrumental group, you know,

was a sign that things were about to change.

Andrew and I always said, "What are we going to do when this is over?

You know, this will end one day, maybe tomorrow, and we'll be just like we were when we started,

a couple of kids didn't get an education,

but know how to play these horns, what are we gonna do?

Are we gonna have a bait shop, or sell barbecue, and 45s?

"What are we gonna do?"

So, when we got to, erm, '67, when we went to Europe,

and we saw the reaction in the European crowd to what we were doing, we knew that we'd made a difference.

CROWD CHANT

LOUD APPLAUSE

# Listen while I'm talkin' to you now

# Tell you what I'm gonna do now

# There's a new thing going around now

# I'll tell what to put down now

# You move your body all around And just shake!

# Go, go now, baby, now

# That's the way you do it! Shake, shake, shake it, baby... #

He was very excited about going to Europe.

And he tried to get me to come along,

but I'm, you know, I was a wife and a mother.

He called home at least four or five times a day, he would say, "I blew them away."

And I'm like, "OK, it's 4 o'clock in the morning."

We did a lot of halls where rhythm and blues music had not been -

they were concert halls, symphonic halls, and we were kind of anxious

cos we didn't know how people were gonna accept it,

we didn't know what kind of audience was coming.

The European people went crazy, they went crazy!

Wow, they like us!

Huh? You know, they like us!

# But if you wanna really roll

# Gotta do the thing with soul

# Shake, shake with all your might, yeah

# If you do it, do it right now

# Let your body loose tonight Lord have mercy, shake!

# Everybody say shake! One more time, say shake...! #

To be treated by the bellhops or attendants at the hotels

in London like stars, we hadn't felt that or experienced that before.

Dr King said, "Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I'm free at last!"

It changed everybody's perception of themselves,

cos none of us had ever been paid that much attention.

That Stax tour just, it gave us a new insight

to what the world really thought of us, cos we didn't think outside the block we lived on.

-# Hold on, baby

-Hold on!

-# Gotta hold on

-You've got to hold on

# Hold on, baby! Hold on... #

We just, you know, we would throw our coats off,

and spin and turn and sing and...

That was it!

They had everybody just, you know, in pandemonium, I mean, they'd faint.

One of the would just faint, fall out, come out, drag him off stage, then Sam would say, "Good night."

Dave would come back out, and start again.

CHEERING AND WHISTLING

CHEERING

I've got to tell you, when Sam and Dave finished,

Otis Redding broke from behind that stage out and grabbed the microphone,

and he started going from one end of the stage to the other end of the stage,

I couldn't believe what was going on, it was, "Gotta, gotta, gotta..."

just the energy that I'd never seen before.

# But it's all all so easy

# All you've got to do is try try a little tenderness

# Yeah, yeah, man

# All you've got to do is know how to grab her

# You've got to hold her and squeeze her

# You've gotta, gotta

# Gotta, gotta, gotta Try a little tenderness!

# Say, yeah, tenderness

# You gotta...make love You've gotta hold her

# And squeeze her Never leave her

# Gotta, gotta...

# Try a little tenderness, yeah

# All you got to do is take my advice

# You gotta hold her, squeeze her

# Don't ever leave her

# You gotta gotta nah-nah-nah

# You've got to try a little tenderness

# Yeah, yeah Lord, have mercy

# You gotta All you've got to do is...

# Hold her and squeeze her

# Never leave her Tcha-tcha-tcha-tcha-tcha...

# Try a little tenderness

# Lord have mercy You've got to hold her

# And squeeze her, never leave her

# Tcha-tcha-tcha-tcha-tcha...

A little tenderness! #

Let me hear it for Otis one more time, ladies and gentlemen!

The fantastic, unbelievable man of soul, Otis Redding!

Let me here it for Otis way out in the back there!

We ended up playing the Monterey Pop Festival, that was the culmination

of our European Tour, and that was a life-changing experience for me.

With 50,000 people there, and they had all the hippy guys with the long hair and the torn blue jeans

and the tennis shoes, and there we were, in silk suits,

and beetle boots, and sweaters, the like, doing steps.

So we must have looked like a lounge act or something,

I don't know what, but it killed 'em, and when Otis walked on stage, it was over for everybody.

This is the love crowd, right?

