The Dream Marches On...

A phenomena is taking place in Memphis today. Thousands of Americans of all kinds are congregating at the Mason Temple Pentacostal Church and near the National Civil Rights Museum, housed in the Lorraine Motel, to celebrate the memory of a man who changed the face of America and the world, before his life was taken from him by an assassin's bullet.

In his last speech before his death, Martin Luther King Jr almost prophetically said, "Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

This is a day then for contemplation of the way Dr King's legacy has been continued, by others working in their own ways for equality and freedom and justice, up to the present day. Have we reached the mountaintop?

Dr Martin Luther King Jr - I Have Been To The Mountain Top (April 3rd 1968)

The recording of this speech is hosted by DrMartinLutherKingjr.com. Photograph taken by Mike Segar.

Isaac On His First Go Round: Sir Isaac & The Doo-Dads

In 1962, Isaac Hayes was graduating Manassas High School in Memphis, and contemplating whether to find a way to study for his early ambition of becoming a doctor, find a steady job at a local meat-packing company to support his young family, or to pursue a career in music...

After a guidance counsellor at school had persuaded him to enter a talent concert, which he won by singing Nat King Cole's "Looking Back", Isaac had begun to learn the baritone and alto sax with Lucian Coleman, and had begun to make contacts with some of Memphis' premier musicians, whom he would watch as they turned up to play at the clubs on Thomas Street in the 'North Chicago' district of Memphis.

In 1961, in one version of the story, he impressed respected band leader Ben Branch while singing "The Very Thought Of You" by Arthur Prysock, after being snuck into Currie's Club Tropicana, and sang three nights a week with the band for the next two years - backed by Branch, Floyd Newman on alto sax, Emerson Able on tenor sax, Larry Brown on bass guitar, Eddie Jones on piano, Herbert Thomas and Herman Green on trumpets, Big Bell James on drums, and Clarence Nelson on guitar. However, in another version of the story, told by band-member and eye-witness Howard 'Bulldog' Grimes over here at the amazing blog Lost And Found: The Memphis Sound, it was thanks to the rest of the band and Mr Johnnie Currie, the club owner, and a lot of shouting in the kitchen, that Ben Branch even allowed Isaac up on stage! As it turned out, Ben had been wrong, and Isaac was a great hit, singing Brook Benton's "Just A Matter Of Time"!

Isaac also sang gospel with The Morning Stars, and doo-wop with The Ambassadors, The Teen Tones and The Missiles, played r&b with Calvin & the Swing Cats, before graduating, and his singing was so good that he had been offered many college scholarships to study vocal music. Amongst those who had encouraged Isaac at the school was Emerson Able, school band teacher and tenor sax player with Ben Branch, who is featured here at Lost And Found: The Memphis Sound, and is recovering from a recent heart attack. At one point, the story goes, Emerson actually kicked Isaac out of the school band to get him to focus more, perhaps to remind him that playing nights wit Ben Branch and himself wasn't going to be enough without an education! Manassas High School is where Isaac Hayes chose to place his historical marker, in thanks for the encouragement they gave him. He continues to support the school in many ways, including attending events during Black History Month (in the photo below Isaac is standing with Dr Linkwood Williams, one of the original Tuskegee Airmen, the African-American pilots and officers of WWII)

However, in need of money, he had to turn them all down and started work full-time at the processing plant. It was only by chance that Isaac heard of an opportunity to perhaps continue in music. Sidney Kirk persuaded him to go down to Chips Moman's American Sound Studios for an audition for Chip's new Youngstown Records label.

Sir Isaac & The Doodads - Laura, We're On Our Last Go-Round (A-side) Youngstown 1962
Sir Isaac & The Doodads - Sweet Temptation (B-side) Youngstown 1962

Moman decided to record them performing Laura, We're On Our Last Go-Round by Patti Ferguson, and Sweet Temptations by Merle Travis. The band was Isaac on vocals, Sidney on piano, Ronnie Capone on drums, and Tommy Cogbill on bass, while apparently, those sweet, tempting backing singers are in fact Isaac himself on an overdub. Isaac's singing on Laura demonstrates a purity and honesty in his tenor range, while Sweet Tmeptation begins to reveal the earthiness and allure possed by his baritone voice, which would later become his trademark. Sadly, the record went nowhere at the time, but Isaac Hayes turned up nearly every evening after work to learn more about recording from Chip, and hoping to get more work, perhaps as a backing singer or saxophonist. Just before Christmas, Sidney Kirk decided to quit music and go into the Air Force. And it was ironically the loss of his partner that set Isaac Hayes on the route to success. Fanny Kirk phoned him just before New Year to see if he knew a piano player for the New Year's Eve party at The Southern Club. Getting desperate for money, Isaac found himself saying that he would play the gig:

"After I accepted it, I broke into a cold sweat ... I was scared to death. I said "What am I doing? I don't know how to play piano. They gonna kill me!"

