The Dog Got Pneumonia

"Could you do that one more time?"

Otis Redding, "I've Been Loving You Too Long" (from Monterey Pop):

There's a choice, here:  Love and lose, or fight for one more day.  While the words beg (Reasons offered include convenience - what, you don't want to stop now? - and the regret of wasted time, effort.  Lame arguments, but honest, human ones.), the music, as written, thinks this is a lost cause.  It's a sad song, it croons, it mourns.  The original studio single fades out on what sounds like a futile final plea.  This was doomed, it's right there in the title, it's been too long, already.

But let me make my case live and in person.  What happens at the minute mark at Monterey is amazing.  Otis defibrillates this relationship.

"Do it just one more time!  One more!"

Even after the horns retreat into passive whole notes, the singer keeps punching declarations out of the melody, the same way D.A. Pennebaker's film keeps poking you in the eye with flash frames and glare.  You can't know if, at the end, he's changed her mind.  But he sure as hell has convinced himself.

Less than six months after this performance - a year before Pop, the movie, hit theaters and a month before his biggest-selling single was released - the twenty-six year-old Redding was dragged out of Wisconsin's Lake Monona along with four members of his backing band.  Airplanes and rock and roll.

[Buy: Footage of Otis Redding's whole, triumphant, nineteen-minute set at the festival has been paired with Jimi Hendrix' complete appearance at same on a typically pricey Criterion DVD; that disc is also included in Criterion's three-disc Monterey Pop box.  The same Redding set is also available on the less expensive DVD Remembering Otis, which includes additional footage from the 1967 Stax European tour.  The Pop soundtrack has this song and one other; the full set is a nice addition at the end of this comp CD collection (though I'm sure it's available on others).]

[And that, folks, is why we have YouTube.]

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Great Performances aired a new doc (trailer, local listings, available on DVD) called "Respect Yourself:  The Stax Records Story," Wednesday night; it was both a good overview of the hows and whos behind one of the all-time great independent labels and a chance to wallow in some great music.

Started in Jim Stewart's wife's uncle's garage, later housed in an abandoned movie palace, Stax not only cobbled together what came to be known as Memphis Soul from a series of incredibly talented walk-ins, but, for the first decade of its existence, represented a sort of idyllic social integration in a racially-divided city.  White owners Stewart and Estelle Axton were joined by African-American Al Bell, who first came on as National Sales Manager and eventually became co-owner.  The original all-white Mar-Keys got absorbed and redefined by the label's mixed-race house band, Booker T. and his Memphis Group.

Behind Redding, the MG's, Rufus Taylor and his daughter Carla, Johnnie Taylor, Albert King, Eddie Floyd, the Mar-Keys, the Bar-kays, and Atlantic loaners Sam & Dave (David Prater, not to be confused with David Porter (who, partnered with Isaac Hayes, wrote many of Sam & Dave's hits)) the label put together a huge, rich catalog.  "Green Onions," "(Sitting on) The Dock of the Bay," "Soul Man," "Try a Little Tenderness," "Born Under a Bad Sign," "Knock on Wood."  And on and on.

[Back in the last century, I worked for a director whose first purchase, after buying an early-model 100-CD changer for his soundstage, was the newly issued nine-disc collection of Complete Stax-Volt Singles 1959-1968.  It seemed extravagant at the time - I think it came out at $150, and I was in/just out of college - but that music brought me such joy it was the first thing I bought myself when I left the job.  And it's one of the best musical investments I've ever made.  It's got every A-side Stax put out over that decade, and a bunch of B's to boot.  Instantly, you've got every artist's early best-ofs, and all the in-betweens you never knew you'd love.  That nine-disc set is on Amazon for $57.97 (42%-off list).  There's a more concise two-disc, fifty-track retrospective that breezes through the label's whole tenure for $9.99 (or you can pledge $100 to WNET).  But, c'mon, seriously.]

There's a perfect musical moment in the Performances episode:  It's 1968.  After top star Redding's ride went down, after a bad distribution deal with Atlantic took away both  the entire label's catalog (Stewart:  "I didn't read the fine print") and #2 act Sam & Dave, as Memphis reeled from its sanitation workers' strike and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (at the label's second home, the Lorraine Hotel, no less)... Really, Stax should have rolled over right there.

Booker T. & the MG's, "Time is Tight:"

Booker T. & the MG's - Time is Tight (mp3) (buy)

As used in the special, the first minute of that song - unfortunately, missing from the only poor-quality clip available of the featured performance on YouTube - works as a sort of sad, dumbstruck shrug.  But then guitarist Steve Cropper starts nodding, picks the whole business up; Booker's organ brightens, follows.  Just look at their faces!  Look how happy their music's making them.

