This course, part 1 of a 2-course sequence, examines the history of rock, primarily as it unfolded in the United States, from the days before rock (pre-1955) to the end of the 1960s. This course covers the music of Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Phil Spector, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, and many more artists, with an emphasis both on cultural context and on the music itself. We will also explore how developments in the music business and in technology helped shape the ways in which styles developed. Rock emerged in the mid 1950s as a blending of mainstream pop, rhythm and blues, and country and western--styles that previously had remained relatively separate. This new style became the music of the emerging youth culture and was often associated with teen rebellion. We will follow the story of how this rowdy first wave of rock and roll (1955-59) was tamed in the early 60s but came roaring back with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and then went psychedelic by the end of the decade.
The Stax Performers (12:06)
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From the course by University of Rochester
History of Rock, Part One
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From the lesson
Motown Pop and Southern Soul (1960-69)
Berry Gordy and the rise and first flourishing of Motown. Atlantic, Stax, and southern soul (Memphis, Muscle Shoals, New York). Parallels between Motown and Stax. James Brown and the roots of funk.
Meet the Instructors
John CovachProfessor of Music and Director
Institute for Popular Music
>> Stax records or Southern Soul of more broadly especially Stax and
Atlantic together, had a whole stable of artists who
helped developed what we think of as Southern Soul.
And as I said in the previous video, kind of seen in contrast to what was
happening in Motown which was seen as sort of a slick professional kind of sound.
These stack artists were seen as more authentic and maybe a little grittier,
a little bit more raw, a little bit more unbuttoned and
enthusiastic in their performances.
So let's turn to some of those performances.
Let's start with Otis Redding.
It's important when we think about these Stax, artist to understand which ones were
actually signed to Stax and which ones were actually signed to Atlantic, because
of the closeness of this relationship that Atlantic and Stax were in.
Otis Redding was actually signed to Stax, and he's got early hits in the 60s
crossing over already in 1965 with tunes like "Mr.
Pitiful", which was at number ten RnB hit but got to number 41 in the pop chart.
And "Respect", Otis Redding is the first one who wrote and performed Respect,
later it would become almost a signature song for Aretha Franklin,
we'll talk about that in just a minute.
But "Respect" was a hit for him in 1965, number four in the RnB chart but
only at number 35 in the pop chart.
Remember, think about what the Motown numbers were like that
I referred to a couple videos ago.
We're talking about Otis Redding crossing over with hits that made
it to number 41 in the pop charts, number 35 in the pop charts.
We get into 1966, "Try a Little Tenderness" a kind of emblematic song for
Otis Redding, number 25 in the pop charts, number four in the RnB Charts.
So we think about Stax and
Motown, I think that if you just do the chart numbers in many ways.
Motown comes out on top that way,
although in many ways looking back at Stax a lot of people we're more influenced by
what happened musically and stylistically with what happened at Stax.
The thing about Otis Redding, he performed at the big Monterey Pop Festival
in the spring of 1967, with Booker T.
and the M.G.'s. Steve Cropper has said, he thought that was kind of a weird
booking because they showed up with little club amps and mohair suits.
And this kind a thing and they show up and there are all of these painted hippies
with Marshall Stacks and Les Pauls and all this kind a thing.
And he thought, what are we going to do with these little amps that we're carrying
around but they went on, they did the show.
And it became a kind of legendary moment for Otis Redding, there'll really help
sort of launch his career with the hippie movement and with a lot of those folks
bringing his music to a wider audience than it might of gotten otherwise.
Unfortunately, that success was rather short lived because he died
In a plane crash in December of 1967,
having already recorded maybe we might think of his signature song,
"Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay" which after his untimely death
went to number one on both the pop and RnB charts in early 1968.
Not so good for Stax from a business point of view because one of the few of these
artists that we're going to talk about that was actually signed to Stax.
When Otis Redding passes away,
it leaves a big hole in the Stax sort of business model although.