Read what happened next here from an excerpt of Rob Bowman's Soulville USA: The Story of Stax Records...

Buy Soulsville USA. Now!

Information and photos for this post come courtesy of Rob Bowman's research, and the dedication of Scott and Preston Lauterbach at Lost And Found: The Memphis Sound. The recordings here are from a reissue by San American records (#950), of Little Rock Arkansas, where Joe Lee was sound engineer and did some work with Allen Orange in the 70s. Go over to the Soul Detective to read more about this...

Dr King We Sing!

Today is Martin Luther King Day. It is the celebration of one man's birthday. Rev King spent his life confronting injustice.

Some were disatisifed with the pace and the direction at times. Why did he put up with so much hostility and violence, and meet it with non-violence? Why listen to so much deliberate politicking and spend time trying to understand it? Did not Frederick Douglass once state that, "If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power gives up nothing without demands." Dr King understood these frustrations and points of view, and sympathised with them. He hoped that he was right to adopt the path of non-violent protest, and he persisted in making demands of the powerful. Along the way, he accepted the indignities that befell his fellow protestors, and shared their arrests and jailings. He was increasingly unafraid to ask questions about Vietnam, and to help stage the Poor People's Campaign as an alternative agenda for the American people, hoping to demonstrate the damage that a system of racism and war was doing to the fabric of the Great Society for all.

Who would Dr King celebrate today? An answer might be found in his Letter From a Birmingham Jail of April 16th 1963, written to shame those white liberal church leaders who had urged him to call off protests, and to wait for a concessions to be worked out. They misunderstood the nature of the black freedom struggle. Martin Luther King Jr knew that he did not have the power to stop something that he had not begun and did not control, and had been waiting long enough. In one passage, Dr King decides to introduce the true faces of the struggle:

"I wish you had commended the Negro sit-inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face Jeering, and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: "My fleets is tired, but my soul is at rest." They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience' sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. "

If you have done one thing, big or small, to face up to injustice and prejudice, which can still pernicously divide us, then today is for you to celebrate.

Happy Birthday Dr King.

In 1968, in the aftermath of Dr King's murder, a gospel group called the Spiritual Consolators went to Style Wooten's Designer Records in Memphis to record a double-sided tribute to Dr King. In part, it was a lament, mourning the loss of a great leader. However, at the same time, the lyric is at pains to demonstrate that they will not go away quietly, but will overcome his passing. Dr King, We Sing. And to the King we sing. And we'll go on singing.

The Spiritual Consolators - Dr King We Sing (Part 1) (Designer 6789) 1968

The Spiritual Consolators - Dr King We Sing (Part 2) (Designer 6789) 1968

P.S. My class (they are 7 and 8) at school today recognised MLK all by themselves after a big discussion, and told me some things they knew about him, and they liked Stevie Wonder's Happy Birthday, which we played over about five times. We thought about whether they would be brave enough to tell someone if somebody was being picked on or treated unfairly. But they did think 50 Cent was cooler now than Stevie...

French Soul At Royal Studios: Axelle Red

Belgian soul songstress Axelle Red (real name Fabienne Demal) has released her new album, jardin secret, on October 2nd. It was recorded at Royal Studios, produced by Boo Mitchell, with father Willie Mitchell dropping by to oversee the sessions. I guarantee that if you have been waiting for that new Marti Pellow CD, expecting the next great soulful album, its time to spend your money on this instead.

