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Saturday, Nov 28, 2009
When Lew Chudd asked Ertegun's brother Nesuhi to start a line of jazz LPs at Imperial, Wexler and Ertegun brought him to Atlantic to do the same, this time as a partner. The idea was obviously appealing to everyone involved, and Nesuhi soon assembled dozens of recordings by both avant-garde musicians such as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Charles Mingus, as well as the more traditional Chris Connor, Mabel Mercer and Bobby Short. In addition to making the Atlantic name as talismanic in the field of jazz as it had become for fans of rhythm and blues, Nesuhi also took over the design and packaging of the albums, bringing in renowned photographers such as Lee Friedlander and Jerry Schatzberg.
However, the most groundbreaking event for Atlantic in the 1950s was a Ray Charles session that changed the direction of R&B as fundamentally as any record before or after. "I've Got a Woman" opened the floodgates of soul and single-handedly laid down the blueprint for a new music: The gospel base, the churchy, unrestrained vocal and the backing trumpets and reeds were all in place. Charles soon completed the formula by adding the Cookies, soon renamed the Raeletts, whose background vocals functioned as an attenuated secular choir.
The 1954 session launched a period of unparalleled creative and commercial success for Charles, and before the decade was over he would record both instrumental jazz and influential big-band sides with fully orchestrated strings. Ironically, Wexler's remarkable intuition in the studio served him again. As he had with Lieber and Stoller, he left Charles to his own devices, for the most part, and was rewarded for his discretion. "To record Ray Charles all Ahmet and Jerry had to do was turn on the lights in the studio," says writer Stanley Booth, "and Ray didn't even need that."
By the early '60s, Atlantic's remarkable run seemed suddenly at an end. The racial boundaries that had defined Atlantic's mission a decade earlier had been obliterated by rock 'n' roll as well as Atlantic's own crossover success, and the British invasion was on its way. More important, Ray Charles had left Atlantic for a sweeter deal at ABC, prompting much soul-searching at the 56th Street offices. Ahmet was becoming increasingly drawn to rock and pop, and Wexler was for the first time feeling stifled and bored.
Salvation arrived in the person of Solomon Burke, a soul singer of overwhelming charisma and remarkable stylistic range. Starting with "Just Out of Reach," a country song recorded as a soul ballad, Wexler and Burke created a string of hits that carried the label financially and represented the first fully realized examples of the classic soul sound. Unusually inventive large ensemble arrangements -- just listen to the tuba obbligato on "Down in the Valley" -- accompanied Burke's soulful, yet precisely controlled singing. It was the full realization of what Wexler calls his "devotion to the bel canto tradition," and remains the epitome of the Atlantic ideal.
Simultaneously, Wexler's attention was becoming increasingly drawn south. In 1960, when "'Cause I Love You," an up-tempo duet performed by Memphis singer and disc jockey Rufus Thomas and his daughter Carla became a regional hit, Wexler signed a distribution deal with Satellite, a tiny label that would soon be renamed Stax. Started by bank employee Jim Stewart and his sister Estelle Axton, who had mortgaged her home to purchase an Ampex monaural tape recorder, Stax was based in an abandoned movie palace that served as a studio, office and record store. The store, built around the theater's popcorn counter, became a gathering place for the black and white musicians who would create the Stax sound, and included Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, Al Jackson and Chips Moman, the guitarist and producer who later became one of Memphis' biggest hit makers as head of American Studio.
With its surfeit of talent, Stax gradually accumulated hits by local artists such as Rufus and Carla Thomas, William Bell and Booker T. and the MGs, the house rhythm section that had scored a surprise million seller with an instrumental B-side entitled "Green Onions." But it was the company's breakaway success with Macon, Ga., singer Otis Redding, who had scored five Top 20 R&B hits in 1965 alone, that got Wexler's attention. He assigned Sam and Dave, an R&B duo he had signed in Miami, to the hot label, and soon arrived himself at the Memphis studio with another new Atlantic signatory, a singer named Wilson Pickett.
The sessions at Stax affected Wexler as profoundly as any collaboration of his career. After years of relying on arrangers and charts, Wexler was knocked out by the Southern method of improvising arrangements on the spot, based on feel rather than a preconceived structure. "I'd watch them come in in the morning," wrote Wexler of the Stax rhythm section, "hang up their coats, grab their axes and start to play. If they didn't have a session or a song, they'd ad-lib, developing chord and rhythm patterns until something blossomed. It was effortless, easy as breathing." The Southern spontaneity shook Wexler out of his ennui, inspiring him to become more directly involved in the music making and sparking his most productive period.
