It is telling that neither Jim Stewart nor Don Davis was in attendance at Wattstax. Both had gradually become increasingly estranged from the company. Moving under a full head of steam, Al Bell, Larry Shaw, and Johnny Baylor had transformed Stax into something neither Stewart nor Davis could easily understand. At Stax’s Avalon offices there was simply no looking back.
Immediately following Wattstax, the National Association of Television and Radio Announcers (NATRA) named Isaac Hayes’s Shaft its Album of the Year. Luther Ingram was voted Most Promising Male Vocalist, Rance Allen was cited as being the Best Religious Group, and the Staple Singers were honored as the Best Mixed Vocal Group. A couple of weeks earlier Stax had captured nine of the twenty-six categories at the first annual Soul and Blues Awards held at the Beverly Hills Hilton.1 In the last week of September, Isaac Hayes, the Staple Singers, Luther Ingram, and Johnnie Taylor gave concert performances (donating their usual fees) at Jesse Jackson’s annual PUSH EXPO at Chicago’s International Amphitheater, Taylor performing a rare gospel set on the final day.2 At PUSH EXPO ’72, the Stax booth continuously showed excerpts of Wattstax, and Stax also donated two thousand dollars for what was dubbed the “Stax Art Award,” a competition involving six hundred pieces of art by two hundred black artists from three continents.
Also in September 1972, Mavis Staples released her last solo single on the Stax subsidiary Volt. Back in 1969, when Al Bell was attempting to generate an instant back catalogue, Mavis had been persuaded to record her eponymously titled debut solo album. Bell saw the Staples family as a potential triple threat, reasoning that over time he could achieve secular success for the group, turn Mavis into a solo star, and promote solo recordings by Pops Staples. In a studio for the first time outside of the family context, Mavis, by her own admission, was scared to death. In 1970, with a little more confidence, she recorded her sophomore effort, the Don Davis-produced Only for the Lonely. Two singles were originally culled from the album; the first, “I Have Learned to Do Without You,” climbed to number 13 R&B and number 87 pop in late summer 1970.
Mavis Staples solo. COURTESY FANTASY, INC.
In September 1972, Mavis’s cover of Brook Benton’s “Endlessly” was pulled from the two-year-old album as a followup single. Benton and longtime compadre Clyde Otis had written the song in the late 1950s one afternoon when Benton was in dire need of an advance from his publisher. A couple of years later, Benton recorded a moderately uptempo version on Mercury complete with flamenco guitar, hitting number 3 R&B and number 12 pop for his efforts. Both Don Davis and Mavis Staples had long admired Benton’s recording, making it a natural choice for the Only for the Lonely sessions. Inspired by what she clearly thought was a superb Don Davis production, Mavis carves out a vocal persona that is in decided contrast from what she used with the Staple Singers.
“It was the way the song goes,” explains Mavis, “and the way I felt it should have been delivered. I tried to give it a softer sound. It’s almost a more jazzy sound. Certain tracks will take you a different place and that’s the way I heard it. On my solo things I wanted to sound different to show that Mavis can sing another way.” Mavis explained that she was also concerned that she not replicate Benton’s original. To my ear, she is the more adventuresome of the two, decorating the melody with carefully wrought ornamentation.
Despite its quality, Mavis’s version only climbed to number 30 R&B and number 109 on the pop chart. Davis insists that Stax personnel told him that they were instructed to hold back on promotion of Mavis’s solo releases. The poor performance of this single, and Mavis’s disenchantment with Stax’s refusal to allow her to copublish her own songs, led her to put her solo career on hold.3
As disgruntled as Mavis was with Al Bell’s decision in regard to giving her copublishing on her songs, she had no intention of letting that affect her family’s career at the label. In the first week of October 1972, the Staples journeyed to Muscle Shoals for what would turn into seven days of recordings, beginning October 5 and continuing, with a two-day break, through October 13. Strangely, this extended session would be the last time the group would record backing tracks until after they left Stax in the last months of the label’s existence. The sessions were begun with the understanding that the group was going to release a double LP. Some time after the session, that idea was shelved and instead two separate LPs, Be What You Are and City in the Sky, and seven singles were eventually released from these sessions. Although the rhythm tracks complete with scratch vocals were recorded in this one mammoth stretch that fall, as each song was selected for release over the next two-plus years, the Staples returned to Memphis to cut finished vocal tracks at Ardent. It would be at that point that all horns, strings, and other overdubs were added.
Several Stax writers made the trek to Muscle Shoals for these sessions. The Staples were hot and they were being produced by the company’s vice president and co-owner, meaning ample promotion was not going to be a question. A song written for the Staples had a better-than-average chance of making its author some money. The attitude is best described by Carl Hampton: “We said, ‘Hey, let’s get on this ride, let’s get on this train. This is our chance to hit the big time.’ We were looking at it like this is Al Bell’s group … we know the money gonna be behind them.”
Hampton had his personal piano trucked down from Memphis and set up in his hotel room. For the first several days, Mack Rice and Bettye Crutcher would be in the studio helping out with the recording of one of their songs while Homer Banks, Raymond Jackson, and Carl Hampton were back at the hotel crafting any number of songs that they would pitch to the Staples in the evening, when the day’s session had come to a conclusion. There was usually plenty of time to audition new material, because the Muscle Shoals players were all pretty serious family guys and generally refused to schedule sessions after 8:00 P.M.
The first single released from these sessions, “Be What You Are,” was one of the songs that was crafted on the spot in the hotel room. Most of the song was written by Banks and Jackson, with Hampton adding a little flavor into the mix. “The idea was taken from biblical scriptures,” relates Banks. “It might have been Nicodemus who said, ‘Be what you are and live the life.’ I was trying to bridge that gap between straight gospel and a social statement. So I adapted that and put it into how people could relate to it in this day and time. ‘Don’t live outside your means, don’t try to be someone you’re not. Just be who you are.’ That was the intent.”
Everyone was excited when the Staples first heard it. “Pops loved our songs,” says Hampton. “We wanted Mavis to sing the song, but he said, ‘I’m gonna sing this one.’ I said, Oh Lord, there goes my gold.’ It did five hundred thousand records anyway, but I wanted a gold record.”
Homer Banks has a dissenting opinion. “Carl was so infatuated with Mavis, but I knew too that Pops was such an instrumental part of that sound with the Staples. With Mavis doing some little ad libs behind Pops, it’s traditional Staples. Carl thought that Mavis was the key to it. I think it was the Staples as a whole.”
It was always the family’s decision whether a given lead would go to Mavis or Pops. “When we would see one that didn’t take a lot of gut, that was just straight, we knew it was for Daddy,” explains Mavis. “He sings cool and he don’t want to sing with no strain at all where he’d have to put some effort. Songs that called for effort he would let me have. We just kinda knew.”
Gold record or not, when released as a single in late spring 1973, “Be What You Are” was a hit. Pops is his usual idiosyncratic, folksy, brilliant self, and either Eddie Hinton or Terry Manning plays some mighty crunchy rock-and-roll guitar on the fade. At the end of the year, the track garnered a Grammy nomination to boot. At the time of its release, Al Bell was planning to produce a straight-ahead gospel album for the group, and Stax announced that they would be producing a television documentary on the Staple Singers’ life and music. Neither project ever came to fruition.
In the meantime, Stax continued to release material from the massive October 1972 Muscle Shoals sessions. Four more singles—“If You’re Ready (Come Go with Me),” “Touch a Hand, Make a Friend,” “City in the Sky,” and “My Main Man”—charted over the next two-and-a-quarter years. As with “Be What You Are,” “If You’re Ready (Come Go with Me)” and “Touch a Hand, Make a Friend” were written by what was now Stax’s preeminent songwriting team: Homer Banks, Raymond Jackson, and Carl Hampton.
Released in September 1973, “If You’re Ready (Come Go with Me)” was another lyrical gem from the pen of Homer Banks. An R&B chart topper that also poked its way into the pop Top 10, for Al Bell, the song was the pinnacle achievement in what had been, and would continue to be, an awesome string of Staple Singers records. “In ‘Come Go with Me,’” stresses Bell, “you hear the absolute completeness of what I was trying to pull together production-wise. I had finally gotten the sound that I was trying to get. The key to it was the influence of Raymond Jackson. He became the piece I needed to carry forth. I looked forward to the next sessions because I knew we had a sound that could cut in all directions in the marketplace.”
“If You’re Ready (Come Go with Me)” was the one song that Banks, Jackson, and Hampton had written in advance of the Staples session. Jackson played guitar on the demo, and was reluctantly coaxed by all concerned to play the lead on the actual recording. On the demo he had played the rhythmic lick heard on the breakdown near the end. At the session, he put individual notes to the rhythm, creating an unforgettable hook in the process. Mavis is the proverbial icing on the cake, scatting along with Raymond, and ultimately taking the song over the top.
The song itself was a deliberate reworking of some of the elements found in “I’ll Take You There.” “That was easy for me,” Hampton says, laughing. “I can write a followup perfectly, come right behind it and pop the charts again. I knew all it needed was a bass line. I think I’ll Take You There’ was more gutsy and more Staxy, but we put a little bit more meaning in ‘Come Go with Me.’ Homer went deep in his mind. The lyric was real heavy. I’m proud of that song.”
Mavis had a few more reservations. “I almost didn’t want to do that song because I said, ‘It sounds just like “I’ll Take You There.” We’re good enough that we don’t have to do that.’ Then Daddy said, ‘Mavis that’s all right, if you find something good, stick with it. A lot of James Brown and Curtis Mayfield stuff sounds the same.’ I tried to argue it down but then I looked at the lyric again. The lyrics were so tough!”
Apparently Homer Banks’s singing on the demo was also pretty impressive. “Homer would have some bad ad libbing on his demos,” continues Mavis. “I used some of Homer’s stuff because I knew Homer could phrase. Homer would put down a demo to make you sing better. You better sing, because his demo is gonna be better than what you’re doing if you don’t get up on it. Homer goes all through me.”
While “I’ll Take You There” was one long insouciant groove, “If You’re Ready” was more of a formally written and structured song. The Muscle Shoals section retained a bit of the reggae flavor from the earlier hit, but the groove and texture of “If You’re Ready (Come Go with Me)” comes off altogether differently, at least partially due to Al Bell and Terry Manning’s brilliant postproduction work. Manning’s carefree but rich acoustic guitar overdub is especially crucial to the final result.
“Touch a Hand, Make a Friend” was issued as a single in January 1974. It also soared up the charts, not stopping until it had reached numbers 3 and 23 on the R&B and pop listings, respectively. Both Hampton and Banks recall structuring “Touch a Hand” around Joe South’s “Games People Play.” Hampton came up with the idea while noodling on the piano, Jackson immediately jumped on it, and Banks had lyrics written within the hour. Tired of writing tunes that drew upon other people’s work, Hampton balked at presenting the song to the Staples. Fortunately, Banks and Jackson carried the day, and the Staples loved it. Everyone involved, from Al Bell and Terry Manning to the Muscle Shoals rhythm section and arranger Johnny Allen, came through with an unbelievably gorgeous track. Barry Beckett’s piano part, which quotes from the calypso tune “Down By the Seashore Sifting Sand,” is particularly praiseworthy; presumably Beckett’s line inspired Terry Manning’s marimba overdub.
Although “Touch a Hand, Make a Friend” was not released as a single until January 1974, the Staples’ vocals were added to the track a couple of weeks after the multiday rhythm session in Muscle Shoals in early October 1972. Tragically, it would be the only one of the three Staples hits written by Banks, Hampton, and Jackson that Raymond Jackson would hear in finished form.
A few weeks after the Muscle Shoals sessions, Jackson attempted to kill a rat that had burrowed down a tunnel in his backyard. Filling the hole with gasoline and then lighting a match, the songwriter was instantly engulfed in flames. He struggled for his life for two weeks in the hospital before finally succumbing on November 10.
“[‘Touch a Hand, Make a Friend’] has special significance to me,” relates Homer Banks, “because right before Raymond passed he had all the medicine in him and I guess he was hallucinating. When I went up to the hospital to see him he said he saw Jesus Christ and the Staple Singers singing ‘Touch a Hand, Make a Friend.’ That always has stuck with me. Two days later he passed away.” Jackson had just turned thirty-one. Banks had lost a childhood friend; along with Hampton he had also lost a writing and producing partner; and Stax, in general, lost one of its gentlest, most loving souls. It would be a while before all recovered.
Two-and-a-half weeks before Raymond Jackson’s death, the fate of Stax Records as a whole was effectively sealed when on October 24 Al Bell signed a distribution deal with CBS that he had been negotiating since June. Given CBS’s historic lack of involvement with rhythm and blues, it is not surprising that the New York mega-corporation was literally the last company Bell had spoken with about selling Stax. The fact that a deal was worked out at all shocked a lot of people in the record industry.
Raymond Jackson, COURTESY FANTASY, INC.
“During those days CBS was the larger-than-life white company,” points out Bell. “There were a lot of people who were not comfortable with CBS, and I was one of those people. That’s why CBS was last. What made me [ultimately] comfortable in dealing with CBS was my dialogue with Clive Davis. When I sat and talked with Clive in a hotel room one evening about the possibility of developing some sort of relationship with CBS, what I heard and felt from Clive made me feel a lot better about dealing with CBS simply because of Clive Davis. I could relate to Clive Davis, I respected Clive Davis as a record man. Even though he was an attorney, he still had a creative mind, and he had a sensitivity to the part of the business that I functioned in. He had an appreciation for our music. He had a genuine appreciation for Albert King. I didn’t think that CBS would have had that appreciation.”
Bell proposed that CBS simply buy Jim Stewart’s half of the company, but CBS’s lawyers felt that they would run into trouble with the then-current United States antitrust laws. Instead, an agreement was worked out whereby CBS would lend Al Bell $6 million4 which Bell would partially use to buy Jim Stewart’s half of the company. In return, commencing on October 24, 1972, CBS would distribute all releases on Stax, Volt, and Enterprise for a minimum period of ten years.5 According to Bell, CBS pledged that it would at least double the sales of Stax’s three main labels. The company’s more specialty-oriented imprints such as Partee, Respect, and Gospel Truth were explicitly left out of the deal.
CBS insisted that Jim Stewart must remain an executive with the company for the following five years, thereby ensuring in their minds continuity and continued success. In the meantime, Stewart was to receive from Stax $2.5 million up front, a promissory note for $1.5 million payable January 3, 1978, and then a further installment promissory note outlining sixty equal monthly payments for the balance (the final payment being due on December 1, 1977),6 bringing the total sale price of his half of the company up to $7.6 million. Bell also had to remain with Stax and could not enter into any chief executive or management function with any record company in the United States or its territories until Stax had repaid the $6 million loan to CBS. To make the deal fly, Union Planters National Bank, then owed $1.7 million by Stax, had to agree to subordinate this indebtedness to the $6 million CBS loan. Union Planters agreed to do this, understanding that Stax intended to use the CBS cash to expand and theoretically become that much more of a powerhouse within the music industry.7 All parties agreed that it was not to become public knowledge at either company that Jim Stewart had sold his equity to Al Bell.
“David Porter said to me,” offers Bell, “‘Man, don’t you let these people know what you’re doing because if you do, it’s going to be a problem. You’re gonna have jealousy among the people inside because we all grew up together.’ From that point forward my mind went to work. [In addition] I felt like and ultimately experienced that the white community in Memphis would have a problem with a black man sitting there owning that record company. That white-black issue was a serious concern.”
Theoretically everyone should have been happy.8 Over time Stewart would get his money and in five years his peace of mind, and AI Bell would continue to run and now wholly own the company that had become his very lifeblood. Through CBS, Stax would get access to the rack jobbers that largely controlled the record inventories at all major department stores; in the days before the big record store chains came on the scene, these retail operations serviced the majority of white consumers and moved serious numbers of LPs. Bell believed that the CBS deal would facilitate crossover sales of any number of Stax artists, as well as supporting in grand style his desire to expand Stax’s efforts in the world of rock, pop, country, and jazz. For CBS, the distribution deal would hopefully force the small mom-and-pop stores that in the main serviced the inner-city black population to come to CBS for Stax product and, while doing so, buy other CBS product such as the wealth of material the company had begun releasing through its Philadelphia International imprint, thereby accessing a segment of the music industry that had heretofore generally eluded it.
CBS’s director of special markets (i.e., black product) Logan Westbrooks recalls: “We were elated. The idea was that some of the methods and procedures that they were using, hopefully we could pick those up with CBS and do some of the same kinds of things. We thought that they were highly successful, that they were a specialized label that knew exactly what they were doing. The idea was, in bringing the might of the CBS distribution network, it would just be unlimited.”
Clive Davis, Logan Westbrooks, Jim Stewart, and Al Bell might have been happy, but Clarence Avant was upset. He had spent months negotiating the RCA deal with its then-president Rocco Laginestra. As far as he was concerned an agreement in principle had been made. “[Then] one day I got a telephone call,” says Avant. “It says, ‘Ain’t no more deal. Al Bell’s gonna go to CBS.’ That was his biggest fuckup he ever made as far as I’m concerned. The RCA deal was a helluva deal, a real big deal.”
According to Avant, RCA was offering $16 million in RCA stock for 80 percent of Stax; Bell and Stewart could sell the remaining 20 percent at any time between the first and the fifth year of the deal for up to $5 million more in stock. In the meantime, they would be able to continue to run Stax with total autonomy, and they would be paid annual salaries of $250,000 a year plus bonuses. This was some $160,000 a year before bonuses more than they had ever previously made. “It was unheard of,” a still perplexed Avant maintains. “That was more fucking stock in RCA than all the black guys in the world own together probably!” In retrospect, Bell and Stewart both wish they had followed Avant’s advice.9
Don Davis was also distressed at this turn of events. “The transition of Stax Records to CBS was one that I took very, very hard. To me that was the end of an age. To take this southern company and put it in the hands of CBS was blasphemy as far as I was concerned.”
Clive Davis’s career at CBS had been nothing short of phenomenal. When he took over as president of Columbia Records in 1967, with the exception of a handful of “folk-rock” artists such as Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel, CBS had yet to establish itself in any meaningful manner within the burgeoning arena of 1960s rock music. Davis was to change this in a big way, quickly signing Donovan, Big Brother and the Holding Company featuring Janis Joplin, Blood, Sweat and Tears, and, a little later, Santana, Johnny Winter and Chicago Transit Authority (known as simply Chicago by the group’s second album). In a very short period of time he had transformed Columbia into a rock powerhouse.
In 1971, together with Columbia’s vice president of marketing Bruce Lundvall, Davis began to consider how further to expand the activities of the Columbia Records Group. By this point in time, CBS was number one in virtually every field of the industry, including rock, country, easy listening, and jazz. What the company was missing out on was soul music. Although in the sixties the company had briefly flirted with two black-oriented custom labels, Okeh and Date, little of consequence was released through either operation and both had ceased activity. On their main labels, the only artist that appeared on the soul charts with any consistency was Sly and the Family Stone. In addition to Sly, other than Taj Mahal, O. C. Smith, and the Chambers Brothers, none of whom were serious soul chart artists in 1971, CBS had little in the way of an R&B roster.
Davis had ignored this area of the market early on in his career, feeling that it was far too dependent on singles, which were not nearly as profitable as full-length albums. This had all changed with Isaac Hayes’s recording of Hot Buttered Soul. Davis was also cognizant of the blaxploitation phenomenon and the subsequent success of black soundtrack albums such as Shaft. In conjunction with Lundvall, he logically concluded that CBS should move aggressively into R&B in the same fashion that Davis had done so successfully with rock some four years earlier. The first step was to hire someone who knew something about soul music. In late 1971 Logan Westbrooks, a six-year industry veteran most recently employed at Mercury Records as national R&B promotion manager, was appointed as director of special markets (a CBS euphemism for R&B). Westbrooks’s mandate, as he articulated it in his 1981 book The Anatomy of a Record Company: How to Survive the Record Business, was to “create a black marketing staff to penetrate the black market.”
Leaving no angle unexplored, CBS executive Larry Isaacson commissioned his alma mater, the Harvard Business School, to conduct a study and make recommendations as to whether CBS should, and how they might best, become a dominant force in soul music.10 Submitted to CBS on May 11, 1972, and formally titled “A Study of the Soul Music Environment Prepared for Columbia Records Group,” this report has since become known simply as The Harvard Report.
It has been alleged for years that the report suggested that CBS should, in the best-case scenario, buy either Stax or Motown, and that Stax was the more likely of the two to be purchased. It has been further alleged that in the event that neither black music concern could be purchased, CBS should distribute one of the two labels instead. Once an ongoing relationship was established, CBS could position itself to be able to purchase the company sometime in the future. Despite widespread belief in these allegations, these are not the conclusions drawn in the actual report.
The report estimates that the black music market was then worth $60 million annually in gross sales at the wholesale level. Albums and 45s each accounted for roughly 50 percent of that total, representing sales of some twelve million albums and sixty million soul singles each year. It was further estimated that soul music accounted for 7 to 10 percent of all record sales in the United States; Motown and Atlantic each accounted for 20 percent of that business, while Stax took 10 percent. The remaining 50 percent of the market was divided between a host of smaller companies.11
The report advised CBS that “The specialized national companies [Motown, Atlantic, and Stax] will provide [CBS with] the most formidable competition. They have an entrenched position and control half of the total market. They have most of the established Soul artists. Their management and professional staffs have extensive experience in this market, and a deep understanding of its subtleties. They operate through a highly sophisticated personal and informational network which they have built up over a period of many years. Finally, they have a profound understanding of the art form with which they work, and of its commercial possibilities. In fact, they have helped to shape it.”
The report also noted that CBS knew virtually nothing about the soul market and, in fact, had a rather negative image within the soul music industry that would need to be substantially altered: “CRG’s [Columbia Records Group] historic neglect of the Soul market has brought upon it some problems in respect to its image in this market. Interviews with people in the Soul music business indicate that CRG is perceived as an ultra-rich, ultra-white giant which has for the most part chosen to snub Blacks in the business. Blacks in the trade feel that CRG has heaped upon them the ultimate insult: that of ignoring their existence. Even when the slight involves seemingly superficial things (CRG fails to invite them to functions; DJ’s say they do not get free tickets to shows from CRG as do white DJ’s) these are seen as manifestations of a broader pattern. Further, they perceive a degree of arrogance in CRG promotion personnel who try to get airplay for a Soul product viewed by Black radio personnel as substandard. That these promotion personnel were almost always white did not help matters.”
The conclusion of the report was that soul music constituted a significant market that Columbia Records had heretofore ignored, and that it should immediately begin to aggressively pursue it. The report recommended a long-term strategy that would involve substantial start-up costs and lose money for the first two years. The Harvard MB As concluded that, if their recommendations were followed, CBS would break even by the third year and that by the end of year five (1978), CBS could make a profit of $1,401,000 on R&B sales and control 10 percent of the market.
The report’s recommended strategies to reach these goals included: (1) Expand external sources of product by augmenting present custom-label activity and increasing outside product resources; (2) Develop internal means of soul music product generation; and (3) Establish a semiautonomous soul music product group. The first recommendation could be interpreted to suggest making a distribution agreement with a label such as Stax, but elsewhere in the document it was stressed that the myriad number of indies operating on a scale much smaller than Motown, Atlantic, and Stax potentially provided CBS with readymade sources of talent (artists and producers) and executives with knowledge of this segment of the industry. The implication was that Motown, Atlantic, and Stax would be best left alone. Nowhere is it even remotely suggested that CBS attempt to distribute a company such as Stax with the objective of an ultimate takeover. In fact, The Harvard Report explicitly states: “Two alternative sets of recommendations were considered. The first was the acquisition of a company presently strong in the Soul music business. This strategy is not a feasible one for Columbia for the following reasons: (1) The dominance of the CBS organization in the communications and entertainment industry could possibly precipitate anti-trust action if it were to attempt the acquisition of a major company in the music industry. (2) Of the three companies strong enough to offer Columbia a base from which to operate, Atlantic has been bought out by the Kinney group, Stax was acquired by Gulf and Western, and it is rumored that Motown is not in a position to contemplate an acquisition at this time.”
The second alternative considered but ultimately rejected by the Harvard study group was the acquisition of presently established talent. This was viewed negatively due to the high costs of such acquisitions, the risks that the acquired artists might not produce quality material for Columbia, the lack of a base structure to properly promote or market the product, the possibility of inspiring other major labels into a bidding war, and the possibility that payment of large advances to newly signed R&B talent might lead to jealousies among artists presently under contract and lead to consequent escalation of their money demands.
The report specifically recommended that CBS start by building an internal, semiautonomous black-music division and establish a presence in the market initially through starting custom labels in conjunction with noted producers or performers, working toward the signing and development of its own homegrown black talent. The custom label deals CBS made for Philadelphia International with producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff and for T-Neck Records with the Isley Brothers were precisely the sort of arrangements the report was recommending.
Taking over Stax or putting the company out of business seems to have been the furthest thing from the minds of the authors of The Harvard Report. The addendum submitted by Marnie Tattersall gives the strongest indication that the report’s compilers envisioned an independent Stax label continuing to exist as a competitor. Tattersall was an ambitious MBA student who was ultimately hired to work in CBS’s Black Music Division by Logan Westbrooks. She recommended a much more aggressive approach whereby after five years CBS would control 15 percent of the R&B market, netting a profit of $2,280,000. The pie chart that accompanies this set of recommendations shows Atlantic controlling 15 percent of the market (down 5 percent from their present position) and Motown retaining its current 20 percent share while Stax was projected to increase its share of the market to 15 percent. CBS’s projected 15 percent would not come from either Stax or Motown; it would come partially at the expense of Atlantic and mostly at the expense of the remaining smaller independents. The Harvard Report actually envisioned a very healthy, strong, independent Stax five years down the road!
Clive Davis has long maintained that he never actually read the document. In conversation with Logan Westbrooks for the latter’s book The Anatomy of a Record Company: How to Survive the Record Business, Davis stated that, with regard to his move into black music, “It was not based on any blueprint. … I went straight ahead on creative feel, intuitive reasoning and common sense, not because I had any study or blueprint. I’ve never read that study, I’ve never seen it, and I’ve certainly never used it as a blueprint. [The study] did not form the basis for any move that I made.”
Al Bell does not believe that Davis never read The Harvard Report and, in fact, believes that Davis supplied Harvard with some of their most crucial statistics. After the “Stax Sound in Chi-Town” program the previous summer, Bell had compiled a number of statistics generated during the course of the campaign. When asked to speak at NARM (National Association of Record Merchants) later that same year, Bell chose as his subject “Black is beautiful … business.” The essence of his talk was how much money retailers could accrue if they properly marketed black LPs. He particularly focused on the fact that black LPs could sell through outlets such as Sears supplied through rack jobbers. Alongside his talk, he distributed a booklet titled “Black Is Beautiful” as supporting evidence that contained the results of the “Stax Sound in Chi-Town” campaign. Clive Davis was supposedly among those in attendance.
“I’m told that Clive took that,” exclaims Bell, “and that’s what he gave to Harvard, the book and all the statistical data that I had in there on the sales that we had realized in the Sears stores during that ‘Stax Sound in Chi-Town’ campaign.”12
While The Harvard Report did not recommend it, Columbia Records, after Davis left the company in May 1973, very clearly was instrumental in putting Stax out of business, and, if Bell had never made the distribution deal with CBS, it is likely that Stax would still be alive and well. Besides ultimately leading to the disintegration of Stax, Columbia’s entry into the soul music marketplace had extensive ramifications for black music in general. As predicted in The Harvard Report, other majors followed Columbia’s lead. Within a few years virtually every major record label had a black music division. Also, as predicted by the Harvard group, these black music divisions were largely staffed from the ranks of the smaller, independent R&B companies, a number of which found that they simply couldn’t compete anymore. CBS lead the charge. By 1980 CBS had over 125 R&B acts under contract, comprising approximately one-third of its total artist roster.
Logan Westbrooks recalls that the way he and other CBS executives found out about the Stax agreement was highly unusual. Usually in a deal of this magnitude, Clive Davis would have consulted with a number of department heads before asking the lawyers to draw up an agreement. In the case of the Stax agreement, Davis put it together entirely by himself. Outside of a few rumors that were mostly discounted, no one at the company had a clue what was going on until early one October morning, when all the department heads were summoned to the CBS conference room. “Basically he dumped the deal in our laps” is how Westbrooks remembers the meeting.
The ultimate responsibility for making the deal work fell on Jim Tyrrell, the vice president of marketing for Epic Records and all custom labels. Tyrrell is a fascinating individual. A bass player active on the New York R&B scene in the 1950s and 1960s, Tyrrell had played sessions for James Brown, the Fiestas, Inez and Charlie Foxx, the Manhattans, and Maxine Brown, among others, and had spent two years in the Apollo Theatre house band before moving over to the business side of the industry in 1965. After stints at International Tape Cartridge and Buddah-Kama Sutra, Tyrrell came to CBS as a product manager in the merchandising department in 1970. When he was promoted to the position of vice president of marketing for Epic Records he was the first black executive at that level in CBS’s history.
Tyrrell saw problems with the deal from day one. “It was clear,” recalls Tyrrell, “that [Davis and Bell] each had a thought in mind. But it was also clear that each of the individuals’ thoughts were never fully reconciled [with each other]. They didn’t [actually] do the deal [although] they wanted to do the deal badly. Clive had the notion that Al was going to produce beautiful music and that the relationship would be not unlike as it was with the Gamble-Huff enterprises. Al, on the other hand, had megalomania.”
Tyrrell went on to explain that, as he saw it, Bell wanted to build an empire his own way on his own terms and that, in Bell’s mind, CBS was simply a conduit that Bell could use to get into the rack jobbers. This is not inconsistent with Al Bell’s own comments. It was not, though, stressed Tyrrell, consistent with Clive Davis’s concept.
“The visionaries who made the deal,” stresses Tyrrell, “never thought it through. As the operations man, I had to make it work. I was in need of reconciliation. For weeks we worked back and forth with Al Bell to try to hammer out an operating plan, if not an operating deal, to find out that what Al was immediately interested in was a large placement of catalogue and that ain’t possible.”
At a major company like CBS, money is available for the marketing of records in two fashions. When a record is initially released there is a national kickoff promotion program. If the record becomes a hit, additional funds become available for the promotion and support of additional inventory placements. Secondarily there are what is known as distributor and co-op funds that, in essence, are incentive funds to get rack jobbers and/or distributors to take large quantities of product in exchange for advertising support.
“Al had a notion,” explains Tyrrell, “that the co-op funds were available to him. I’m a real team player. CBS was my organization and I was not going to put the control of coop funds, which we use to control our customers, in the hands of Al Bell, or even give him a notion that he could do such a thing. Al just put a full-court press on trying to get a hold of these co-op dollars. That was all that he wanted to know about because he wanted to use that as leverage to place catalogue orders. In other words rack jobbers, whom he knew we had good access to, should take great quantities [of Stax product] and this way, within three or four months, he would have a positive cash flow.”
Tyrrell refused to do business in this manner. For his taste, it was too speculative. Forcing the product on the rack jobbers’ floor doesn’t mean that the product ultimately sells, and it exposes a record company to the possibility of massive returns. Tyrrell wanted net sales, and, from his perspective, Al Bell was simply too impatient. Further compounding the problem according to Tyrrell was that there was an inordinate amount of pre-CBS Stax product glutting the market that needed to be cleared out before it made sense for CBS to place a substantial quantity of new inventory in the racks.
Putting aside the possibility of larger motivations on CBS’s part, the business and operations philosophies of Jim Tyrrell and Al Bell were simply too far apart to lead to anything but a fractious relationship. In many respects, it was a classic case of the ill fit between a major corporation’s mode of operating and the shoot-from-the-hip way an independent label often works.
Not helping matters was a strategic telephone call placed by Johnny Baylor to Tyrrell. “Johnny calls me up,” recounts Tyrrell, “and says, ‘You better do whatever we say. You got to put out some goods because if you don’t do it, you’re gonna have to take a helicopter back and forth to work!’ I said, ‘Oh, okay’ But I was cool because I was born and raised in Harlem. I’ve got friends! I called my friends and said, ‘I don’t know who this guy is but I know some of his people.’ I knew Dino and I knew Ted Storey before he went to jail the first time. I went through some folks that knew Ted and they told Ted to back off and Teddy told Johnny, which led to a phone call a month later with Johnny saying, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I said, ‘You didn’t ask!’”
Troubled days lay ahead.
Within a month of the consummation of the CBS distribution deal, Isaac Hayes was performing in Lake Tahoe, a concert that would be recorded for a double live set that both CBS and Stax were certain would generate large revenues for both corporations. For this performance, the Isaac Hayes Movement included its usual eight-piece rhythm section (nine counting Hayes), an expanded eight-piece horn section, and Hayes’s regular four female background vocalists (Pat Lewis, Diane Lewis, Rose Williams, and Barbara McCoy, billed as Hot, Buttered Soul, Ltd.). As was by now his common practice, Isaac augmented the Movement by hiring local orchestral musicians who were now being conducted on the road by Onzie Horn, Sr.
Providing visual support in the form of interpretive dance were seven dancers headed by David Porter’s niece, Helen Washington. Four years earlier, Washington had been doing time in the Tennessee State Prison for Women in Nashville for five counts of larceny. On hearing of Washington’s plight from David Porter, Hayes wrote to the warden of the prison promising to do everything he could to help Washington if she was released. On that promise, Washington was given her walking papers after serving five years. After a short, frustrating period trying to find work, Washington was signed to an East Memphis songwriting contract and went on the road with Isaac. Little came of her songwriting efforts but, having shaved her head in emulation of Isaac, she provided an intriguing visual aspect to Hayes’s performances. Washington became personally involved with Johnny Baylor and consequently signed a management contract with Baylor and an artist contract with KoKo Records, although no recordings by her were ever released.
Isaac was scheduled to perform two shows each night on November 25 and 26 at the Sahara Hotel in Lake Tahoe. On the twenty-first he provided color commentary for the Muhammad Ali-Bob Foster fight staged at the same hotel. Stax chose to record Isaac’s second night and captured a stunning performance. Included are classic Hayes reinterpretations of Jose Feliciano’s version of “Light My Fire,” Bacharach-David’s “The Windows of the World” (which Isaac had recently performed in England on a Bacharach-David television special), Bill Withers’s “Use Me” and “Ain’t No Sunshine,” Carole King’s “It’s Too Late,” Roberta Flack’s version of Ewan MacColl’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” T-Bone Walker’s “Stormy Monday Blues,” and Traffic’s “Feelin’ Alright.” Those tracks alone could have been recorded as a new Hayes studio album.
Helen Washington places a cape on Isaac Hayes’s shoulders live in concert, COURTESY THE STAX HISTORICAL PRESERVATION COMMISSION.
Augmenting this newer material in his repertoire were indelible treatments of three tracks from Shaft, plus Hayes’s recent singles “Never Can Say Goodbye,” “The Look of Love,” “The Theme from the Men” and its flip side, “Type Thang,” a new Hayes composition entitled “The Come On,” and an extended treatment of the blues standard “Rock Me Baby” that Isaac had included on his very first solo album, 1968’s Presenting Isaac Hayes. When released in the spring of 1973, complete with liner notes by jazz critic Leonard Feather, Live at the Sahara Tahoe predictably shot to the number 1 position on Billboard’s Soul LP. charts and number 14 on the Pop LP. charts, selling just over 550,000 copies.
Four days after Isaac closed out at the Sahara, Johnny Baylor set a number of forces in motion that would have considerable consequences for Isaac Hayes and everyone else who was employed by Stax Records.
Of the $6 million CBS lent to Stax, at least $1 million was paid to Johnny Baylor.13 From Al Bell’s perspective, he was simply making good on his promise to compensate Baylor and the KoKo team for working Stax product in the marketplace over the past twelve months without charge. “We made the deal with CBS,” claims Bell, “and I had to call Johnny—Johnny Baylor didn’t know how much money I even owed him—and tell him how much money I owed him. He said, ‘You owe me that much money?’ I said, ‘Yeah, that’s what I owe you man.’ ‘Well Dick, let me come to Memphis and get my money!’ ”14
Be that as it may, the moneys paid to Johnny Baylor were not accounted for in any normal, straightforward manner, and very shortly would be of considerable interest to the IRS and Union Planters National Bank. According to testimony in the Stax bankruptcy trial given by the company’s controller, Ed Pollack (who was granted immunity in exchange for his testimony), Al Bell instructed Pollack, beginning for the royalty period ending June 25, 1972, to pay Baylor’s KoKo royalties on gross sales and not take into account returns of KoKo product or free goods! Bell also told Pollack to make the payments to Baylor personally rather than to KoKo, and to more than double the KoKo royalty rate. KoKo had previously been paid 11 cents on every 45 and 49 cents on every LP. sold; now Baylor was being paid 26.22 cents per 45 and $1.85 per LP.15 Baylor was to be paid retroactively under these terms for all KoKo shipments prior to this date, less royalties already paid. Pollack went on to say that no such agreement existed for anyone else at Stax, including Isaac Hayes.
Pollack also testified that he never saw a contract for Baylor. There wasn’t one. Both Baylor and Al Bell testified that they had an oral agreement, although Stax lawyer Craig Benson stated—in a deposition read in the lawsuit brought against Baylor several years later by Stax trustee A. J. Calhoun—that Bell asked him in April 1973 to prepare a contract backdated to October 15, 1968, embodying these terms.
For the statements ending June 25, 1972, and December 31, 1972, under these new terms Stax owed Baylor/KoKo $688,917.21 and $881,968.74. Taken together, the royalties and promotional fees totaled $2,710,038.83, with promotional fees being a flat $1 million.16 This is extraordinarily high compensation, given that Bell and Stewart were only making $90,000 a year, and that the next highest-paid Stax executive was Ed Pollack, who was paid $39,536 in 1972. Not a penny of this was deducted as an ordinary and necessary business expense on Stax’s 1972 income tax return.17 In fact, Ed Pollack was told to write a letter instructing Stax’s New York accounting firm, Weissbarth, Altman and Miller, not to file the Baylor payments as an income-tax deduction. After consulting with his attorney, Pollack refused to sign the letter. Weissbarth, Altman and Miller, also upon their lawyer’s advice, gave the Stax account up in April 1973 when, after persistent inquiry, they could obtain only vague and evasive explanations regarding the moneys paid to Johnny Baylor.18 The account was taken over by Laventhol, Krekstein, Horwath and Horwath.
These details came to light in the course of the Stax bankruptcy trial. Union Planters attorney Wynn Smith attempted to prove that most of the $2.6 million paid to Baylor for royalties and promotional work was actually money rightfully belonging to Stax. He believed Al Bell was laundering these funds through Baylor as part of a grand scheme in which Bell would let the company go bankrupt and defraud Union Planters and several other creditors out of moneys they were owed by Stax.19 In 1974 testimony before a U.S. grand jury investigating Stax for possible tax fraud, Pollack stated that when he asked Al Bell why Johnny Baylor was being paid this amount of money in this fashion, “Bell replied, ‘What’s the price you put on a man’s life?’” The IRS report, from which this quote is taken, goes on to say that Bell informed Pollack that Jim Stewart’s life had been threatened by certain people who wanted to take over the company and that Baylor had been called in to prevent it. When I asked Al Bell about this in 1996, he simply said that Pollack’s claim was not true.
The house of Stax began to come tumbling down in Birmingham, Alabama, on November 30, 1972, when Johnny Baylor was detained by the FBI after stepping off a plane arriving from Memphis. While going through security in Memphis it was discovered that Baylor had $130,000 in cash and a check from Stax for $500,000. This seemed suspicious, and Memphis authorities phoned ahead to the FBI in Birmingham. Three days earlier Al Bell had requested a check written out to himself for $150,000. He then asked Pollack and Dino Woodard (the latter for security purposes) to go to the Union Planters branch at 100 North Main where the loan officer in charge of the Stax account, Joseph Harwell, was based and cash the check in denominations of fifty- and one-hundred-dollar bills. This check was charged to a Stax account labeled “loan to officers,” which, according to the IRS, was never paid back. Pollack testified in court that this was extremely unusual. Presumably this is where the cash originated that was being carried by Johnny Baylor on the Memphis-Birmingham flight. Baylor testified in court that he did not remember where all the cash had come from, that he had carried thousands of dollars with him from city to city since the beginning of 1972, and that he had just won $50,000 in three days betting on horse races. On the morning of November 30, Pollack cut a check for Baylor totaling $500,000. This check was originally charged to the Stax “loan to officers” account. It was subsequently charged as a royalty payment before being moved to a promotional fees account.
After the FBI interrogated Baylor, the Internal Revenue Service elected to seize the funds and, at that point, began to investigate Stax Records for possible income-tax fraud, interviewing Stax controller Ed Pollack on the very next day.20 The IRS subsequently seized several further payments to Baylor totaling over $1,850,000, with one of the net results being that Luther Ingram’s career was, in effect, put on ice for the next few years while Baylor fought the IRS. He initially won his fight, convincing the court that the money was legitimately his, and the IRS returned slightly over $600,000 to him (the rest of the money was kept as the income-tax liability on the money he received from Stax).21
Despite these problems with the IRS and the FBI, both Bell and Baylor were convinced that Baylor would get his money back and that nothing too serious would result from the investigations. In the meantime, the label had plenty to look forward to. Stax was getting ready to release the Wattstax film, two double albums of Wattstax material, and several Wattstax-related singles. The company had moved forcefully into the arenas of gospel, comedy, and country in the past year, and, with the signing of the Ardent deal, would hopefully make significant advances in the world of white rock. Now that Stax was aligned with a rock album powerhouse like CBS, the latter should only be a matter of time. Little did anyone at the company imagine that CBS would be engaging them in economic strangulation within a year-and-a-half, and that, following upon the Baylor airport incident, the IRS, through the U.S. Attorney’s Office, would hound Stax until it was bankrupt.
Meanwhile, life for Stax and its artists continued as usual. Isaac Hayes busied himself with his usual Christmastime charity efforts, personally delivering groceries to needy families; and Al Bell basked in the fact that he was awarded a National Pacesetter Award by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Office of Minority Business Enterprises. The Pacesetters Award honors the accomplishments of minority group members who have established successful business enterprises. Bell was also included in Ebony’s list of the “100 Most Influential Blacks” in the United States. Although Stax sales were a little bit off the peak of 1971 (how many years does any record company get a Shaft?), the company still grossed $11,798,292.22 The good ship Stax looked as healthy as ever and, with new albums and singles due from Isaac Hayes, the Staple Singers, and the Dramatics, the label appeared poised for a banner year in 1973.
1. Isaac Hayes was cited as Best Male Vocalist and as composer of the Best Musical Score for a Motion Picture; the Staple Singers were named Best Vocal Group; the award for Best Gospel Group went to Maceo Woods and the Christian Tabernacle Choir; Dave Clark was named Best Promotion Man and also received a Special Humanitarian Award for Outstanding Contributions and Achievement to Black Arts and Culture; Al Bell was voted Record Company Executive of the Year, and, capping it all off, Stax was honored as Record Company of the Year.
2. Jackson’s annual Black Business and Cultural Exposition had debuted in 1969. In each subsequent year he had received substantial support from Stax Records.
3. As was the case with Booker T. and the MG’s, Mavis found it particularly difficult to swallow the fact that Stax was unwilling to let her share in the publishing of her own compositions, and yet Don Davis retained all of his publishing through Groovesville Music. Her response was to simply take her first two compositions, “I’m Tired of You Doing Me Wrong” and “You’re All I Need,” off the Only for the Lonely album and refuse to record subsequent solo efforts for Stax.
4. Taking the RCA stock offer as his benchmark, Bell had originally been asking CBS for $15 million dollars for full ownership of Stax. In the course of the negotiations with Davis, that figure got whittled down to the $6 million Bell ultimately settled for.
5. The actual wording of the deal gave CBS distribution rights until three-and-a-half years after Stax had paid off the $6 million loan or until November 30, 1982, if Stax had paid the loan off by that date. Bell was not very comfortable with such a long-term agreement, but seeing as he had not been able to make a deal with anyone else, he felt he ultimately had no choice.
6. According to controller Ed Pollack’s testimony in the Stax bankruptcy trial, Stewart was paid $1,175,000 on December 22, 1972, and $62,500 a month afterward. Payments continued through July or August 1974 when Stax’s cash flow made further payments impossible. These payments were recorded on a private ledger so that Stax’s bookkeeper, and anyone else for that matter, would not know that Stewart had sold his part of the company to Bell.
7. Among the exhibits in the Stax bankruptcy trial is a note from Al Bell to CBS that states that the purpose of the $6 million loan was “to use portions of the loan proceeds as a down payment against the agreed price for the repurchase of the outstanding shares of our stock currently owned by James Stewart; to acquire a recording studio; to purchase a small independent record label, which we are now distributing; to fund artist signings and for working capital purposes.”
8. In addition to the principals, the Big 6 from the company’s first period—Steve Cropper, Booker T. Jones, Al Jackson, Duck Dunn, David Porter, and Isaac Hayes—also benefited from the deal. According to Al Bell, there had been a lingering dispute between the six and Jim Stewart with regard to remuneration they felt they were due under the old producers’ pool agreement. Bell saw the CBS money as an opportunity to put this lingering problem permanently to rest.
9. After Stax went bankrupt, Avant went to every major label trying to get a production deal for Al Bell. He couldn’t get a nibble.
10. The Harvard Report was not commissioned by Clive Davis as I and several others have erroneously written in the past. Totaling twenty-four pages of text plus another eighteen pages of appendices and a ten-page addendum submitted separately by one of the members of the study group, the report cost less than $5,000 and involved six students carrying out research over the course of a half year. The existence of this report first was made public in 1974 when CBS and Stax were suing each other over their distribution agreement. Stax’s legal team interpreted the existence of the report as evidence that CBS intended to “buy” the soul market or at least buy out Stax itself. There have been many other theories spread by those who have had secondhand knowledge of the report. However, after a ten-year search, I finally acquired a copy of this legendary document in early 1996; I am now able to correct some of my earlier statements about the report that were based on incorrect, secondhand information.
11. A further indication of the size of the soul music market in the early 1970s comes from a CBS presentation at its annual convention in 1974. During the course of the presentation, it was stated that, whereas in 1964 there were only 30 R&B stations nationwide, in 1974 the number had grown to over 250. Stax had played a large role in this growth.
12. Marnie Tattersall, who was the most active member of the Harvard study group, does not remember CBS making any booklet or statistics available to them.
13. Between the execution of the CBS deal in October 1972 and August 1973, Baylor was paid over $2.6 million by Stax. How much of this came directly from the CBS loan and how much came from subsequent royalty payments by CBS to Stax is a matter of conjecture and, although a lot of time was spent arguing about this at Stax’s bankruptcy trial, is ultimately a moot point.
14. For the record, only one KoKo 45 was ever distributed through CBS, Luther Ingram’s “I’ll Be Your Shelter (in Time of Storm),” which was already in the marketplace at the time the deal was struck. Baylor did not approve of the CBS deal, and consequently all KoKo product continued to go through the independent distribution network alongside Stax’s Partee, Respect, and Gospel Truth lines. Due to Baylor’s impending IRS difficulties, Koko basically ceased operation in the summer of 1973 for a three-year period. Luther Ingram’s career never recovered from this hiatus.
15. To put this in perspective, Isaac Hayes was only being paid 12 cents per 45 and $1.00 per album sold!
16. Untangling the morass of Stax finances so many years after the fact via bits and pieces of information from a number of sources is fraught with difficulty. The figure cited above is derived from concrete knowledge I have that Baylor was paid $500,000 November 30, 1972; $500,000 March 6, 1973; $1,000,000 April 10, 1973; $541,409.54 on July 24, 1973; and $168,629.29 on August 3, 1973. That said, I have also run across a statement in the files of Stax’s New York accountant that suggests the total figure is $2,682,323. Ultimately the difference is not significant. Whatever the precise figure, these checks were variously charged as “loans to officers,” royalties, and promotional fees.
17. Bell and Stewart wrote in a letter dated September 17, 1973, to their New York City accountants, Laventhol, Krekstein, Horwath & Horwath, “We have instructed you that the following expenses, which were paid or incurred during the year ended December 31, 1972, are not to be claimed as deductions on the tax returns for the year ended December 31, 1972 as prepared by you. (a.) Royalties and promotion fees paid to, or accrued in the name of J. Baylor and/or KoKo Records in the amount of $2,682,323. (b.) Royalties accrued in the name of Dino Woodard in the amount of $88,577.” There is a virtually identical letter dated September 16, 1974, with the same instructions re: “(a.) Royalties and advances paid to, or accrued in the names of J. Baylor, D. Woodard, T. Storey, J. Thomas and/or KoKo Records in the amount of $494,028. (b.) Salary paid to T. Storey in the amount of $13,115.” Just as curious as Stax’s desire not to claim these payments as tax deductions was the fact that Baylor took no tax deductions, aside from attorney’s fees, for any expenses incurred in his work: no expenses for traveling, for other employees, or for any other outlays. For the record, for the week ending November 26, 1972, both Dino Woodard and Ted Storey appear on Stax’s payroll, Woodard pulling in a $50,000 per year salary, Storey earning $15,500 per year. This is the only time they show up on Stax’s books. Controller Ed Pollack told the IRS that Woodard refused to take his checks. “I just felt that—boom—I’d rather have mine in a lump sum,” states Woodard, adding cryptically, “We made some agreements.”
18. Howard Comart of Weissbarth, Altman and Miller told a U.S. grand jury while testifying under immunity that Bell may have said with regard to the money paid Baylor that “He is worth a million dollars for what he has done.”
19. In an affidavit filed in a later court case where Stax trustee A. J. Calhoun was suing Johnny Baylor over these funds, an investigator hired by Union Planters named Roger Shellebarger stated unequivocally with regard to Baylor’s royalty payments, “There is nothing in the books, accounts and business records of Stax to justify the unreasonable royalty statements allegedly prepared by Stax for KoKo Records. To the contrary, such royalty payments are illogical, irrational, without fair consideration and without legitimate business purpose, and could not logically have been paid for their stated purpose. In short, these payments and the documents which reflect such payments are a mere sham and pretense for huge payments of Stax moneys to Johnny Baylor without adequate consideration or explanation.” Shellebarger went on to make the same claim with regard to the $1 million Baylor was paid for his promotional services.
20. In the spring of 1995 I requested under the Freedom of Information Act the FBI files on Johnny Baylor and Stax. On February 12, 1996, the FBI sent me a letter stating that it had “no record responsive to my request” with regard to Johnny Baylor. I immediately appealed this response, citing the IRS file number that I had uncovered in the court proceedings and the fact that the FBI had certainly interviewed Baylor in Birmingham on November 30, 1972. At the time this book was going to press I still had not received a response to my appeal.
21. On January 27, 1977, Baylor was subsequently sued by the receiver at Stax who argued, as had Union Planters in Stax’s bankruptcy trial, that the money was fraudulently paid to Baylor as part of a scheme to launder money out of Stax Records. Baylor wasn’t so lucky this time, and on October 25, 1978, he was forced to turn over the approximately $800,000 that he had left to what was now a defunct Stax.
22. This is the figure that was reported on Stax’s 1972 corporate income tax return. Al Bell claimed in an undated speech (most likely 1975) labeled “Corporate Objective” that Stax had grossed $12,226,000 in 1972. The difference in the two figures is not that significant.