Axelle sings mostly in french on this album, but its worth persevering even if you are not linguistically gifted. You don't need to know all the words to know that this is seriously good music, and a masterful songwriter. Axelle started out as another teen pop sensation in her native Belgium, but quickly proved to her agents that she had her own agenda, and it included exploration of her own musical direction. She travelled to Muscle Shoals in 1995 to record the album a tâtons, and impressed producer Isaac Hayes, Steve Cropper, Richard Hawkins, Willie Weeks and Lester Snell with her talent and committment when she recorded with them. Sadly, Axelle is considering throwing in the towel after this album, disappointed that record companies the world over still only seem to want to promote the 'pretty girl shaking her r&b lite booty' format. Beyoncé and others of talent, take notes.

Listen to a sample of the first single, Temp Pour Nous (Time For Us), and buy it online at i-tunes, or at the link below. It's about people needing more time to love each other more. There are samples of other tracks from the album at Axelle's website here. They range from Fruit Défendu, a funky come hither number in English, to Changer ma vie, a more classically French song, and it is the fusion of soul instrumentation and musical themes with French conventions which makes Axelle's songwriting work so interesting. Yesterday, I watched Axelle live on a webconcert from Belgium, playing with her touring band, including Bar-Kays (and now MGs) drummer Steve Potts and once again Lester Snell on keyboards. She isn't a soul shouter by any means, but tries to inject her vocals with soul feeling while retaining the lyrical, poetic bent that is integral to French pop. The result sounds like few other French songs do. As a rough idea, Carole King is one songwriting reference that Axelle herself alludes to.

For a limited time, the blog filles souries is hosting the song Papillion (Butterfly) from the album, which you can also hear a clip of here. A soft and sweet ballad about intimacy, it stunned me into silence!

All of Axelle Red's more soulful albums are available on i-tunes, and at her website, including jardin secret, a tâtons, and French Soul: The Best Of Axelle Red. Information used here from Willie Mitchell's Royal Studios website, Axelle Red's website and the Belgian Pop & Rock Archives.

P.S. Ma copine (soul transl. 'My Cherie Amour') has reminded me that Axelle sang a song, Manhattan-Kaboul, with French folk pop star Renaud, who is her favourite songwriter. I think she wants you to buy Renaud records too now you all love French pop. That would be a good thing.

Dante Carfagna & Memphix Records

Just time for a post on general stuff. While researching Memphis gospel label Designer Records, and reading an article about Memphix Records, I noticed the name of Dante Carfagna on the same webpage. I knew only that Dante Carfagna is behind the creation of Ohio Soul Recordings. However, it seems that this is merely the tip of the iceberg.

Those of you who are a bit more hip than I may well know that Mr Carfagna is also writer of the website Wax Poetics, and a renowned DJ and recording artist under the name of Express Rising, who's debut album jeux de ficelles (on Memphix Records) in 2003 is a much-sought after, limited edition, modern-day collectors item. Or as one site described it:

"...just about the most peaceful and folkily psychedelic instrumental breakbeat funk-soul-hop you ever heard."

Dante began his recording career by designing beats for Professor Griff of Public Enemy. He is one of the founders, with Luke Sexton and Chad Weekley, of the hip-hop/rare beats label Memphix Records, and also involved with Now-Again Records, who release both modern hip-hop and numerous compilations of rare soul and funk.


You can hear some clips of Dante Carfagna's work at Boomkat's CD site, although, due to their popularity, copies are rare as hen's teeth. eBay has some listings.

A discography of Memphix Records can be found here.

Boy Meets Girl: It's Too Late

Is it? Is it too late? Has summer gone? Did it stay too long? The day is cloudy, and thus I have to make this the final Boy Meets Girl snippet for this summer. If you don't go and buy the CD RIGHT NOW, however, don't fear - I'm sure I'll come back to it next summer, and the next!

A pairing now of two artists we haven't heard yet, Eddie Floyd and Cleotha Staples. Cleotha is the oldest of the Staples siblings, born just before the late Roebuck 'Pops' Staples moved his family from Mississippi to Chicago. While younger sister Mavis gets to show off her vocal virtuosity on some outstanding soul shouters, Cleotha chooses a song in a more traditional gospel form, and building from a near whispher 'it's a weak man that cries...', she can take it up to match the haunting organ accompaniment. Eddie Floyd's voice, crisp and clean, seems perfectly suited for the song. A wonderful, pure song of love and regret.


Cleotha Staples worked with the Staple Singers up to Pop's death in 2000. Soon after that, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease, which, with the help of her family, she continues to cope with, and she helped to organise the release of the final Staple Singers sessions in 2003.

