CLIP: Stax: Soulsville, USA [“Hold On, I’m Coming” by Sam & Dave]
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Welcome to We Disrupt this Broadcast. I’m your host, Gabe González. The history of the United States can be traced in a lot of ways, but especially through music, a form that embodies the multicultural, multiracial realities of our country. As genres evolve and blend, they’re shaped by the histories and traditions of people who consume and produce that music.
But historically, these nuances haven’t been widely embraced. When marginalized communities produce music that becomes popular, their contributions can be erased or co-opted by white artists. But as early as the 1960s, one record company in Memphis, Tennessee charted a different path. Stax Records put black artists and producers at the center of their music, even as the world outside tried to push them toward the margins; and inevitably so many of the artists that worked with Stax shaped the history of American music as we know it.
CLIP: Stax: Soulsville, USA
Stax had developed this astonishing sound. It’s black culture, but it’s being made by an interracial group with elements of white pop and country, and creating this new fusion. Once you have “Green Onions,” Stax starts getting a reputation as being this place where great R&B records can be made.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: The story of this iconic record company and the artists that graced its studios is the focus of the documentary Stax: Soulsville, USA, directed by Jamila Wignot. And as she explains this episode, this documentary properly credits the artists without whom music today simply wouldn’t sound the same; grounded in exploring both the oppressive politics and moments of joyful liberation they experienced.
JAMILA WIGNOT: No matter how much bad shit is going on in the world, people, whatever they are, however marginalized, oppressed, the world is beating them down; we still exist and we’re finding ways to live, and we’re laughing through it. And we’re dancing through it.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Later on, we’ll be joined by Dyana Williams, an iconic broadcaster, music historian, and co-founder of Black Music Month. I’ll be chatting with her about the relationship between music and the Civil Rights movement and why the music that came from Stax is still everywhere around us today, from music samples to films, to the dentist’s office. So don’t go anywhere. We’ll be right back.
CLIP: Stax: Soulsville, USA [“Green Onions” by Booker T. & the MG’s]
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Welcome back. It’s time for our interview with Jamila Wignot in conversation with our executive producer and executive director of the Peabody Awards, Jeffrey Jones.
JEFFREY JONES: Welcome to We Disrupt this Broadcast. We’re here today with documentarian Jamila Wignot and the director of Stax: Soulsville USA, the four-part HBO documentary of the legendary Memphis recording studio Stax Records that changed American music producing such artists as Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, Booker T. & The MGs, Carla Thomas, Isaac Hayes, and many others. And in the process defining rhythm and blues and helping create southern soul music. Welcome to We Disrupt this Broadcast, Jamila.
JAMILA WIGNOT: Thank you so much, Jeff. I am so thrilled to be here.
JEFFREY JONES: Well, I think it’s great for all kinds of reasons that we really want to unpack, but one in particular is that it’s not just about art and music, but that it is truly broader stories about race, the South, Capitalism, politics, community, and really so much more. Which really makes it such an amazing tale beyond just art and music. What drew you to this story?
JAMILA WIGNOT: The story actually came to me, which was wonderful since I was a huge fan of the music. Ezra Edelman, who is a very good friend of mine and we’ve informally collaborated for years, called me one day and said, ‘Hey, you wanna have lunch?’ We live in the same neighborhood in Brooklyn.
And so I walked over to where we were gonna have lunch, put my headphones on for my walk, and had Otis Redding on. And I go to the lunch, sit down in front of him and he says, ‘listen, there’s these folks who are interested in making a documentary about Stax Records. Do you think you’d be interested?’ And I’m like ‘look who is on my playlist right now.’
So first and foremost, it was the music. This is music I got introduced to in high school by my high school boyfriend who used to make me lovely mix tapes of CDs that he had. And I just really fell in love with soul music and it became my main staple. A sound that, it’s just so rich and nourishing and full that I just loved it.
