When people think of music in the 1960s-’70s, of soul music, they think automatically of the Motown record label. But there was a heck of a lot going on further south then, too, down in Memphis: the home of Stax Records.
Originally Satellite Records, the company was forced to change its name in response to a complaint from another, older label by the same name. The renaming took the form of a quasi-acronym, derived from the names of its two owners: Jim Stewart and his sister Estelle Axton. Name aside, it carved out a niche for itself in a number of other respects:
- The recording studio was located in a former movie theater, where the seats had been removed but the sloping floor remained intact. Wikipedia describes the resulting sound as “big, deep, yet raw,” and cites one music historian who who says that “because of the distinctive sound, soul music fans can tell often within the first few notes if a song was recorded at Stax.”
- Stax’s stable of big-name performers tended to sound less slick than Motown’s: Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Wilson Pickett (whose music was released on the Atlantic label, but recorded and produced at Stax), Isaac Hayes…
- …and even their “house band,” who provided backing for the big names, made a name of its own — as Booker T. and the MGs.
In
a recent post at
The Barstool, as he calls it for short,
RAMH blog-friend Froog mused on his selections as the top five favorite basslines in popular music. In a comment to that post, he mentions that a bassline can be thought of as being of one of two types:
- Hooks are “quite simple bass figures that are one of the most prominent features of the song”; while
- Chuggers are “often even simpler bass parts, [which] because of that very simplicity… drive the song forward powerfully.”
Froog’s top five, he says, all qualify as “hooks.” I’ll take his word for it — I’m not familiar with all five of the performers he highlights, let alone those performances. But I totally recognized the concept of the “chugger.” It’s not the word usually associated with the MGs, but yeah — that’s their bassline. The more conventional word for it, I think, is groove.
Interestingly, Wikipedia has an entry on groove:
Groove is the sense of propulsive rhythmic “feel” or sense of “swing” created by the interaction of the music played by a band’s rhythm section (drums, electric bass or double bass, guitar, and keyboards).
It goes on to include a comment by (presumably) a musician:
Steve Van Telejuice explains the “groove” as the point… in a song or performance when “even the people who can’t dance wanna feel like dancing” due to the effect of the music.
(This might be even more interesting — to say nothing of authoritative — if there were any reference to a “Steve Van Telejuice,” anywhere on the Web, other than in connection with this quote.)
By whatever (in)formal definition, it seems clear that the music of Booker T. and the MGs practically embodies the concept. The songs start with a bassline, and the melody of the organ and lead guitar twine around it. The bassline isn’t an afterthought, a complement to what we think of as “the song” — it’s practically the whole point.
Here’s “Time Is Tight,” from the soundtrack of the 1968 Jules Dassin film, Up Tight!:
[Below, click Play button to begin Time Is Tight. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left -- a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:15 long.]
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
The influence of the MGs went far beyond the Stax walls. The Beatles, among others, hugely admired the band’s sound. Wikipedia, again:
John Lennon was a huge Stax fan who fondly called the group, “Book a Table and the Maitre D’s.” Paul McCartney, like [MGs' bass player Donald "Duck"] Dunn, played bass melodically, without straying from the rhythm or the groove… And as the story goes, after being locked away in the Memphis studio, when [Stax performers] embarked on the “Hit the Road, Stax!” tour of 1967, The Beatles sent limos to the airport and bent down to kiss [lead guitarist] Steve Cropper’s ring… Lennon was quoted as saying he always wanted to write an instrumental for the MGs.
Cropper (who co-wrote “In the Midnight Hour” and “Dock of the Bay”) and Dunn eventually would go on to appear in both “Blues Brothers” movies, and had otherwise successful solo songwriting and performing careers. (Drummer Al Jackson, Jr., was murdered in 1975.) As for Booker T. Jones himself, no worries — the guy is still going strong.
Want more? There’s a great post about Stax Records, including some photos I’ve seen nowhere else, at the excellent blog known as The Selvedge Yard. (Be sure to read the comments thread there, too.) And Steve Cropper mulls over his musical wanderings in a blog post at No Depression.
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Update, 2012-01-14, 9:15ish a.m.: It’s not uncommon for me to be prevented, by one thing or the other, from replying promptly to comments here at RAMH. What is uncommon: not regretting that I can’t reply promptly. This is one of those rare comments threads which I have thoroughly enjoyed watching develop on its own. Thanks, folks.
Now to dive in myself…
So there was this front-page headline in the morning paper:
