7 - 6 - Motown Stax the British Invasion and the American Response (637)

8/9/2019 7 - 6 - Motown Stax the British Invasion and the American Response (637)

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/7-6-motown-stax-the-british-invasion-and-the-american-response-637 1/4

Let's take a minute to take stock of someof the styles we've been talking aboutthis week and, and the two previous weeksand kind of add them all together becausein many ways we've talked about paralleltracks through the mid-1960s.We start talking about the BritishInvasion in 1964 through 66 or 67.Really from I want to Hold Your Hand tothe release of Sgt Pepper in the summerof 57.The American response to that afterinitially a lot white pop musicianskind of feeling like they've beenknocked, had the pins knocked out fromunder them, are back by the summer of1965.Bob Dylan, The Byrds, the folk rock, alot of the folk rock stuff that we weretalking about last week.And now we've talked about Motown, who,whose success really sort of paralleledthat of the British Invasion, having,

even having hits before the BritishInvasion, but continuing to go strongthrough that period.Seemingly unaffected by the BritishInvasion.And Stax, who really kind of rise alittle bit later after the BritishInvasion.So we get into 65 and 66.We're talking about Aretha Franklin in67, 68, the southern soul kind of sound.so what exactly is is the influencethere?

I would say that through Motown black popreally remained on the pop charts in away that is almost continuous with whatwas happening at the 60s.So if you take groups like the Charelles,and the Ronettes, and the Crystals andBenny King and the Drifters and then youtransition over to groups like TheSupremes and The Temptations and The FourTops and Martha and the Vandellas.You get a relatively continuous stream ofblack pop artists at the top of the, of,of the charts, even if the location seems

to move from New York based to Detroitbased.The rise of Stax, however, in pop, reallysort of broadened the market for blackpop by the second half of the decade,because Stax music really brought in alot more of the more sort of unabashedlyblack influences, especially thosederived from the church from the gospeltradition.



And as I said before, when we say Stax,we're really sort of talking aboutsouthern soul, because a lot of thismusic wasn't really recorded in the Staxstudios or, or, or Memphis at all.One important thing to, to know is thatold school music business practicesreally remained enforced in a lot of thisnew music and the, the roles of producersand song writers, especially.And black pop during this period.and I think it's also important to asI've said in a couple of different waysto just to reinforce that black pop wasnot really forced off the charts by theBritish Invasion.in many ways the British Invasion wasimportant because it, it was somethingnew that added a new potent force intopopular music, but it didn't really shutdown a lot of things that other peoplewere doing.It changed things, but it, it didn't, itdidn't force black music off the charts.

I would say Motown and Stax did not reactas much to the British Invasion as whitepop did.so, in many ways, black pop seemedrelatively un, not unaffected but farless affected than those groups, theWhite pop groups that thought they had tocome back with something in response tothe Beatles, the American response, PaulRevere and the Raiders, The Byrds, someof these folks.what really strikes me are thesimilarities between Motown and Stax,

because as I said before a couple oftimes in this video, they've always beensort of set up as almost like sort ofpolar opposites.And you know and the whole question ofwhether or not Stax music is somehowblacker that Motown music.But we look at it.And if you look at the similarities, youknow, both labels had their own studio inwhich they did all their recording.that is Stax studio specifically.And even if we include the Muscle Shoals

Sound Studio, that sort of broadens out,broadens out the Stax side.Still, it's an individual studio devotedsongwriters studio bands, a lot of it is,is, is very similar between the two.so is Stax really blacker than Motown?Remembering that we have to be sensitivewhen we talk about these issues of these,these racial kinds of issues.Let's just do a quick sort of comparison



here.The Motown musicians and artists werealmost all black.There were some white artists involved inwith a guitar player or two, couple offolks who were white who were involved inthe Motown operation.But, you know, it was, it was black ownedand almost everybody there was black.Now Stax, on the other hand, was whiteowned and the studio band which was agreat thing, was integrated but still itwas, you know, two white guys.And two black guys.So in terms of just you know for justsort of counting heads, in a certainsense Motown was really the blacker labelthan Stax from that point of view.Now sound wise, stylistic wise, lot ofpeople would, would say that's, it's verydifferent, but, it's worth pointing outanyway that, that these things are neveras simple and as facile.especially when it comes to issues of

race, as they're, as they're oftenportrayed to be.So it's good to into some of the otherkind of other kind of sort of factssurrounding this.it's true.The Stax recordings were much more un,unbuttoned and loose sounding.When you listen to a lot of those Stax inSouthern Soul recordings you hear,especially the singers doing things thatnever would've shown up in, in mostMotown recordings.

there's a kind of improvisational, Gospelinfluence kind of element that BerryGordy probably would have tamped down abit because he was afraid of alienatinga, a certain element of the white,audience.So, in, in, in effect Motown Recordssounded very produced, very controlledironically a lot like the way AtlanticRecords production sounded in the 50swhen they're juxtaposed against somebodylike Chess Records.Of course now we're talking about Motown

being the polished record.And the label that's associated withAtlantic Stax being the one that soundsmore unbuttoned and, and, and looser.Motown was obviously more pop orientedand concerned with mainstream crossovers.So when we think about this Stax, Motownthing it's good to turn all of thesedifferent variables around.and think about develop your own opinion



on whether or not you think Stax wassomehow a label that was blacker or moreauthentic and embraced its own blacknessmore than Motown records did.Or do you think it's an unfair criticismof Motown, to think of them as somehowselling out their blackness for the sakeof a white audience.I won't give an answer to that.I'll leave it for you to decide.In the mean time, let's, let's turn ourattention to somebody who's never beenaccused of selling out his blackness inany way, shape, or form, and that's thegodfather of soul himself, James Brown.

Documents

7 - 6 - Motown Stax the British Invasion and the American Response (637)