We all love each other, don't we? CROWD: Yeah!

Am I right? CROWD: YEAH!

Let me hear you say yeah! CROWD: YEAH!

All right...

# I've been

# Loving you

# Too long

# To stop now

# You are tired... #

But we got so much attention when we were in Europe,

and to be invited to do Monterrey, we looked at each other and said, "This is it."

And at that night, as Andrew and I tipped up a bottle of Jack Daniels

in our hotel room, he said, "I think we can make a living at this."

And that was the day that we turned that corner.

27 years old.

# And I don't wanna stop now, no... #

Can you do that one more time?

Do it just one more time, one more... Just one more time!

Otis was our standard bearer, I mean, he was THE man, I mean,

the world was beginning to view Stax as Otis Redding.

# ..Can't stop now... #

1967 was a meteoric year for Otis Redding.

After Monterrey, he was embracing a new life with the pop audience.

27 years old, and at the peak of his creative abilities, he left in December

on a weekend tour of the Midwest, in his new plane.

I had spoke with him earlier that morning,

he won't speak to the kids, and it was like something is not right.

Something, it was a feeling.

# ..For too long

# And I don't want to stop now

# No, no, no

# I've been loving you

# Just a little bit too long... #

We just happened to turn on the TV,

and then they said, "Bulletin - plane belonging to Otis Redding...."

I just put my hands in my ear, I didn't even hear the rest of it.

And he said, "Man, did you hear about Otis?"

They all went in the lake, up in Wisconsin.

I said, you mean, they had a crash?

He said, "Yes, and they're all gone."

I can remember the minister, because he was the minister that married us.

It was just too much

for my mind, for my body, too much sorrow.

# I love you, baby I love you, honey

# Good God Almighty, Good God Almighty, I love! #

Stax lost their biggest star, and the heart and soul of the label.

Then, within weeks, they learned that the fine print

of their distribution deal with Atlantic took from them ownership of everything they'd released.

Stax found itself gutted,

a record company with no records.

I had not read the fine print in the distribution agreement,

and Gerry Webster, I love Gerry, you know, but we had a serious,

serious argument.

It was sort of like, "That's not what you said and that's not what you implied."

But they'd go, "Yeah, but the paper says this."

Well, there didn't need to be any paper in the first place.

As it turned out, Sam and Dave were not really signed to Stax as artists,

they were signed to Atlantic and loaned out to Stax.

It was a family thing! That chemistry works,

so, when they broke that mould, and took us back,

it all went downhill after that.

So these were really Atlantic artists, and we were the little guys

down in Memphis Tennessee who really didn't get it, didn't know it.

In the face of all these hardships, the Stax family could still rely on each other.

But in early 1968,

something happened in Memphis that would banish Stax from its garden.

When you listen to the music that came out of Stax,

you would think that Memphis was this sort of special oasis of...

of inter-group love and affection, and co-existence,

and that type of thing, but it was really just the opposite.

It was a very intractable situation, where the power structure in Memphis

wasn't interested in recognising the humanity of this strata of workers.

We have an illegal strike here, but this city, like most cities,

is a product of the times caused by what's happening countrywide.

The garbage men were not separate people that you didn't see every day,

my father always taught me to shake their hands and say hello to them.

They were really a part of the fabric of the society.

Their fight was everybody's fight.

Men who break their backs, day after day,

for peanuts,

instead of wages!

They turned to Martin Luther King because there was nowhere else to go with this.

Not only Memphis,

but you are reminding the nation

that it is a crime for people

to live in this rich nation, and receive starvation wages.

What I found interesting about the location of Dr King's death,

that we at Stax had found the Lorraine hotel

to be our oasis number two.

I was there when that bullet was fired, I was standing on the balcony,

I mean, I spent the last hour of his life on earth.

About a quarter to six, we stepped on that balcony, he stood here, I stood here.

I got five steps.

K-pow!

The shot rang out.

I looked back and saw he had been knocked from the railing back onto the balcony.

I rushed to his side,

there was a gaping hole in the right side of his face.

Blood everywhere, just bleeding profusely.

I ran in the room to call an ambulance, you couldn't use the phone without the operator.

When the operator heard the shot, she left the switchboard,

I'm beating on the wall saying, "Answer the phone, answer the phone."

