Rock and Roll; Interview with Al Bell [Part 1 of 3]

Our Yeah. Yeah tell me real briefly how you used to introduce yourself on the radio where not going the whole story. You say you know you show Washington on such and such place. Reality. Yeah I used to be only in Washington D.C. and I really enjoyed it I had in front of me a bell. And I'd say Al So you know OK we can use that. You know the part where you tell me now love don't talk about when you first came to Stax and 65 Could you for Describe a little bit of the kind of recording staff was making when you when you first arrived 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 destructors across the country and that I would be able to influence them to play the Stax music. And of course when I came in they were producing the likes of Otis Redding and Sam and Dave is my fact 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 joined the company but then had a hit song on Booker T and the energies in the marquis's and hit song Rufus Thomas and Carla Thomas and basically what they were producing and William Bell had had you don't miss your water till your well and Brad cetera. I brought with me to the company airflow it. And it 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 what was being recorded which fit for radio. And we began to select from that that material and asked 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 my ideas from a radio standpoint and thinking as a writer thinking as a producer without really being aware that we were having so much produce and fluence and telling the producers and writers they had what we thought would say oh radio ending up as a result of that sort of diversifying the sound a little bit or the approach to recording the songs and the artist. So when you write for radio you know what that really means in terms of what were some of the criteria one uses for radio and I'm talking about. Oh wow. Well at that time I was thinking specifically black radio. But in the same breath we were thinking Top 40 in the larger marketplace because at that time they Top 40 radio station was a radio station they played whatever the Top 40 hits were and then you would hear a station play an Elvis Presley type song and come out of that employer Johnny

Cash type song and from that into to attack Barry and from a tech berry into by the event and then from that into an Otis Redding if those songs were in the Top 40. But what we basically basically look for as we went through the repertoire that was being recorded there was that particular song that we believed to be that real action record that radio station could put on the air play once or twice and expect the audience to react expect the telephone to ring. And as a cause as a result of that that same type record was a kind of record that caused the consumer to go into the retail outlet. So we look for the reaction records because that's what a good radio programming needed you need that record that causes the audience to respond instantaneously. So we look for that kind of music now. Just to pick up where we left off. Yeah you know the reaction record would translate in terms of what goes on in the recording. What do you look for especially as that

gives an example of the kind of record where who's making love Janet Taylor. Was a reaction record. I mean 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 chorus who's making love to your lady while you are making love you don't need to play the second verse No that was a hit record. Oh and I come more current with with the new thing going for an example of loving you is wrong I don't want to be right. Oh when you heard an Otis Redding sing the Rolling Stones I Can't Get No Satisfaction but I notice that I Can't Get No Satisfaction. I mean I just did that 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 records I don't know quite how to explain it but it's you feel it and you know that is there. One of the things that we would do at Stax is we'd have a good record. And if we didn't get it like we wanted it in the intro Sometimes we'd come back after we

recorded it and have the artist maybe just to over dub on the front end. Just to get the audience's attention and everything else and the attention get up and hold them for maybe throughout the first course 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 reaction. You know 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 don't you hear it instantaneously. You feel it you either feel the rhythm or you feel the way the vocalist is performing it you feel his or her cadence. We call it in the pocket when in the pocket. 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 that was added about a 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 the listener could hang on to the cup. So we can't know what made for it right.

How's it different from what mode was it was different. Well I don't think that the Motown formula was that different. I think that at Motown However they placed. More emphasis on that smooth cosmopolitan approach to 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 felt that kind of rhythm and melodic approach coming out of Stax whereas And Motown. I mean they were really excellent at being smooth cosmopolitan and 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 when you listen to the

likes of the Smokey Robinson's and. The Norman Whitfield's and great lyricist and great melody guys and of course of course Barry Gordy himself who I suppose set the pattern for what they came with in Motown but it was a cosmopolitan approach to lyrics a cosmopolitan approach to melody and swears 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 because Motown was that for for smooth pattern. We have a heavy emphasis on the back beat but the going forward it was a lot funky that kind of stuff. I think that made the difference between us in the town. But what was happening Stax was in a way more and. More I mean the subject matter much I mean we're seeing you make you sing with me. It stands in the way in more

sophisticated way more work than a real story. Well again I think it's the way you say it. I Heard It Through The Grapevine not much longer would you be man was the I Heard It Through The Grapevine approach where's it stacks. 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 that may have been indigenous to the area in terms of the Southern way of speaking or I suppose another way of putting it is just that it was wrong and it was authentic and it was pure it wasn't polished it was just a front and straightforward. OK you said something like it was from the church. In what way was music coming down.

