I’m not sure the first time I saw Gerald Wexler’s name on an album.

Quite possibly it was the Patti Labelle & The Bluebelles’ “Over The Rainbow” LP in 1965 but I do know that as soul music buff growing up in London, I was certainly aware that Atlantic Records was a haven for some of the best and most emotionally satisfying music I’d ever heard, albeit as a mere ‘falling-in-and-out-of-love’ teenager.

There’s no question that in 1967, Jerry Wexler was more than just a name I’d seen. Already a devotee of Aretha Franklin’s recordings for Columbia (and in particular her latter day work at the label which included such spine-chillers as “(No, No) I’m Losing You” and “Sweet Bitter Love”), I was thrilled when I saw in a November issue of “Billboard” – the magazine for whom Wexler had written in the late ‘40s, coining the term ‘rhythm and blues’ for the first time – a photo of Jerry, Aretha and her then-husband/manager Ted White as she signed on the dotted line with Atlantic. A few weeks later, I was actually on the phone with her: as a Christmas ‘bonus’ at Soul City Records, the store I co-owned in London, I got to call and wish her a merry Xmas! Speaking for the first time to anyone in England, she revealed that she was getting ready to record her first material for Atlantic and how thrilled she was at the prospect.

Neither she nor I – nor I suspect Wexler or anyone else at Atlantic – knew that her union with Atlantic would initiate a career that would place her firmly in the history books of contemporary culture, that she would go from being a ‘marginal’ but exceptional artist at Columbia to being a voice heard around the world for decades, a prime influence on hundreds of female vocalists and an enduring presence in American – indeed, global - life.

I was besides myself when I got my hands on Aretha’s first Atlantic album, the groundbreaking “I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You).” That was nothing compared to the surprise that awaited me just months later: Wexler, ever astute and conscious of the British love for R&B, had seen my little article on his new ‘star’ in the UK Atlantic Records’ fanzine and had written to me personally thanking me and included a red-and-white promo of Aretha’s then-brand-new single, “Baby I Love You” backed with “Going Down Slow.” I was floored that a major executive at an American record company would do such a thing and it took me days and days to get over it.

As I began to become even more deeply immersed in R&B, I discovered that it was this same man, this man with a passion and appreciation for the music I too loved, was also responsible for the distribution deal that had brought the sounds of a tiny company in Memphis to the world. Wexler, ears ever open and tuned in, was the architect of the deal that resulted in the music of Stax Records being heard around the globe. Were it not for his foresight, we might never have heard Otis (Redding), William Bell, Booker T & The MGs, The Mar-Keys, Eddie Floyd, Carla Thomas and her dad Rufus, Mable John and so many more.

In recent tributes to Wexler, who passed away on Friday, August 15 at the age of 91, his association with Ray Charles, his work with all the great Atlantic artists who helped establish the company as a leading light in black music (including Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett and before them, The Drifters, Lavern Baker, Clyde McPhatter and others) and of course, his vision in bringing the remarkable artistry of a woman named Aretha to an unsuspecting world have been front and center – and rightfully so. But for this young Brit soul fan, Wexler’s decision to sign that little Memphis company to a pact with Atlantic (no matter how it eventually turned out, business-wise) was major.

Years after Jerry sent me that note and that Aretha 45, I got to meet him in a studio in L.A. when I was doing a special appreciation on Aretha for Britain’s “Blues & Soul” magazine. He was delightful, a real no-nonsense New Yorker, full of great anecdotes and stories. I’m not sure what happened to keep us in touch – other than a shared love for R&B – but we did indeed communicate from time to time on the phone. I called him to tell him I had unearthed an entire album of material that Irma Thomas had recorded for Atlantic/Cotillion in the early ‘70s. Wexler had signed her and he immediately remarked on how the one single that was released, “Full Time Woman” was one of his favorite recordings of all time. I sent him a CD of the album which he deeply appreciated and in return, he sent me some CDs of conversations by old time record executives like Syd Nathan (no relation to me but the founder of King Records) and Hy Weiss of Old Town Records.

