MU S I C
I S S U E
AL BELL CAN’T QUIT MUSIC STAX LEGEND WILL TAKE NEW TALENT THERE, THE FUTURE.
M COURTESY STAX MUSEUM OF AMERICAN SOUL MUSIC
BY SAM EIFLING
SOUL TRIO: Bell (right) with Jesse Jackson (left) and Isaac Hayes.
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aybe before Al Bell could properly mount his comeback — if indeed the legendary impresario and songwriter ever quite left — he needed a reminder of what was holding him back. Now living in North Little Rock, Bell earlier this year was back in Memphis, a town where he ran and later owned Stax Records in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Like its great rival Motown, much of the Stax catalogue still defines American popular culture of its day, and today, when you recall Sam and Dave or Isaac Hayes or Booker T. and the MGs, you have Bell partially to thank. But the label melted down in spectacular, traumatic fashion, and Bell, who had previously marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr., felt in the breakdown the same enmity that ultimately saw King killed. He was persecuted (successfully) and prosecuted (unsuccessfully, on bank fraud charges) and was laid low. Time has been kind enough to the man who wrote “I’ll Take You There.” He went independent as Bellmark Records and released a pair of songs in the ’90s that are about to get stuck in your head: Tag Team’s “Whoomp! (There It Is)” and Prince’s “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World.” In 2009, the BBC and the New York Times chronicled his return to the Memphis music scene as chairman of the Memphis Music Foundation.
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NOVEMBER 14, 2013
ARKANSAS TIMES