She went in the courtyard, looked up and saw Martin on the floor, and she had a heart attack on the spot.

She died about four days later.

I ran back outside, the police were coming,

and I hollered to them, "Call an ambulance on your police radio, Dr King has been shot!"

They said, "Where did the shock come from?"

So that's where the picture comes with us pointing to the building across the street.

"Where did the shot come from?"

# All those nights I watched the four walls

# I didn't have to watch them all alone. #

The death of Martin Luther...

The whole complexion of everything changed... it had to.

We stayed closed,

the shop, and the studio, for about a week I guess, four or five days,

because we wanted to respect the people.

I can tell you that prior to that, as far as I know,

there was never, ever any colour

that came through the doors.

Didn't happen.

And, erm,

after that, it was never the same.

I was devastated,

and I prayed, I deal with things the same way

that God dealt with Adam,

when he walked in the garden, and Adam had hid himself from him, he was Adams's friend, he made Adam,

they walked and talked together, every day.

And all of a sudden, there was a breach, and my prayer was

that things happen with sex, when the breach came,

that somebody could remove the breach

and reclaim that that was almost lost.

Everything changed, it had to.

Gone were the heroes, the stars,

all the records they'd made, yet among the ashes, an ember still burned.

They said Stax is dead, there will be no more Stax.

From that moment, there was Stax, I was on the keel,

to take Stax and those artists to that level of appreciation in this country.

We had a lot of confidence, and so we were very adamant

and determined that we were gonna be successful.

Al Bell, when he came to Stax, he brought that

large sack of BS with him,

he could get on the telephone and make things happen. It was great!

We were all young, and naive, I guess.

And certainly, our love for what we were doing,

even at that point, and for Stax records, was unquestionable.

Al Bell was like a rocket that was already launched, and was orbiting,

and nothing could stop him.

He'd dip that phone in BS,

and everybody at the other end would go, "Yeah!" They'd like it!

It was during that period of time when the finger snap was developed.

And the finger snap at that point in time, even though we had the records flipping up and down, you know,

off the turntable, the finger snap signalled a change.

BLUESY RIFF PLAYS

Stax was a company that had been betrayed and almost ruined

but the music, its soul, refused to die.

Somewhere in the wreckage, a new vision began taking shape.

In the process, I started looking for whatever that sound

could have been or would have been

that was a merger between Stax and this raw, gritty, gutsy soul

and Motown in its contemporary, sophisticated, polished soul.

Who's Making Love was a step off the kerb for all of us cos it was such a sexually charged song.

# Tell me who's making love to your old lady

# While you were out making love?

# Who's making love to your old lady

# While you were out making love?

# I've seen so many fellows

# All in that same old bag

# Thinkin' that a woman is made to

# To be beat on and treated so bad. #

I would have guys who would say,

"why did you write a song like that?

"You had me going back home

"checking to see if my wife was leaving home with somebody."

I said, "Well, see, you had a guilty conscience."

# ..I'm sure that you never even dreamed of

# Somebody was a-lovin' my old lady

# While I was out makin' love... #

Who's Making Love sold more copies than any Stax record ever had.

With the new sound came new songwriters, new musicians

and new currency in the cash box on which dreams could be built.

The idea was to try to get as many hit records

as we possibly can in the market place and then do the impossible,

let us have a sales conference, let us put together 28 albums and I worked that out on paper,

bring all these distributors in and let them know that we are formidable, independent record company.

Everybody believed in everything Al Bell said, "We are going to do 28 albums." "Yeah? When?"

27 albums was a mercy.

We had a meeting, everything was explained to us that we have got to rebuild the catalogue.

I was busy back and forth on the phone pumping everybody up and just driving, driving, driving.

Soul Explosion venture, Al Bell's baby.

Al Bell came up with this idea that he was going to explode and flood

the market with Stax material,

one was a major success and that was Hot Buttered Soul.

INTRO PLAYS

# Mmmm-mmmm

# I just can't get over losing you

# So if I seem all broke in two

# Please walk on by

# Walk on by

# Foolish pride... #

It was just a beautiful thing to see Isaac go from background guy

to singer with this unique and unusual record, becoming a superstar.

# You gave me, you put the hurt on me

# You socked it to me, mama

# When you said goodbye... #

I saw something in Isaac Hayes that I had not seen before.

