Sam and Dave

Sam & Dave - I Thank You (1969)
Samuel David Moore (Born 12 October 1935, Miami, Florida, USA) and David Prater (Born 9 May 1937, Ocilla, Georgia, USA, d. 9 April 1988). Sam And Dave first performed together in 1961 at Miami's King Of Hearts club.

Moore originally sang in his father's Baptist church before joining the Melonaires, while Prater, who had worked with the Sensational Hummingbirds, was also gospel-trained. Club-owner John Lomelo became the duo's manager and was instrumental in securing their contract with Roulette.

Five singles and one album subsequently appeared between 1962 and 1964, produced by R&B veteran Henry Glover, but it was not until Jerry Wexler signed Sam And Dave to Atlantic Records that their true potential blossomed. For political reasons, their records appeared on Stax Records; they used the Memphis-based house band, while many of their strongest moments came from the Isaac Hayes/David Porter staff writing team. "You Don't Know Like I Know", "Hold On I'm Comin" (both 1966), "Soul Man" (1967) and "I Thank You" (1968), featuring Prater's gritty delivery and Moore's higher interjections, were among the genre's finest.

When Stax and Atlantic separated in 1968, Sam And Dave reverted to the parent company, but a disintegrating personal relationship seemed to mirror their now decaying fortune. The amazing "Soul Sister, Brown Sugar" (1969) delayed the slide, but the duo split briefly the next year when Sam Moore began his own career. Three solo singles followed, but the pair were reunited by a contract with United Artists Records. A renewed profile, on the strength of the Blues Brothers' success with "Soul Man", faltered when the differences between the two men proved irreconcilable.

By 1981, Moore was again pursuing an independent direction, but his sole chart success came when he was joined by Lou Reed for a remake of "Soul Man" six years later. Prater found a new foil in the "Sam" of Sam And Bill, but before they were able to consolidate this new partnership, Prater died in a car crash on 9 April 1988. Sam Moore, in the meantime, has been working consistently all over the world, notably on luxury cruise-liners. In 2001, some master tapes of his solo material were discovered and issued the following year. The best duo in the history of soul music, Sam And Dave released records that combined urgency with an unbridled passion.
- Music.us

The Mar-Keys

The Mar-Keys - Last Night (1967)
Oslo, Norway. The Mar-Keys, formed in 1958, were a studio session band for the Stax label from Memphis, Tennessee, in the 1960s.

As the first house band for the label, their backing music formed the foundation for the early 1960s Stax sound.They also recorded organ and saxophone oriented singles of their own, scoring a number three hit nationally with "Last Night" in 1961.

Keyboard was played by Jerry Lee "Smoochy" Smith. Other singles of theirs from the early 1960s include "Philly Dog" and "Pop-eye Stroll." Members of this rhythm section later formed other nationally prominent Memphis studio session groups, including the Memphis Horns, the Packers, and Booker T. & the M.G.'s.

Each of these offshoot groups also recorded popular instrumental albums of their own, in addition to serving as the backing band on albums by dozens of rock, r&b, and soul music stars on Stax, Volt and other national labels. The legacy of the Mar-Keys and later groups was that of having been key players in the development of soul music styles like Southern soul and Memphis soul.

Eddie Floyd

Eddie Floyd - Raise Your Hand (1967)
7th April in Oslo, Norway. I love the way guiraist Steve Cropper keeps the groove rolling in the extened bit wher Eddie goes into the crowd. Born 25 June 1935, Montgomery, Alabama, USA. A founder-member of the Detroit-based Falcons, Floyd was present on both their major hits, "You're So Fine" (1959) and "I Found A Love" (1962).

He then recorded solo for Lupine in Detroit and Safice in Washington, DC, before moving to Memphis in 1965 to join the Stax Records organization. He first made his mark there as a composer, penning Wilson Pickett's "634-5789", among others. During Floyd's recording tenure at Stax, he enjoyed the use of the session bands Booker T. And The MGs and the Mar-Keys.

