Oh dear lord: I've found someone on slsk who is sharing the entire STAX-VOLT SINGLES 1968-1971

!!!!!

seriously. that's the best way to put it. you'll love some of it to death. some of it, not so much.

also William Bell's I Forgot To Be Your Lover

also Eddie Floyd's Big Bird

Sir Mack Rice, "Mini-Skirt Minnie." "Skirt so short, keep the traffic tight/Police on the corner don't know his left from his right." Pretty great.

All the early Bar-Kays singles--twee, I don't think so.

Johnnie Taylor, "Toe Hold."

Of course, Booker T. and Eddie Floyd, "Big Bird."

"Walkin' the Dog" by Rufus Thomas still sounds great.

Wendy Rene's "Bar-B-Q" is tasty.

Plenty of stuff on Vol. 2 as well, including all the records not done in Memphis--the Don Davis era.

"Cheaper to Keep Her" by Johnnie Taylor.

"Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get" by the Dramatics.

All in all, very few bad tracks on Vol. 1--worth listening to in its entirety so you don't miss something.

Vol. 2 does represent a slight decline, but still classic. Have fun.

http://www.soulfulkindamusic.net/cthomas.htm

So I came back here to post...

Thanks Nate!

Has anybody read Soulsville, U.S.A. by Rob Bowman? I did a quick search and didn't see anything. I'm through about 80 pages (of very small print) and it's pretty damn comprehensive.

one thing he really hammers is how much the Stax sound & the Stax roster (Booker T, Steve Cropper, Carla Thomas, etc) were an accident of real estate. The McLemore location was the first location Jim Stewart & Estelle Axton seriously looked at; it was in a black ghetto, and many of the (to be) famous names simply lived in the immediate catchment area; it was a huge space (a former movie theater) that they couldn't afford to do anything but the most rudimentary renovations. The sloping theater floor (which they couldn't afford to level) meant that there weren't any surfaces directly opposite each other; and so on

I've been meaning to get and read that for years but never have.

haha, I took a course with Rob. He's fun. Sometimes I feel bad for being so argumentative in his class but he deserved it;). I should read his book. What I skimmed on the Google Book Search preview reads exactly the way he talks, which is slightly disturbing.

aka how can one man have too much stax.

Bowman book is very good.

Here is an interview with Steve Cropper about Al Jackson.

Another book I've been wanting to read for ages but never seem to find the time to do so.

Do like I do- take it out of the library. The fact that I have to return it eventually usually forces me to read at least a little bit.

good advice for funk-soul box sets, too

Just got the Wattstax box set. Anybody heard this, yet?

I've already got the The Complete Stax-Volt Singles 1959-1968, btw, but the idea of Stax performers live...

i find that in concert the stax band often played much faster than the recorded arrangements -- too fast if you ask me.

Hmmm. I'm going to give it a listen this weekend.