So selfishly in the beginning, what drew me to doing the project was just knowing that I was going to be able to spend endless amounts of hours in the sonic universe of this incredible label. And then I started to dig in and doing the reading about it and realized that there was a much, much bigger canvas to be able to explore because the label’s, the place that it emerged from, the people who built it, the times that it came about just intersected so totally with huge forces in history, politics, economics, the social life of America at that time.
JEFFREY JONES: The interracial composition– so Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn guitar and bass player are white and Booker T. Jones and Al Jackson are black. The Muscle Shoals recording studio and around the same time, ’67, ’68, it’s white musicians recording with Aretha Franklin and Etta James, some of their biggest breakout albums. What was your take as you tried to wrestle with the fact that the rhythm section and the studio musicians for Stax was this interracially composed group?
JAMILA WIGNOT: Yeah, there are those kinds of possibilities and openings with art making. I think if you look at the kind of music that Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn were listening to as young people, and the fact that they were going down to Beale Street when they were underage and trying to get into those clubs and watch people play and listen to that music. They were willing to transgress those barriers because the art meant so much more to them. And so that’s one way in which I think art can be a real opening.
I think what’s interesting and what we explore in the film is that that doesn’t mean that it’s an opening to understand each other’s lives in the most kind of complex and nuanced ways. And so you can make really beautiful music together because you are really turned on by what each other has to give. And that’s coming from your very particular backgrounds. And I think in some ways, Stax and also places like Muscle Shoals become these sanctuaries to escape the forces. But in that escape, you’re a little bit living in a fantasy. That escape isn’t about interrogating those forces. It’s like looking for relief.
And so I think there’s this interesting tension where both groups of people get to walk through the doors of the studio, make something amazing, forget about these completely absurd and ridiculous constructions that we seem to cling to and make something really beautiful. But then they leave those doors. And obviously the black people are very aware of the differences in their lives. And I think oftentimes the white people aren’t. They don’t go to each other’s homes. They don’t explore. They don’t know each other intimately as people. They know each other intimately as artists and musicians.
And so that’s a tension that’s there. And Booker said it best. He’s like, ‘it’s like a family’. He’s like, ‘we love each other. We lied to each other. We lied to ourselves’. Like they were so in love with what they were doing that they really tried to stave off this other stuff.
JEFFREY JONES: I have to say it’s truly remarkable what you were able to capture. Tell us about how you went about achieving, accessing this archive. And I mean everything from, say the interviews with Isaac Hayes, who died in 2008, which is instrumental to the storytelling here, but also just beautiful segments, amazing depth to the Stax facilities. And just tell us about your access there.
JAMILA WIGNOT: Yeah, thank you. It is a mix of materials, although I’m always looking for ways to create cohesion. I wanna say Ines Farag, who is my archival producer on this, is just extraordinary and she is one of those needle in the haystack people. So she just keeps digging and digging and digging, and so it is with great gratitude to her that we had the material to work with by synthesizing all of that material.
But then that footage that we found of Booker T. & The MGs jamming together in the studio, that’s footage actually from ’69 and we cheat it for their early period. But seeing that footage was just amazing to like really be with these young guys in this beautiful footage.
JEFFREY JONES: It seems at numerous junctures that you really wanted to celebrate black joy. Scenes of dancing in apartments and homes, and not to mention the Wattstax experience itself and even Isaac Hayes and the joy that he brought. So talk to me about that. Was that very intentional?
JAMILA WIGNOT: Yeah, it is very intentional for me. I think this is informed by two things. One, it just is true. No matter how much bad shit is going on in the world, people, whatever they are, however marginalized, oppressed, like the world is beating them down, we still exist or we’re finding ways to live. And we’re laughing through it. And we’re dancing through it. And you know, that is like the vast majority of your life. So I wanna show that very intentionally, and I wanna connect with the idea that like, this is how this kind of music emerges is ’cause there are people who are in their homes listening to music, dancing to music, experiencing love and joy and passion, and all the kind of thematic things that find their way into a great Stax song.
Like when you think about an Otis Redding song like I love “Cigarettes and Coffee”, and it’s just a very simple song about late night at a table with your woman and you love her so much and you’re smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, and it’s like, because that happens, right? So like, I wanna find the footage that explores that.
