OH, Lord, make it last longer than two hours, I prayed while watching this mesmerizing documentary.
But alas, my prayer was not answered (the usual result for me) and after two hours, it ended, leaving me bereft in a world without soul.
I had come under the film’s spell early, at about the time the hands of Booker T. Jones were shown feeling out a melody on the double keyboard of an electric organ. I wrote in my notes that watching him do this was something “pretty close to ecstasy.”
He was Booker T. of Booker T. and the MGs, the house band at Stax Records, a Memphis recording studio that came to be known as Soulsville, USA.
He is one of many surviving members of the Stax family who were interviewed for this remarkable film to testify to the miracles that transpired there.
Like Sam Phillips’ Sun Recording Studios across town, Stax Records was a magnet for hopeful young singers and musicians from the Deep South who migrated to Memphis, Tenn., like pilgrims to Mecca.
One of them was Otis Redding, who showed up at Stax one day in 1962 at the age of 21 begging for an audition that knocked the studio’s musicians off their feet.
“He started singing ‘These Arms of Mine,’ and I know my hair lifted out about three inches,” recalls Steve Cropper, guitarist for the MGs.
Stax – which got its name from the first two letters of the last names of its founders, siblings Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton – was the home recording studio for scores of black-music stars.
It was where Wilson Pickett recorded “In the Midnight Hour” in 1965 and Sam & Dave recorded “Soul Man” in 1967. Isaac Hayes also recorded there after starting his career co-writing (with David Porter) “Soul Man” and dozens of other hits.
The story of Stax is told in parallel to the story of Memphis and the city’s role in the civil-rights movement of the 1960s, culminating in Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968 at the Lorraine Motel, where Stax artists, most of whom were black, stayed and hung out together.
The best feature of this documentary (whose title “Respect Yourself” comes from a Stax hit recorded by the Staple Singers) is its many film clips of performances powerful enough to make your hair stand on end and leave you wanting more.
“Great Performances: Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story”
Tonight at 9 on WNET/13