Rock and Roll; Interview with Jerry Wexler [Part 3 of 4]

Thanks. Yeah. But wait a minute wait you have to convey that. Rhythm and Blues might better have been called Rhythm and God spoke in a sense because there is a contemporary rhythm and blows and the rock and roll which stemmed from it. They're probably much more. There's much more recourse. The gospel musical forms that the Blues forms blues is blues. But rhythm and it does occasionally use the 12 bar form has used. Gospel music

meaning gospel chord changes and gospel meters. I don't get too technical. But to put it in a nutshell because of what Ray Charles brought to the table. The music of random blows now is the devils words to the church's music. My first intimation. Of this was when Ray Charles summoned us to Atlanta. Ahmed cardigan and myself and we went to the Peacock hotel and there was this new seven piece band that Ray had assembled. Until then Gray had worked as any other. R&B musician so you know it in a studio would handpick studio man with songs that we presented to him. Now Ray was an integer and it was complete with his own band his own arrangements and his own songs. And one of the first intimations of this

recourse the Gospel wise song I Got A Woman. Then this song this little girl of mine which was this little light of mine and so on. The mind knowledge very little of this had been done before. I'm sure it may have occurred but this very conscience conscious and deliberate effort to bring music from the church and put secular words to it was Ray Charles. And it never changed and of course the next great the purveyor of that was Aretha Franklin continued. And maybe maybe even solidified. There's an idea of rhythm and gospel even more than Ray. Said it. Yeah yeah yeah

yeah. My great you know abiding love for Sam Cooke has to do. Incidentally more with the records he did with the soul stars than the records he did later on for RCA with the range records but that's a whole other story because he was the same same cook whether he was singing with an epic a capella quartet and the guitar are a full band arrangement. But. Sam was the incarnation of sexual appeal to women. When Sam would Let's go to the gospel days if he was doing a gospel show he'd be standing. On stage one or at a pulpit or whatever and he saw to rock from side to side and then. Slapped his side like this.

That was almost the same as a charismatic hitting a supplicant with Jesus in the far right cause the ladies would fall over like tenpins as soon as Sam did this or that. But of course it was not. Artificial. It didn't look planned. Because Sam knew what he was doing. It always came in an appropriate moment in the music. Now let me say another thing about Sam. I don't believe anybody ever had controlled his voice the way Sam Cooke controlled his his voice for registration. Pitch was perfect. The variation in Camber and so on and his voice the way a great saxophone player could blow a saxophone and do whatever he wanted with it. And of course his famous well that. How about that one said that he tried to

ask Sam to put in some of those when they didn't belong and Sam always knew where they went. So that would you call the magic of melisma. By the way Sam for those who never saw him physically it was very prepossessing just beautiful man. I mean he was as handsome as could be. Oh yeah. Oh absolutely. Sam Cooke was a. We became an archetype and many many singers utilized what they could of his style because he was inimitable. Again because of this seamless. Magic he had for purveying melody.

And beautiful turns. But people like Marvin Gaye Solomon Burke. This is the smooth voice saying of Smokey Robinson. Some of the highest pitch Clyde McPhatter had many elements of Sam Cooke in them. Oh. OK so I talk about that getting away from our group. Yeah yeah yeah. Because I have a little personal I spin on what happened to Sam Cooke but it's a loser story about perhaps I shouldn't tell it. I see no Sam and he's the come up to our office in the days when he was singing only gospel with the Soul Stirrers he was on Specialty Records he had a manager out of New York named Bill Cooke who was a disc jockey in New Jersey are in beat this jockey and they would visit

with us when they came to New York and I used to beg Sam said this I said Gospel great but how about let's make some money like this let's start seeing the blows in R&B. He said well maybe some day it never happened because we never even had a look in because he was in California and we were in New York. What happened was that he and his then road manager and musical director Bumps Blackwell went into the studio and cut a couple of non-classical songs. They then went to art rope. The owner and the CEO of Sam's record company Specialty Records and present them to art art that did not want to risk Sam Cooke's gospel career. With these pop songs over on the other side so they struck a deal. I think there was something like $15000 of obligation that Sam owned. And he was

excused from that and the Masters which were probably cut expenses specialities expenses were handed back to see him. He was not free. That would be maybe the equivalent of Bobby Bonds being turned loose on the market with no restrictions whatsoever and being now available for the nearest comment. So he then went to a man who was in the airplane business I mean in Keene and put out the first few records and of course they were again prop spins on gospel tunes. She's wonderful which was God is wonderful. He said She's wonderful You're wonderful she's wonderful whatever. And it was you know God is wonderful. And of course now Sam turned his back. On the church on the Gospel business and became a pop artist and then he went to RCA and had just wonderful career with all those big hits.

Although again I'm not a big fan of the RCA arrangements. Of Stax. Yeah. One of the. The best associations that we had in Atlantic wise the association with Stax Records. Which was a module in Memphis making the most wonderful kind of rhythm and blues records with a new technique. We had a we were pressing records at that time for the particular area of the southeast of the mid south and a pressing plant in Memphis called plastic products which was owned by a wonderful gentleman named the Williams. He called me one day and said

there's a record down here that was selling a lot of you might want to come down here and take a look at it. It turned out to be a record not on Stax but on Satellite Records which was the early and named for Stax with Rufus Thomas and they start to call it Thomas called Cause I love you. I went to Memphis I like the record. I met up with Jim Stuart the owner of Stax Records and we arranged for a contract whereby we would press and distribute the record on a royalty basis. The record really didn't do much it had its little run regionally. Yes. So there was this one record Rufus and Carla that really didn't happen to any extent but it was the door opener because he a

later I was in my office and I got a call from an old pal of mine Jaime Weiss who is one of the loveable roughnecks in the record business. And. He said he was in Memphis and he said Hey schmuck you got a hit record down here. It's called Thomas she was. He said What do you I pick it up for myself. You better come down and get it. Of course that was his own way of it. You know give me a little bit of information we had on the contract. So that was a big hit. Gee whiz by Telecom Yes but my colleague Thomas and we began a very close association with Stax Records. We have by they furnished us when that incredible. Rush story of the illustrious artist. Of course Otis Redding. Later on Sam and Dave. Although I did bring them into Stax Eddie Floyd

