You might not know his name, but if you’ve been listening to music since the 1960′s, you’ve heard the man play. Dunn was a member of the soul music band Booker T. & the MG’s, known for their instrumental strut-off “Green Onions.” The group was also the house band at their label Stax Records in Memphis, TN, backing the likes of Sam & Dave, Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding. Dunn and his bandmates also toured and recorded with the comedy/blues band The Blues Brothers and starred in the film as well.

I’ve written on ongoing series about the Stax label and Memphis soul music that I hope to fashion into a proper manuscript of some kind one day. What follows is a long section discussing the beginnings of the MG’s during the early years at Stax. At this point in the story, the label is still called Satellite and they’ve just scored with hits by both Rufus and Carla Thomas…

This one is for the “Duck.”

Green Onion Blues: The Birth of the MG’s

Part I

After two successes with the Thomases’, Satellite had solidified its reputation as a little label capable of creating  hits that could find an audience at a national level. This special brand of soul was beginning to leave its mark on the popular consciousness at a time when the civil rights struggle in the South and Memphis was about to reach a flash point that would ignite an entire nation and create one of the most important cultural movements in American history.

One of the things that made this new kind of Memphis music so special is that the recordings were the result of a shared effort between black and white musicians in an environment that every participant states was emphatically color blind. This blend of cultural experience and musical tastes gave the soul songs coming out of Satellite the depth of gospel music, the infectious danceability of rhythm and blues, and the lilting sweetness of the best of country music.

In addition to the innovative recording techniques Chips Moman brought to the studio, he also brought a great talent for casting musicians for his sessions. It was obvious to everyone concerned that Moman couldn’t have cared less about the color of a player’s skin. Remarkably – given the prevailing attitudes of the time – Moman chose his musicians according to talent alone. In doing so he deserves a share of the credit for establishing Stax as a place where music trumped racial hang-ups and ignorant prejudice. He also can be thought of as the architect behind one of the greatest studio bands of all time.

Packy Axton and the Royal Spades had been cutting their teeth since their high school days, practicing at the old Satellite studio in Brunswick. Now that his uncle and aunt’s label had become known as a place where hit songs were being created under the direction of a talented producer and engineer, Packy was determined to make sure some of the luck rubbed off on the ‘Spades.

Axton generally made himself a ubiquitous presence in the old theatre, hanging at the record shop, checking in with his relatives and getting to the other side of the control room door whenever he could, making sure Moman knew he was a musician with a band that needed to be recording. If Moman was reluctant to take the enthusiastic young man seriously, his need for players at the studio got the best of him. Soon the ‘Spades found themselves spending a lot of time down on McLemore Ave.

One of the first signs that the boy’s new status was affecting the way they thought of the band and its music was a name change. In honor of the old theatre that had become their new home, the Royal Spades became The Marquees. After finding that many would-be fans couldn’t pronounce the name, the boys – undeterred – embraced the great rock ‘n roll tradition of creative spelling and decided they had now become The Mar-Keys.

Part II

Packy Axton and the other Mar-Keys became a ubiquitous presence at the studio on McLemore, backing sessions and searching for a hit of their own. One night during an intermission at a club gig, Chips Moman and studio keyboardist Smoochie Smith, came up with an interesting 3 chord riff during an intermission. Upon returning to the studio, Moman started to work the idea into a song using the Mar-Keys and a few other players – Smith manned the keys, while Booker T. Jones doubled the riff on the baritone sax. Stewart was unimpressed, but Estelle Axton was immediately excited by the groovy little song and declared that it was sure to be a hit.

“I kept bugging Jim. Then I started in on Chips. I said, ‘Look, this is a hit record.’ They said, ‘Forget it.’ Finally I got them to agree to it. They said for Packy to get the tape mastered and take it down to the pressing plant. That’s when we discovered that sixteen or eighteen bars had been wiped out.” - Estelle Axton, from Goin’ Back to Memphis by James Dickerson

Upon realizing that the song’s introduction had disappeared somewhere between the recording studio and the mastering lab, Packy fell into a panic and called his aunt. She reminded him that they had spent the whole evening recording the song, and, surely, there was an acceptable recording of the intro that could be substituted.

