Memphis 68

by Cosgrove, Stuart;

  Hayes was determined to go the full distance and create a persona that stood astride music as a colossus. His style was daringly political, with the torso of a slave decked in symbolic gold chains and his head shaven to the bone. Over the next decade he would rise to be one of the superstars of a newly emancipated black music, the emperor of a generation who would no longer confined to the ghetto – or what had once been called ‘race music’. He would strike out in a new direction, disrupting the classics, barnstorming the movies, his name emblazoned in lights. Isaac Hayes became Black Moses.

  EPILOGUE

  The Final Pay Cheque

  William Brown had seen it all. His life had almost exactly corresponded with the birth and death of Stax Records, and, more importantly, he knew where the bodies were buried. Brown had the archetypal Stax background. He had attended Booker T. Washington High School and had been a member of a gang of precocious teenagers who hung around the doorway of Satellite Records. He worked in the store and became friends with Estelle Axton. By 1964 he had joined the Mad Lads, singing in local talent contests and then touring on the under-card of some of the biggest shows at the towering height of sixties soul, supporting James Brown, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye and the Four Tops. He shared a stage with Otis Redding when they were both hopeful artists on Stax’s subsidiary label, Volt Records. Then, in 1966, when the Mad Lads were beginning to establish a reputation as recording artists, he was swept up in the wave of conscription that focused on the inner cities of the USA. He was drafted to fight in the war in Vietnam, and along with his schoolfriend and singing partner, John Gary Williams, he had to abandon a musical career for military service. Axton regularly sent him surprise boxes to Vietnam: chocolate, hair gel, newspaper clippings and good wishes from the Stax team back home. On his return from Vietnam, the second generation of Mad Lads had no great desire to see Brown return to the group, and had become a settled new unit enjoying their own success. But out of respect for a returning veteran, the Stax management team was adamant that they could not abandon him. So Jim Stewart created a new role and encouraged Brown to build an alternative career and pursue his interest in studio engineering. As his friend Williams drifted towards the political insurgency of the Memphis Invaders, eventually spending time in jail, Brown became obsessed with the voodoo sounds that came from the knobs and dials of Stax’s burgeoning studio. In time he became the first African-American to hold down a job in studio production, working off-microphone at Stax as an engineer, and then later as an engineer at Ardent Studios and at Hi Records with Willie Mitchell. In 1971 he was one of the engineers on Isaac Hayes’ Oscar-winning smash ‘Theme From Shaft’ and two years later worked on Elvis Presley’s sessions at Stax.

  William Brown succumbed to a stroke in July 2015, but before he passed away at a rehabilitation centre in East Memphis he confided in those close to him that the saddest day of his life was the one when his last pay cheque from Stax bounced. IRS officers had locked and bolted the doors of the studios and, with no guaranteed income, Brown struggled to meet mortgage payments. Sadly, his home was repossessed.

  The decline of Stax Records began in earnest on 30 November 1973, when producer and ‘security executive’ Johnny Baylor was apprehended at Memphis airport by FBI agents. Security had checked his hand luggage and found a case carrying $129,000 and a cheque to the value of $500,000. Baylor told the FBI that he was suspicious of banks and so was taking the money to Birmingham, Alabama, to lodge with his mother, whom he trusted more than a savings account. A more likely explanation was that Baylor was travelling to Birmingham to meet up with local DJs and dispense payola – cash gifts to induce them to promote current releases by Stax and his own label, KoKo Records. KoKo’s success with the Luther Ingram classic ‘(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want to Be Right’ had taken it from the fringes to the forefront of soul music, and the latest releases ‘Always’ and ‘Love Ain’t Gonna Run Me Away’ were in urgent need of greater promotion. Others have since claimed that he was taking the money on Stax’s behalf out of sight of the tax authorities.