Over years, we talked about other artists I loved – Judy Clay, signed to Atlantic but on ‘loan’ to Stax initially who he recalled as being a little ‘difficult’ in the studio but who he remembered (and what a memory!) had cut a version of a Bobby Bland song (“I Pity The Fool”) which was still in the vaults. Of course, we chatted about Aretha and the great sessions he did with her: when I did research for Rhino on Aretha a few years ago, I discovered a demo of “Until You Come Back To Me,” the Stevie Wonder song which gave her a massive early ‘70s hit and hearing Jerry and Aretha chatting was just mind-blowing!

I wish I’d spent more time with Jerry Wexler and talked more about some of those Stax records and material he recorded with the likes of Dee Dee Warwick, The Sweet Inspirations and others. As it is, I’m left with fond memories of a real character, a man who loved to share his lifelong passion for R&B as well as dozens of recordings that bear his name. Oh – and one song, “I Don’t Want To Go On Without You,” something he co-wrote with producer Bert Berns that was recorded by The Drifters, Patti Labelle & The Bluebelles and The Sweet Inspirations. Plaintive and soulful, the song was never a hit but as I listen to it now, I’m reminded of Jerry Wexler, a man who left an indelible imprint on popular music – and through his work and that little package I got in the mail - on a skinny little teenager in London.

With appreciation,

David Nathan
A/k/a the British Ambassador Of Soul
Secretary, The Rhythm & Blues Foundation (www.rhythmblues.org)
Owner,
www.soulmusic.com,
www.soulmusicstore.com,
www.soulmusicglobal.com

“The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town…”

“To an Athlete Dying Young,” by A.E. Housman

I had this all planned out. I had four seats reserved for the Stax 50th Anniversary All-Stars featuring headliner Isaac Hayes, scheduled for Friday August 15 at the Mann Music Center. I was going to enjoy the show last night, then today, write about how wonderful it was to see William Bell, Eddie Floyd, the Bar-Kays and of course “Black Moses” onstage again.

But you know what they say: Life is what happens while you’re busy making plans. And instead of commanding the performer’s center stage, Isaac Hayes will command center stage in the city of Memphis for his funeral this Monday, August 18.

Isaac Hayes was my first favorite artist. I don’t presume to write that Isaac Hayes was “the best” or “the greatest,” simply that he was my first favorite. Maybe it was entirely coincidental but I’ll remain eternally grateful for the timing of my birth, born so that I was ten years old when Ike’s “Theme from ‘Shaft‘” broke through. As I grew through my teenage years, his public image was everything that mine was not: Superbad, supremely cool, confident and suave with the ladies, an articulate and confident voice packing tons of soul. Everything that mine was not. So I escaped to and through Isaac Hayes’ music, which helped keep me afloat through my awkward teenage phase that lasted only forever.

I never noticed until his passing how much my taste in his music has evolved as we both grew. I never listened to his post-Stax work much, because almost every one of Hayes’ Enterprise / Stax albums proved so commercially and musically monumental (although his 1991 summit with Barry White, “Dark and Lovely,” was profoundly deep and romantic).

Every single one of Hayes’ Stax albums was a killer. “Theme from ‘Shaft‘” was the first and real mother for me - I suspect like it was for many others, too. Later in the ’70s, a friend of mine was preparing to relocate halfway across the country, and sold me a box of records to save the cost of moving them. The Isaac Hayes Movement was in that box, like a messenger sent to reconnect me - especially through that glorious, gut-wrenching spoken-word intro to the rapturous “I Stand Accused,” which, just like “Shaft,” was both great and unlike any music I had ever heard before. It broke my heart AND blew my mind. Its set-ending cover of “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself” connected another set of musical dots for this Burt Bacharach-Hal David fan; Hayes’ lifetime affection for recrafting Bacharach-David tunes also made me a Hayes acolyte for life. But lately my favorites have been the sly, revelatory bump ‘n’ grind of “Good Love” from Black Moses and the concert performance of “Do Your Thing,” which first appeared on that Shaft soundtrack 37 years ago, recorded Live at the Sahara Tahoe. It’s pretty much all good.