That bald head, bald heads weren't popular back then,

but Isaac Hayes had a bald head,

from a marketing standpoint we could probably do wonders with this guy.

When Al Bell told me he wanted me to help him out with these acts being recorded

for the spring sales meeting I said, I want to do an album myself and do it the way I wanted to.

Because I knew that they weren't and relying on me

to give them a hit album, because we had 26 other albums

to pull them through. So I selfishly wanted to do this album.

# Please walk, walk right on by, baby

# Oh, there's not doubt in my...

# I don't you to see me cry, no, no... #

And it crossed over.

It just started my whole career.

A re-birth was blossoming within the walls of Stax,

but outside in the streets of Soulsville, a darker reality was taking hold.

One day two young black men came into Stax records and went into

Jim Stewart's office and laid a big piece of iron on his desk, 357 magnum, my guess, big pistol,

and said, "If you don't give us 50,000 in the next two days we are going to kill you."

After Dr King was killed it got pretty, pretty

intense around there.

We started experiencing some...

attitudes that were directed towards both the white side and the black side

of our oasis.

Al Bell sent me to... West Memphis, Arkansas

I bought five .38 pistols.

He said, "Anybody gives you any shit, pull the trigger."

The neighbourhood had changed so bad they had to put up an 8ft

chain-link fence with guards and so forth,

you almost had to have a laminate to get in and out.

I was threatened by people outside the company

threatening to kidnap me, trying to extort money from me.

I went to the FBI, I got no...

help whatsoever. "You're on McLemore Avenue,

"what you doing over there anyway?"

You know, that kind of mentality.

So we brought in Johnny Baylor along with his sidekick Dino.

Johnny Baylor had worked with Sugar Ray Robinson, a former Army Ranger

he was running a small record label in New York's Harlem.

Al knew that Johnny Baylor and Dino, these two guys, they were toughs.

New York tough street guys. And they were killers.

They were people who did the thing.

We challenged them, we let them know hey, either do or die, you know,

that is what it is.

We are going to protect these artists, we are going to protect Al Bell.

You know, and there will be no more of this...

robbery and stealing and stick-ups or whatever they were doing.

Now after that, Jim was a little further out of control because he had two guys there

and Jim said, "We will let them be Isaac Hayes' security.

"He's just getting to where he is going to need some security

"and we will let them be at the head of Stax security."

# Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic!

# I can't sleep at night

# But that's all right

# The MD tells me

# My heart's on strike... #

Johnny Baylor and Dino were described as our protectors

and sometimes they...

appeared to harass us.

I never will forget this, but Johnny Baylor had grabbed my arm

and just twisted my arm behind me and had me pushed against the wall.

And I gave him a really bad punch in a place, I don't think he will ever forget.

# Hyperbolicsyllabic Sesquedalymistic! #

It was a conspiracy to takeover the control

of the most powerful individual

in his view in the company at that time, which was Isaac.

He felt if he could do that then he could call shots on whatever he wanted to call.

And Johnny felt that Isaac should be, should have been...

out front of David Porter.

They put a gun up to David Porter's head once and told him to stay away from Isaac.

He wanted to see Isaac out being number-one, you know.

Well, there went all that songwriting,

those magical songs, gone.

Johnny Baylor stayed around Stax.

He was the problem solver who would soon become the problem.

That was the day I went to Jim and told him we'd like to be off the payroll.

MUSIC CONTINUES

Estelle Axton got caught up in some of the politics of the company,

as we got bigger and bigger and bigger I think she was made to be quieter, quieter and quieter.

I closed the record shop

because they needed the space for the studio and offices for Stax.

-So I was lost without

-...

He and my sister didn't get along,

it had gotten to the point that I was ready to leave...

I had a decision to make, a very hard decision to make.

It involved family, number one.

In the end, I made the decision that more people's livelihoods

were at stake than just mine.

And I made a decision to ask that my sister step down.

I decided that I'll never have any influence in the future -

the best thing for me to do is to get out.

And that's when I sold my part

and got out.

She left and the magic was gone.

You know, this building will never be the same.

And it was never the same again.

Jim and Al were now equal partners in a company that was outgrowing it mum and pop roots,

new demands meant that old ways had to change.

There was a feeling like mass production going on or assembly-line type feeling.