  According to the Guardian, ‘behind Stax’s hip, happening façade lay a bloated organisation of 200 employees, where excess flourished and rumours of gangsterism and payola flew’. Baylor’s arrest seems to have been the fuse that ignited a tangled set of circumstances, to the extent that many consider him as the principal cause of Stax’s demise. That would be to simplify a much more complex situation. The singer William Bell said in his defence, ‘Johnny was an outside entity, but I don’t think he was the cause of the collapse of Stax. There were some choices made that were not right for Stax. One was leaving Atlantic, because they knew our music, they knew the artists. Then, for the sake of trying to get into the movie industry and all that, they changed from Atlantic to Paramount, which was a big mistake, because them being out of California, they knew nothing about what we were doing at Stax. So even though the financiers were at Paramount, the support was not.’ But Bell’s clarity obscures the degree of difficulty Stax had found itself in. Like many empires before and since, Stax Records collapsed for reasons that were in the main of its own making.

  First, and in common with almost every dying empire, it had expanded too far from the centre, with offices in Los Angeles, investments in the movie business, and, following Isaac Hayes’ lead, diversifying into real estate. Even within the record business, Stax had pushed it too far. What had once been two strong labels servicing the soul market (Stax and Volt) became an array of labels: Enterprise became a branded vehicle for Isaac Hayes; We Three became the label of songwriters Bettye Crutcher, Raymond Jackson and Homer Banks; Truth was the down-home soul label that showcased Shirley Brown; and Gospel Truth was the home of Jo Armstead and the Rance Allen Group. This only scraped the surface of a bewildering catalogue of labels, deals, co-productions and distribution arrangements that baffled the staff, confused the market, and stretched the loyalty of even the most ardent followers. Stax had also bought pressing plants and was on the lookout for a radio station.

  Then, Stax was battered by a perfect storm. Relations with new distributor CBS were at an all-time low, and its record division Columbia warehoused Stax product rather than release it to shops. According to journalist Ericka Blount Danois, writing for Wax Poetics, ‘CBS deliberately put the squeeze on Stax. And Bell claims that he and Stax employees were told in no uncertain terms that they were aiming for Stax’s jugular and intending to take down the “biggest nigger” from the company.’

  Meanwhile, the US Attorney’s office and the IRS began an investigation into Stax’s finances. Management changes at its local bank in Memphis led to a separate investigation into bad loans. This investigation claimed that Bell, representing Stax, was in conspiracy with a rogue bank employee, Joseph Harwell, who in turn was accused of falsifying the signature of Jim Stewart and creating bogus accounts in the name of real and fictitious Stax employees. Then the roof really caved in. Once the most successful company on the books of Union Planters Bank, it now transpired that Stax owed the bank $10 million. The new regime petitioned for bankruptcy. Stax could no longer meet its payroll and was forced to ask employees if they would take a fifty per cent cut in salary. Unable to stomach the fears and anxieties around him, songwriter David Porter, who was cash-rich from publishing royalties, settled some wages from his own pocket and paid the bills of desperate friends. Stewart put up his luxury home as security to allow the company to limp on, but it was too little, too late. Stewart lost the house as years of over-expenditure caught up with Stax.

  Bell and Stewart made a final desperate bid to keep the doors open. Bell’s father funded a trip to Europe to find investors, and Stax came close to pulling off a masterstroke; first with Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and then with Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal, both of whom talked about making a significant investment in the label – enough to pay off the now despised CBS and clear outstanding debts. But, in an unscripted twist of fate, on 25 March 1975, as Bell was planning to travel to Riyadh, King Fa
isal was assassinated by his own nephew – Faisal bin Musaid – who was eventually beheaded in the public square in Riyadh under the blistering Saudi heat. Stax’s pursuit of oil money drained away with the blood.