These are sad days, make no mistake. Isaac Hayes was an amazing composer, arranger, musician, vocalist and performer, and even if the music world everywhere is poorer for his passing, we might instead imagine Barry White now reunited with the best duet partner each one ever had. And as much as I mourn today what seems to have been taken away by Isaac Hayes’ death, I’m more than grateful for the gift of his life and more specifically his body of work. What great soul music is his legacy!

It might be easy to simply consider Isaac Hayes as ‘Black Moses,’ as the distinguished winner of an Oscar for “Theme For Shaft,’ as the man who literally changed the sound of R&B radio in 1969 with his groundbreaking “Hot Buttered Soul,” as a 1977 duet partner with Dionne Warwick – for their famed “A Man And A Woman” tour (I saw it; it was amazing) and to whom he gave the Grammy-winning song “Déjà Vu” as a birthday gift, as a dynamic showman resplendent in gold chains, bald head glistening, a physical giant of a man.

But for old school R&B buffs like me, Isaac Hayes - briefly a sax player with The Mar-Keys and then a keyboard player on several sessions at the Stax studios – was (with songwriting and producing partner David Porter), the genius behind some of the greatest and most soul recordings ever to come out of that studio on McLemore Avenue in Memphis. I’m not talking about the obvious Sam & Dave material – as good as it is and as important as it was for establishing Stax Records as a viable hitmaking machine (and soul music-wise, “When Something Is Wrong With My Baby” is still one of the best ballads the duo ever cut). I’m talking Ruby Johnson (“I’ll Run Your Hurt Away”), Mable John (“Your Good Thing”), Johnnie Taylor (“I Got To Love Somebody’s Baby”) and my personal, forever-favorite the late Judy Clay (“Give Love To Save Love,” “It’s Me,” “Remove These Clouds”).

In putting together a musical tribute to Isaac at www.soulmusic.com, I went for those kind of tracks – along with the requisite “Soulsville,” the still-brilliant “Walk On By” (my eternal favorite song) and an often-forgotten duet with Barry White entitled “Dark & Lovely (You Over There),” significant because when Barry first emerged as a recording artist, there were obvious comparisons with Isaac because of their bass-baritone vocal sound. Truly, if there was a ‘definition’ for deep soul, for the kind of chills-down-the-spine, make-the-hair-on-your-neck-stand-up recording, Ike and David’s work – mostly with bluesy female vocalists like Johnson, John and Clay – was it.

Of course, no one makes records like “Your Good Thing” or the stunning “I’ll Run Your Hurt Away” (on which the late Ruby J. wails and churchifies like Otis Redding) anymore, steeped in emotion and passion, lacking all the ‘cleanliness’ of Pro-Tools and pitch-fixers. Isaac and David set it up for soul sisters (and brothers like Johnnie Taylor, with whom they made some masterful sides) to have the right environment, Ike on keyboards, those funky Stax horn players punctuating the track with dead-on timing. The songs were full-on stories – Mable’s “Taking Up Another Man’s Place” is high drama (“you don’t want me to go to the store alone, what kind of man are you? You run over me to answer the telephone…”) and she recalls that “Your Good Thing (Is About To End)” was written as a result of her sharing with Isaac and David about a marriage gone bad. But what made Isaac Hayes and David Porter so compelling as songwriters – beyond their ability to create seriously soul-filled tracks – was their skill at writing songs that everyday folks could relate to. You need go no further than The Soul Children (who tore the house down in Memphis at the Stax 50th last year) whose Hayes-Porter-penned-and-produced “The Sweeter He Is” is an unadulterated classic!

Whenever I was in Isaac’s presence – which was a few times over the years (interviewing him for “Blues & Soul” in the late Seventies a couple of times and then doing a bio for his 1995 Virgin/Pointblank release, “Branded”) – I was always conscious of the musical contribution he had made to me personally as much through “Hot Buttered Soul” and “Shaft” as with the afore-mentioned Stax recordings he did with Judy Clay, Mable and their ilk and was appropriately respectful and awed. It was a real treat for me to put together my own personal musical tribute to Isaac at Soul Music.com (http://www.soulmusic.com/ishatrsomuco.html). I hope you can go check it out and discover for yourself the soulful genius of a man who will be much missed but whose recorded legacy remains intact.