I also feel like at that time we were still in this moment of like, ‘see us, recognize us, acknowledge the suffering. Maybe through seeing the suffering you’ll see us as deserving to be seen as humans.’ And so I just always want to be able to portray that other world, which I think like black literature is captured so beautifully. Toni Morrison obviously is high queen of giving us that kind of work. And yeah, I think about a lot being able to showcase the interiority of black experience.
JEFFREY JONES: One of the most joyous early sequences is the Stax concert in London, which was an amazing concert, and there’s an amazement going on by both the audience but also the musicians. Sam & Dave are taking the audience to church. Carla Thomas is dancing with a white guy and the look on her face is trepidatious. And then Booker T., The adorable guy that he is, has this wry, kind a smirking grin on his face.
CLIP: Stax: Soulsville, USA [“Hold On, I’m Coming” by Sam & Dave] As a little boy, I wanted to be like the minister that I saw at my church. And I would take that and use that. Running up and down, and you’re sweating, and preaching.
JEFFREY JONES: Talk to me about when you found that footage and your own desire to lean into that.
JAMILA WIGNOT: Yeah. David Peck of Reelin’ in the Years, huge help in finding that footage and finding really great copies of that footage. I was similarly blown away by that. We had, it took us a while to accordion, to the right size ’cause so enamored of this experience of finding that sweet spot of making that scene live and serve, but also not overindulging ourselves with all of it was a challenge. But yeah, I just think what a high point for these musicians who, because of the financial constraints of Stax, were not touring around actually all that much. They were playing gigs in and around, maybe they go up to Chicago, they’re doing a couple like college gigs in the South, but they hadn’t really performed in a major way. And so to go all the way to Europe, which is like so beyond for them, right?
I mean, Deanie jokingly speaking about like they’re such country bumpkins, like they don’t even know what to wear, what to do. Like they hadn’t been on planes. And I think the embrace that they got was completely exhilarating and eyeopening. And this is a common experience for many African American artists who have to leave the United States, all twenties, thirties, forties. James Baldwin writes about this, you know, to find that kind of acceptance and embrace.
But I love that you noticed the Booker moment because that smirk is also like, ‘yeah, I know I’m the shit.’ Like, ‘I’m glad you know, but also that’s right. I’m gonna like, I’m gonna tear you up.’ And Sam’s performance as well like really makes that come through like, these are excellent performers, not just studio musicians, right?
And that’s another kind of evolution for the label is like, ‘oh, we don’t just have people who can cut great records. We have performers who can entertain at the largest scale.’ I mean, Sam sort of getting swept up and that was a moment in his interview when he talked about, because it’s true, what he really had always wanted to be in his life was, first and foremost was a preacher and in the end of his career, he like started actually making a lot of gospel records. So that connection between where he first ever saw this kind of performance and then to be on a stage and for him to embody all of that and then do it just so well.
And again, like, you know, a way that it just completely explodes the absurd notions of who can and can’t accept certain kinds of people’s music. And I think importantly, and Al Bell makes this point, who can and can’t accept like a southern rural roots-based music, right? Like they don’t have to change their art to get the wider, and in this case whiter, audience. They can stay true to who they are. And that as a label, they wouldn’t deviate from that. And that’s, that’s real courage, right? It’s like we need to make money, we need to sell records, we need to find an audience like God, should we change how we approach things for that kind of commercial success? And all across the board, they’re all like, absolutely not. Right? And it works. They just have to get America to stop being moronic.
JEFFREY JONES: Exactly. You mentioned Al Bell, and it’s a good time to transition. So Al Bell is the promotion man brought in, he’s in his early, mid twenties and he is brought in pretty early for his amazing business sense, which I guess they discover along the way. But Al Bell is also just a force of nature who really defined the company, eventually becomes president.