  Over-indulgence had in part brought Stax to its knees, and conspicuous consumption played a role in the downward spiral of the label’s most successful artist, Isaac Hayes. In 1976 the IRS filed a tax lien against the singer for $463,969.73 and took ownership of his property and assets. Hayes’ financial problems have always been blamed on ‘bad management’, a euphemism for much more complex problems, not least a parasitic inner circle who openly leeched off Hayes. In the case of the now-notorious Johnny Baylor and Dino Woodard, they functioned as a well-heeled Praetorian Guard who protected Hayes from everything, including the truth. Another drain on Hayes’ fortune was the cost of his increasingly bloated concept albums, which since the success of Hot Buttered Soul in 1968–9 became costlier by the day, depending on orchestras, new electronic instrumentation and expensive talent. Hayes spent without restraint, and in an industry accustomed to lavishness he was a hopeless spendthrift. Nor was he good at controlling his loins. He had a string of lovers and had lost significant sums of money on alimony and expensive child support settlements. He had married his teenage wife Emily in 1966, and when they divorced, she took ownership of his home at 3628 Old Dominion and took out an injunction to prevent him moving assets from Shelby County. The assets cited in the suit were five vintage luxury vehicles, including two Cadillacs and two Jaguars, furs valued at $40,000, and a hidden bank account in the name of Hot Buttered Soul Ltd, which Hayes had been building up, away from the marital assets. By 1977, despite the phenomenal success of his albums and movie career, Hayes was broke. He owed whopping sums of back tax, and in 1977 his estate was put up for auction by the Delta Auction Company. One of the many assets up for grabs was the Oscar he had won for the soundtrack to Shaft. Moments before the auction began, a last-minute appeal allowed Hayes a meagre $2,500 exemption, and his attorney stepped forward and took down five platinum album awards, for sales in excess of $2 million. The auction itself was a circus, with people climbing on chairs and chests of drawers to attract the eyes of the auctioneer; many turned up simply to gaze at the haul. Much of Hayes’ characteristically flamboyant clothing was up for sale, including a floor-length tiger-skin coat, which the auctioneer said could never be made again as tigers were now an endangered species. Fans flocked to buy little pieces of the life of the man they called Black Moses; one fan bought a bathroom mirror for $7; another bought his TV set; and one lucky bidder went home with a little box of toothpicks.

  As the Stax empire and Isaac Hayes tried to ward off insolvency, another brutal and inexplicable episode scarred the final days of the company. On the evening of 30 September 1975, Al Jackson Jr, the drummer of the legendary Booker T. and the M.G.’s, drove to Memphis airport to catch a flight to Chicago. He was scheduled to produce a session with soul singer Major Lance, who at the time was signed to a Memphis indie called Osiris Records. As he headed towards the airport, a radio advert alerted him to one of the major sporting events of the era – the Thrilla in Manila – Muhammad Ali’s final fight in his blood feud with Joe Frazier. Jackson made an impulsive decision to return home and secure tickets for the fight, which was being aired live at the Mid-South Coliseum. He called Major Lance and they agreed to bump the recording session to a day later in the week. Ali won in the fifteenth round on a technical knockout and Jackson returned home unexpectedly, later that night. What happened when he returned home is one of soul music’s great mysteries and remains an open case on the desks of the homicide squad at the Memphis Police Department. Writer Andria Lisle described the event: ‘Jackson was found lying face down, shot in the back five times. As the police later told the press, “Whoever killed him really wanted him dead.” The robber, never apprehended, made off with jewellery as well as the contents of Jackson’s pockets. He was described as a tall black man, twenty-five to thirty years old, with an afro haircut and a moustache, wearing dark clothing at the time of the murder. Despite the Memphis Police Department’s pledge to Stax Records and the black community to catch Al Jackson’s killer, the case remains unsolved.’

