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.
- 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 (among other sources) the soundtrack of the 1968 Jules Dassin film, Up Tight!:
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…
Froog says
I find that I am often not great at recognising, or even consciously noticing, a bassline. The rhythm section most of the time serves the song rather than standing out from it; and we’re more used to paying attention to the melody, the lyrics, the lead instruments, the vocals. I often kind of sense the bassline at a visceral level, without really being consciously aware of it.
Last night in the bar, I was making a concerted effort to attend to the bassline in each song we heard – and I found that I was being reminded of (or noticing for the first time) all kinds of other contenders for my ‘Top Five’ (there is no final canon: it’s going to become a neverending series!). And then Soul Man came on, and barman Mike – himself a very decent guitar player – and I both kind of slapped our foreheads and went, “HOW did we forget about this one??”
I think, in fact, I had deliberately excluded soul, funk, and rhythm’n’blues from my initial selection because the field there is just too broad (although Ben E. King forced his way in). I started off thinking about just rock songs, but then found that all the basslines that kept coming to mind were in fact more jazzy numbers (even though a couple of them were nominally ‘rock’ songs). I suspect I’ll do a later instalment composed entirely of MGs’ songs.
My ‘chugger’ idea is not quite the same as ‘groove’. The ‘groove’, I think, is a broader term, suggesting a rhythmic pattern so strong that the rest of the song falls into place around. There’s some overlap with my idea, but I was thinking of a ‘chugger’ more specifically as that kind of bassline that is so simplistic and repetitive and urgent (and usually very fast, and unusually loud and/or deep) that it gives you a sense of breakneck forward momentum. The prime example would be Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, which is basically the same note played 12 times very fast (though with a key change, I guess, in the third group of four), and then a three-note riff to vary it up… and then repeat again.
I’m not sure how well my distinction holds up: there may be some crossover examples. In trying to think of another classic ‘chugger’, Iggy Pop’s Lust For Life came to mind: it has the prominence, the depth, the driving sense of urgency – but it’s also got some bounce to it, it’s actually rather ‘hooky’.
And by the by, I did also posit a third category – for which I haven’t yet thought of a name – for more sophisticated and melodic bass-playing, in the manner of Paul McCartney, or Colin Moulding of XTC.
Yes, this series will run and run….
Thanks for the mention. Glad you enjoyed the post.
John says
A lot of this terminology seems so fuzzy (not a criticism, as I’m adding to it myself, ha)… Maybe related to your “chugger” category is what I think of as a “rolling” bassline — similar in its sense of non-stop forward momentum, but not necessarily “very fast” nor “breakneck”…
A group formed in the mid-’80s, called The Bodeans, made a pretty big splash with their debut album, Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams (an album title which pretty much says it all). I think it made Time Magazine‘s list of top 10 albums of 1986, which I’m pretty sure is where I first heard of them. Anyway, a lot of songs on that first album (and other early ones; I haven’t kept up with their later stuff) featured “simplistic and repetitive and urgent” basslines, ones which roll, roll, roll, roll…
Here’s one of my favorite numbers from Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams — the last one — called “Lookin’ for Me Somewhere.”[playlist width="95%" height="50px" dload="n" pos="rel-C" fontSize="16px" font_family_1="verdana" font_family_2="lucida" tracks="Lookin' for Me Somewhere@lookinformesomewhere_bodeans.mp3" captions="The Bodeans"]Oh — about “Soul Man”: interesting that the MGs would have (presumably) been the house band behind that… and then that both Dunn and Cropper would play it again with the Blues Brothers (although not in the film, I think).
Froog says
Hmm, Paranoid is actually three groups of eight notes, isn’t it? So easy to miscount when it’s going that fast!
John says
I’m afraid heavy metal’s neighborhood is one I don’t drop into by choice. (You’ve admitted your weakness for it before; I couldn’t have been more surprised.) That said, I did go to YouTube to hear “Paranoid” for, I’m sure, the first time ever. Rhythmically, it reminded me a little of “Born to Be Wild.” And it and “Lust for Life” — yeah, I get the propulsive momentum…
You know what I think my difficulty with them is? The propulsion is coming from behind me — pounding me on the back, saying movemovemovemoveMOVEgoddammit… All the difference in the world, to me, between that and a propulsion from in front, like it’s got hold of my hand and is saying Come on! Come ON! You’ve gotta see this…! Which is how “Time Is Tight” affects me. (Getting into some very weird back alleys of synesthesia here…)
Froog says
I hadn’t heard this MG’s number before. Certainly a great bassline – but the bass sound is unusually bright, almost tinny. I prefer my bass lower, gruffer, growlier.
Technical query: I still seem to be missing sidebar notification of new posts arriving. I think the problem is that ‘Hats Recently Chased’ does not include the most recent post. If I train myself to watch out for the post I’m looking at appearing under ‘Recently Chased’, I’ll know there’s something newer for me to read.
John says
I wonder if that “bright” sound is the “Stax sound”???
