Big Ass Truck - All You Can Handle
What Big Ass Truck created was both comfortingly familiar and utterly new. If their sound was a cocktail, it was like shaking up equal parts Hi Rhythm Section and the Beastie Boys, adding a dash of Big Star and Dr John the Night Tripper, and garnishing the concoction with a twist of the Meters. You have to remember that this was the before times: streaming services, Amazon, and YouTube had not been invented. In order to cite such deep sources, you had to track down albums by these lodestars for your personal collection…
Stone Crush: Memphis Modern Soul 1977-1987
Even on an album of rarities, Greg Mason’s 1986 lo-fi DIY experiment, “What Does it Take To Know (A Woman Like You),” stands out for its otherness. Pressed to describe its sound, alt-hip hop iconoclast Cities Aviv has declared, “There’s nothing, even today, that sounds like this record. Nothing I could recall. It’s very spastic, very off-kilter, schizophrenic, borderline. It’s insane.” Little is known about Mason, who was merely the delivery mechanism for the sounds that producer Bernard Haynes envisioned.
Stax ‘68: A Memphis Story
Co-written with Robert Gordon
Stax songwriter Johnnie Frierson, a member of the Drapels and the older brother of Wendy Rene, was an active member of the Invaders. Isaac Hayes, a staff songwriter who had not yet moved onto the stage was still a year away from his reincarnation as to become Black Moses, had joined another Black Power group, the Black Knights. The FBI places Hayes at a September 11 Black United Front meeting at Clayborn Temple. According to reportage by photographer and FBI informant Ernest Withers…
Isaac Hayes: The Soul of Memphis
Published in the Guardian August 14, 2008
With a baby on the way, Hayes got a job at a meat packing plant, and in his spare time started hanging out at the American Sound Studios, run by the great white, blue-eyed soul songwriter…
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Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
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Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
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Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
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Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
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Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Solid Soul: An Interview With Willie Mitchell
Wax Poetics #9, published online December 28, 2020
I’ve been fortunate enough to know “Poppa” Willie Mitchell for a handful of years. When we first met, in August 2000, I was working for Ike Turner, who decided to record his hoped-for…
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Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.