I know it's can be kind of thought of as disrespectful to think of it that way,
that's kind of what happened.
Now we turn now next to Sam & Dave.
That's a group that was signed to Atlantic, but "loaned" to Stax.
So in other words, Jerry Wexler had already signed these guys, but
said I'm going to send you down to Memphis and have you work with the guys at
the Stax because I like what they're doing down there.
So, Sam & Dave started working very closely with Isaac Hayes and
David Porter and that produced a whole series of hits using the Stax band and
the Stax horns and all that, maybe the most important of those songs or
the one that everybody knows is "Soul Man".
A number one RnB hit from 1967 went to number two in the pop charts and
that's the one that was in 1979 among much of these songs,
covered by the Blues Brothers.
In 1979, when John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd put that first Blues Brothers band
together first appearing on Saturday Night Live and then making their own movie and
all that, it really reignited the passion for all of this music.
And a lot of these guys, Duck Dunn,
Steve Cropper, Aretha Franklin all appear in the film itself.
The version the Blues Brothers had on the radio in 1979,
was actually a very very close cover version of what Sam and Dave had done.
Of course for Sam and Dave it was fantastic,
it reignited their careers that all of a sudden they started getting better paying
gigs that they hadn't been getting before, it was fantastic.
So, we're talking about now Sam & Dave,
a group that as I said before was signed to Atlantic but loaned to Stax.
That's very much like the situation with Wilson Pickett,
who was also signed to Atlantic and started out recording at Stax records.
In fact, one of his most famous records "In the Midnight Hour",
was a number one RnB hit in the summer of 1965, number 23 on the pop charts.
Was actually written by Steve Cropper and Wilson Pickett together and
recorded in Memphis with the Memphis studio band.
As Steve Cropper tells the story about this In the Midnight Hour thing
was something that Wilson Pickett used to sort of do when
he was sort of improvising over vocals while trying to find things.
Really the coming out of a gospel tradition,
my Jesus comes to me In the Midnight Hour, In the Midnight Hour, this kind of thing.
And so Cropper kind of pulled this together, corralled together some of what
Wilson Pickett was doing and they wrote this song.
In the course of writing this song, Jerry Wexler who was supervising the sessions
Tom Dowd was often at these sessions, came in and
told him about a dance that the kids were doing back in New York.
And he kind of danced it around from, and
what they could figure out was that the beat was going one, two, three, four,
but the two's and four's were slightly delayed.
So instead of being metronomically one, two, three, four, it was one, two,
three, four.
They were just a little bit behind the beat.
So they tried to capture that in the feel,
this became the feel that was called the delayed backbeat.
And when "In the Midnight Hour" was such a success they tried to reproduce that feel.
And sometimes that delayed backbeat feel, is one that's
often associated with Stax Records and again came out of this session.
But something happened, it's not really quite clear what happened but somehow.
Jim Stewart of Stax Records kind of forbid
Wilson Pickett from recording in the Stax studios in Memphis.
And so, Jerry Wexler was familiar with another studio
in the South in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
That had produced hits, that he liked the sound of those records too.
They'd already licensed Joe Tex's record "Hold On to What You've Got",
which had been a number five pop hit, a number two RnB hit in 1965.
That was recorded at FAME studios in Muscle Shoals.
The one that Jerry Wexler really liked from Muscle Shoals, was a record that they
licensed by Percy Sledge called "When A Man Loves A Woman" what a fantastic tune
that is, number one on the RnB charts, number one on the pop charts in 1966.
But that record actually wasn't recorded in FAME studios in Muscle Shoals,
it was recorded in a different studio in Muscle Shoals called Quincy Studios.
But the person he knew down there that he worked closely with,
was a fella named Rick Hall at FAME studios.
So, what he did is he started to move Wilson Pickett down to Muscle Shoals.
In fact, in order to get the stax horns.
