CD Review: Various Artists' The Best of Wattstax (2023)

The Wattstax concert was one of the most consequential and influential live events in pop culture history. Organized by Stax Records as a benefit show to commemorate the anniversary of the 1965 riots in the Watts community in Los Angeles, the concert was held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on August 20th, 1972. Performers included nearly the entire Stax roster at the time, stylistically running the gamut from soul, gospel, and blues to jazz and funk. The label released a double-LP set of the concert’s highlights a few months later to critical acclaim. The event was also filmed by producer David L. Wolper and directed by Mel Stuart (best known for 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory); released in 1973 as Wattstax, the concert film won a Golden Globe Award for “Best Documentary Film.”

In recognition of the event’s 50th anniversary, CraftRecordings has released the entire freakin’ concert in various formats (more about which below). We’re only going to look at the condensed, twenty-track The Best of Wattstax CD here, which offers up highlights from the concert as “hand-picked” by Stax Records. The set kicks off with an amazing performance by R&B legend Kim Weston, singing the ‘Black National Anthem,’ “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” a song that created somewhat of an undeserved controversy when performed at this year’s Super Bowl game. Released by Stax as a single at the time, proceeds were donated to the United Negro College Fund. Weston knocks it out of the park with a powerful, Gospel-tinged performance. It’s a great way to kick off the CD, but then The Best of Wattstax gets mired down by a handful of Gospel performances, highlighted by the ever-welcome Staple Singers (“I’ll Take You There”) and including songs by Deborah Manning and Eric Mercury.

Luckily, The Best of Wattstax rights the ship with Lee Sain’s effervescent take on “Them Hot Pants” and pretty much rocks the house from then on. As talented as Stax’s Gospel artists may have been, people bought the label’s releases for scorching soul, rowdy funk, and lowdown blues tunes, and that’s what you’ll find on 75% of The Best of Wattstax. While mainstream talents like Isaac Hayes (“Theme From Shaft”), Carla Thomas (“B-A-B-Y”), Rufus Thomas (“The Breakdown”), and Eddie Floyd (“Knock On Wood”) put Memphis soul on the map in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, it’s the lesser-known talents like the Soul Children (“Hearsay”), the Rance Allen Group (the funkalicious “Lying On the Truth”), and William Bell (who proves himself to be the equal of anybody on the soul scene with “I Forgot To Be Your Lover”) that has had collectors’ digging through the crates for better than a half-century. Throw in stellar performances by blues legend Albert King (“I’ll Play the Blues For You”), the Temprees (“Explain It To Her Mama”), and the Bar-Kays (“I Can’t Turn You Loose”) and you have one helluva collection!

As mentioned above, Craft is also releasing Wattstax: The Complete Concert in both a six-CD and ten-album vinyl versions that feature every performance from the event, including spoken word interludes. If your bank account allows for luxury this month, or maybe you have a fat tax refund, consider investing in Soul’d Out: The Complete Wattstax Collection, a twelve-CD box set comprised of the entire L.A. Memorial Coliseum concert as well as recordings from the Summit Club, including 31 previously-unreleased performances and a 76-page, full-color book. Really, you can’t go wrong no matter which version you end up buying! (Stax Records/Craft Recordings, released February 24th, 2023)

Also on That Devil Music:
Isaac Hayes’ Stax Classics CD review
Carla Thomas’ Stax Classics CD review
Albert King’s Born Under A Bad Sign CD review

Buy the CD from Amazon: The Best of Wattstax

Stax ’68: A Memphis Story box set

We’ve written about the legendary Stax Records label on That Devil Music.com before. At a time when the music industry was centered on the coasts, the Stax label put Memphis soul on the map in the mid-to-late ‘60s with influential and innovative records by giants like Sam & Dave, Rufus Thomas and his daughter Carla, Otis Redding, and Booker T & the M.G.’s. As they approached the decade of the 1970s, the label branched out into blues music with essential recordings by guitarist Albert King and they pioneered ‘70s soul and funk with groundbreaking releases by the great Isaac Hayes. In our house, there’s no such thing as too much music from Stax Records.

Stax Records, now owned by the Concord Music Group, celebrated its 60th anniversary last year with a slew of archival releases including vinyl reissues of vintage LPs by Otis Redding and Carla Thomas; a four-disc Isaac Hayes box set; and individual “best of” CDs by some of the label’s biggest stars. The celebration has continued into 2018 and on October 19th, Craft Recordings, Concord’s archival imprint, will release Stax ’68: A Memphis Story, a five-disc box set that offers the A- and B-sides of every single released by the label during that tumultuous year. The set also includes a 56-page book with in-depth liner notes by writers Robert Gordon, Andrea Lisle, and Steve Greenberg as well as rare and previously-unpublished photos.

More important is the music – more than 120 songs spread across the five CDs – featuring both some of Stax’s marquee stars like Redding, Hayes, William Bell, Johnnie Taylor, Eddie Floyd, and the Staple Singers but also from underrated talents like Mable John, Linda Lyndell, the Soul Children, and the Mad Lads. The year was a tough one for Stax, which had lost its distribution deal with (and control of the label’s back catalog to) Atlantic Records. The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis had a profound effect on the label’s multi-racial roster of musicians, and Stax was already reeling from the December 1967 death of the great Otis Redding.

