Tell me, real briefly how you used to ah introduce yourself on the radio, and where, not going into the whole story, but just say, I used to have a show in Washington, on such and such, and used to be...

Yeah, I used to ah, be on the air in Washington, D.C. and I really enjoyed it. I had in front of me a bell, and I'd say, Al, bing Bell, y'all.

We could use that with the other part we did. Tell me now, talking about when you first came to Stax in '65, could you describe a little bit of the kind of recording Stax was making when you first arrive and then what your job was when you got there?

Well, I came to Stax as a promotion person. I was heading up national promotion. It was believed that because I was in radio, and very popular, with disc jockeys across the country, that I would be able to influence them to play the Stax music. Ah, and of course when I came in, they were producing the likes of Otis Redding, an, and Sam and Dave. As a matter of fact ah when I got there the first real hit that Sam and Dave had You don't Know Like I Know, was done right after I, I joined the company. But they had, had the hits on Booker T. and the MGs and the Marquees. And hits on Rufus Thomas, and Carla Thomas. And ah, the, basically what they were producing, and William Bell had, had You Don't Miss Your Water Till Your Well Run Dry, etc. I brought with me to the company, Eddie Floyd. And ah Eddie started recording for the company. We initially went in and took on the role of music director, if you will. We thought, programming from a radio standpoint, so we went in and started selecting from the material that was being recorded. The kind of songs that we thought, of their repertoire, of what was being recorded, would fit for radio. And we began to select from that, that material and ask for releases on it. And put that in the marketplace and get it promoted at the radio level. And after that we started influencing the producers and the writers by giving them our ideas from a radio standpoint, and thinking as a writer, thinking as a producer without really being aware that we were having that much producing influence. And telling, the, the, the producers and writers there what we thought would sell at radio. Ending up ah, as a result of that sort of diversifying the sound a little bit, or their approach to recording the songs and the artists.

So when you say try to select things that are right for radio, tell me a little bit about what that really means in terms of, what were some of the criteria, and why do you say it's good for radio, and are you talking about only black radio. Or, bigger markets.

Well, at that time I was thinking specifically black radio. Ah but in the same breath we were thinking top 40 and the larger marketplace because at that time, ah, the top 40 radio station was a radio station that played whatever the top 40 hits were. I mean you would hear a station play an Elvis Pressley type song, and come out of that and play a Johnny Cash type song, and from that into, to a Chuck Berry, and from a Chuck Berry, into a Buddy Vinton, and from that into an Otis Redding. If those songs were in the top 40. But what we basically, basically looked for ah as we went through the repertoire that was being recorded there, was that particular song that we believed to be that reaction record. That a radio station could put on the air, play once or twice, and expect the audience to react. Expect the telephone to ring. And as course, as a result of that, that same type record was the kind of record that caused the consumer to go into the retail outlet. So we looked for the reaction records, because that's what a good radio programmer needed. He, you, you need that record that causes the audience to respond instantaneously. So we looked for that kind of music.

To pick up where we left off, on the reaction records. What does that translate to, in terms of what goes on, on the recording. What do you look for especially at Stax, give us an example of the kind of records that you call reaction records.

Well, Who's Making Love, Johnny Taylor, was a reaction record. I mean, in, in the first four bars in the intro, you felt it. And by the time the downbeat was there, you knew it. And when he hit, when he hit the a, the a, the a, of who's making love, to your old lady, while you'all making love, you didn't need to play the second verse to know that was a hit record. Oh, oh and I come more current with, with the Luther Ingram for an example, If Loving You is Wrong, I don't Want to be Right. Or, or when you heard an Otis Redding ah sing, The Rolling Stone's "I can't get no Satisfaction," but when Otis said, "I cain't get me no, Satisfaction." I mean it just ah that, that was something that you felt, and that an audience would feel, and that an audience would react to. That, that's what I mean when I say, the reaction to our records. I don't know quite how to explain it, but it's, you feel it, and you know that it's there. One of the things that we would do, at Stax is, we'd have a good record and if it didn't get it, like we wanted it, in, in the intro, sometimes we'd come back after we recorded it, and have the artist maybe just to overdub on the front, an “Oww”. Just to get the audience's attention and everything. It was a, the attention getter. And, and hold them for maybe throughout the first chorus until they heard that great hook line, and felt that pulsating beat and it became a part of them. And that's, that's what I mean by, by reaction. You know it's, it's a kind of record that you don't need to hear 20 times to feel. And that's, that's, that's what I mean. You al-, you hear it instantaneously. You feel it, you either feel the rhythm or, or you feel the way the, the vocalist is, is performing it, you feel his or her cadence, ah we call in the pocket when they're in the pocket, and, and, and, and you feel that inside you, you feel that, and you react to it, whether you know what they're saying or not. And of course, and, and that was the idea, ah, ah behind making a hit record. And you would always hope that by the time you got to the chorus line that you'd have a good hook line, that, that the listener could hang on to.