It fell to Packy to sift through the 50 odd takes of the song, find the missing bars at the beginning, and splice them into place. Although Estelle Axton and many of the players claim they can still hear the edit on the recording, Packy saved the song, and it’s a good thing he did.

Released in 1961, “Last Night” blasted to No. 2 on the pop charts, earning the infectious tune the title of the hottest-selling record in the history of Memphis. Estelle was right again. However, like so many other victory’s for the little label, sweet success was not without its bitter side.

“Last Night” brought unwanted notoriety to Satellite in the form of another label that claimed they had the rights to the Satellite name. Jim and Estelle put their heads together – and their last names – deciding that from then on, the label would be known simply as Stax.

With “Last Night” hovering at the top of the charts, The Mar-Keys quickly rearranged themselves into a touring unit to support the single. The band now included Steve Cropper on guitar, Donald “Duck” Dunn on bass, Packy on the tenor saxophone, Smoochie Smith on keys, Terry Johnson on drums, and Wayne Jackson and Don Nix on trumpet and baritone sax, respectively.

Back in Memphis, Moman was becoming a well-known presence, frequenting music clubs at night, playing gigs, or just fraternizing with fellow players backstage and after-hours. Moman’s reputation as a producer, and his high profile in the Memphis music community meant that he was constantly in touch with young talent wanting to record at Stax.

One of the first young singers Moman brought to the studio was William Bell, a popular 22- year-old singer who was well-known in black clubs in Memphis. Bell was soon to be drafted into the army, but not before recording “You Don’t Miss Your Water.” The song was recorded as a demo, but it was decided that the recording had a special kind of magic, so Stax sent it straight off to be mastered. “‘Water” became a huge hit in the South, and climbed into the national charts. More importantly, the song helped Stax define the kind of vocal-based soulful sound that the label would become known for. In the meantime, Booker T. Jones had other ideas.

Stewart, the fiddle player, was anxious for Stax to make a mark on the Country charts. The Mar-Keys had come in off the road, and Stewart quickly set up a session. He brought in a country vocalist, and booked Jones, Cropper, Al Jackson on drums and Lewis Steinberg on bass. While waiting for the singer to arrive, the guys started jamming on a riff they had been kicking around on their road gigs. The simple, bluesy notes combined a lazy sexuality with compelling repetition. In that melody lay the birth of one of the most important American bands of all time, and the end of the label as they had all come to know it. Stax had just been christened with its new name, when events conspired to tear it to pieces.

Part III

Despite the Mar-Keys initial, blockbuster success, they had trouble following up with another hit. While they struggled to stay afloat under Packy Axton’s guidance, many of the original touring band’s members had left the road and found themselves back in Memphis becoming the studio band that would create “The Memphis Sound.”

The horn section, always a round-robin mix of players, was beginning to solidify into what trumpeter Wayne Jackson and baritone sax-man Andrew Love would dub the “Memphis Horns.” Meanwhile, Booker T. Jones had taken on all of the keyboard responsibilities, while Al Jackson and Lewis Steinberg anchored the rhythm section on drums and bass, respectively. Packy Axton had lost his place at the table, while Steve Cropper had made himself an invaluable asset above and beyond his slash-and-burn guitar playing.

“Steve was my right hand man. He would come to the studio and sit there and keep the doors open and take care of business; he was disciplined and responsible. Steve was the key.” – Jim Stewart, from Sweet Soul Music, by Peter Guralnick

While there doesn’t seem to have been bad blood between the old friends, Cropper was not impressed with Packy’s intermittent commitment to the music that was being made at the studio, and was all-too-ready to step-up when the opportunity presented itself.

