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What Country and Southern Rock Owe To Classic Soul Music - Pt. 1

© Barney Quick

American society continues to make strides in its ongoing and laudable efforts to eradicate racial division. Ironically, rankings charts for the various types of popular music are one area where such division persists. This is a curious legacy that goes back nearly a century. From the 1920s, with its "race records," to today's distinction between R&B and pop, music marketers have assumed that performers and audiences of various music types would be mainly characterized by skin color.

The truth behind the making of American music is somewhat more nuanced. Early hillbilly, cowboy and blues performers knew each other and swapped licks. "Territory" bands and later jump-blues bands from the American southwest came out of the same milieu as western-swing bands.

Classic southern soul of the 1960s, generally thought to be one of the most distinctly black musical genres, was actually quite a watershed as well as launching pad for various "white" styles. Memphis, Tennessee and Muscle Shoals, Alabama, the two best-known recording centers during soul's heyday, crafted their sounds with the chops of studio hands steeped in a backwoods heritage that crossed color lines.

Memphis had been experimenting with musical hybrids for several years when Jim Stewart and his sister Estelle Axton founded Satellite records in the late 1950s. Sam Phillips' Sun label pioneered the rockabilly sound, which was country-flavored blues by white performers, after having established itself with acts that fell more neatly into the blues and country categories.

Stewart, who had played country fiddle with Don Powell and the Canyon Cowboys and Clyde Leopard and the Snearly Ranch Boys as a college student, had no sense of direction for his new label at first. It was when Estelle's son Packy started bringing his teenage friends around the studio that the company's activity took some shape. They formed a band called the Royal Spades that headed straight for a rhythm-and-blues repertoire. Guitarist Steve Cropper was raised on country, which gave the white ensemble a characteristic twang in its treatment of black material. The group changed its name to The Mar-Keys and cut an instrumental, "Last Night," which is generally considered to be the first true example of Memphis soul. Around this time Stewart and Axton changed their label's name to Stax as well.

A local black celebrity entertainer, Rufus Thomas, approached Stax during this period. Thomas had been a minstrel show performer, disc jockey and blues singer over the years. He wanted to record a duet with his college-student daughter Carla. Not only did Stax cut the duet, the label also released a ballad by Carla called "Gee Whiz" that garnered national airplay in 1961. This brought Stax to the attention of Atlantic Records, which picked the Memphis label up for national distribution.

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