Soul Series: Evolution of Memphis Soul - An Introduction
- by Joe Nolan
Otis Redding. Photo courtesy the Stax Museum of American Soul Music
Part gospel, part rhythm and blues, soul music emerged as a commercial force in the early 1960s and became one of the most important musical contributions made during that highly creative era. Soul is a broken hearted plea and a joyful noise. From despair to ecstasy, the great gift of soul music is its ability to express extremes of human emotion with vitality and sincerity, inspiring both the sexual and the spiritual, the profound and the profane.
Soul is a thing grounded in the real world. It springs up full-grown from stinking Southern soil, thick with gallows ghosts and the white ash of the plantation fires that signaled the coming of the modern world. Soul comes from a land plowed by angry armies and Great Migrations, steeped in the blood of slaves and soldiers alike.
Soul is also something otherworldly. As much as soul is an open-mouthed kiss and a lynching rope, it is also something that descends from on high, baptizing not by water, but with fire. And if soul is spirit, its mecca is Memphis.
Fifty years ago, soul came to Memphis when Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton started the Satellite label and opened the Stax Records retail outlet. Although the roots of the music can be traced to earlier dates, the beginning of Stax marked the starting point of soul’s most productive period, and the era when soul music found mainstream, popular success.
The ancient Egyptian city of Memphis gave birth to a form of monotheism that went on to influence the beginnings of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Soul in turn, borrows heavily from the gospel music and culture that spilled out of black churches in the 1940s and 50s.
In ancient times Memphis was also known as Ankh Tawy (”That which binds the Two Lands”), do to its strategic position straddling Upper and Lower Egypt. The soul capital achieved a similarly conciliatory reputation, bringing musicians, producers and writers of all races together in the name of making music, while at the same time becoming a sound track of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
Formally speaking, the history of soul music stretches from the early gospel/blues pioneers of the 1950s like Ray Charles, Sam Cooke and Solomon Burke, to the heyday of Stax records with artists like Sam and Dave, Booker T and the MG’s and Otis Redding, to the closing of the doors at Stax and the murder of drummer/songwriter Al Jackson in the 1970s.
Like any great epic, the story of Soul emanates from a mysterious past, made up of equal parts fact, legend and lie. The first chapter of the Soul story begins in a small recording studio in New York City in the late 1950s. The walls of a too-small vocal booth strain to contain a man who looks more like a heavyweight boxer than a gospel singer, and whose roaring voice threatens to blast the windows from their frames.
The engineer signals another take, while the man dabs the glistening sweat from the expanse of his broad, brown brow with a soaking, white handkerchief.
The tape reels turn, and the vocal booth again explodes with sound:
“You can run, but you can’t hide…”
Joe Nolan is a poet, musician and freelance journalist in Nashville, TN. Nolan writes about visual art for the journal, Number, published by the University of Memphis. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.