He opened his account with "Things Get Better" (1965), followed by the anthem-like "Knock On Wood" (1966), one of soul's enduring moments, and probably the only time "lightning" and "frightening" have been coupled without sounding trite. Although subsequent releases failed to match its success, a series of powerful singles, including "Love Is A Doggone Good Thing" (1967) and "Big Bird" (1968), confirmed Floyd's stature both as a performer and songwriter. Although his compositions were recorded by several acts, his next US Top 20 pop hit came with Sam Cooke's "Bring It On Home To Me" in 1968.

Floyd stayed with Stax until its bankruptcy in 1975, whereupon he moved to Malaco Records. His spell there was thwarted by commercial indifference and he left the label for Mercury Records in 1977, but met with no better results. Briefly relocated to London, he recorded under the aegis of Mod resurrectionists Secret Affair. In 1988, Floyd linked up with William Bell's Wilbe venture to release the Flashback album. In 1990 Floyd appeared live with a re-formed Booker T. And The MGs and continues to gig consistently up to the present day, although new recordings are rare. - music.us

Ipi n' Tombia

Ipi n' Tombia - My Girl (1972)
A African dance troupe and singers that toured Europe in the 1970's. Although the dancing and singing was aimed at markets abroad, the gun or wellie boot dancing I particularly love.

Ipi Tombi (also produced as Ipi N'tombi, both corrupted transliterations of the Zulu iphi intombi, or "where is the girl?") is a 1974 musical by South African writers Bertha Egnos Godfrey and her daughter Gail Lakier, telling the story of a young black man leaving his village and young wife to work in the mines of Johannesburg. The show, originally called The Warrior, uses pastiches of a variety of South African indigenous musical styles.

The show, which starred Margaret Singana, enjoyed success in South Africa, and toured Europe, the United States and Canada.

Otis Redding

Otis Redding - I Can't Turn You Loose (1966)
Uploaded by 5 other people so I've linked. Another R.S.T. UK TV special from London on 16th September 1966 with special guests Eric Burdan & Chris Farlow.

The stunning footage came out on video in 1984. Again great side wide angle shots showing all the stage excitment. Shots of the the girls dancing with Otis and the musicans (Bar-Kay's?) on scafolding in the rear. This is the benchmark of what live soul is all about!

On December 9, 1967, Redding and his backup band, The Bar-Kays, made an appearance in Cleveland, Ohio on the local "Upbeat" television show. The next afternoon, Redding, his manager, the pilot, and four members of The Bar-Kays were killed when his Beechcraft 18 airplane crashed into Lake Monona in Madison, Wisconsin, on December 10, 1967.

The two remaining Bar-Kays were Ben Cauley and James Alexander. Cauley was the only person aboard Redding's plane to survive the crash. Alexander was on another plane, since there were eight members in Redding's party and the plane could only hold seven, and it was Alexander's turn in the rotation to take a commercial flight. Cauley reported that he had been asleep until just seconds before impact, and recalled that upon waking he saw bandmate Phalon Jones look out a window and say, "Oh, no!" Cauley said the last thing he remembered before the crash was unbuckling his seatbelt. He then found himself in the frigid waters of the lake, grasping a seat cushion to keep afloat.

Redding's body was recovered the next day when the lake bed was searched. He was entombed on his private ranch in Round Oak, Georgia, 23 miles (37 km) north of Macon. The cause of the crash was never precisely determined.

Issac Hayes

Isaac Hayes - Shaft & Cafe Regio's

Outtake footage like this is better than watching the original film. I remember going to see this film in a Birmingham flee pit in 1971. The cinema had still got gas lighting in the passageways even in those days. The first thing I noticed was the sound in the film was a different mix to the Shaft album, more basic perhaps a little raw!

Anyway this footage shows the guitarist with an un-lit cigarette to relax his nerves perhaps and Isaac at the piano with the films producer Gordon Parkes watching over it all - wonderful

I do remember a withdrawn version of the Shaft single having some swearing in it, this must be quite rare now, does anybody else know about this? The song begins with a sixteenth-note hi-hat ride pattern, played by Willie Hall, which was drawn from a break on Otis Redding's "Try A Little Tenderness", a Stax record on which Hayes had played. Also featuring heavily in the intro is Charles Pitts' guitar, which uses a wah-wah effect common in 1970s funk; the riff had originally been written for an unfinished Stax song. The synthesized keyboard is played by Hayes. Even on the edited single version, the intro lasts for more than two and a half minutes before any vocals are heard.