“Packy was a playboy. He was a mama’s boy. He wasn’t a total goof-off, but Packy was allowed to do what Packy wanted to do.” – Steve Cropper, from Sweet Soul Music, by Peter Guralnick

It was in this conflicted atmosphere full of bruised feelings that “Green Onions” was recorded. The guys recorded two sides one night when a singer failed to show for a country session. Both songs were immediate and exciting, and both Jim and Estelle wanted to release them as soon as possible.

The “A” side of the single was a tough, little blues number entitled “Behave Yourself.” The “B” side was the slinky, second tune the boys put together that night – “Green Onions.” By the time the 45 shipped, DJ’s around the country took it upon themselves to flip the record, promoting “’Onions” over the intended “A” side “hit.”

The success of “Green Onions” established the unit as a popular recording group as well as the band that would play on every song that was to come out of Stax for the next five years. Soon, teeny-boppers around the country were grooving to a new thing called the “Memphis Sound,” as interpreted by a group of racially-integrated musicians known as Booker T. and the MG’s. Although the origins of the band’s name are somewhat hazy, it is most likely that they took their moniker from Chip Moman’s Triumph automobile. Moman had named an earlier incarnation of the band The Triumphs, and he hypothesizes that the conflicting stories regarding the name were invented after what followed in the wake of “Green Onions’” success.

With yet another hit on their hands, the little studio was experiencing growing pains. Stax was becoming a music industry player and was reaping the monetary benefits of that success. As so often happens, this success began to tear the family that created it apart.

Almost fifty years after the fact, events are difficult to recreate. There is no doubt that there were bruised feelings over the creativity in the studio: Chip and Estelle had been instrumental in making “Last Night” a hit, while Jim took the credit for producing “Green Onions.” There was also the question of money. Moman, seeing the kind of success the label was having, began to feel he wasn’t getting his fair share. In the meantime, Estelle wasn’t about to give up any of her 50% after having mortgaged her house, and Jim felt entitled to at least half the rewards of his dream. The arrangement left little room for Moman as anything other than a producer-for-hire, and he decided to walk.

Given the creative role the producer occupied, the impact of Moman’s departure surely left an artistic and emotional void in the studio. However, that was a spot Steve Cropper was all-too-ready to take for himself. With Cropper at the helm, Stewart finally quit his job at the bank, while Booker T. and the MG’s continued to gel into one of the finest studio bands ever.

Moman’s departure marks the end of Stax’s early rise to prominence on the national music scene, and the beginning of Moman’s own American Studio, that would produce some of the biggest hits of the late ’60’s. However, in 1962, it all began to come together for Stax – and not a moment too soon. That was the year a young man named Otis Redding first visited the studio.

Sources:
Peter Guralnick’s Sweet Soul Music, Harper and Row, 1986
James Dickerson’s Goin’ Back to Memphis, Simon and Schuster Macmillan, 1996
Michael Haralambos’ Right on: From Blues to Soul in Black America, Drake Publishers, 1975
Respect Yourself: The Stax Story, documentary film, produced by Tremolo Productions,
Concord Music Group and Thirteen/WNET New York, for PBS’ Great Performances, 2007

This week: Putin’s got pussy issues, Occupy Fatigue, Daughter Disintegration, bye bye 2012ers, Celebrity Justice, The Case of the Sleepwalking Killer, Opera News, China Pills are Peeeeople, Stay Negative, and NASA goes Doctor Who.

Sorry burnt-out counterculture/conspiracy/’Mind and Spirit-section’/ McKenna wannabe – authors, the gold rush is officially OVER. Book your return flights from Guatemala, cancel your weekend retreats with gold-diggin’ 2012 consciousness gurus, and delete your last three years of patronising, and self-congratulatory blog posts, 2012 is over…it’s done. How do I know this? I read The Washington Post:

In a striking find, archaeologists in Guatemala report the discovery of a small building whose walls display not only a stunningly preserved mural of a brightly adorned Mayan king, but also calendars that destroy any notion that the Mayans predicted the end of the world in 2012.

