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Music 262: Rock Music, History and Social Analysis, Stax

[Music Playing on Piano]

[Brian Ward]: Another musical center of soul music in the 1960s was Stax Records in Memphis.

Now Stax Records is known for its own sound that’s distinctive from Motown. They have more

of a unison horn line. Their beats are a little more laid back. It’s more of a southern version of

this rhythm and blues in soul music that was becoming really popular.

Now Stax had some key artists that recorded for them. One of them is this little known

character. His name is Solomon Burke. Now Solomon Burke never really made a major impact

on the pop audience, but he reached a lot of R&B audiences. He came out of the Stax record

label and he had a real country sound to his voice. It gave Stax that real southern distinctive

soul. He had a smooth lush voice and he was an important influence on a lot of the British bands

including The Rolling Stones. He never celebrated any hits on the pop market, but he had a ton

of hits on the R&B charts in his career. Now Wilson Pickett, also known as the Wicked Pickett,

he was a more volatile singer than Burke. He was the label’s best-selling soul singer.

I have to mention that Stax merged with Atlantic Records, the number one soul record label in

the United States. He became Atlantic’s best-selling southern soul performer. He’s got tons of

emotion in his music. A huge influence on a lot of artists that came after him. One of the most

successful songs of the soul era was In the Midnight Hour recorded by Wilson Pickett at the Stax

label. This song lasted 23 weeks on the R&B charts. It also lasted 12 weeks on the pop charts,

big crossover hit.

Like Motown we have these instrumental players in the recording studio in Memphis with Stax

Records that were similar. These were the same group of guys that played for all the artists and

they created a sound that was really distinct for the Memphis sound. This group of players

actually made some instrumental hits. They were known for a while as The Bar-Kays.

Eventually a core group of these guys went on to form the hit instrumental group, Booker T. &

the M.G.’s who recorded the great song, Green Onions. These guys were also featured in the

movie, The Blues Brothers. They were the core of the backup band for The Blues Brothers in

the original Blues Brothers movie.

Another key artist that comes out of Stax is Otis Redding. Otis Redding was originally

influenced a lot by Little Richard. He had this great way of communicating with the audience.

He was very skillful at delivering ballads, that was his key thing. He also earned a reputation as

a leading performer of these soul ballads. He also did a lot of up tempo numbers and scored him

some points in the pop market as well. He was a very savvy businessman. He was financially

stable and extremely popular on the black circuit. He was able to make his way through the

recording industry without many bumps along the way. His performance at the Monterrey Pop

Festival in 1967 really pulled him into the crossover audience and gained him a wide audience,

both black and white. Unfortunately that same year, he died in a plane crash. One of his most

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iconic songs was Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay. An interesting thing about this song is that he

never finished recording it. There was a verse at the end that he was going to sing later. During

this session, during that verse, instead of having words, he put in place this whistling which

became the great hook at the end of this song. So when this song was put out after his death, it

had a huge popularity and sold a lot of records.