We were talking a little bit about what made for a hit record at Stax? How is it different from what Motown was doing. Do you think it was different and if so, how?

Well, I don't, I don't think that the Motown formula was that different. Ah I think that at Motown however, they placed ah, ah more emphasis on that smooth cosmopolitan approach to a melody. Whereas at Stax we would have more of a rural, church approach to a melody, and in many instances you would find us dealing with tense. Hold on, I'm coming you know, Sam and Dave, I'm a soul man. You, you felt that kind of rhythm and melodic approach coming out of Stax, whereas in Motown, I mean they were really excellent at being smooth cosmopolitan and, and, and, their, their approach to writing the lyrics were marvelous. I don't know any other way to explain it, other than just, just, just marvelous, when, when you listen to the likes of, of the Smokey Robingsons and, and, and, and the Norman Whitfields. And, and great lyricists and great melody guys, and of course, of course, Barry Gordy himself, who I suppose set the pattern for what they came with at Motown. But it was a cosmopolitan approach to lyrics, a cosmopolitan approach to melodies, whereas at Stax we had more of a rural, Southern approach to the melody and to the lyric, and we had more of the Southern work rhythm and feel to our rhythmic beats. 'Cause Motown was that 4, 4 smooth pattern. We had a heavy emphasis on the backbeat, but the 2 and 4, and there was a lot funky, that kind of stuff, and I think that made the difference between us and Motown.

But do you think that what was happening at Stax was in a way more, more adult, I mean the subject matter. Motown they weren't saying “Who's making love to your old lady.” They were singing more like, “Baby”. Was Stax in a way more sophisticated in that way, more adult, more kind of real stories.

Well, again ah, ah, it's the way you say it. Ah, ah the, the, the, the, I heard it through the grapevine, not much longer would you be mine. Was the, "I heard it through the grapevine," approach whereas at Stax we might say, that, “somebody told me that you didn't love me anymore.” It was just a bit more direct. And that, that, that may have been indigenous to the area, in terms of the, the, the Southern way of speaking, or I suppose another way of putting it, is just that it was raw, and it was authentic and it was pure, it was unpolished, it, it, was just, it's raw, and straightforward.

And you said something a minute ago too, that it was, that a lot of it was from the church. Talk a little more about that. In what way was the music coming out of Stax, from the church?

Well the, the, the, I think that the genesis ah, of the music that, that, that we by and large, produced and wrote at Stax Records, wa-, was a, was a kind of music that you could trace back to the church or that you could trace back to the period that preceded that, the slave, slave music, or the slave experiences. And, and in there you had a different kind of moaning, and a different kind of groaning, that you heard in the melody. And it was pure, and we didn't, we didn't attempt to take a church melody if you will like you heard in a Sam and Dave when something is wrong with my baby, something is wrong with me. Is basically a pure church melody, it wasn't necessarily a lift or steal on a church song, but it was an approach to a melody, tha-, as, as you hear the melody sung in church. Full of emotion. Full of the pain, full of the feeling. And uncompromising in its presentation. And that's the different between I think again Motown's approach. You would hear sounds at Motown that had the influence of the church in the melody, but they would polish it. And they did a marvelous job at doing that. At Stax we didn't. We just let all hang out, we went for it, and whatever it was, that's what it was. Whatever you felt, that's what it was.

We were going to talk about the...

White acceptance, white exposure.

Motown had a broad appeal to white kids, you were telling me before that Stax music appealed to them too, once they could hear it. Maybe just tell us that story about.

Well, Motown had an appeal to White America. As well as Black America, because ah principally their approach to the rhythm and the melody, and the lyric. Additionally, because of that they got the acceptance and were able to promote it and get it exposed. So they got it played. They got their singles played. And they did something that has not been repeated by any other record company since then, in terms of getting the kind of exposure that they got, on their single records, on their artists. At Stax ah it was a little bit more difficult, because the kind of music we were coming with, was not the music that was generally accepted as the kind of music that radio stations ah, ah wanted to play, ah whether they were black stations, or in some instances where they were white stations. And of course, part of my responsibility was to come in and get it played. And wherever we got their product played, that product sold, and we had a great appreciation from the white listeners, and, and, and, and the white community. Ah, but you know it, in the final analysis whether it was Motown, or Stax, ah it had nothing to do with anything but getting the product exposed. Black music in America by and large has been a kind of music that's been appreciated by the masses and by whites. If you go back to the period of time before a Motown, and before Stax, and before any of these record companies, what you found was an appreciation for the black music coming out of the slave experience. Appreciated so much, until you had white performers out with black faces, singing, the, the, the black music. And when you come into a period of time, there was a early period in the recorded music industry, you'd have the black artist on the small labels, that would go and record the songs, and have a hit record breaking in the black community, but it would not be exposed in the white community because the white companies would take a white artist and cover that song, performed by that black artist, the same way that, that black artist was performing it and sell it to the white community. Thus you had an Elvis Pressley who came out of that kind of phenomenon. So when you look at Stax, it was a music that every time we got it exposed to the masses, it was appreciated by the masses. As I sit today and look at the boxed sets that are being released through Atlantic Records, and through Fantasy Records, where the catalog is housed, I look at the White Americans who grew up on that music out buying the CDs on that today. And I look at the White Americans and the young people, who didn't know, or didn't hear that music, hearing that music today, and appreciating that music. Having as much appreciation today for the Stax music as they did for the Motown music, and probably as time goes on it might be even much broader for the Stax music because we were much more diverse in the kind of music that we had. For our music ranged from jazz, to blues, to soul, to the kind of music that they had at Motown. So I think when, when history writes the entire story we probably would have had a broader appeal to White America with the Stax music than Barry had with his Motown music.