These deep-time calendars can be used to count thousands of years into the past and future, countering pop-culture and New Age ideas that Mayan calendars ended on Dec. 21, 2012, (or Dec. 23, depending on who’s counting), thereby predicting the end of the world.

Let me just pause this delicious slice of copy, to let you know about a BLOW OUT SALE at your nearest bookshop. 99.9% off in the 2012 section, that’s 99…wait, they’re giving them away; what a deal!

…researchers have long assumed that the Mayans had worked out the cycles of the moons and planets much earlier, but no evidence of such work had ever been found.

But in 2010, an undergraduate student working with Saturno, Max Chamberlain, stumbled onto the house as the team began to excavate at a Mayan city, Xultun, which, despite being known since 1915, had never been professionally excavated. Over the decades, looters had dug deep trenches to access buildings. One day at lunch, Chamberlain announced his intention to find paintings by crawling through the trenches.

Let it be noted that the throngs of experts, channelers, and ‘academics’ (a mail-away degree ain’t worth the paper it was printed on) were disproved by a bachelors degree student. Just saying.

With the virtually unexplored city of Xultun containing hundreds of buildings stretching across at least 16 square miles of jungle, Saturno (the Boston University archaeologist who led the expedition) guesses that plenty of other surprises await excavation. “It might take another two decades,” he said.

He expects the world to still exist then and said he’d bet anyone a million dollars that it will. The Mayan calendar does start a new “long cycle,” later this year, but he equated that with the odometer on a car rolling over from 99,999 miles to zero: “You go, ‘Yay,’ but the car just doesn’t disappear.”

To quote my podcasting colleague Joseph Matheny, I’m “Laughing so hard my sides are hurting.”.

What will be interesting over the next few days, and following weeks, will be how the 2012ers react to this discovery. Will they attach it to what Michael Barkun refers to as ‘stigmatised knowledge’? Or will they somehow warp the discovery, bending it to fit their highly profitable worldview.

Only time will tell (pun intended).

(source: The Washington Post)

]]> http://sittingnow.co.uk/2012/05/12/whoops-2012-just-got-served/feed/ 0 http://sittingnow.co.uk/2012/05/11/behindcloseddoors-broadcast-034/ http://sittingnow.co.uk/2012/05/11/behindcloseddoors-broadcast-034/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 16:50:31 +0000 Ken Eakins http://sittingnow.co.uk/?p=5251

Tracklist

1.Temporal Fragments – 6.9 Hz
2. Deadbeat Echoes – Surge of youth
3. a.P.A.t.T – My Nuns Door Theme
4. shhh… – Slow Room
5. Corleone (w/ Mike Patton) – Tutto diveNterà Rosso
6. Brad – 20th Century
7. Murkage – Paperweight
8. Raised on Replicas – OMG
9. Stanley Odd – Broken Has Morning
10. Yppah – Film Burn feat. Anomie Belle
11. Beestung Lips – Sick History
12. Hidden Highways – My Rifle, My Pony and Me
13. Phelios and False Mirror -Entropy Reversed

If you want us to play your band/noise/whatever, drop us a line here.

Peace.

***Signal Ends***

Look at the artwork. It makes me want to smash my screen. It looks like one of those pictures they get a group of people with mental health problems together to make to encourage teamwork and discourage sadness. Look at the name. Call The Doctor. What a shitty name. It sounds like a comedy house band from a Carry On film. So, two significant failures before anyone gets near the band, which makes it a double shame because the song isn’t that bad at all. It’s not in anyway punk. Maybe if you took punk and ironed it and sprayed it with Febreze and told it to be home before midnight and then it nodded in agreement, but if this even came close to punk it would break down in tears.