Considering the enormous track listing for the Stax ’68: A Memphis Story box, I’m amazed at the sheer amount of great music Stax released over the course of the year. While not all of the singles were huge hits, they were all of uniformly high quality. Of course, there are the ‘heavy hitters’ – songs like Otis Redding’s posthumous hit “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” Sam & Dave’s classic “I Thank You,” Johnnie Taylor’s smooth-as-silk hit “Who’s Makin’ Love,” and Albert King’s fiery “Blues Power” – but there are also faintly-remembered tunes like Booker T & the M.G.’s “Soul Limbo” and Carla Thomas’s “A Dime A Dozen.” The box set also includes long-lost material by folks like the Memphis Nomads, the Bar-Kays, Shirley Walton, Judy Clay, Billy Lee Riley, and the Epsilons as well as rock ‘n’ roll by cult band Southwest F.O.B. and the first recordings by Delaney & Bonnie and Bobby Whitlock (Derek & the Dominoes).

The Stax ’68: A Memphis Story box retails for roughly $70 (less for a downloadable digital version) but is also available in various “deluxe bundles” from the Stax Records online store. Ranging in prices up to $120, you can get bundles with a cool letter-pressed vintage poster, Stax hat and t-shirt, or all of the swag in the “Superb Bundle.” The release of Stax ’68: A Memphis Story coincides with two exhibits opening at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis, Tennessee – “The Sound of ’68” and “Give A Damn! Music + Activism at Stax Records.” Details on both exhibits are available from the museum website.

Buy the box set from Amazon.com: Stax ’68: A Memphis Story

Also on That Devil Music.com:
Otis Redding - Live at the Whiskey A Go Go CD review
Sam & Dave - Stax Classics CD review
Carla Thomas - Stax Classics CD review
Isaac Hayes - Stax Classics CD review

Stax Singles, Vol. 4: Rarities & the Best of the Rest box set

Craft Recordings – the catalog division of Concord Music – has announced the upcoming release of Stax Singles, Vol. 4: Rarities & the Best of the Rest. The whopping six-CD box will be available on February 9th, 2018 and will feature a wealth of long-gotten single B-sides and other rarities exploring the legendary record label’s explorations in rock, pop, blues, soul, and gospel music from 1960-1975.

Offering recordings from the catalogs of both Craft and Rhino Records, who jointly control Stax’s masters, Stax Singles, Vol. 4: Rarities & the Best of the Rest features four new in-depth essays by music journalist Lee Hildebrand, writer and music historian Alec Palao, and box set co-producers Bill Belmont and Rob Bowman, who is also the author of the excellent Soulsville USA: The Story of Stax Records. This fourth volume of material from the Stax vaults follows box sets released in 1991, 1994, and 1994 and takes a look beyond the label’s R&B chart hits to dig into the crates and resurrect singles from Stax subsidiaries like Ardent and Hip (rock); Chalice and Gospel Truth (gospel); and Enterprise (country) as well as instrumental and blues tracks from the pre-Stax Satellite Records imprint.

Stax Singles, Vol. 4: Rarities & the Best of the Rest collects singles from over 60 diverse artists including the Staple Singers, Big Star, the Bar-Kays, Don Nix, Rufus and Carla Thomas, the Cobras, Mable John, Eddie Floyd, William Bell, the Mad Lads, Sid Selvidge, Bobby Whitlock, Billy Lee Riley, Larry Raspberry and the Highsteppers, and many others. The new box set caps off a year-long celebration of Stax Records’ 60th anniversary by a unique industry partnership between Craft and Rhino that included over fifteen vinyl reissues of R&B classics like Rufus Thomas’s Walking the Dog, Sam & Dave’s Soul Men, Carla Thomas’s Carla, and Otis Redding’s Live In Europe, an exclusive Record Store Day ‘Black Friday’ release pressed on red vinyl.

Buy the box on Amazon.com: Stax Singles, Vol. 4: Rarities & the Best of the Rest

Also on That Devil Music.com:
Carla Thomas - Stax Classics CD review
Isaac Hayes - Stax Classics CD review
The Dramatics - Stax Classics CD review
Sam & Dave - Stax Classics CD review
 

CD Review: Carla Thomas's Stax Classics (2017)

Widely known as the “Queen of Memphis Soul,” singer Carla Thomas was born into Memphis music royalty. The daughter of local music institution Rufus Thomas – a popular and talented Bluff City deejay, comedian, and singer who recorded for labels like Chess, Sun, and Stax Records – Carla was one of three musical siblings, including singer Vaneese Thomas and keyboardist Marvell Thomas. A member of Memphis’ Teen Town Singers (which also once included Isaac Hayes), Thomas sang with the group from the age of ten until she graduated from high school.