I’d like to ask you to talk a bit about the Booker T. and the MGs. From the standpoint of a mixed race band, in a segregated town, and just, talk about the way they made music together, and the way they, and in the course of doing that maybe you can talk about how they couldn't even play in clubs at that time because of the segregation.

Well, from my vantage point ah Booker T. and the MGs ah, represented a phenomenon, never to be repeated again. Ah, we had, on the banks of the Mississippi River, in Memphis, Tennessee at a time when Jim Crow, as it was known then, or ah segregation, was the order of the day. And certainly there in Memphis where at that time it permeated ah, ah the community, we had two black guys, and two white guys working in absolute harmony in a recording studio. Which was in direct contrast to the world that was right outside those studio doors. You had a Duck Dunn, a bass player, white, country influence, some rock influence. You had an Al Jackson the drummer, black, jazz influence, wonderful, wonderful drummer. You had a Steve Cropper, incredible guitar player, who had country and rock influence, probably more rock than country, or rock and roll, than country, white. And you had a Booker T. black who had the academic pursuit if you will, as it related to music, who were the keyboardist who played the organ and the piano. Four, four, four brilliant young men, working together in harmony in a studio, making the music that became the Stax sound. Sitting there and proving that harmony amongst the races, does work, and was working, and did work while the rest of the world was fighting on the outside. And I think that it was that harmony that was created from those people, those four guys, combined with Jim Stewart who was white. A country fiddle player, who sat there, in, in, in the control rooms and, in the control room rather, and drove them hour after hour, day after day, until they came up with what was a perfection in rhythm, and to hear the melody woven into that when they were doing instrumentals you would hear Booker T. and, and you could hear Steve Cropper and an Al Jackson, and a Duck Dunn, but then there was always that little simple nice melody that never got in the way, that was always there, that was always light, that felt good, and that you always remembered, and that any four piece band across America, that played Booker T. and the MGs, and to see these four guys, then, then, then move from that, and, and, and perform with an Otis Redding, where, where you had the, the, the, the strongest rhythm singer that I've ever heard. Ah to, to hear them, take their magic and integrate that or marry that to Otis Redding's ma-, ah magic, is, is, is to me a phenomenon. And to see the next week these same four guys play with a Sam and Dave. And to hear Sam and Dave who personified ah, ah church singing, where you had two guys with __ close harmony ah as a duo, that sang soul, like soul men would sing it, with all of the church feel. To feel these four guys with them, or to see them move from that to a Carla Thomas. And or from a Carla Thomas to an Eddie Floyd, and Knock on Wood. And Bring it on Home to Me, was a phenomenon I think in American music never to be realized again. And for that to be done in the bowels of the South, on the banks of the Mississippi River, before we had integration in America, to me is truly a blessing and a miracle.

Talk just a little bit if you could about Duck and Steve and they're sort of the white country boy and the black blues man, R and B man, how they're similar.

Ok. When you look the influence, the country influence of a Duck Dunn. And the country influence of a Steve Cropper and the environment in the South, and you look at the influences of, of a Jack-, Jackson L. Jackson, and a Booker T. When you compare them you, you find that, that, they're basically one and the same. For you, you have these white guys coming out of a rural kind of environment, a rural kind of thinking an out of the main stream kind of thinking, and you have the same thing happening with these black guys. In essence what you had was two different ethnic groups, both indigenous to that area. And when you saw that married, you saw harmony. Which I guess goes to show that ah in the final analysis, we really aren't that different as human beings, are we?

I wanted to ask you as we talked about in your office, what about Sam Cooke, and maybe you could just tell us from your perspective a little bit about the importance of Sam Cooke. Did that influence the whole generation of what came to be called Soul?

Well I think Sam Cooke epitomized the evolution of church music into popular music. Sam came out of the church, and his approach to singing was the same. Melodies were basically the same. As a matter of fact they were so poignant until it, I'm sure was the dominant influence on Otis Redding, the Temptations lead singers, and many other artists that I can't even name today. He has not been replaced. He was truly one of a kind. And the one that was able to take a church melody and a country yodel and make it sound like church. And the kind of a singer that didn't need to dance, that just needed to let the feeling flow in his melody. And that influenced, I'm sure, a couple of generation of singers and can't be replaced.