He didn't tell Jim Stewart he was doing it,
he paid Stax horns guys to like drive down to Muscle Shoals and
do the tracks there because he really wanted that horn sounds.
But all of those classic Wilson Pickett records after In the Midnight Hour
were all done.
And Muscle Shoals, Alabama which quickly developed this reputation as
being sort of like one of the hippest rhythm sections,
the hippest places to record in all of popular music.
"Land of 1000 Dances" from 1966, "Mustang Sally" from 1966,
"Funky Broadway" from 1967, all of these hits on both the RnB and
the pop charts, and all of them recorded at Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
The last of the Southern Soul figures that we have to talk about,
is perhaps the one who towers over all of them in terms of reputation and
importance in the history of Southern Soul in many ways.
Aretha Franklin comes to the picture fairly late and
we start to talk about Aretha, we're really talking about the very end
of the 1960s certainly not right in the middle of the 60, 64, 65.
So she comes a little bit later than the other artists, but
sort of towers over all the rest of them.
Aretha Franklin, with a fantastic background in gospel music.
Her father, the Reverend C.L.
Franklin was minister at the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan.
He was a real celebrity in the sense that he was a very very well-known pastor,
not just in Detroit but nationally attended a lot of kind of national events.
His radio show, he's services were on the radio it was
a very sort of famous man in his own right.
And there was his daughter Aretha, along with her sisters all sort of hearing all
this fantastic gospel music getting to meet a lot of the most important gospel
performers of the time, having dinner with them and mixing with them socially.
And sort really of getting to see all of it very up close while she was
just a child.
So, what a fantastic background, for
somebody who would go on to become a professional singer.
She was initially signed to Columbia Records, in the first half of the 1960s
but it was like Columbia didn't quite know what to do with Aretha Franklin.
Like they thought she was some kind of a supper club singer or
maybe a kind of a jazz singer or something like that.
And so she did some recordings that really didn't go anywhere, and her contract came
up for renewal at Columbia and Jerry Wexler was aware of Aretha Franklin and
thought he had a pretty good idea of what she was capable of and so
convinced her to move to Atlantic.
First thing he did was he took her down to Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
Got her in FAME's to do this with Rick Hall and
with that studio band and started working with her to develop a kind
of a more gospel influenced approach to her music.
Well the first session went pretty well at least initially
they got the track finished "I Never Loved a Man" which was released in 1967,
went to number nine in the RnB charts, number 37 in the pop charts but
something happened in the studio, people got into disputes with each other.
There was some drinking involved and
the session dissolved before Wexler had even his B side completed.
So he decided that he wasn't going to take Aretha Franklin back down to
Muscle Shoals because there was some bad blood down there.
So, he finished the single off in the New York studio and in fact it turned out that
Aretha recorded much of the rest of her music her Southern Soul, in New York City.
Sometimes, Wexler would fly the Stax horns guys in or
musicians in, from the South to play on the recorders but they did it in New York.
Aretha subsequently had fantastic success,
all the tunes that you know from her from the 60s were recorded during this time.
"Respect" which was number one on the RnB and the pop charts in 1967.
Wilson Pickett or I mean Otis Redding saying, after he'd heard Aretha's
version of Respect, he said I might have written that song and
recorded it but she's the one that owns it now.
"Chain of Fools" number one on the RnB charts,
number two on the pop charts in 68.
And "Think", number one in the RnB charts, number seven the pop charts in 1968.
Another track in the Blues Brothers movie that Aretha,
sings as a guest star in that movie.
So in many ways Aretha Franklin coming at the end of this Southern Soul thing and
what's ironic is that she's not on Stax.
The records are not even recorded in the South, but they still are emblematic of
this Southern Soul style, which is seen in juxtaposition to the music of Motown.
In our next video, we're going to consider Motown, Stax,
the British invasion, and the American response.
That is everything that was happening in the middle of the 1960s and
see if we can sort out, what the various influences and
effects between all of these different musical activities were.
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