CLIP: Stax: Soulsville, USA
The attitude in the industry with Stax is dead. It’s over. I mean, how could you think of it any other way? Those in New York, they look down, they think we are the dumb bunnies, if you will, and they tried to keep us quote in our place. I didn’t accept that though. I couldn’t. And I got to thinking, well, wait a minute. I came to Stax records because of that sound that comes outta Stax. And it was that sound that’s behind our top artists: Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, Rufus Thomas, William Bell, Eddie Floyd, Otis Redding. I realize we no longer have our catalog, but we still had our people. I knew what Stax really was. It was a product of creative and rare people and great authentic music, art.
JEFFREY JONES: So Al is the central character in this narrative. As you reflect on Mr. Bell, what is your sense of him? What’s the moral of Al Bell’s story?
JAMILA WIGNOT: Yeah. Gosh, I love Al, but it’s funny because Al and Jim are such compliments to each other, and I am much more Jim Stewart. Like, let’s just, do we have to get bigger? Do we have to grow? Like I, I really understand Jim’s like, I don’t wanna know about anything about the business and I just wanna make this music.
And you need Al Bell’s, right? You need these visionary thinkers who have a bigger mission and a bigger view of what’s possible. I think Al Bell, the moral of his story. Gosh, I don’t know. Sometimes we would say like, you know, should Al Bell, knowing everything he knew as a black man in America at the time that he was trying to build this company, shouldn’t he have known that there was gonna be pushback? There was like a place that you maybe couldn’t get beyond. Like he had to have known that because that’s what the world told him. And so was there a different way he could have run that experiment, if you will. And on the other hand, it’s like Al’s just like, ‘no, I will not accept your boundaries.’
And I don’t know if there’s a moral, I think it’s, do that even if you don’t succeed forever right away. Like run the company and have this grand vision, which for Al was so much bigger than making great music. He believed that Memphis could be an economic foundation for the black community. That if you found a way to really succeed in this part of the American business apparatus, you could build something for a people. And that’s very powerful. He’s a kind of like in the Booker T. Washington school of like economics over politics first. And it worked for a while. I mean, ultimately, Memphis became the fifth largest record producing center on the globe through what Al Bell did. And that meant for Memphis, feeding that city’s economy in incredibly important ways, all the ancillary businesses that exist because you have this record company doing what it’s doing and all the employment possibilities. I mean, he really was making good on that promise.
And so it’s funny because now it’s very common for corporations to have a kind of social good component to their business, and Al’s doing that like in sixties thinking about it in those ways. In spite of the fact that Stax tragically ends, I still think Al did it the right way. So I think he raises just a lot of questions for us. But also it is a kind of very compelling model if you’re the kind of person who has the charisma to dream that big. And as I say, like, I mean, it takes a lot of energy and Mr. Bell and I still talk today, and I’m just like. Oh man. You have more energy than I have, and you are twice my age.
CLIP: Stax: Soulsville, USA
By 73, Memphis was in the top five record producing centers in the world, New York, LA, London, then Nashville and Memphis, driven by the success of Stax Records. We were all learning and developing and growing and changing. Oh my goodness. Stax, it was excellence. It was black excellence. You got writers, producers, publishers, costume people. There was a company that was created as a result of selling Isaac all of his instruments and sound systems and stuff for the road. So Stax was important to the economy of the city.
JEFFREY JONES: This is a quintessential story about American capitalism– mom and pop versus corporate capital, but also black owned and run businesses and its threat to even the sensibilities of local Memphis people. Could you unpack that a little for us?
JAMILA WIGNOT: Yeah. This is one of the other wonderful thematic aspects of the series. It’s funny because, but for being a black man, Al Bell is kind of representational of like the best kind of American capitalists. It’s what we always want, like enterprising, innovative, hardworking, bootstrapping, all of these things. And you have to wonder if he had been a white man at that same time, the heights he would’ve scaled. Part of the problem for Al Bell within the capitalist system is that he has a morality.
JEFFREY JONES: Yeah, he did. He did.
JAMILA WIGNOT: And so there are, he has an integrity. Did. So there are are things he’s just unwilling to compromise on. And when you think about it, that’s actually what undoes him. When people watch the series, you’ll see this moment where he’s given a kind of Faustian bargain and he doesn’t take it. And the ripple effects of that cannot be undone.