"Could you do that one more time?"

Bell turned Stax into a round-the-clock factory, working bands in three eight-hour shifts a day, determined to immediately churn out 26 full-length records.  I'm not a huge fan of much the label's later output;  The Staple Singers were a great addition to the roster, but Isaac Hayes became the dominant artist, and simple soul ceded space to extended funk musings [Two additional box sets cover singles from 1968-1971 (9 CDs) and 1972-1975 (10 CDs)].  But business boomed and, as MG's bassist Duck Dunn says in the doc, "Stax Records replaced cotton as the biggest industry in Memphis, Tennessee."

One of the most impressive things about the next phase in Stax' history was its outward reach within the African-American community.  It was easy enough to enjoy its internal harmony - the word "oasis" comes up time and again in the film - but as a partially black-owned business selling "black music" to a black consumer base, embracing a political role was a brave? necessary? thing to do.  The label's highest profile event was 1972's Wattstax, a concert held in the L.A. Coliseum on the seventh anniversary of the Watts riots.  Tickets were one dollar each; 100,000 people came.

Stax eventually folded when it found itself overextended and conflicted - creatively, financially, legally.  The label's been very recently revived by Fantasy Records, and has plans for new releases; the old Memphis stomping grounds are now a museum.

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"Respect" featured a lot of nifty (though, unfortunately, truncated and talked-over) video footage.  Some was pulled from cleaned-up sources like Pop and Wattstax; there was some great stuff from that '67 European tour, which may/may not have been from the same source as this DVD.  Sam & Dave, they killed it live.

Sam & Dave, "Hold On, I'm Coming:"

(Note: Crackle Player won't stop at the end of the song.)

Sam & Dave, "Soothe Me:"

Sam & Dave, "When Something is Wrong with My Baby:"

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But this is Friday, and on Fridays - as well as on most Saturday-thru-Thursdays - my favorite Stax artist is Rufus Thomas.

"I feel so unnecessary!"

Rufus Thomas, "The Funky Chicken" (from Wattstax (DVD, CD)):

Nothing complicated about Rufus.  The Crown Prince sired half the population of the Land of 1,000 Dances, putting out the Push-and-Pull, the Mashed Potato, the Breakdown, the Double Bump.  Funky Chickens, Penguins, Robots.  He's the best friend of man's best friend, having dished "The Dog," "Walking the Dog," "Can Your Monkey Do the Dog," "Michael Vick's Lament," "Somebody Stole My Dog," and "Stop Kicking My Dog Around."  He's intoned "Ya Ya," "Boom Boom," "Ooh Poo Pah Doo," and "I Think I Made a Boo Boo."  Yay.

His best-of compilation's called Do the Funky Somethin'!  What's not to love.

Rufus & Carla - ‘Cause I Love You (mp3)

Rufus - who'd recorded a few singles for Sun Records, a half-decade earlier - and his then-seventeen-year-old daughter Carla recorded Stax' first local hit, "‘Cause I Love You."  Was it a local hit because Rufus was also a popular DJ at Memphis' black-owned radio station?  Whatever:  That single got Atlantic Records' attention.  National hits followed, and Carla became a star, the label's "Queen," recording earnest solo torchers and duets with King Otis.

Meanwhile, Rufus danced.  And so should you!  It's Friday.  I got it, you need it:

Rufus Thomas - Can Your Monkey Do the Dog (mp3)

Rufus Thomas - Jump Back (mp3)

Rufus Thomas - Willy Nilly (mp3)

Rufus & Carla - When You Move You Lose (mp3)

Rufus Thomas - Sister's Got a Boyfriend (mp3)

[Buy:  All these songs are available in that awesome Stax box; all but "Willy Nilly" and "When You Move You Lose" are also on the 19-track, single-CD best-of.)

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Breaking:  No World-Renowned Film Directors Have Died Within the Past 96 Hours

• Corpse from Blow-Up Speaks!
• Antonioni & Bergman:  "Before Them, Films Were Just Movies."
• Or, cheerier stuff:  "The basic truth is that the critics who described Bergman as the greatest of film artists... believed the movies were a low and disreputable art form and that its only salvation lay in offering moral and aesthetic instruction to its audiences about the worthlessness of existence."

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"Just kick the fucking thing, she said."

Chuck Bukowski takes on Chuckie Brown. (via Gaiman)

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Bats!  In Prospect Park!  I'd heard there were some, but had never seen any before Wednesday.  Then, at dusk, a scattered colony in the Ravine and down by the Ballfields.  Two of them swooping, a couple minutes apart, straight at my face and pulling up at the last minute.  Bats!  Using their sonar to fuck with me.

tags: stax records  otis redding  rufus thomas  great performances  sam and dave  

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