Aside from New Orleans, the city of many men of influence, there are Nashville and Memphis in Tennessee where music is extensively played among local cities in the South. Since in Nashville music is a staple industry whose scale is no less than that of New York or Los Angeles, I find no "men of influence" as I have said. Meanwhile, Memphis has full volume of music including from the blues through Elvis to soul, however, it's my impression that Memphis is the "passage" of music, differnt from New Orleans or Nashville. After the noise in the golden age passed by, Memphis only remembers the past and doesn't seem to spawn a new thing : Graceland, the house of Elvis, became a tourist spot and a music museum was built on the site of bankrupted Stax. Despite it, there are Men in Memphis. the AM radio station WDIA is a pioneer of R&B stations in the South, whose black DJs were so popular thanks to their clever word play and chatter. Riley B. King a.k.a. B. B. King began to go his way to the stardom as a host of a program sponsored by a tonic manufacuturer. He left WDIA for his career and here came the star DJ, Rufus Thomas I talk about here. He started as a vaudevillian of the tent shows traveling around rural areas, and went on the chitlin circuit with the revue featuring songs and skits and humorous plays. While he earned his family's living by working in a factory and was eagar to teach his children, he cut some singles and sought a chance to sell. "The world's oldest teenager", as he call himself, is a rascal with a sense of living and a man of dignity which he sometimes reveals. He is one of a kind who is rare among music men.
His first hit was from Sam Phillips' San records Bear Cat (The Answer to Hound Dog). This is an imitation of Big Mama Thornton's blockbuster Hound Dog. It was nominally written by Sam Phillips but nothing but the same tune with other lyrics. So he was sued for rights problems by Hound Dog 's writer Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller (each is heard on discs like "The Sun Records Collection" or "Pure Blues"). Even with such faults, it was the first hit of Sam Phillips' label and Rufus Thomas cut Tiger Man (King of the Jungle) for the second loach under a willow (which means "trying to follow the past success" ). San Records has Rocket '88 (Jackie Brenston's fame actually directed by Ike Turner), recorded at Sun but released at Chess, or recordings of B. B. King, the Howlin' Wolf, "Sleepy" John Estes or James Cotton whose name should drive the blues fans mad, however, Elvis Presley,"a white man who can sing like a black", arrived and contracts with black musicians were gone. This didn't discourage Rufus Thomas, who did a factory job and a DJ and a night show in a day. His signature jive was "I'm young and loose and full of juice. I got the goose, so what's the use? We're bright and gay but we ain't got a dollar ! Rufus is here, so let's hoot 'n' holler !". R&B stations of the '50s were popular thanks to black DJs with machingun jive talk and nasty but nice rhymes or white DJs who imitated blacks. (I have translated Rufus jive into Japanese with the help of the Japanese edition of "The Death of Rhythm & Blues" and "Sweet Soul Music". I left metaphors not revealed. These kind of translations are damn hard works !)
There were few R&B labels in Memphis in the '50s, there came Stax at the dawn of the '60s. Sharp-eyed Rufus took seventeen-years-old Carla to Stax and brought the first local hit 'Cause I Love You. He put some tricks on this : not only it was aired on his own program but the part of its right was given to John R. in exchange for promotion, the R&B DJ of the influential WLAC of Nashville. As the distribution contract with Atlantic and Carla's national hit of Gee Wiz followed, Stax started to run on the track. Many of Rufus Thomas tunes heard on "The Best of Rufus Thomas" or "The Stax Story" are cheerful and dancable, and he had a comical carriage on stage nurtured by tap dance in his vaudevillian years. The Dog or Walking the Dog, Can Your Monkey Do the Dog, Somebody Stole My Dog is backed by Booker T & the MG's and the Memphis horns and has a loose and confortable groove nothing but called as "the Memphis Sound". Although he, the star in the early years, was gloomy under the singers who came in later, his prime time had come in the '70s when he was over 50. His heavier funk delivered by the Bar-Kays such as Do the Funky Chicken, (Do the) Push and Pull, The Breakdown, Do the Funky Penguin , with the atmosphere of King Curtis or James Brown, is so good that you could have more fun if you see it with his dancing.
Looking like playing the fool, he was so serious a father thinking keenly the importance of educating children that he had his daughter Carla not only let her sing but go to college . When you watch the live film in '72 getting Stax singers and musicians together "Wattstax", you should find the real leader was neigher the Staple Singers nor Isaac Hayes but Rufus Thomas. When he began dancing, part of the audience sitting calmly on the seat of L. A. Colosseum, holding the crowd of over 100,000, brought down the fence and surged into the stuff-only field. He didn't stop them so quickly and let them dance to a tune, and then he reasoned them to go back and the accident was put down. In the place where the anger was surging within those who saw the same situation even after the civil right movement was over, I cannot help myself impressed by this remaining solidality and confidence. This cannot happen in the world of internet : things we think are thrown raw and the keepers lose the power of persuasion, and those who should soothe them have got to ride on and stir. If there were more smart adults like Rufus Thomas, wearing a gorgeous pink jacket and short trousers and doing the dog or the cat or the chicken or the penguin, the world would be better. So I imagine. (2008/08/18)