The aspects of it in terms of what does it mean to live beyond your station, and that’s what I think we talk about when we’re talking about black wealth within a white city like Memphis, you know, where the political structures, the economic structures, the banking systems, all of these things are white owned. And when you become too visibly successful as a black person, this becomes lethal. Fatal. And there are so many stories like this, tragically, in American history. There’s stories like this in Memphis. I mean, the first black millionaire was in Memphis and they eventually ran him out of town and burned his mansion to the ground.
You have stories like Tulsa, Oklahoma, which we all have better insights into now. And so there’s this strange thing where blackness is very pathologized in this country and there’s a strain of racism that’s like, ‘you’re lazy. You don’t do anything, you don’t contribute. You’re a sort of burden on society.’ And that’s one strain of racism. But the other strain of racism is the penalty you have to pay if you’re too successful. And there are just so many stories of like if you succeed and you’re succeeding against all odds, somehow that success is now jeopardizing some sort of fragility on the part of the white power structure, and it has to be punished.
Ida B. Wells, famously, African American journalist, Tennessee, her two best friends ran the People’s Grocery Store in Tennessee were lynched because their grocery store was doing better than a white owned grocery store, and whites and blacks were frequenting that black owned grocery store. And so instead of that being held up as a model of success within the capitalist structure, you are absolutely penalized for it in the most brutal and violent ways. And so this story really embodies those tensions too, which is just racism is incredibly illogical. And so it manifests itself in these ways.
JEFFREY JONES: Memphis is the city in which Dr. King was assassinated in April of 1968, and that plays out in the film. Would you give a window to our viewers of the effects on the musicians of Stax with the assassination of Dr. King and, and Memphis writ large?
JAMILA WIGNOT: This was another one of those extraordinary realizations that, you know, I discovered in the research the fact that, you know, Martin Luther King’s assassination can always be used generically as a symbol of a kind of turning point in American politics. And so it often is featured within documentaries because it is such an inflection point. But for the Stax musicians in particular, and for Memphis, this assassination happens at the Lorraine Motel. And the Lorraine Motel was the only other place outside of the Stax Studio where black and white people could hang out.
It’s a black owned motel, so they don’t care and they let the Stax musicians come and hang out. So it’s this incredibly, it’s just like another beautiful sanctuary for them. And when people come to town, black figures like a Martin Luther King Jr., he’s gonna stay there, right? And in fact, he had a relationship with Al Bell. So the story, him as a figure, it’s a very intimate connection to this label. One of the young guitar players, Terry, goes to pick up Dr. King from the airport, takes him to the Lorraine Motel. And then there he is assassinated. And so I think to have such a seismic political American event be so deeply personal to this label is one thing that’s just extraordinary.
And then when you think about the ways that kind of disrupts this kind of social contract of like, ‘we’ll walk through the doors, we won’t talk about race. We’ll make this beautiful music’. And then here, because of the garbage worker strike and MLK’s coming to the town and then the assassination happening, race is something that no longer can be ignored. But that happens in the most intimate personal way for them. This is something that maybe was happening all across America at that time, but for the Stax musicians, it’s suddenly like, ‘oh, we haven’t talked about this.’ And so it’s, it’s very profound.
JEFFREY JONES: The big surprise for me was Isaac Hayes. And a larger than life figure. There he is in the early part with David Porter writing songs, playing piano before he became Black Moses before he became the Isaac Hayes wearing chains. But what a sweetheart. He accepts the Oscar and he tributes it to his grandmother. And just at every phase. So I, I guess I wanted your own journey of discovery of seeing this archival footage and crawling up in the world of Isaac from young studio guy to the Isaac Hayes of later. Tell us about your engagement with him.
JAMILA WIGNOT: Yeah, I love Isaac Hayes’s music as well, but I was more of an Otis girly going into the documentary and I kind of switched over and I started just, oh man, listening to like “Walk On By,” was my soundtrack for such a long time because it’s such an extraordinary sonic like, ‘are we on the moon? Are we on Saturn?’ It is just so expansive. He really takes up space. There’s something very symbolic about that too, that he’s like, ‘you will not contain me to the two minute pop song. I wanna take up space’. There’s something very radical about that.