The lyrics describe John Shaft's coolness, courage, and sex appeal, and Hayes' lead vocals are punctuated by a trio of female backup singers. At one famous moment, Hayes calls Shaft "a bad mother—" before the backup singers (one of whom is Tony Orlando & Dawn's Telma Hopkins) interrupt the implied profanity with the line "Shut yo' mouth!" Hayes immediately defends himself by replying that he's "only talking about Shaft," with the back-up vocalists replying, "We can dig it." Other well-known passages include "You're damn right!" also uttered by Hayes, and "He's a complicated man/but no one understands him/but his woman/John Shaft."

The song was considered very racy for its time; as late as 1990, censors at the FOX Network thought it too risqué to be sung on The Simpsons (until it was demonstrated that the song had indeed been played on television before).

According to Melvin Van Peebles, the original production was of a white detective story, but after the success of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971), the original script was scrapped in favor of an adaptation of Ernest Tidyman's 1970 novel Shaft, which focused on an African-American detective. Tidyman, who was white, was an editor at The New York Times prior to becoming a novelist. He sold the movie rights to Shaft by showing the galley proofs to the studio (the novel had not yet been published). Tidyman was honored by the NAACP for his work on the Shaft movies and books. - Wikipdia extracts

Shirley Brown

Shirley Brown - Woman To Woman
Shirley Brown was born in West Memphis, Arkansas, and later her family moved to St. Louis, Missouri. There, she started to sing in a Baptist church in St Louis, Missouri at the age of 10.

Brown got a great reputation for her powerful solos in church. Then, in her late teens, she focused more on secular music and sang with many of the city's soul singers. Then, finally, she found Oliver Sain, who helped her record some songs like "I Ain't Gonna Tell" and "Love is Built on a Strong Foundation", which only made it locally, not nationally. These songs were noticed by Albert King, who then became her manager.

King negotiated a recording deal with Stax Records in Memphis and gained Brown national attention with the hit "Woman to Woman", taken from the 1974 album of the same name. Soul critic Ron Wynn went on to call "Woman to Woman" a "seminal confessional and confrontational soul masterpiece," and it was actually the last hit for the Stax label and its success delayed its bankruptcy for several months. Brown selected her new record label Arista Records, which was one of the first signings to Clive Davis.

In 1975, Brown's hit "Woman to Woman" was nominated for a Grammy Award, but she didn't win. (The song was later covered by Barbara Mandrell in 1978 and became a top-five country hit for her.) After her very successful debut album, Woman to Woman, she came out with more albums such as Shirley Brown, For the Real Feeling and Intimate Storm. None of these albums was successful and her popularity fell at a surprising rate.

Booker T. and The MG's

Booker T. & The MG's - Green Onions (1967)

European TV footage that's been circulating for a few years shows the Stax stable at the peak of there musicianship and would not be allowed out of the studio for some years to come. In this photo you see Duck Dunn (bass) and Steve Cropper (Guitar), footage also shows late drummer Al Jackson and Booker T. Jones.

They were one of the first racially-integrated bands (as opposed to vocal groups) in the rock music era. They are probably best known for their 1962 hit instrumental "Green Onions" and for being members of the house band for many Stax/Volt performers. As originators of the unique Stax sound, the group was one of the most prolific, respected, and imitated of their era. By the mid-1960s, bands on both sides of the Atlantic were trying to sound like Booker T. & the M.G.'s.

Original members of the group were Booker T. Jones (organ, piano), Steve Cropper (guitar), Lewie Steinberg (bass), and Al Jackson Jr. (drums). Donald "Duck" Dunn replaced Steinberg on bass in 1965, and has played with the group ever since. Carson Whitsett was the group's keyboard player, and Bobby Manuel was the guitarist during a brief 1973 reunion, when the temporarily Booker-less band was known simply as The MG's. Following the 1975 death of Al Jackson Jr., the trio of Dunn, Cropper and Jones reunited on numerous occasions; drummers Willie Hall, Anton Fig, Steve Jordan and Steve Potts have joined the group at various junctures for these later reunion efforts - Wikipedia