I got sent the whole album to listen to but I don’t want to. The songs alright, it has a nice vocal hook on the chorus and the singer has a nice voice and it’s pretty good. But really…it’s 2012. This sounds like it was dug up 15 years ago. Who’s it for ? If I want pretty boy melodic punk I’ll listen to the Strokes. If I want girly punk I’ll listen to Peaches or something. If you want to listen for yourself its over here :http://callthedoctor1.bandcamp.com/

Kim Monaghan

Stupid and contagious?

On a recent episode of Coincidence Control Network, I reviewed Hit so Hard: The Life and Near Death of Patty Schemel. I viewed the flick at the Nashville Film Festival and this rock doc is just now starting to open in theaters. It tells the tale of the hard living drummer of Courtney Love’s band Hole.

One of the film’s draws is the footage that director P. David Ebersole assembled out of hours of Schemel’s own home movies from her Hole heyday. The scenes capture the chaos at the center of Hole’s life on the road and include a number of never-before-seen intimate appearances by Kurt Cobain.

After my report, Ken Eakins mentioned being interested in the story behind grunge more than he cared for the music itself at this late date. Pell and Matheny quickly agreed. I’m not sure how far these gentlemen are willing to go with this line of criticism, but, surely, they’d stop short of shrugging off Nirvana’s Nevermind? Surely we agree that Nevermind is imminently listenable 20 years later?

Of course, some grunge bands/albums now sound dated – and others sound rather bad – but I wouldn’t say either about any of Nirvana’s Grohl-era music. As my companera pointed out to me “It would be hard to find a teenager listening to Pearl Jam, but there are a lot who are still listening to Nirvana.” I would agree. And although Nirvana will never have a chance to prove that they had a long run of amazing music in them, I would say that kids today discover Cobain and Nirvana the same way they discover Zeppelin, the Stones, The Doors and The Beatles. For me, Nirvana is part of the canon and they deserve their place in it.

This BBC doc was made 10 years after Kurt Cobain’s suicide. In a sometimes scathing manner, it explores whether or not Nirvana’s music was really as great as it seemed to be in the early ’90′s.

What do you think?

Click here to view the embedded video.

When I got notice through about a new Lorn album, I got pretty excited. “Nothing Else” was a huge album with a fistful of tunes that blew away a lot of other shitty namby pamby albums that year because it had both power and skill. It fed the heart and the head AND you could actually dance to it…so a lot to live up to.

I was a little bit worried, on reading the press release, to hear that he has added live drums and vocals and has also gone for a warmer sound. One of the things I loved about “Nothing Else” was its cold beauty. It had an almost gothic elegance to some of the melodies and at no point did I think “This needs drums and vocals” (ie: it needs to sound like virtually every other electronica act out there). The first couple of tunes pass by without incident. They’re not bad but one is just intro and the other is just an idea really, so the first proper tune is “Weigh Me Down” which features live drums and vocals. And it’s really fucking good. Continuing the kind of dubstep but without the clichés thing that he did so well on the first album, he has created a catchy almost pop song that is instantly recognizable as him but could quite easily be gracing some fucking car advert or something if he’s not careful.

“This” is another sketch really and “Diamond” is sort of ruined by a horrible trumpet sound half way through. In fact this is one of my beefs with this album. There are a few inadvisable synth noises that cheapen the tunes they appear in which is probably what the press release meant when it said he was aiming for a “warmer” sound but …if it isn’t broke why fix it ? Midway through the album I started to notice that there are some seriously familiar things going on too. The beats from “Everything Is Violence” sound exactly something off the first album (until he garnishes it with a “live” drum solo) and while Lorn beats are a definite strength they do stick to a formula.

“The Well” is another good tune that is besmirched by a bad synth solo but it becomes a whole different thing when he lets everything drift off and decides to go all ethereal with a fuzzy sonar noise and a big Autechre style bass. This minute and a half and “Weigh Me Down” are easily the best moments on the album. “The Gun” is great sounding but is a bit too reminiscent of Kangding Ray for my liking and that’s where the whole vocal thing seems to be coming from.

