Another instalment of my novel: The Blues Muse: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781518621147: Books
Memphis and Monterey
Stax was a great place to work. To start with it was good to be in Memphis again. I felt as if I was home. This was the time of Black Power; the Black Panther movement were tearing up New York. The old subservience was long gone. I could stroll down Beale Street with my head high and my Afros declaring to the world that I was a free man. More importantly it was a musician’s paradise. McLemore and College was the site of an experiment that proved race was not important; white and black could be equal. Booker T and the MGs were the tightest unit on the planet, apart from maybe the Meters in New Orleans. They were the driving force behind the whole Soul phenomenon. The incredible thing, for that time in the south, was that ‘Duck’ Dunn and Steve Cropper were white, white Booker and Al Jackson were black. They were a living example of just how good racial harmony could be. Together that band had created a sound that had propelled the likes of Aretha Franklin, Carla Thomas, Wilson Pickett, Albert King, Eddie Floyd, Sam and Dave and Arthur Conley to the heights of their creativity. I was in heaven. They’d taken me on as a studio technician on the basis of my work in London. I got to stand on the spot where Otis Redding stood. Better than that I actually got to watch Otis record!
Music doesn’t get much better than that.
My legs were like jelly as Otis came in for his session. The MGs were all micked up and Otis was sound tested but I still faffed around. Somehow I knew this had to be perfect. Man, that was an intense session. Otis knew what he wanted. It had to be just right. ‘Try a little Tenderness’, ‘Shake’, and ‘I’ve been loving you too long’ send shivers through me but ‘Respect’ filled me with pride and resolve.
Watching Otis performing in the clubs was like seeing a ball of energy bounce across the stage. Nobody was ever short-changed. The sweat poured off him as the emotion poured out. That voice, the anguish, yearning, tenderness and power; it was all there.
Steve Cropper was brilliant with me. He was working with Otis writing songs, sorting arrangements and getting the sound right, but he always had time for me. He always included me, sought my opinion and made me feel valued.
In my book that Soul sound was unparalleled. Nobody has got close. Those guys engineered it and it came out of harmony, collaboration and integration. That sums up life for me.
The Monterey Pop Festival brought it all together for me into the perfect package. If ever a festival has been misnamed that was it. It was derogatory and demeaning to describe those acts as Pop. Nobody in their right mind would put Otis, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin and Big Brother, Buffalo Springfield and the Holding Company and Hendrix under a Pop label. That might be true of the Mamas and Papas but not class Rock and R&B acts like those.
Otis and Steve Cropper had insisted I went along. It was brilliant. I got to see a lot of my favourite acts, reuniting with Jimi and the Who, the Airplane and Springfield. It was as if a w3hole load of different elements were being drawn together.
Monterey was a great time to be alive. To see Otis Redding up there on stage wowing a white audience, the British contingent and Us Acid Rockers all together on stage was like the apotheosis. Hugh Masekala just put the seasoning on the dressing.
I came away thinking that this couldn’t get any better and we were heading for a climax that would transform the world; this was building to a crescendo that would blow the whole conservative edifice to shards. Music was the liberator, the emancipator and uniter of people.
It just goes to show how wrong you can be.
It started going wrong with that plane crash.
I was in the Stax studio with Steve when the news came through; Otis was gone. We turned on the TV and watched as news came through of the crash. They pulled Ben Cauley out of the lake but not Otis.
It seemed to me that Otis was just the start.
Four months later we were reeling from another body blow.
Martin Luther King was staying in the Lorraine Motel across Town from us. He was there to support a walkout of sanitation workers. He went out from his room on to the balcony. A sniper shot him through the neck.
That was the year of the black riots. Memphis, along with many other cities burned as the frustration and fury boiled over.
Steve Cropper stood outside Stax studios and looked over to the smoke. ‘They’re burning their own town’ he said in disbelief.
It was blind fury and the atmosphere at Stax changed forever.