Actually at one point they had us operating in shifts,

three eight-hour shifts.

The market was changing, where I was spending a whole month working on four,

five artists and records trying to get a hit single,

all of a sudden I'm working on four, five or six albums.

So, I couldn't continue the way things were going at the time.

It was more or less the group,

the core group was becoming more and more fragmented.

SLOW, BLUESY MUSIC

We were all family and it's tough to break up a family,

but I just felt that it was going to head for disaster at some point.

RHYTHM INCREASES

CROWD CHEERS

You couldn't help but feel saddened by it, this is Booker T and the MGs

and they were the sound of the music that was coming out of there.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

# Starting all over again

# It's gonna be rough

# So rough

-# That we're gonna make it.

-Oh, yeah. #

We just kept on generating more and more revenue,

kept on daring to be different and kept on defying what they said that couldn't be done.

# ..On us. But we gotta face it... #

Al felt like he should give something back to the community

that we were trying to do the right thing,

that we were concerned with civil rights and we're taking an active role to show that.

The whole evolution of Stax was a parallel to

what was happening in the civil rights movement

and then when the civil rights movement evolved,

devolved to some people, into this Black Power movement or wave,

Stax underwent a transformation as well.

In terms of advertising, promotion, marketing,

and research, we're researching black because that's where our product is directed and we're supporting black.

# Starting all over again

# Is gonna be slow

# We...

# We both know that we can make it... #

Whenever there was a black cause in the City of Memphis,

Stax rose to the occasion, Al Bell, Isaac Hayes they made sure of that.

You know, Stax was not militant, but it was all black.

You know, we knew the problems that our people were having.

You're talking about you're dissatisfied with the way the government is run.

You're complaining about unemployment,

equal employment,

housing,

only you can do something about it.

Bursting with new life, Stax supported many causes, the Black Knights in Memphis,

the Angela Davis Defence Fund, the Rainbow-PUSH Coalition,

its efforts helped drive the black economic renaissance.

It was a very timely moment in history with politics.

What was lagging behind was the business development.

We could never produce our own music.

We could produce it, but we couldn't distribute it.

We didn't own our own talent.

We were doing, at that time because of segregation,

what every other ethnic group had done in America.

We had our own hotels, our own banks, our own insurance companies,

we were building our own economic base.

Black Pride was more than a slogan, it was a way of doing business.

Stax embraced traditional black culture and brought it mainstream.

# See that host all dressed in red

# He's a-going to trouble the water

# Looks like the children that Moses led... #

I loved the Staple singers and I said, "As soon as I can get this company into a point

"where I can do it I'm going to get the Staple Singers,

"because I think they can be one of the biggest acts out here."

We felt really close to Al because we knew him before Stax, you see.

And my father was like a father to him.

So you hear in the Staple's message music, that made them among

popular culture, the church - they became the sound of the streets.

I like my gospel.

# Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh...

# Are you sure your prayers haven't been answered?

# Now think, brother, think

# Are you sure your prayers haven't been answered?

# Now think, think

# And don't you dare say the Good Lord didn't stop to hear

# He hears and sees everything you do

# Stop now and take an inventory

# To come up with a different story

# Because he sees every move you make

# Every wink of your eye...#

They wanted to put us out of church.

"Staple Singers singing the Devil's music"!

And I was letting the people know, the Devil ain't got no music.

All music is God's music.

# Ohhh...

# Ahhh-ahhh... #

APPLAUSE

# Ohhh-ohhh...

# Oh, Lord... #

I think Al was just trying to stretch us on out further, because he wanted so much for us.

We want everybody to get this kind of message, take our songs,

and make your life better, make the world a better place.

# Ahhh-ahhh...

# Ohhh...

# You should save...

-SOME PEOPLE SHOUT OUT

-# ..For you... #

Lives were changed when they heard Mavis Staples, when she would sing, you just...

you were another person after you witnessed her.

# ..For you...

# Yeah!

# Yeah!

# Yeah!

# Yeah! Everybody say "Right on!" #

-Right on!

-Right on!

-Right on! Right on!

-Right on!

We went in for a session.

And Mack came in the studio, he said, "Pops, I've got one for you."

I showed 'em the song, and he said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah!"

Mack, he had this rhythm...