For every good thing I find on this album (like the Cello bass on “Ghosst(s)) there is an annoying car alarm sound (like on “Dead Dogs”) that annoys me. Overall I like the album but not as much as “Nothing Else” but only time will tell, I suppose, on whether this is a viable follow up to that album.

Out soon on Ninja Tune http://ninjatune.net/release/lorn/ask-the-dust

Kim Monaghan

Bassline house is a term I have only used in a derogatory sense before now. For instance if I was to have an encounter with someone and they performed unsatisfactorily I would say something like “You’re less use than bassline house” or if I was eating something that didn’t taste nice I would say “This tastes worse than bassline house.” That’s because previously the only bassline house I heard was flung out of shitty cars, converted to look like futuristic training shoes, driven by crudely carved lumps of fat disguised as human beings. But Dj Q is here to shut my stupid mouth for me and I’m glad he has.

On paper I should be behind bassline all the way. I loved drum n bass (thanks Chase and Status / Pendulum you fucking backward pricks), I loved Reso and about three of the dubstep tunes that appeared when it was first christened (not any of the hipster rubbish that sounds like techno crying). I even liked about three speed garage tunes so its about time someone gave me some reason to like bassline house. And this is it.

The titular tune (you simply won’t get this kind of quality alliteration in other reviews) is the weakest of the two because it goes all dark and moody, and while it is effective Reso would just laugh at it then destroy it with a mere raised eyebrow. The other tune however “Swing” is great. Nothing unexpected, nothing too daring just a great big bassline that bounds around like Clifford the big red dog would if he was made of bass.  There are sped up vocal samples and rave horns and some Mr. Oizo noises….basically its just speed garage but the whole thing made me want to get fucking trollied and dance like a fucking trollied idiot. I didn’t though I sat and wrote a review about it while having a cup of tea because I’m sensible.

Out now. Buy it.  http://ninjatune.net/shop/labels/girls-music

Kim Monaghan

If you haven’t heard Tomahawk, you’re half a (wo)man, it’s as simple as that. Featuring Mike (Fantomas/Mr Bungle) Patton on vox, Duane (Jesus Lizard) Dennison on the geetar, John (Helmet/Battles) Stanier, and now Trevor (Fantomas/Mr Bungle/Melvins) Dunn on bass; to be honest, the lineup alone should have you running to your rekkid store to buy their back-catalogue.

It’s seemed like an eternity since the band released their native American songbook inspired ‘Anonymous’ back in 2007, an … eternity, so you can imagine, this video came as a massive relief to me:

Click here to view the embedded video.

As if that’s not enough good news, Patton’s label ‘Ipecac Recordings‘ has just released a retrospective 12″ vinyl boxset of the first three albums, entitled ‘Eponymous to Anonymous’, so you really have no excuse not to catch up do you?

I can only hope that Tomahawk will be returning to these fare shores in support of this release, we’ll let you know as soon as we do.

Ken Eakins

Filmaker, and activist extraordinaire, Michael Moore, has released a song (wait…what??) for the Occupy Wall street movement’s upcoming release, called ‘Occupy This Album’:

my contribution to “Occupy This Album”, a compilation CD (99 songs!) featuring David Crosby & Graham Nash, Steve Earle, Tom Morello, Willie Nelson, Ani DiFranco, Third Eye Blind, Immortal Technique and Jackson Browne to be released Tuesday, May 15th. All proceeds from this album will go to fund the Occupy Wall Street movement (all the musicians and songwriters have donated their time and music).

They asked me if I’d like to record a poem or maybe make a music video of some of the songs. I said, “I could just sing a song.”

When the laughter died down, I recorded this.

I hope you enjoy my first try at this new profession (though I have no intention of giving up my day job).

And thank you, Bob Dylan, for your contribution, and for approving this, my debut

I admire your passion Mr Moore, but I’d stick to your film-making, and activism.

If you want to check out a cool Occupy-themed protest song, I point you in the direction of SittingNow/CCN’s Joe Nolan:

Click here to view the embedded video.