CLIP: Stax: Soulsville, USA [“Walk on By” by Isaac Hayes]
But yeah, just knowing he’s like a sweet, shy guy, he has the physique of somebody who’s like, can come on and be sort of like the big man, but that’s not really where he starts. And I love seeing that trajectory for him. And I also just love, like he was deeply experimental. The fact that he just went away and was like, ‘I’m just gonna make something. I’m not gonna be the one that’s gonna lead this record label to the promised land.’
To pitch forward to where he will go, but he does. This is the recurrent theme of Stax where it’s like everything that should have been a detriment, a disadvantage, an obstacle to their success, somehow they turn that into possibility, and so like when they’re at their lowest moment it’s a time for experimentation, for trial and error, for taking great risks, big swings. And actually out of that comes new discoveries.And for black music in particular, you can see Isaac Hayes’s Walk On By as the equivalent to Sergeant Pepper’s, right? It’s like it opens the door. For other black artists to start thinking about like the album format, and he makes that possible.
And then yet he’s very community minded. You know, I loved being able to resurrect the true meaning of “Soul Man,” which I think had been watered down and whitewashed and just became this like Blues Brothers song, but that it started with Isaac Hayes looking at what was happening in the wake of the riots and seeing “soul” “soul brother” on windows and thinking like, ‘oh, that’s a rallying cry, let’s make a song about that’. You know? And like reattaching the meaning that he and David Porter intended to that song was so great.
And then frankly, like for a lot of people, maybe Isaac Hayes was just Chef from South Park, and I take great pleasure in being able to like thumb my nose at that and remind people of who this guy really was.
JEFFREY JONES: Absolutely. Otis Redding dies at age 26. One of the, really put Stax on the map in a lot of ways, but there’s a brilliant insight somebody says that, they say that ‘Otis had a profound loneliness,’ and boy, once you hear that, you begin to reflect on his music.
CLIP: Stax: Soulsville, USA [“I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” by Otis Redding]
JEFFREY JONES: Tell me about your own journey with Otis and his effect on Stax, including his death’s effect on Stax.
JAMILA WIGNOT: Yeah. Again, I don’t think people could have imagined that Otis Redding was a kind of a long shot for the record. He came in and recorded “These Arms of Mine.” The song inconceivably does not do well in its own time, but Jim, just loving the sound, decides to stay with him. And I think Otis brings a really important dimension to the sound of Stax. He’s the one who is credited with really figuring out how to use horns. And again, they were relying on horns because they didn’t have money for background singers, so, that’s another detriment that they turned into a beautiful piece of art.
And he’s such an important motivating figure, an artist who’s coming in and helping them shape their sound. He’s clearly like a joyful person to be around, but he is endlessly hustling to build his career on the road forever and ever and ever and a day, and his death is unmooring because he had become, as Booker says, he had become a real leader, and whether or not the record label could continue to succeed without him, I think was a real question mark for them.
JEFFREY JONES: Well, in closing of the film, Jim Stewart reflects on these people and says, ‘I merely gave them the tools for them to express themselves.’ And then he says. ‘There was real soul there,’ and he seems like he means that in the largest, most expansive way. And the subtitle of this film is Soulsville, USA. And so my question for you is, after all this, what does soul mean to you?
JAMILA WIGNOT: In the context of Stax specifically, it’s the beautiful thing that can happen when everyone is coming together and offering something of themselves to a process. And I think like the possibility that comes from the power of a collective, when you’re willing to like set your egos aside, which is so true of so much of Stax music, when we are at our best as artists and as a nation, I think it is because we are rejecting the idea of the individualistic pursuit. We are rejecting the idea of the auteur. I’m like so very, very sick of that. Right. Oh, the great genius filmmaker who’s doing it all by himself apparently. Even though you look at the credits and you’re like, well, then who are all these people?