William Bell. Different groups and. It really turned me on to watch the way they recorded because it was entirely different from what we had been doing in New York and from what everybody else was doing around the country which was recording with written the arrangements the Rangers and studio players will read the charts. This is not to say that they didn't make some good records in that way. That sounded spontaneous and authentic and real and funky. But. I think entropy was setting in for us around this time. Somewhere in the early 60s and it just seemed as though we couldn't get out of our own way at least I couldn't in the studio. I sing on the line read a line record producer. It seemed to me that. The musicians were out Aleck's the arrangements or the ranges were out of ideas. The

songwriters were coming up empty and I just. Was so turned off and so bored with making bad records actually that I stayed out of the studio and I let somebody else in with the records. But when I went to Stax and I saw how they did it they had a house band The rhythm section called book at the in the MCs which in and incidentally is one more famous examples of an integrated band. Look at Jackson being black and Steve Cropper and Dr. Steve the guitarist and the bass and being white and they produced some wonderful music but what they did is they would come in in the morning coming up that couch take out their axes and start playing music. If they didn't have a song they'd play some chord changes. If they didn't have any chords somebody would sing a top line. The records with the

arrangements were developed inductively by building rhythm patterns on simple chord changes rather than playing the chords to finish chords and the finished patterns from written paper. This was very heartening and also inspirational to me because it seemed to me a way out of my impasse. I had Wilson Pickett. Signed up. And for a year we just couldn't seem to make any headway. The songs that I brought him he didn't like the songs that he wanted to record didn't strike me as being suitable. And one day his manager called up and said. Let's turn him loose. I didn't want to turn him loose because I thought he was a fabulous singer. So I got the idea of calling him in Memphis and say hey can I bring with some Pickett down here and make some records with you guys. Which we did

and it was fabulous. Went down to Memphis I put Wilson Pickett in the hotel room which Steve Cropper and I had a bottle of Jack Daniels and the. Next day they came out with midnight hour. Don't fight it 6 3 4 5 7 8 9 it's a man's way. There was a week's worth I mean credible hits were cut that week in this new method. And. The other person I brought down was Darren Culver who also cut some fantastic records there. But the main thing is that I had not. Tasted this sudden style of recording. The must be the Memphis. The doormat for the welcoming mat for me at Memphis was cold because of. Whatever reasons Mr. Pickett's intransigence. Problems with the other people. And maybe it was the management's idea that they wanted to concentrate.

Their efforts on their own. Artists and their own label Stax lab rather than making their study available as a custom operation. Whatever it was. I now felt very frustrated because I found this way to go and the door had been closed. Well. Hundred twenty five miles from Memphis. It's I guess that would be southeast and I'm 25 miles south of Nashville in the triangle. It's a town in northwest Alabama called Muscle Shoals and I heard some music coming from there that sounded exactly like I was coming from Memphis. Again it was a man name recall who had a studio there and no had a rhythm section of exceptional players recording people like Arthur Alexander and Jimmy Clarence

Carter. And it came about that we. Distributed Preston distributed records records on a label called Fame which was the name of his studio and mussel shells. Well there seem to be the next place to go so I took Wilson Pickett. To Muscle Shoals and we built. His records that night the same way. It was just. A listing of chords chord progressions no rhythm pattern nothing just chords and we put the record together by the musicians playing the music and playing into a pattern. And the first thing we cut was land of a Thousand Dances which was enormous and the energy in the sonority of that record that to me is wonderful to this day the projection. There's just something that comes that leaps out of a wreck and I call it. The sonority of the record. That. It's different from the rhythm. It's not exactly the

sound. It's not the songs it's the gestalt it's the way the sound of the record impacts on me it. Instantly. And to me that's the magic ingredient in a phonograph record. If you can convey that it can't be defined or explained but it's something that just grabs you. The Rolling Stones have it the Beatles tried it. Out it's Rush has it to this day and they had it. And so from then on muscle shells became the place that I preferred to go. I'd love to go. Incidentally there's another curious anomaly. Incidentally that's where I took Aretha Franklin when we cut her first records. I never loved the man. Which people to this day I still regard. As being maybe how much soulful I really funkiest records. But here's the anomaly. These players in Muscle Shoals were all Caucasians. Now this again this seems to confound

perceived wisdom and all that the logic of the music professors and the commentators. How could. Authentic soul music and blows come out of a situation like this. Well I don't know how it did but it did because what it was in my opinion is that these white boys. Who grew up in Alabama and who were the products of country living and also of country music which they had heard all their life. Also had a proclivity for blows all Southerners. Like blows whether that white a black. Now. Many of the people like the Muscle Shoals Rhythm section ended up in Nashville playing three and four chord country songs. But there was a notion among this particular group of people not to do that because here's the little dirty secret they profess not to like

country music but they like country music to listen to. They don't like to play it. So these boys took a left turn thought the Blues side of going up to Nashville and making a lot of quick money in the studio and that was the. Matrix and the genesis of two decades of wonderful. Rhythm and blues recording at Muscle Shoals. You know.