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Videos by American Songwriter
The long story is very long, but the short story goes something like this: Atlantic Records had been distributing Stax since 1961, and when the larger label was sold to Warner in 1967, it allowed Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton, along with new partner Al Bell, to renegotiate the terms of the agreement. During that time they discovered that Atlantic owned the rights to all previous masters, which infuriated Stewart in particular. In response, they did not re-sign with Warner and sold the company to Paramount Pictures/Gulf+Western. In the deal, Stax lost its entire back catalog, along with its biggest act, Sam & Dave.
The deal benefitted none of the artists. Sam & Dave soldiered on, but they would never have another hit even close to what they had enjoyed with Stax. They broke up and re-formed several times through the 1970s, before Prater died in 1987. Porter and Hayes, meanwhile, lost their primary outlet, their best act — the other two sides of the least square square. They wrote a few more hits for the Soul Children, the Emotions, and Homer Banks (better known as a songwriter than as a recording artist), but nothing quite burned up the charts. Who knows what they might have accomplished together in the 1970s if Isaac Hayes hadn’t become the biggest star in the world?
In 1969 Hayes recorded a solo album called Hot Buttered Soul, tracking the sessions at Ardent Studios in Midtown Memphis with members of the Bar-Kays and string arrangements by Motown’s Johnny Allen. It was his second effort, after his underperforming debut Introducing Isaac Hayes the year before, and Stax had few plans for the record. Hot Buttered Soul was defiantly eccentric, featuring just four songs clocking in anywhere from four minutes to eighteen. Hayes had been playing solo shows around Memphis, often launching into long speeches between songs, the mellowest preacher imaginable holding forth on matters of romance and trust and sex. He drew large crowds, women mobbing the stage and men often glaring from the back of the room. Hayes preserves that delivery on Hot Buttered Soul, providing a 9-minute spoken-word introduction to his cover of Jimmy Webb’s “By The Time I Get To Phoenix.”
The album was a smash the likes of which Stax had never seen and Hayes could never have predicted, and it very quickly established Hayes as a sex symbol for the new decades and turned his tight pants and chainmail shirt into iconic fashion symbols. It exploded the rules of r&b: three-minute pop songs were out, ambitiously orchestrated soul suites were in. And Hayes would transform from a songwriter into a song deconstructor, taking apart hits by a range of well-regarded composers and refashioning them in unexpected ways.
Porter was no less ambitious, but he could not match his partner’s newfound success. But how could anyone? The duo had been working on Porter’s debut, but the success of Hot Buttered Soul made it impossible for Hayes to see it through.
He ended up listing his friend as sole producer, even though it was a collaborative effort. Released in 1970, Gritty Groovy & Gettin’ It gently updates the classic Stax soul sound, adding string arrangements and extended running times, but neither it nor the follow-up, 1971’s … Into A Real Thing, caused much of a stir. Perhaps they would have sounded a bit old-fashioned at the time, especially at a moment of such transition in r&b, but more than forty years later, they sound fresh, inspired, newly engaging and bold.
Porter’s third and (at least to date) final album is another thing altogether. Victim of the Joke?… An Opera, released in 1973, intersperses original songs and covers with several playacted scenes — part concept album, part radio play. A bit awkward at times, a bit conceptually top-heavy, it sounds like nothing else ever attempted before or since, and it includes a song that Porter counts as his very best. “That song was ‘Storm In The Summertime,’ and boy, just that title … I don’t even know how I came up with it. Stumbling upon that was just so magical, and I think it’s one of the greatest songs I ever wrote. But I didn’t do the greatest job of singing it. At some point I’m going to have to find someone who’s better at singing and get them to give it a try.”
If none of the albums established him as a superstar, they have proved to be incredibly inspiring to subsequent generations of musicians and cratediggers. A wild array of artists has sampled Porter’s solo tunes, including Public Enemy, Wu-Tang Clan, and the Notorious B.I.G. “I’ve had people come up to me over the years and tell me how much they love [Victim of the Joke?]. I didn’t realize it had that kind of credibility attached to it in people’s minds.”
As Hayes was ascending — touring constantly, winning an Oscar for “Theme from Shaft,” headlining the epochal Wattstax concert in 1972 — the label itself was floundering, brought down by some ill-advised deals and some unscrupulous investors. But that’s another story — a good one, to be sure, but the main point is that Porter was there through the very end. When the label didn’t have the money to issue checks to its hard-working staff, he paid them out of his own pocket. “Porter comes through as one of the heroes in Stax’s last days,” says Gordon. “He worked hard to keep the company alive.”
Still, Stax closed its doors in 1976.
The building was torn down in 1989.
But the Stax Museum of American Soul Music opened in 2003.
The Stax Music Academy opened the same year and the Soulsville Charter School in 2005. It’s taken decades, but Stax has risen from the ashes as both a label and an educational organization, which are testaments to the label’s incredible roster of talented locals — including Porter and Hayes. Likewise, the Consortium MMT (which stands for Memphis Music Town) is an organization that Porter established to provide educational and musical opportunities for local youth.
“I thought I might have a perspective that could have some merit to young people now,” he says, “and it felt like it would be a shame if I just stayed on the golf course all day. What I’ve found is that there are a lot of very talented young people who appreciate the concepts and thought processes that we used in the ’60s and ’70s to make those great records.”
In many ways the Consortium MMT is an extension of Porter’s work at Stax, back when he was recruiting his talented friends and working his way into the company. The idea is the same: get people involved, create something new.
“I remember thinking, ‘Why couldn’t we be successful doing the kind of music that was such a part of our upbringing? Why couldn’t we put a little bit of the church in this music that has a rhythm and a beat?’ Isaac was a visionary and I was a visionary, too, and we just saw that this could be something truly meaningful.”