Yes, there is vision, but there is also the community. There’s the collective that’s the artists. There’s the community around you sustaining you. There’s the individual people in your personal life who are supporting you in every way, and I think soul is when all of that is coming together in the most magical way. And I feel it’s reemerging even in these dark times. I think we can see it in pockets across the country where people are recognizing that what we can do when we come together as a collective is extraordinary. It’s the most meaningful thing. It’s the thing that’s going to last.
JEFFREY JONES: Beautifully said, and exactly what I would say. Just perfectly capturing what we are needing to hear at this moment in time.
JAMILA WIGNOT: Thank you. Yeah.
JEFFREY JONES: For sure. Jamila, this is such a pleasure. Thank you for being on We Disrupt this Broadcast, and congratulations on your Peabody win for Stax: Soulsville, USA. It’s a brilliant film. I encourage everyone to watch it. And it made me feel so joyous. And I think that’s the greatest compliment you can offer an artist talking about other artists.
JAMILA WIGNOT: Thank you.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Thank you again to Jeff and Jamila Wignot for that conversation. The history of Stax Records stands out because it’s a rare example of American artists from different racial backgrounds working together to make amazing music during the sixties and beyond. But Jamila’s exploration of this point in time complicates our sometimes idyllic understanding of this reality in such an important way, acknowledging the racism many black musicians faced on a daily basis that their white counterparts could willfully overlook. Don’t go anywhere. When we come back, I’ll be talking to Dyana Williams.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Welcome back. I am your host, Gabe González, and today we are here with a very special guest, Dyana Williams. She’s a legendary radio and media personality as well as a CEO of Influence Entertainment. She’s also known as the Mother of Black Music Month, which she co-founded with Kenny Gamble. She’s worked in broadcast entertainment for over 50 years and co-founded the National Museum of African American Music where she now sits on the board of directors, we are so excited to have you here. Dyana, how are you today?
DYANA WILLIAMS: Gabe, you left out the most important part of my identity. [singing] I’m a Boricua Morena from the Bronx and Harlem.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Yes. There we go. This might be the first exclusively Boricua interview and We Disrupt this Broadcast. So Dyana, we are here to talk to you specifically about Stax and a documentary we’ve been discussing, Stax: Soulsville, USA. So I’m curious, coming from this world where you have pioneered months that honor black music history, what were your thoughts when you saw a project like Stax: Soulsville USA?
DYANA WILLIAMS: First of all, I am a friend of Al Bell. I wanna preface it by saying that. In fact a lot of my leadership activity came as a result of Al Bell whispering in my ear that it was time for me to step up and out. Al Bell, I credit him for just taking a stronger leadership role in the music industry as it relates to the perpetuation of black music.
You know, we’re talking about a man, once he took over and started implementing his ideas, nNot just musically because he’s a songwriter. He was then, and imagine then, in Memphis, Tennessee, a very proud, cognizant black man, very aware of herstory, history, and used the platform of Stax records to elevate the condition of principally brown and black people in this country. So it was more than music.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Oh, absolutely.
DYANA WILLIAMS: Stax was more than music. And then the Wattstax. Political statements. We’re talking about powerful leadership, the hottest artists of the day, at that time. The Staples Singers, Isaac Hayes, one of my personal favorites, all out there espousing the concept and notion that we are somebody, maybe black, but we are black and fine. Okay? And that happened with Stax Records and under Al Bell’s watch. When you look at what Wattstax, and then when you look at what Stax Records was doing, admirable because they had a very integrated situation in Memphis, Tennessee. White and black musicians came together to create music.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Could you talk a bit more about that relationship between music and the Civil Rights movement, especially as it’s explored in the documentary, right? This idea that one’s identity cannot be separated from the music at this point in time.
DYANA WILLIAMS: You’re absolutely correct, Gabe. And the thing about the artists on Stax records, they embraced their blackness, they understood the limitations in the industry. So many of those artists could not walk in the front door of venues where they were performing because of racial segregation and the evilness that existed in the south against black people.
