Popularity: 1
Vote:   | As a 14 or 15-year-old kid, I was just in awe and they were like 22 or 25 but those were my teachers. They were, like, "sing this song" and "this chord." |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | Back in those days I was always a fan of Sam Cooke who, I guess, when I got into the business had just left the Soul Stirrers and started his [pop] career. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Everyone was coming to the club then - Wilson Pickett, Isaac Hayes came there a few times and anyone who was coming into play the Colosseum or the Auditorium would come by after hours. It got to be known as an entertainers' hang-out - where people could jam and have a good time. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | Growing up in Memphis and listening to all kinds of music and dreaming... So that was one of the first times I wrote a complete song and set it to music and the whole bit. From then on, I was busy with it. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | I did a role in a movie called "Together For Days." I just found out recently that Samuel L. Jackson was in it! |
Popularity: -2
Vote: | I felt a little uncomfortable because, when I went in to the military, I was the main male vocalist they had and when I came out they had like two or three vocalists. Otis came in when I was in the military, too. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | I spent a year and a half in Hawaii, 6 months Stateside and my Stax contract was retroactive so I started recording again. When I came back from training, I cut as much stuff as I could in 2 weeks, which was then released as singles. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | I stayed with them for about a year up there and, at night, worked over in Long Island at a club called The High Hat Club which was like a pseudo jazz / blues place. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | I was doing all of the production all of the writing - everything - and I was taking it on a silver platter to them - "Can you put this out?" I thought I could do that myself; I knew the record businesss so I invested in myself. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | I wear a lot of different hats - from writer to producer and artist. We all do 5 or 6 jobs, everything from creating our own graphic design to actually recording and the whole bit. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | Isaac and I, Carla Thomas and David Porter were in a chorale-type group called The Teen-Town Singers and we did a radio show on saturday at WDIA - the other part of the show was B.B. King, he had a show there also ! |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | It's been a rollercoaster ride. There have been some great moments and some low points... like when I was leaving Stax. That's when I actually thought of getting out of the business. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | My parents had problems but I didn't! |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | Oh yeah! Al Jackson, Booker T.... we were all part of the Booker T. Washington School and I think Isaac was across the city at Melrose. But we all knew each other and Booker and I also went to the same church. He was younger, but he was the church organist there for a while. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | Some of my other heroes around that time were, oddly enough, Frank Sinatra, Nat Cole and people like that - I was always more inclined to listen to ballads. |
Popularity: -3
Vote: | The first song that I wrote was when I was with The Del Rios. I was like 14 years old but I was always putting my thoughts down on paper even before then because it was like an escape - a way of unleashing all the stuff. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | There was an exchange programme going on between Alantic and Stax, that was when Judy Clay came in to do a session - which is how "Private Number" came about. During one session she was low on material so they said: "Do you have anything that Judy can do?" |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | There was some scene in The Blues Brothers movie, when they had the chicken wire across the front of the stage, and it was almost like that. They had a big guard rail around the stage, which kept the college kids from getting on... we had some good times. |
Popularity: -3
Vote: | We left Gulf and Western and went with CBS and the same thing happened. We had a kind of music that they didn't know how to market - the main market for the music was still in the South East - only Motown had blanketed the whole of the USs. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | We worked over at that place The Plantation Inn with The Del Rios. It was really wild over there. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | When I came out of service, the first couple of releases didn't really hit so I just took a little hiatus and sat down to see what was happening. I just glued my ears to the radio and then I started writing - the first hit record that came out was "Everybody Loves a Winner." |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | When I came out of the military, I had a club in Memphis and I started using the The Bar Kays as my club band. They were still only in the middle school - but I'd take them on the road with me on the weekends, sometimes. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | When the Wattstax thing came out, that was the first time we realised that things were not working for Stax - we were with Gulf & Western but not in control. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | Yep, we were all in and around Memphis locally working in local clubs. I was aware of O.V. and James, because the guitarist that worked with me for a while, Clarence Nelson, became James's guitarist later on. |