STAX-VOLT: FUNDAMENTALS OF FUNK

"What the Nominalists call the grit in the machine, I call the fundamental element of the machine."—T.E. Hulme.

Jesus, have a laugh on me.

Trying to sort out even the major accomplishments of the Stax-Volt powerhouse, from the Memphis label's ragged beginning in 1961 to its disintegration in the late 70s, is more than just a little foolhardy. To shoe-horn things in this coffee-break length view, let me take it down to two chunks:

1) It's impossible to imaging a figure like Otis Redding coming around today, and not just because talents like that are so rare.

No, Redding so effortlessly wanted to please—whites, though more often blacks, pop fans as well as the soul core—that by sheer will (most of all) he achieved epochal success. The only comparable big-hearted artists of our own day are Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five, and already there are signs that hurdles may be slowing them down.

Redding is the seminal Stax-Volt artist because his work, like the label's, built majesty from a small stock of absolutely commonplace elements. Redding wasn't— couldn't ever be—tricky. The sheer lack of artfulness in his singing is disarming to this day.

As Jon Landau has noted, Redding was a "folk" artist, a singer who wore his sincerity on his sleeve, if for no other reason than that the people he first sang for were no different than himself. He was capable of ocean-deep yearning in his ballads, such as "That's How Strong My Love Is," "Pain In My Heart" and "You Don't Miss Your Water," and rockers like "Respect" and "Satisfaction" (which he claimed at one time to have written) had ferocious locomotion.

All of it, by natural inclination first and then by intention, was utterly direct. In 1967 the great Live In Europe was released; Redding's audience seemed to be growing. And then, late in 1967, it ended in a plane crash. "Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay," his biggest-selling single, was inadvertently his last testament.

2) There is a certain Stax-Volt sound, one immediately identifiable at the time, that has taken on quite different meaning over the years. I'm talking about the rigorous, everresourceful, and—to modern ears—doomaccented music made by the label's core of backing musicians. Folks like bassist Duck Dunn, guitarist Steve Cropper, drummer Al Jackson and organist Booker T. Jones were house players, frequently unlisted on albums—but they were crucial to the label's success.

The music they made connected the history of blues and country, taking them through an acid bath that only the most durable underlying structures could withstand. If a band played like them today they'd be labeled "minimal" lickety-split; but today's minimalism offers many more notes, and much less feeling.

A drum beat suddenly inserted into a song could have the force of bowling balls rolling off a roof; a guitar line—three or four notes repeated over four bars—made a statement bulging with emotion. These musicians could play a variety of song styles; but today the feeling that often surfaces is somber, worrisome, a crack-of-lightning jolt present on Stax-Volt songs as different as Sam and Dave's "You Don't Know Like I Know" and Booker T. and the MGs' "Green Onions." This sound traveled to Jamaica, where it became a key part in the development of reggae. Reggae made public Stax-Volt's secret that each second had a finality to it, and merged it with Rastafarian prophecies of imminent apocalypse.

This can only hint at Stax-Volt's legacy. There's no space for talking about Carla Thomas's wonderful "Gee Whiz (Look At His Eyes)," the majesty of Sam and Dave's shtick, King Curtis's fat-chested sax, and hits by people like Isaac Hayes, Eddie Floyd, Wilson Pickett, Rufus Thomas, and more.

Bad financial deals and poor musical decisions in the 70s did the label in.