David Nathan
A/k/a the British Ambassador Of Soul
Secretary, The Rhythm & Blues Foundation (www.rhythmblues.org)
Owner,
www.soulmusic.com,
www.soulmusicstore.com,
www.soulmusicglobal.com

The Stax Records and Concord Music Group family lost a great friend on Sunday when soul music giant Isaac Hayes died suddenly at the age of 65.
 
To the world he was Black Moses, Ike The Ripper and, later, Chef from TV’s South Park. To the rest of us who had the extraordinary opportunity to work with him in recent years, he was just Isaac. He was humble, unpretentious and refreshingly down-to-earth. Not bad for a man who delivered a record-setting seven #1 albums to the Billboard R&B chart, scored numerous awards (including multiple Grammys and 2 Academy Awards), appeared in over three dozen films and was named a Royal King of Ghana along the way.
 
In the ‘60s, the Covington, Tenn. native helped define the Stax Records sound, co-writing with David Porter such hits as “Soul Man,” “Hold On (I’m Coming),” “B-A-B-Y,” and “When Something Is Wrong With My Baby” for Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas and Johnnie Taylor, among others.
 
He took soul music in a new direction with his 1969 album Hot Buttered Soul, which featured expansive re-interpretations of Jimmy Webb’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and Bacharach and David’s “Walk On By.”  The music’s impact was matched only by the visual impact of the record’s cover, which featured Hayes’ signature bald head, gold chains and bare chest.
 
Two years later, his “Theme From Shaft” exploded on the pop and R&B charts, putting him on the map as an artist and icon. The rat-a-tat of that lone high-hat, that cultural-shifting kick of the wah-wah pedal — no other piece of music signaled the true end of the ’60s, ushering in the gritty 1970s than Isaac Hayes’ theme from Shaft. The song won him not only a Grammy but two Oscars, for “Best Song” and “Best Score” in 1972. That same year he won a Grammy for his double album Black Moses. The hits continued for Hayes throughout the ‘70s.
 
In later years, Hayes’ career took some other directions. He became the voice of Nickelodeon’s Nick at Nite and later the voice of Chef in the animated series South Park. He had a role in the upcoming movie Soul Men with stars Samuel L. Jackson and Bernie Mac (who also died this past weekend).
 
In 2007, Hayes participated in the Stax Records 50th Anniversary celebration shows in Memphis, Austin and Los Angeles. Despite health problems that slowed him down in recent years, he continued to tour the world. He had proudly returned to Stax Records, both as an artist and as an advisor in planning the reactivation of the imprint in 2007 by Concord Music Group. Isaac was also in the process of recording a new album for Stax.
 
To borrow a phrase from the man himself, he was “one bad mutha.” And through the music he so generously left behind, the world will be talking about him and more importantly listening for lifetimes to come. Concord Music Group president and CEO Glen Barros states, “Isaac Hayes exemplified all that is Stax. We are all very fortunate to have worked with a visionary who changed music in indelible and profound ways.  His talent was matched only by his kindness of spirit.  On behalf of the entire Concord/Stax family we express our deep sympathies to his family, friends and fans all over the world.”
 
Gene Rumsey, Concord Music Group general manager added, “The enduring influence of Stax Records could only have been made possible through Isaac’s brilliant song-writing which laid the ground work for the future generations of rap, hip-hop, and soul.  Isaac played a pivotal role in the recent re-launch of Stax, once again infusing the label with his creativity, inspiring a whole new breed of Stax artists.  Our condolences go out to all the people whose lives Isaac touched throughout his unparalleled career and lifetime.”
 
John Burk, executive VP and chief creative officer, Concord Music Group, states, “Isaac had a profound and multifaceted impact on the Stax label, contributing to its legacy as a writer, producer, arranger, studio musician, A&R executive and, of course, one of its most successful artists.  Having collaborated closely with Isaac during the past few years, I came to know the man behind the music and his deep love for humanity.  He was an extraordinary individual who used his talents to inspire and unite people from all walks of life.  I feel tremendously privileged to have had the opportunity to work along side this giant of a man.”