This is a must-see, even though I waited a year to watch it.
I’d been to the Stax museum in Memphis. And I’m the kind of person who pores over the exhibits, reads all the cards, digests the information. Furthermore, I know the records. How much more was there to learn?
Well, not a whole hell of a lot about Stax, but there was great footage of back then and…
You really get a feeling for Memphis and race relations.
Memphis is not on most people’s vacation to-do list. Nashville? They call it NashVegas and not is it only the home of country music, it’s the land of bachelorette parties. Not far from New York, the home of L.A. expat musicians, everybody knows about Nashville.
But most people don’t know about Memphis.
Memphis is the south. I know, I know, technically they call Nashville the south, but one step into Memphis will illustrate the difference.
So a wannabe country singer gets his sister to take out a mortgage on her house and they open a recording studio in an old movie theatre with a record store out front. And this record store attracts all the kids in the neighborhood. And these kids are Black.
The other. To be scared of. There are many people who still feel this way.
But with Jim Stewart behind the controls, and whites Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn melding with Blacks Booker T. Jones and Al Jackson, Jr., this integrated house band creates what are ultimately legendary records. From Rufus and Carla Thomas to Otis Redding to Sam & Dave. Never mind as themselves as Booker T. and the M.G.’s.
But Otis dies in a plane crash, along with members of the Bar-Kays, and Atlantic ends up with all the masters and…Al Bell rallies the troops and rebuilds the label.
Al Bell… He’s the heart and soul of the movie. A man without much portfolio, a deejay, who ends up driving the entire company commercially and ultimately creatively too. He’s got a vision. And he’s a preacher and a coach and he keeps the troops going. This is the kind of person who conventionally triumphed in the music business. An outsider who made it on their wits, developing skills along the way. And when Al talks about the lessons he learned from Winthrop Rockefeller…
When the movie is over you’ll think twice about competing with the big boys. I would doubt CBS putting Stax on hold, not sending the company checks, but this same company did the exact same thing with Tom Scholz to force him to deliver a second Boston album. And the funny thing about the man is the corporation continues but not the executives doing its dirty week. You stay for a while, act as the big swinging dick, take your money and one day you’re done.
But if you’re an entrepreneur, it’s YOUR company, and you want it to last forever.
Al wants Stax and Memphis to be taken seriously by the people on the coasts. Black-owned businesses were always seen as second-class, in some cases irrelevant, or to be toyed with and ripped-off. As for Memphis… Despite so many residents moving south for the weather in the past few decades, if for no other reason following the companies who were evading the northern unions, in the sixties and even seventies northerners had contempt for the south.
If you watch this documentary you’ll feel the power of Martin Luther King, Jr. In a way taking a day off from work will not. You get insight into what it was like to be Black in America, a second class citizen. As it is said in the film, they didn’t want more, just the same, the same opportunity, the same equality.
You get a history of civil rights in a music doc, you’re not beaten over the head with it, and I wish everybody in America could see this doc.
And a concomitant one about being Black in America today, which doesn’t exist.
And there is the music. And Isaac Hayes gets his due as Black Moses. Something that has been lost to the sands of history, eclipsed by his role as Chef in “South Park” and his ultimate exit.
Now to a degree this documentary is hagiography. How could Al Bell not know that the company’s masters could be attached? It’s one thing to be screwed by Jerry Wexler when you’re wet behind the ears, quite another to be ignorant when you’re facing trial for fraud…you’ve got high-priced lawyers, you know what is going on.
Was everybody out to get Stax, to put it in its place, wanting to keep Blacks down? Definitely to a degree, to what degree…
These documentaries are made by people trying to draw attention to the catalog and burnish its image. You’re not going to find a deep exposé.
Then again, the real story of Stax is the music, and that’s given a fuller treatment here than anywhere else. There’s a strong case made that the Memphis sound was homegrown and unique, and when it was snuffed out something was lost.
No one will watch this documentary and say it was a waste of time. No one will be bored during it.
Two thumbs definitely up, WAY UP!
HBO Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgR9W13B98w