And he started... # If you disrespect everybody that you run into... #

# How in the world do you think anybody's supposed to respect you...?

# Dum-dum-dun-dun...

# If you don't give a heck about the man with the Bible in his hand... #

# Mmmm-mmm...

# Mmmm-mmm... #

# If you disrespect everybody that you run into

# How in the world do you think anybody's supposed to respect you? #

We had hit records. HE LAUGHS

It was like great apples falling off a tree.

# Respect yourself

# Da-da-da

# Respect yourself

# De-de-de-de... #

Al Bell, every time he would go out, he'd come back with something solid.

Stax Records replaced cotton as the biggest industry in Memphis, Tennessee.

The Stax corporate staff mushroomed, gathering executives from Motown, Chi-Town and beyond.

Their interests diversified into more soundtracks, and soon, movie production.

GUNFIRE

Shaft - hotter than Bond, cooler than Bullitt.

Somebody got the bright idea of producing a black film,

with a black director, a black leading actor, and a black composer.

They wanted me to do the music.

Isaac put the music together, and the rest is history.

He said, "Dig the tempo of his walking,

"I want to you to play 16ths on the hi-hat to that tempo."

So they rolled the machine over to me, I gotta peep over and play the hi-hat...

In 1972, Isaac Hayes stood on a mountain top,

winning an Academy Award for his Theme From Shaft.

His date that night was his grandmother.

I called her Momma cos that's the only Mother I know, and last night was the highlight of my career.

So, I felt like she should be there.

This award, which I accepted last night...

The first time in the history of the Academy

a black musician has been honoured,

receiving an Oscar.

Isaac's position, to me, was more of a social position

than a musical position at Stax.

Isaac became something of a symbol

that was missing in African American society.

Dino was hanging out with me at time.

He said, "Man! Listen to the people!

"They love you, man! You just like a Moses.

"You just like... yeah, black Moses!"

I said, "Whoa, don't do that, man, that's sacrilegious!

"I ain't no Moses, man."

"Yes, you are, man, you black Moses!"

I've got Isaac's albums here, the latest, Black Moses.

It's got a spectacular ...

Look at that!

APPLAUSE

MUSIC: "Theme From Shaft" by Isaac Hayes

I think he really saw that it was a necessary thing

for people to have an icon like that.

Yeah, right on.

The African American community in Watts had been scarred by riots in the mid-1960s, leaving 34 dead.

In August 1972, Stax organised a benefit festival of peace and music in Los Angeles.

It drew more than 100,000 people, a fifth of the city's black population.

Soul music sort of rose to it's zenith in terms of what it could do politically,

economically and culturally, all at once.

And that was at WattStax.

# I'm the son of a bad... #

I'd gone to Watts when it was just smokin' from riots

and urban frustration, neglect.

We were in that kind of setting, with that kind of audacity and that kind of ambition.

# Son of Shaft

# Don't forget my daddy... #

Went to the stadium, they kind of laughed at us.

Some little record company from out of Memphis, Tennessee.

"Who do you say these artists are?

"What's the names?"

# Respect yourself, yeah

# You oughta respect yourself. #

# If you're walking round thinking that the world owe you something

# Cos you're here

# You're goin' out the world backwards

# Like you did when you first come here

# Yeah

# Keep talking 'bout the present but won't stop air pollution

# No... Put your hand on your mouth when you cough

# That'll help the solution

# Yeah

# Oh, you cuss around women and you don't even know their names

# And you dumb enough to think that'll make you a big old man

# Respect yourself... #

There had been riots where they'd burned down just about everything.

You know? And WattStax brought all these 100,000 people together.

That was largest crowd any of us had ever seen.

-Hey!

-ALL: Hey!

-Can I ask you something?

-ALL:

-What?

-I said, can I ask you something? ALL:

-Yeah!

Ain't I clean?

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

# Come on in, now

# Come right on down front

# I got something I want to show you. #

This was trying to give something back to the neighbourhood.

Only costed a dollar.

# ..I'm gonna tell you

# What you gotta do

# Flap your wings

# Feet start kickin'

# Now you know

# You doin' the funky chicken... #

We're still now on this curve of trying to carry forth the resurrection

and the Ascension.

And that caused others to realise that they could do the same thing

in their various ghetto communities across America.