Eddie Floyd & Cleotha Staples - It's Too Late (STAX STS-S 2-2024) 1969

Boy Meets Girl: Just Keep On Loving Me

Carla Thomas featured prominently on the Boy Meets Girl album, at a time when she was beginning to feel that she was being sidelined as an artist at Stax. After performing in London at the Bag O'Nails club in front of an impressed Paul McCartney, she was actually asked to drop out of the Stax/Volt tour of England in 1967 to perform at a civil-rights benefit in Chicago that Al Bell had double-booked! Having recorded the successful King & Queen of Soul album and Tramp with Otis Redding, she was hoping to capitalise on this. Jim Stewart promised another duet album with Otis for December 1967; yet Phil Walden remembers talking with Al Bell about an album featuring Otis with Aretha Franklin.

Al Bell found a place for Carla on Boy Meets Girl, although she is billed last, under Stax's newest female singing sensation, Mavis Staples. Nonetheless, Carla Thomas makes the most of her chance. She performs three songs in her trademark ballad style, All I Have To Do Is Dream with William Bell, with Eddie Floyd on Don't Make Me A Storyteller, and I'm Trying with Purvis Staples. She streches out into more impassioned territory with William Bell again on I Can't Stop and I Need You Woman, It's Our Time with Eddie, and particularly forcefully on It's Unbelievable with Purvis Staples. But it is perhaps with Johnnie Taylor that she reaches her best rapport, first on the ballad I've Just Been Feeling Bad, and then on today's song.

Carla Thomas matches and outdoes Johnnie Taylor on every plea to Just Keep On Loving Me. It's clear to me that she is in fact the power driving this song, with more confidence that she expresses on some of her other duets here. Ironically, in September 1975, in the dying days of Stax as a real record company, this song was released with Carla's vocals removed, in an attempt to cash in on Johnnie Taylor's renewed popularity with the disco crowd and drum up some much needed cash while the vultures swooped (this version recently featured on Stepfather of Soul, I think, but I can't remember now). It is good, but does it feel like someone is missing when he cries out for Carla halfway through? If you have that version, compare it to the original here, and decide for yourself.

Carla Thomas & Johnnie Taylor - Just Keep On Loving Me (Stax 0042) 1969

Information for this post taken from Rob Bowman's Soulsville: USA, and the Stax Site. You can buy the CD Boy Meets Girl here.

Boy Meets Girl: Love's Sweet Sensation

Summer lingers on, the sun is shining, boy meets girl, feel love's sweet sensation...



1969: Following the revelation that Atlantic Records had conned them out of ownership of their entire body of work to date, and stunned by the death of Otis Redding, and the murder of Martin Luther King in Memphis, the Stax family gathered together under the new direction of Al Bell to consider the future. Even though there had been tragedy and trickery, and even though tensions lay simmering beneath the surface, everybody equally believed in the possibility to make one new team effort, in the Stax spirit, to push ahead. A big release of new material, in a fanfare of publicity, was planned for May 1969.

The recording push of late 1968 and early 1969 produced so much astonishing music, often from previously untapped talent at the company, that it was able to push Stax to new heights. Everybody was put to work writing songs, performing, producing, in new combinations. New acts such as the Soul Children, the Emotions and the Staples Singers joined the family, while Isaac Hayes got to work on Hot Buttered Soul. A grand total of 27 new albums and 30 singles were recorded and pressed for simultaneous release, with more in the pipeline.

Boy Meets Girl was one of those albums, and was in part a response to the perceived success of that other soul giant, Motown, with duet songs. The decision to record four sides worth of Stax duets may seem slightly over-enthusiastic. Not everyone, even at Stax, believed that it would be possible to release so much and promote every artist properly. Al Bell, who personally produced the album, explained the reasoning in an interview with Rob Bowman:

"It was an attempt to take the entire roster and come up with a unique catalogue album ... then I could expose every track on the album and ... get all of those artists out there..."

Almost every permutation of male and female vocalist gets an outing. Duets were recorded with William Bell, Mavis Staples, Cleotha Staples, Purvis Staples, Johnny Taylor, Carla Thomas and Eddie Floyd. The results are remarkable. Carla Thomas matches and outdoes Johnny Taylor with every plea to Keep On Loving Me. William Bell and Mavis Staples didn't have to love us but they did, yes they did, on I Thank You. Mavis's voice soars above Eddie Floyd to dare him, Take Another Little Piece of My Heart.