At the age of eighteen, Thomas recorded her first single – a 1960 duet with her father titled “Cause I Love You” – released by producer Jim Stewart’s pre-Stax label Satellite Records. She would subsequently become one of the fledgling Stax label’s biggest stars, scoring some 18 R&B chart hits circa 1960-1969, occasionally crossing over to the pop charts and taking her place as arguably the best soul singer, male or female, that Memphis had to offer. The budget-priced Stax Classics offers up a dozen fine Thomas performances, mixing (most of) her chart hits with some obscure album tracks to showcase the underrated singer’s enormous voice and talent.

Carla Thomas’s Stax Classics

Carla Thomas’s Stax catalog comprises a mere six albums, but it was with those little 7” vinyl flapjacks where her talents truly shined. There were hard choices to be made, I’m sure, in what to include and what to exclude when piecing together Thomas’s Stax Classics collection, but in the end the producers assembled a fairly representative (and entertaining) twelve tracks. Thomas’s Stax Classics set opens with “B-A-B-Y,” the singer’s biggest and most enduring hit (#3 R&B, #14 Pop), and a perfect vocal showcase. There’s an innocence and youthful energy at play on the side (Thomas would have been only 24 years old when it was released), but also a knowing, sensual purr that is emphasized by the judicious use of Stax’s horn players.

Thomas and Otis Redding were the biggest-selling female and male artists on the label’s roster so somebody (OK, probably Stax main man Jim Stewart) had the bright idea of having the two talented singers wax an album of duets like those which Motown’s Marvin Gaye had so much success with at the time. “Tramp” was a Top 30 hit single off the 1967 album King & Queen, the song a lively call-and-response between the two singers that is playfully argumentative as Thomas and Redding talk-sing a humorous, melodramatic tale. Sadly, Stax Classics doesn’t include either of the other two Thomas/Redding hits from that album (including a scorching take on “Knock On Wood”), but since the label is reissuing King & Queen on vinyl this summer, I’ll forgive them.

Carla & Rufus Thomas

The collection also includes “Cause I Love You,” Thomas’s duet recorded with her father Rufus which didn’t chart, but is a gem nonetheless. The teenaged Carla’s soulful vocals were nearly fully-formed and offer a sweet counterpoint to her dad’s gruff but affectionate singing. The song doesn’t feature a strong melodic hook, but it does offer a fine foot-shuffling rhythmic line. “I Like What You’re Doing (To Me)” is one of Thomas’s most underrated releases, the 1969 single displaying a fuller range of the singer’s voice and her ability to inject emotion into even the most rote of lyrics. The ballad “Comfort Me” went absolutely nowhere when released in 1965 tho’ I can’t imagine why. Standing proudly on the fine line between classic R&B and pop-influenced early rock ‘n’ roll, Thomas delivers a wonderful vocal performance amidst the crooning backing vocal harmonies and swells of instrumentation.

The Isaac Hayes/David Porter collaboration “When Tomorrow Comes” is another such soul-pop hybrid with lush instrumentation supporting Thomas’s soaring vocals. Although the song crept onto the pop chart at #99 in 1967, it could have been a huge hit if it had received significant airplay on mainstream AM radio. Released later that year, “Pick Up the Pieces” is what we would consider “classic soul” these days, Thomas knocking out another powerful mid-tempo ballad, her vocals flying high above crescendos of orchestration and an undeniable melody. An obscure album track from 1965, “I’ve Got No Time To Lose” shows Carla in Irma Thomas (no relation) mode, belting out the lyrics with strength and feeling that fuses contemporary ‘60s soul with gospel fervor. Thomas’s edition of Stax Classics closes out with the 1969 track “I Play For Keeps,” the song’s overall vibe similar, musically, to the sound that the Fifth Dimension was scoring hits with at the time. Strip away all of the gratuitous strings and instrumentation, though, and you’ll find a lovely soul-pop performance with Thomas’s magnificent voice front and center.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

After the release of her final Stax album, 1971’s Love Means… and an appearance in the 1972 Wattstax film, Thomas largely turned her energy away from chasing hits and towards improving her community. Although the singer toured every now and then during the 1980s, her work with the “Artists in the Schools” program allowed her to inspire Memphis teenagers, earning Thomas a prestigious ‘Pioneer Award’ from the Rhythm & Blues Foundation, an honor that placed the singer in the company of fellow R&B and soul legends like James Brown and Solomon Burke.

Carla Thomas’s Stax Classics entry is one of the strongest in the series, showcasing the singer’s dynamic voice and charisma over the course of a dozen songs. However, I’ve knocked a point off the grade for one major omission – the lack of Thomas’s first big hit, 1960’s “Gee Whiz (Look At His Eyes),” which was released by Stewart’s Satellite Records label and distributed by Atlantic Records. Peaking at #5 on the R&B chart and #10 pop, the song helped put Thomas on the map and led directly to her subsequent string of hits for the Stax label. If you can include “Cause I Love You,” which is of a similar vintage, then you have to include “Gee Whiz.” Nevertheless, Thomas’s Stax Classics is a treasure of mid-to-late ‘60s soul and pop performances that is available on CD for a pittance. The Rev sez “check it out!” Grade: B+ (Stax Records, released May 19, 2017)

Buy the CD from Amazon.com: Carla Thomas’s Stax Classics