That is why I challenge you now to stand together,

raise your fist together,

and engage in an our national black litany.

Do it with courage and determination. I am...

-ALL: I am...

-Somebody.

-ALL: Somebody.

-I am...

-ALL: I am... Somebody.

ALL: Somebody.

-I may be poor...

-ALL: I may be poor...

-I am...

-ALL: I am...

-Somebody.

ALL: Somebody.

-I may be on welfare...

-ALL: I may be on welfare...

-But I am...

-ALL: I am.

-Somebody.

-ALL: Somebody.

-I may be unskilled...

-ALL: I may be unskilled...

-But I am...

-ALL: I am

-... Somebody.

There were many messages, even mixed messages,

running through that very moment where Al and I had our fists extended.

We had survived the rubbish.

Like a sphinx rising from the ashes we had come back to life again

and there we were at this awesome moment in history.

The brother all of us have been waiting for.

Isaac Hayes!

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

I had preached that our music was a reflection of what goes on in our lives and our lifestyles.

And Larry Shaw said "What we need to do is film this and make it real."

There was something new in Hollywood movie premieres

as over 2,000 soulful people came together for the opening of WattStax.

Among those attending were Stax recording star, Carla Thomas Sonny and Cher,

recording star Johnny Taylor, superstar Isaac Hayes.

WattStax was during the grand year of 1972,

then they started going downhill pretty fast

because they were spending a great deal more than they were making.

And I have always been of the opinion that it was riotous living

more than anything else, because they just haemorrhaged money.

We were growing so rapidly that we had taken out the loan,

they gave it to us,

and I think it was over a couple of years or something like that,

and in nine months we paid that loan off, and it freaked them out.

I mean it freaked them out, nine months and you've paid it off,

from that point forward every time we turned around

we were getting calls from Union Planters National Bank wanting to know if we needed any money.

"Hey, it's Duck, I need a loan."

"Sign a piece of paper."

"I want to buy a car, but I work for Stax." "OK, it's done."

The bloated era came when it seemed like we wanted to be a Motown.

That was bloat in the sense of expensive ideas,

that didn't seem straight.

Our eye was not on the ball any more.

We were looking up in the stands.

They wanted to buy the Tams basketball team.

When we've finalised all elements the team will be fully owned

and operated in the city of Memphis by the Stax organisation.

All day long, people wandered up and down the halls,

you wondered, who are those people?

I'm the director of the statistical department,

the statistical department is a new department,

which has been established by Stax recording company.

So statistical department went to work and said,

"Let's take this record, Don't Take Your Momma, and analyse it."

Notice the difference, I want you to notice the strings and the bass is the predominant factor.

MUSIC PLAYS

That's getting back to the soul, that's where it's at.

This is Rufus Thomas with a brand new dance.

I started dealing with comedy

and I thought we could be tremendously successful in comedy.

Remember the essence of life, we're the people of the universe,

life is beautiful, my parents go, "That nigger is crazy."

Also, into the movie production we went.

Despite continued success, Stax couldn't get its records into suburban department stores.

So, in 1972, not long after Motown sold out to MCA,

Al Bell struck a unique deal with Clive Davis at CBS Records,

Stax remained independent but gained major-label distribution.

CBS dominated every category of music in the entire industry

other than black music.

Because of the power of Columbia Records and its branches

and everything, that would put us in a position where we could reach the white market.

And in the discussions with Clive,

Clive was explaining to me how he wanted to penetrate deeper

into the black market and the black community.

The white majors don't know how to produce their product,

so what they do is they go and get a black promotion man

and say this will solve their problem, black promotion man, we'll sell to the black market.

Not true, they don't have a black product, you have to get that first.

Al Bell was God.

In the rhythm and blues music, you can ask anybody that.

He dictated what went on in rhythm and blues in those years.

Clive and Al Bell, they both had a dream and I think they bought into each other's dream.

In their minds, they knew exactly how they could make it work.

Clive Davis became the most powerful man in the music business.

His salary and benefits - 350,000 a year.

So, it was a bombshell when in May of last year CBS fired Davis.

The charges against Clive Davis

stem out of an investigation conducted by a United States grand juries

here in Newark and in New York.

But unfortunately, when Clive Davis was taken out of the picture

no-one else had that vision of that dream at CBS,

so consequently, Al Bell was out there drifting.