You do resist learning some elementary tech tricks would make your blogging life so much easier. If your primary objective is to know when a new post arrives, here or elsewhere, you might want to think about subscribing — via RSS or email — rather than leaving a page open in a tab and just refreshing it from time to time. Just a suggestion!
That said: yes, I too experience a lag in the updating of the “Hats Recently Chased” list. But it’s always just a few hours. And well before then, because I subscribe to RAMH both via RSS and via email — just to be sure those subscriptions work — I’ve already learned about the fresh post, even though it’s not yet counted among the “Recently Chased.” I can’t control the updating/refreshing of the widget directly; I can force the blog’s cache to refresh… when I remember to. (Note that this isn’t the cache in individual site visitors’ browsers; it’s a cache on the server.) I don’t often remember to, though! :)
Froog says
I think “the Stax sound” was more about the ambience of the recording studio than the way the MGs played. But I don’t think Donald Dunn usually played like that; all the other songs of theirs I can think of, the bass was much deeper.
Just something different they were trying, I guess; something they thought fitted better with an instrumental piece.
s.o.m.e. one's brudder says
What’s next? Green Onions?
BTW: Want to get your bass groove on? If you haven’t checked out all of the following, your bass line is not complete:
Stanley Clark – his “hits” collection is referred to by one of my employees as “huggy-bear” music (see Starsky and Hutch for that referenece…),
Marcus Miller,
Victor Wooten – not withstanding his excellent work with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, his bass work is certainly in a groove of it’s own.
Nance says
Ooo-ooo, (hand up, waving wildly), I can name-drop on this one! We’re large Wooten family fans at our house. Bela Fleck worshippers, too. Our son, who bills himself as a “pro audio systems integrator,” recording engineer and budding producer in Nashville, has worked for Fleck and for Victor Wooten, individually. When we are there visiting, we get to drop in at Third and Lindsley, where Wootens often gather to jam. Bela and The Flecktones came a few years ago to our Pawley’s Island Jazz Festival and performed at Brookgreen Gardens. At one point we met their recording engineer, who gratified our parental pride by saying, “Oh, yes! Marc! He’s a really, really smart guy and he’s helped us out a lot.”
John says
You have got such a… various pile of memories and experiences behind you. May the gods be kind to the rest of the wannabe memoirists when you finally sit down at the keyboard to hammer it all together.
That comment must’ve tickled the bejeezus out of you!
Nance says
Indeed. (So that’s what happened to my bejeezus. I thought I’d simply misplaced it and now I can put the blame directly on the Flecktones’ sound board man. How many people can afford to be so laconic with their bejeezus?
And aren’t threaded comments fun? Would someone please unwind my tangled intersection between Blogger’s new threaded comment feature, my devotion to Chrome, and the wild card of my custom domain name so that I can enjoy this fun thingie at home, too? I’ve been pulling my hair out for two days over it.
John says
I did think about including “Green Onions.” (And before I post this comment, I may do that anyway.) It’s just so familiar, y’know?
I am NOT dropping hints — this would be way more trouble than it’d be worth in the grand scheme of things — but in preparing this Music Break I spent waaaaay too much time looking around online for a digital copy of an album from 1969 called The Age of Electronicus, by pianist/organist/composer Dick Hyman — experimenting with the Moog synthesizer. It’s got what is (other than the MGs’ own) my favorite version of “Time Is Tight.” Couldn’t find the album from a trusted source; it was apparently never digitized, and I’ll bet the LPs/tapes are in pretty iffy condition by now. But I did find a YouTube video, one of those static images (in this case, of the album cover) which just sits there while the music plays over it:
You’re welcome!
Froog says
Thanks for the tips, brudder. I shall go a-Googling right away.
s.o.m.e. one's brudder says
Oh, and the three of them have done a collaboration, too. Aptly titled: Thunder, under the moniker of S.M.V.
John says
Once again, I am humbled by how freaking MUCH you guys know about music (compared to me, anyhow).
Jayne says
“even the people who can’t dance wanna feel like dancing” — true dat! I would get up and dance to almost anything. But my husband? Time is Tight is one of those songs that would pull him from the chair (if I hadn’t already). Its baseline is the groove that sets one’s feet on the dance floor.
I can’t think of Stax without hearing Isaac Hayes or Otis Redding and the absolutely epic soul music from all of its artists. I believe there’s a museum out in Memphis. Would love to get myself there some day. :)
(Listened to Time is Tight three times. Brightened this grey day.)
John says
So inquiring minds need to know if you, with or without husband in tow, actually, like, got up and danced to this post.
I read about the Stax museum this week. Apparently the original studio was demolished in the ’80s; the museum — at least from the outside — at least looks like a reconstructed version of it.