  Jackson’s death inevitably became caught up in the collapse of Stax, but there was no evidence to connect the two. In fact, a more likely explanation was much closer to home. A police officer who was passing the Jackson household on Central Avenue found Jackson’s wife Barbara screaming, with her hands tied behind her back. When he entered the house, he found Jackson lying on the floor and noticed that he had been shot several times. Mrs Jackson, who had been accused of wounding her husband a few months previously, claimed that she had arrived home from a beauty parlour at 11 p.m. and was ambushed by a young black man brandishing a gun. The intruder demanded money and, after she told him there was no money in the house, tied her to a chair and ransacked the house.

  The rumour mill went into overdrive. Then, on 1 May 1976, the Tri-State Defender reported that a source inside the Attorney General’s office had named widow Barbara Jackson and southern soul singer Denise LaSalle as two of the suspects about to be indicted. The other suspects were not named, but speculation grew that the killer was probably an escaped armed robber from Springfield, Ohio, whom LaSalle had been accused of harbouring. His name was Nathaniel Doyle Jr, a young gangster who used the pseudonym Nate or Nat Johnson. He was soon to join the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list as fugitive number 341. LaSalle co-operated with the FBI and, under her real name Ora Denise Allen, was acquitted of assisting Doyle back into Ohio. He had escaped arrest and was still on the run. It raises the as-yet unresolved question of whether Doyle had moved to Memphis to hide out with LaSalle, who was signed to Detroit’s Westbound Records but recording locally in Memphis. The homicide squad’s investigation faced a massive barrier in July 1976, when Doyle was killed in a gun battle with police officers in Seattle, Washington. The truth almost certainly died with him and his one-time girlfriend LaSalle lived to record another day. Her bestselling album The Bitch Is Bad! showed her posing by a Memphis swimming pool, resplendent in a shimmering black satin dress split to the thigh, and with her white stilettos firmly planted on a dead tiger. It is an album cover that screams of bitchy self-confidence and violent power.

  Al Jackson Jr’s murder had another consequence. It ended the Memphis Group for ever, the famous M.G.’s who had given Stax such powerful symmetry in the early days of the label as segregation still presided in Memphis. Two black men – Booker T. Jones and Al Jackson Jr – and two white men – Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn and Steve Cropper – came together to defy the worst prejudices of a divided city, and through their cultural backgrounds created a truly unique sound. That was now gone and would only survive in memory.

  For all the intrigue and murderous side stories, the end of Stax Records was banal and ignominious. In December 1975 the Union Planters Bank foreclosed, forcing the company into involuntary bankruptcy. The bank had secretly worked with three minor creditors to force bankruptcy on a debt of only $1,900. One creditor had supplied Stax with photography services, another with small electronic parts, and, most galling of all, the third creditor was the company that supplied the studio’s toilet rolls.

  Stax employees were given fifteen minutes to gather their personal possessions and leave the premises. Security guards surrounded the building and chained the doorways. It was a moment that had desperate memories for the singer Eddie Floyd, whose ‘Knock On Wood’ remains one of Stax’s evergreen releases. His two-year-old daughter had been playing at the family home with Floyd’s gun and accidentally shot herself. Desperate to fund her emergency care, he called Stax to discuss his medical insurance policy, and was told it was too late, that marshals were already closing the doors. Then, in a final humiliating transaction, the building that had once housed the most vibrant studio in the history of southern soul music was sold to the Southside Church of God in Christ for ten dollars. It would be forty years before a degr
ee of dignity returned to the old cinema at 926 East McLemore Avenue, when it was reborn as a museum and music academy. By day tourists stream through the renovated building, surveying the exhibits of an era rich in social history and musical memories. Next door the newly discovered musical talent of Memphis, some still living in the decaying streets nearby, are tutored in performance skills and the curious ways of the music business. It is a building that can never be reborn but at least a flame still flickers.

  Black Moses. The mercurial singer, actor and superstar Isaac Hayes abandons his robes for a gold watch and a gun in the film Tough Guys.

  © AF archive/Alamy Stock Photo

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Primary Sources

  The Commercial Appeal and Memphis Press-Scimitar newspapers, 1967–1969, McWherter Library, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN.