Documentary is story of Memphis — and America
“We as a Black people have made something fantastic.”
Those words can be heard in “Ailey,” a 2021 feature documentary directed by Brooklyn-based filmmaker Jamila Wignot. The speaker, in vintage interview footage, is Alvin Ailey himself, the pioneering African American dancer and choreographer. Ailey’s chosen form of artistic expression, modern dance, is regarded as sophisticated and metropolitan, yet Ailey said his work was steeped in his childhood immersion in the blues and church traditions of the rural South.
“We as a Black people have made something fantastic” is a declaration that recurs, in various forms and in different words, throughout Wignot’s latest work, “STAX: Soulsville U.S.A.,” a documentary celebration/postmortem that premieres in four parts on Monday and Tuesday nights on HBO/ Max.
Also emerging from the soil of the rural South (Stax’s white founder, Jim Stewart, calls himself “a hillbilly from Tennessee”), the Memphis soul label has a deserved reputation as a place where Black and white artists collaborated on writing, performing and recording some of the greatest popular music of the past century. In the words of the white guitarist Steve Cropper, who is one of many Stax veterans interviewed for the series: “At Stax, there was no color.”
Yet the documentary asserts that Stax’s identity ultimately was “too Black” (to quote former company coowner Al Bell) to save the studio from the wrecking ball after the white establishment — in Memphis and at CBS Records, in New York — became hostile to the company’s increasing independence and success. “I’m proud to represent the city of Memphis, black and white,” said Isaac Hayes, in a press conference, when he returned home after winning the Best Original Song Oscar for Shaft. “And we should take it upon ourselves to be the model city which we say were are.” Instead, the documentary suggests, Stax was betrayed, disrespected — shafted.
In Wignot’s telling, this rise-and-fall is not just the story of Stax or a story of Memphis but a story of America: a broken promise — a hand held out, then withdrawn (see also: Emancipation followed by Reconstruction). Stax branded itself as “Soulsville, U.S.A.,” but in the context of the documentary, the phrase is more than just a snappy (or fingersnappy) slogan. “U.S.A.” becomes a different type of brand — a claim of ownership.
This grim message takes nothing away from the beautiful sounds produced at 926 E. Mclemore — what Al Bell calls the “great authentic music art” of “creative and rare people,” many of whom wandered into Stax from the surrounding neighborhood after Stewart converted an old movie theater into a studio in 1960, and his sister and company investor, Estelle Axton, opened an adjacent record shop (where Cropper worked as a clerk before venturing into the studio).
Expertly and incisively constructed, the documentary is frequently joyful and exuberant, thanks to its liberal use of vintage performance footage, fromthe-vaults recordings and archival photographs showcasing such talents as Rufus and Carla Thomas, Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Johnnie Taylor and more. “I just walked right into my dream,” remembers Booker T. Jones, future leader of Stax hitmakers Booker T. & the MG’S, who was pulled from algebra class by his friend, future songwriter David Porter, to play baritone saxophone on Stax’s first soul single. “There I was, playing on a record. My dream came true when I was 14 years old.”
Working with a mix of Memphis and out-of-town crew, Wignot augments the old material with many new interviews with Stax veterans, notably the uncompromising Jones; the charming Carla Thomas; irrepressible Bettye Crutcher; ace songsmith David Porter; and recent Grammy-winner Deanie Parker, the former Stax publicity director who is not just a key founder of the must-visit Stax Museum of American Soul Music — the phoenix that was resurrected from the rubble of the razed original building — but, arguably, the embodiment of the Stax spirit — the conscience that wouldn’t let Memphis forget that the death of Stax in 1975 was a stain on the city if not a literal crime.
Says Parker: “Those with the power, they wanted Stax Records to be erased.” Jones, meanwhile, tells Wignot that the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis in 1968 exposed the fact that “something was amiss” within the seeming utopia of Stax, however hopeful the symbolism of its revered interracial house band, Booker T. & the MG’S.
“The relationship that we had in the studio didn’t happen outside the studio,” Jones says, adding that the belief that mainstream society’s embrace of Black-led music meant that racism was diminishing “was not the truth.”
The Stax story has been told many times before, in books and in films. Rob Bowman, author of “Soulsville, U.S.A. – The Story of Stax Records,” was a key contributor to the new project, and appears frequently on camera; and Wignot borrows some footage from “Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story,” a 155minute film directed by Morgan Neville and Memphis’ Robert Gordon (also the author of a book on Stax history) that, until now, was the definitive documentary on the subject.
Wignot’s film, which places Stax’s triumphs and troubles within an encompassing story of greater Memphis (the 1968 sanitation strike, the assassination of King), may be especially valuable for those for whom the narrative and its many strands (the tragic Otis Redding/bar-kays plane crash, the jubilant Wattstax concert) are fresh. Which probably actually means “most people.” Given HBO’S reach, it’s possible that millions of people for the first time will hear Carla Thomas croon “Gee Whiz,” which is justification enough for any project.