Al Bell, working with Don Davis and Isaac Hayes to produce the tracks, took the artists to Muscle Shoals Sound for half of the songs. This was the first time the Muscle Shoals rhythm section, David Hood, Jimmy Johnson, Roger Hawkins and Barry Beckett, had played on a Stax record. Eddie Hinton, Marvell Thomas and Isaac Hayes also played.

The other half of the songs were recorded at Ardent Studios, with the new line-up of the Bar-Kays. Marvell Thomas and Isaac Hayes came to record parts too. They soon would return to Ardent to come up with Hot Buttered Soul...

Today's song is Love's Sweet Sensation, a duet between Mavis Staples and William Bell. You can't help but think about the warmth of a sunny day. I always cheer up listening to this track. When William calls out that love's "like a big hurricane", listen out for Mavis' response: "ooh, windy..." The string parts (recorded at Tera Shirma Studios in Detroit by Russ Terrana Jr) add a soaring element that matches the song's sentiment, while the song never gets syrupy thanks to the clever changes of tempo that wind up the song.

William Bell & Mavis Staples - Love's Sweet Sensation ("Boy Meets Girl" Stax STS 2-2024) 1969

The predictions that the release schedule was overdone were in part justified. Boy Meets Girl, and its six singles, did not chart, like some of the other albums. But the album push did make an impression on the music industry, and the record-buying public - Stax would continue - and gave us a wealth of great music.

All of the facts in this post come from Rob Bowman's Soulsville: USA. Amazon.co.uk are selling the Boy Meets Girl CD at good price for 22 classic tracks.

The Faithfulaires of Jackson, Tennessee: I'm Coming Home

Moving into gospel in today's post, we have a track by The Faithfulaires of Jackson, Tennessee. It was recorded for Designer Records in Memphis in 1971. The A-side is a slow mournful gospel song, I'm Coming Home, written by David Taylor, who also provides some backing vocals. The B-Side is a more up-tempo celebration, He's A Friend Of Mine, written by C H Clark, who also sings lead on it.

I'll look in a gospel reference book later on, but so far neither composer has come up in any web search. On the other hand, the Faithfulaires, originally led by the indefatigable Sister Thelma Bass, are still spreading the gospel word. In 1996, she helped to establish the Thelma Y. Bass House, a centre for women recovering from substance abuse problems in Durham, North Carolina. Sadly, Sister Thelma has been suffering from some serious medical conditions since last year, and a benefit concert was held in her honour May 2005, at the Living Water Church in Durham. I couldn't find any other references about her current health, so I wish her a speedy recovery.

Designer Records resided at 3373 Park Avenue in Memphis, where today you will find a photo studio called Brasher/Rucker Photography.

The Faithfulaires of Jackson, Tennessee - I'm Coming Home (Designer SW71-5750) 1971

Ella Brown: Love Don't Love Nobody

I have been busy working recently, but now I have a few minutes free I can make a new entry for the Louisiana soul sensation Ella Brown. According to Yukata Sakurai's Encyclopaedia of Soul, she recorded a number of singles for Adams Records. The track here was recorded for Lanor Records in Louisiana. According to John Ridley, Ella's husband was producer Jackie Avery, who produced acts at Phil Walden's Capricorn Records. Jackie was also a recording artist it seems, and although I don't know very much about him, I have found out that he recorded his own songs for Tail-Gate Records in New Orleans, including the song I Got Love. I think I will be trying to discover more about Jackie in the near future! Off to visit the Soul Detective...

Love Don't Love Nobody is the song for today. It is a great lament about the quality of manfolk. The instrumentation combines a funky band, horns and orchestration. The rockier feel to the band hints at Ella Brown's career in the 70s, when she became vocalist with the southern rock group Wet Willie, and recorded with The Marshall Tucker Band in 1973. Still, this is a classic soul track for us to enjoy.

This song will strike a chord with women everywhere!

Ella Brown - Love Don't Love Nobody (Lanor Records)

I found this song on a compilation of Lanor Records artists, but it is currently available on a compilation CD called Down & Out: The Sad Soul of the Black South by TRIKONT Records.