CBS warehoused Stax's product and withheld payments.

At the same time,

Stax long time bank, Union Planters, buckled under a national real estate crash.

To keep solvent they hired a new president, Bill Matthews.

One of the first things he did was to start looking around for problems

and he started turning them up at a pretty sharp rate.

The bank had something like 10 million extended to Stax records.

All of a sudden, this guy who they had just brought in,

he said, "Al, I don't want you to think I'm a redneck from Georgia."

I looked at him and I said,

"And I don't want you to think I'm a nigger from Arkansas, so what are you talking about?"

Union Planters stopped lending money to Stax, accusing them of bank fraud.

And with no money coming from CBS, the squeeze was on.

You had a bank who wanted to destroy the record company,

you had people that just hated that all these blacks were having all this success

in Memphis, Tennessee, with all these pretty houses and pretty cars.

Isaac Hayes is driving around in a custom-made Cadillac

that cost more at the time than many white folks' houses did.

Carla Thomas or another artist

going to Julius Lewis and purchasing a fur coat - cash!

I'm unimpressed with the racist aspect of this whole thing.

I would say there was at least as much racism

manifested on the part of the Stax people,

who were always trying to use it as a crutch.

Well, at that point in time,

we had no sales and no promotion, so I went to my dear friend John Baylor.

I said to him, "What I need you to do is take your team and go out and promote the Stax product."

Our stack of cards seemed to come tumbling down

when Johnny Baylor was getting an airplane in Memphis to Birmingham.

They asked him to open one of his suitcases for some reason or other,

I don't know what it was but he did,

and there was nothing but cash in there.

That's when IRS and FBI and everyone else came saying, "How does this work? What we do here?"

I had people threatening my life.

I'd wake up with toilet tissue in the trees in my yard,

all kinds of threats on the phone,

being told by a gentleman that was sent to me by Matthews.

He's say, "Listen, tell Al, why don't he go down to the Mississippi River bridge

"and jump off the bridge and make it easier for everybody?"

They started taking the actions that would put us out of business.

They easily concluded, I suppose,

at this point that the future for Stax would look dim, but that is not the case.

We know the facts, we have not given up,

and we will pursue legally whatever is necessary in order

to restore Stax and bring it, from a corporate point of view,

back into the position of its rightful owners.

We used to call Al Bell the Hype Meister,

because no matter how dark the situation,

Al Bell has the upside to the story.

He could put you in the palm of his hand, and he did it to me, he did it to everyone.

"Lord's gonna bless ya."

To me, I couldn't, I couldn't, I tried to think about it,

but I could not fathom the company going under.

It to me was like the Bank of England or the Rock of Gibraltar.

"Well, they're going to talk over some new deals for the company."

In the days when it was all closing in,

and the guy that kept our books and stuff,

he went over to get our cheques,

and he came back any he said, "There are no cheques."

And I'm on the steps of that church with Jim Stewart

and I'm shaking my head and I said, "Wow!

"I had all this planned and stuff."

And Jim reached in his pocket and pulled out 200 American dollars and gave it to me.

And him ending up with nothing.

All this - it was a snowball effect.

I put what money I'd gotten for the sale back into the company,

plus I pledged my personal assets,

but it was not enough.

Too little, too late.

I saw Jim be really hurt over this,

because it hurt his children.

When you give away your children's fortune, you hurt for them.

And we started watching the demise of everybody slowly.

They'd come in the lot and start pulling cars and foreclosing homes,

and stuff like that, and we knew it was on.

AUCTIONEER SPEAKS QUICKLY

I really didn't realise what was happening until it was too late.

I had a change of fortune.

An elaborate white gold diamond bracelet watch with initials "IH" in emerald.

Sometimes growth and ambition can wreck a company.

You push one domino and they all fall.

A lot of people lost their homes, they lost their families,

one person committed suicide.

The offices of Stax here are closed.

A lot of other problems have also plagued the firm.

The latest came yesterday.

A judge declared the firm officially bankrupt.

They caused a 16-count indictment to be brought against me

and an officer of the bank alleging that we had conspired to defraud,

I think it was 16 million, 18 million.

Harwell was convicted and later on admitted

that he'd made these dishonest loans to Al Bell,