Well the I think that the genesis of the music that we by and large produced and wrote at Stax Records was it 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 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. It is basically a pure church melody. It wasn't necessarily lift or steel on a church song but it was an approach to melody that as it as you hear the melody is sung in church full of emotion for all of the pain for all of the feeling and uncompromising in its presentation. And that's the difference between I think again Motown's approach you would hear songs at Motown that had

the influence of the church in the melody but they would polish it and they did a marvelous job of doing that. And Stax we didn't we just let it all hang out. We went for it and whatever it was that's what it was whatever you felt that's what it was. FREE so and long time we don't know how pretty much. We're going to talk about white acceptance when a perspex poses so much kind of broad appeal. But what you were telling me before that he's a good heel you want to get here it just tells that story. Well Motown had an appeal to white America as well as black America because. Principally in their approach to the rhythm and the melody. And the lyric.

Additionally because of that they got to acceptance and they were able to promote it and get exposed so they got it played again the 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 the artist at Stax. 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 a kind of music that radio stations wanted to play it whether they were black stations on some instances whether they were white stations. And of course part of my responsibility was to come in and get played. And we have a we got that product played that product sold and we had a great appreciation from the white listeners and and the white community. But. Know it in the final analysis. But it was Motown or Stax. It had nothing to do with anything but getting the product exposed to 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 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. Appreciate it so much until you have white performers I would black faces singing the black music. And when you come into a period of time that was an early period in the recorded music industry you would have the black artist on the smaller 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 black artist was performing it and sell it to the white community. Thus you had an Elvis Presley who came out of that kind of phenomenon. So when you look at Stax it was a music that every time we got exposed to the masses it was appreciated by the masses. As I sit today and look at the box

sets that are being released through Atlantic Records into Fantasy Records where the catalog is housed I look at the white Americans who grew up on that music buying the CDs on that today. And I look at. White Americans and the young people who didn't know I didn't hear that music hearing that music today and appreciating that music having as much appreciation today for the stats music as they did for the Motown music and probably as time goes on it might be even much brought out 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 point when history writes the entire story we probably would have had a broader appeal to white America where the stats music than Barry had with his Motown music cut everything in the sense of time. So now I'm like yes you know. Let me bring in the segregated

you know just talk about the way. And in the course of you know you can you play love. Well from from my vantage point look at books and the energies. Represented a phenomenon never to be repeated again. We had on the banks of the Mississippi River. In Memphis Tennessee at a time when Jim Crow as it was known. Or segregation was the order of the day. And certainly then Memphis where that time it permeated. 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 Doug Dunn a bass player. White. Country influence some rock influence. You had an L. Jackson drama. Black jazz influence. Wonderful wonderful drama. 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 whites and you had a book atty black who had the academic pursuit if you will as it related to music who was a keyboardist who played the organ and the piano for four four brilliant young men working together in harmony in a studio making the music that became the Stax sound sitting then 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 the control rooms and in the control room rather than drove them hour after hour day after day until they came up with what was a perfection and rhythm and to hear the melody Wolfen into that when they were doing instrumentals you would hear a Booker T and you could hear Steve Cropper and Al Jackson and a duck. But then there was always that little simple nice melody that never got in the way it was always there. There was always light that felt good in that you always remembered and that any four piece band across America could play look at in the energies and to see these four guys then then and then move from that and perform with an Otis Redding. Where you had the strongest room. Some sing out that I've ever heard.

I tend to hear them take their magic and integrate that on merit that Otis Redding's man magic is is to me a phenomenon and to see the next week the same four guys play with a Sam and Dave and hear Sam and Dave who personified church singing when you had two guys we did close harmony as a duo that sang soul like Soul Man would sing it with all of the church feel to feel these forecasts with them or to see them move from that to a collar Thomas and Al from a college 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. And these guys are just a little bit crowded out. Duncan Stephen here is really a white country boy and a

blast losing an army player. How they're similar to what you know. OK OK. You know when you look at at at the the the influence the country influence of adult done and the country influence of a Steve Cropper and then environment in the south and you look at the influences of a Jack Jackson Al Jackson and a book at the when you compare them you find that basically one in the same for you. You had these white gas coming out of a rural kind of environment a rural kind of thinking and out of the mainstream kind of thinking. And you had 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 marriage you saw harmony which I guess goes to show that in the fall analysis we really aren't that different as human beings.

Oh if you're going to change. OK. We have a couple minutes left on the floor I wonder as you as we've talked about your office. That's right Sam because from your perspective a little bit about the importance of that in for the whole generation of what could be called Soul. Well I think Sam Cooke he patronised the evolution of church music in the popular music. Sam came out of the church and his approach to. Singing was the same. Melodies were basically the same. It's a matter of fact it was so poignant until it I'm sure was the dominant influence on Otis Redding. The Temptations lead

singers and many other artists that time. I can't even name today. He has not been replaced. He was truly one of a can 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 the just needed to let the feeling flow in his melody and that influenced I'm sure a couple of generations of singers and can't be replaced. I think you mean yeah well you know how long. Are you going to live. Laughs I think you want to be thinking I'll care all for nothing.