But the artists at Stax recognized the limitations and they fought against them. They spoke about it. They dealt with it in a very active way, and they were supportive of other artists and civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King. They supported these efforts to create racial parity.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: So I’m wondering, how do you see the legacy of Stax from a musical and cultural perspective still impacting us today? Where do you see its influence most these days?
DYANA WILLIAMS: Interesting. I see Stax influence everywhere. We hear samples, we hear people rerecording the music. Whether you’re aware or not, when you’re in that elevator or that dentist office, you’re probably listening to a song that was recorded 60 years ago and sounds pristine now. So they made timeless music that was ultra relevant then and remained so 60 years later. So the beauty of this documentary and Stax, it survives the legacy of that incredible, more than a record label. I would define it as a movement.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Well, Dyana, I’ve gotta say, I’ve had so much fun talking with you today. Thank you for walking us through your perspective on Stax. I feel like we have the full picture now.
DYANA WILLIAMS: Thank you so much, Gabe for that. I’m super honored to be part of this discussion because this is music I grew up with that I love. So I would encourage your listeners who have not listened and are not familiar with this extraordinary music and documentary to go take some time for yourself, make a worthy investment of your time to learn about this great American company and movement and leader, a man named Al Bell who’s still with us. Bless him.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: I could not agree more. Thank you again for joining us. It’s really been such an honor and such a pleasure. Gracias.
DYANA WILLIAMS: [Singing] Thank you, Gabe.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Thank you.
DYANA WILLIAMS: Alright.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of We Disrupt this Broadcast. I’m your host, Gabe González, and I’ve gotta give a huge thank you to documentary filmmaker and producer Jamila Wignot for joining us to talk about Stax: Soulsville, USA, an incredible documentary. And of course, we have got to give thanks to broadcast and music history icon Dyana Williams for joining us. Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t offer a special thanks to N.O.R.E., Daddy Yankee, and Nina Sky, the artist behind the song Dyana was singing earlier and without whom today might not have been possible.
But truly what an honor to have both of today’s guests on the show, both of them accomplished women in their field working to not only preserve and uplift the history of Black American music, but empower the artists who carry these traditions into the future. Look, whether you are a fan of soul, R&B, or even the standup comedy of Richard Pryor Stax has had an indelible impact on what we listen to. It was an absolute honor to talk to both of today’s guests about it.
We are almost at the end of our episode, but before I let you go, there is a little tradition we have around here that I am contractually bound by this studio to honor: because the Peabody are decided unanimously every episode will bring you the quote that we chose unanimously as our most disruptive moment.
JAMILA WIGNOT: They just have to get America to stop being moronic.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Next time on, We Disrupt this Broadcast: Join us as we launch our Legendary Disruptors series. Our first guest will be the legend himself, Keenan Ivory Wayans. That’s right. We will be discussing In Living Color, the comedy sketch show that shook airwaves, smashed ratings, launched the careers of countless icons, and 35 years on is still a source of inspiration for all of your favorite comedians, myself included. You do not wanna miss this.
KEENEN IVORY WAYANS: That’s always been my source, has been my family. You know, we grew up in a house and we didn’t have anything but each other, and we used to make each other laugh. We know each other’s sense of humor, and if I’m gonna ask someone’s opinion, I’m gonna go to them because I know that they know what’s funny.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: We Disrupt This Broadcast is a Peabody and Center for Media and Social Impact production hosted by me, Gabe González, with on air contributions from Caty Borum and Jeffrey Jones. The show is brought to you by executive producers, Caty Borum and Jeffrey Jones. Managing producer Jordana Jason. Writers: Sasha Stewart, Jordana Jason, Bethany Hall, Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, and myself, Gabe González. Consulting producers Jennifer Keishin Armstrong and Bethany Hall. Researcher, Riley McLaughlin. Graphic designer: Olivia Klaus. Operations producer: Varsha Ramani. The marketing and communications team: Christine Drayer and Tunishia Singleton. From PRX: the team is Terrence Bernardo, Jennie Cataldo, Edwin Ochoa and Amber Walker. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.