I don't know why it's taken me so long, but I just finally got around to cracking Rob Bowman's 1997 book Soulsville USA — The Story of Stax Records, which has not only illuminated all sortsa nooks and crannies of the Memphis label's fascinating story that I never knew about, but has also got me relentlessly scourin' YouTube in search of clips of Otis Redding, Booker T & The MGs, Sam & Dave, etc.
One of my favorite recent finds is this clip of Isaac Hayes working on the score for the 1971 blaxploitation classic Shaft while director Gordon Parks looks on and offers some thematic guidance. After reading Bowman's book, I'm pretty sure this sequence was staged for the cameras — though it's still really cool to watch Hayes and his band, including the impossibly cool (and quite possibly stoned) Bar-Kays guitarist Michael Toles, making such incredible music in such a cramped little studio. According to Bowman, Hayes had played around with "Theme from Shaft"'s famous sixteenth-note hi-hat pattern and funky wah-wah pedal lick years earlier on a couple of different recording sessions; the same hi-hat pattern appears on Otis Redding's 1966 recording of "Try A Little Tenderness" (which Isaac did the arrangement for), and guitarist Charles "Skip" Pitts came up with the original wah riff while working with Hayes on some long-forgotten track.
"It was just one continuous thing that never went anywhere," Hayes told Bowman, regarding his original jam with Pitts. "But I liked the sound and said, 'Okay, we'll tape this. We're gonna put this on file and just use it later.' When it was time to do the 'Theme," I was told Shaft was a relentless character, always moving all the time, never stopping. I said, 'Hmm, what can we do? The hi-hat could be the underlying thing but I need some other thing.' I went back and pulled that tape out and said, 'Skip, come here a minute. Play this lick.' He played that lick and it fit so perfectly."
You can see Skip — who also worked with such soul and R&B luminaries as the Coasters, Gene Chandler, Wilson Pickett, the Isley Brothers (that's him playing on "It's Your Thing"), Rufus Thomas, the Temprees and the Soul Children — doing wah-wah duty in this clip. Like I said, I think this was probably staged — but if there's more of this footage out there, I'd love to see it. As it is, I could pretty much watch this all day.
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