Only Child Book Club: Respect Yourself: Stax Records And The Soul Explosion by Robert Gordon

I come from reading people. Even though for quite some time during high school and college, I didn't read for fun that often, I have always enjoyed books. As an only child with specific tastes rarely did I have other people with which to talk about the books I had read. So I just read and kept all the things I learned to myself. Which is part of the reason I think my wife calls me "Wiki." Now that we are grown up we all have things to do, people to see, lots and lots of media to consume, no one has time to talk about what they have been reading, if they have been reading anything other than twitter and Gawker at all. Book clubs are just an excuse to see each other in person under the guise of participating in culture, but we all know no one actually reads the books. So I decided to start my Only Child Book Club. I read the book, and then discuss it with the internets, you have absolutely no responsibility to participate! It's a win/win.

 I usually do not enjoy fiction, genre books in particular are offensive to me. There will be no discussion of sci fi series, or vampire series. Harry Potter was good, The Hunger Games was passable, and that's about as deep as I get. The only fiction authors I get down with on the regular are Chuck Palahniuk and Jonathan Franzen. I prefer nonfiction writing, especially with a strong narrative. I want to learn something while I read, most people don't want to be bothered, for that I say "Go choke on that Twilight apple."

The first book in this series is "Respect Yourself: Stax Records And The Soul Explosion" by Robert Gordon.

Soul music has always been something I've been in to. I've always dug the...well...soul that is present in the recordings. As I have complained in this space before, I hate crispy clean production, I want to feel the groove, or pain, or elation that the musicians are feeling while recording.

For Christmas 2012, my sister-in-law Sarah got me a compilation record of an obscure artist named Wendy Rene called "After Laughter Comes The Tears: The Complete Stax and Volt Recordings".  If you're in the know, you would recognize some of Wendy Rene's samples from Wu-Tang's "Enter The Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers", as RZA used his parents record collection as base for the beats of that classic record.



Besides the joy of hearing the original pieces that RZA used to construct the beats, I was getting a real feel for the Wendy Rene tracks. Yes these tracks were pretty old, and recorded on equipment of much less quality than even what is available on my phone today, but there was an authenticity to those tracks that I think is rare to find in 2014. I wanted to learn some more about the history of soul music, beyond "Green Onions" and The Blues Brothers. (Shout out to Mr. Ceci, AP English for forcing The Blues Brothers on us!)

I came across this book while searching for some Stax related records at the library, I figured I would give it a read. What an accidental find.

"Respect Yourself" tells the story of Memphis born and bred Stax Records from it's inception as kind of a lark by a bored banker, through it's rise to prominence as one of the largest tastemakers of African American culture, to it's shockingly quick demise. The other part of the story is Memphis of the 1960's, with it's social problems, and the racial tumult that came along with it. Stax Records is shown as the antithesis of Memphis. Where Memphis is segregated, and still in the clutches of Jim Crow laws, Stax is integrated from the get go, and fosters inclusion of all types.

From the highs of the earliest hits from Rufus and Carla Thomas, to Sam and Dave, to Otis Redding to Isaac Hayes and "Shaft", to the crushing lows of bad contracts, losing all the original masters, the untimely death of Otis Redding and the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination, Gordon has interviews with all the important players and a driving narrative that tells the story.

My favorite story from the book is the one time Stax agrees to record an artist from another label, just to see if they can get anything out of him. That guy hires a driver and brings all of his gear from Georgia to Memphis. During the failed recording session, the driver is telling anyone who will listen that he can sing. Finally they say all right and give him a shot, and yes, he could sing. Who was that driver? Otis Redding!


My biggest take away from this book is a lesson I already knew, but had reinforced. As Phife Dawg from A Tribe Called Quest says "Industry rule number 4,080, record company people are shady." The bad contracts with distributors, and producers of physical products, and artists, and session musicians, and publishing rights, and disc jockeys, and payola, and coercion...it's a wonder anyone ever made any money, or enough money to make it all worth it.

Overall this is a really good book, about a really important slice of American culture. If Jim Stewart had not been a restless, bored banker we would not have "(Sitting On) The Dock Of The Bay" or "Shaft"...so as America, we owe Jim Stewart a debt of gratitude.