STAX-VOLT: FUNDAMENTALS OF FUNK
Trying to sort out even the major accomplishments of the Stax-Volt powerhouse is more than just a little foolhardy.
"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.