Jayne says
Hubby was not home, but I did some swivel chair dancing. ;)
Ok, so I took the Stax museum tour online, and now I don’t need to go. Anyway, lil Rhody is opening its own Music Hall of Fame (hugh? – no I shouldn’t say that, a Rhody band was just featured over at SS) next month. I think I should get to thatvenue! :)
John says
“Swivel chair dancing”: hmm. Filing that one away… :)
Bet you could get a complete book out of “Music Halls of Fame of the 50 States” or whatever. Not that I’m trying to badger you into a book-length project or anything, but come on: music? you? Perfect fit!
Froog says
My jazz guitarist buddy Dan observed to me at a show a little while ago, “Americans have the best time.” He meant that American musicians have the best pacing, or the most reliable sense of consistency and appropriateness in setting a rhythm. But it also made me think, Yeah, you guys sure know how to enjoy yourselves!
John says
Well, some of us are more… more sedate than others. All our partyin’ goes on between our ears.
This reminds me — when I was lollygagging about the Web a few days ago, I came across something I never expected: a karaoke version of “Time Is Tight.” Still trying to get my head around the idea of a karaoke version of a song which has no vocal component. Maybe the performer hums along, and slaps his/her thighs?
I suspect this would be a mystery even to our mutual karaoke-loving friend (although she seems to have skipped over this thread).
Ashleigh Burroughs says
Imagine my delight when Booker’s daughter was in Little Cuter’s class?! He is every bit as wonderful in person as he is on vinyl… the grace and strength in his music is evident in how he conducts his life. One of my favorite parenting moments was showing my daughter Olivia’s daddy’s exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and then stepping back as she proudly announced to everyone who approached “I know him!”
a/b
ps. It’s nice to be back and commenting again, JES
Nance says
You and I are proud mommies to the end. I posted my reply to brudder before I scrolled down to read yours. It’s nice to see you here again!
John says
Well, look who’s here! THIS is an arrival which cheered me right up this week!
A bit of trivia about Booker T. Jones, at least as I understand the story: shortly after “Green Onions” came out and made it big, instead of forging ahead and “making the most of his career,” so to speak, he more or less put it on hold to go to college (Indiana University), where he studied classical music and played with the MGs on weekends. When he returned to it fulltime, he was accordingly much more well-rounded and alive to the non-pop-musical world than he might have been otherwise. I really admired him for this — like I admired, e.g., Jodie Foster and Natalie Portman for temporarily putting their acting careers in a drawer to get their degrees.
(So good to see you back.)
Tim says
I liked the observation that rather than a hook or chugger, Dunn’s bassline is more of a groove. Then I got to thinking a great groove is both a hook and something that drives the song.
John says
Hello, Tim — pleased to meet you, and thanks for chiming in.
“A great groove is both a hook and something that drives the song”: very nice. This definition almost sounds like a blend of Froog’s hook and chugger classifications!
Nance says
And there’s Respect Yourself: The Stax Record Story. Post in the works about Mr. Mature’s early life in music (among other things), in which “Soul Man” figures. Hooked me.
John says
Never heard of that Respect Yourself documentary before — thanks! Here’s the trailer:
Now to see if I can hunt it down on Netflix or Amazon instant download…
John says
Nope — no instant downloads. On DVD though, along with Back to Stax: Memphis Soul; Stax/Volt Revue: Live in Norway 1967; and Soul Comes Home: A Celebration of Stax Records and Memphis Soul Music.
Froog says
Hmm, pretty song. Never heard of The Bodeans before. Country, I guess. Not an area I have much experience in.
Much too slow and gentle to be a ‘chugger’.
I imagine professional bass players already have their own terminology for different types of bassline. So, this dum-diddy-dum-dum figure is a ‘rolling bass’? Live and learn! ‘Walking bass’ I think I understand, but this is a little different.
John says
Not country, no — they had a country sound on some of their numbers, on some others more like a raw, almost rockabilly feel. “Lookin’ for Me Somewhere” is probably the slowest song on that album.
Jeez, I hope I haven’t clouded the waters with the introduction of the “rolling” term. I made that up, I think — though I’m prepared to believe it’s actually a stray memory surfacing AS IF invented. Which, yes, happens. A lot. :)
Froog says
Hmm, by the way, the latest glitch I’ve run into is that some of the latest ReCaptcha’s are almost impossible to decipher, but… the Master Control Program (yes, I watched Tron again recently) has a very fixed idea of what the ‘right answer’ is supposed to be and keeps on refusing to approve my comment. When you have to go back for a second or a third (or a fourth) try, the comment form has forgotten that you were ‘replying’ to something, and just puts you down at the bottom of the thread.
John says
You can also use the “audio challenge” button (below the circled one), if the image doesn’t work for you — I’ve never tried that, for probably obvious reasons, but it might be preferable for some.
Froog says
Yes, I know about that feature, JES. But my problem has been with ReCaptchas that are tricky to decipher but I think I’ve nailed them. And then The Machine says, “No, WRONG! Do it again!” I’m pretty sure it wasn’t me who was wrong; but there’s no arguing with The Machine.
John says
There’s no arguing with The Machine: spoken like an experienced (if not necessarily loyal) denizen of the PRC!