Soul music luminary Booker T. Jones stopped by the LifeMinute Studios last month. The legendary artist was in town with students from the Stax Music Academy and its Executive Director Pat Mitchell Worley for a special performance at Lincoln Center. The Stax Music Academy after-school and summer music programs keep the flame of Stax Records alive with today's youth. The institute also provides professional and mental wellness counseling to its families. It's the only music institute in the world focusing on the musical art form created at Stax in the 1960s and 70s. Booker T. also regaled us with stories from his more than seven decades in the music industry and the iconic Stax Records, and working with other musical greats such as Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, the Staple Singers, Sam & Dave, Willie Nelson, and hundreds more. This is a LifeMinute with Booker T. Jones.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 Hello, I am Booker T. Jones and you're watching Life Minute TV.
00:14 Soul music luminary Booker T. Jones stopped by the Life Minute Studios recently.
00:19 The legendary artist was in town with students from the Stax Music Academy and its executive
00:24 director Pat Mitchell Worley for a special concert at Lincoln Center.
00:29 This after school and summer music academy not only keeps the flame of Stax Records alive
00:35 with today's youth, it also provides professional mental wellness counseling to its families.
00:40 It's a huge victory for everyone that the Stax Academy has existed for 20 years.
00:47 It's such a victory for the community and it's such a victory for the individual who
00:54 wants to learn music.
00:55 I say this because I reflect on myself at age 17, 16 and I had saved $900 because I
01:04 wanted to know how to implement what I was hearing in my mind.
01:08 How could I write this music down?
01:10 I had no idea.
01:12 So I saved $900 and paid for two semesters in advance at Indiana University.
01:17 So that was fine but it was 400 miles away.
01:21 If I could have done that in Memphis, it would have just been so much, if I could have gotten
01:27 that education for the money I had, it's just such a wonderful thing.
01:31 It's been a personal creative victory for me to be able to get the music out that I
01:35 have in my mind and for that to be happening on a large level, a large scale now at the
01:40 academy is just a wonderful thing that it's been there for that long.
01:45 The Music Academy is a creative youth development program.
01:49 So it is a strenuous music education that the students get.
01:55 It's not just about can they play?
01:59 It's also about how do we nurture and shape young people into amazing adults.
02:05 And I think that it speaks to also that Stax legacy.
02:09 Stax wasn't just a label that put out music and the impact that it had on so many people,
02:17 but also its involvement as far as activism, its involvement in the community.
02:23 When you look at entrepreneurship, when you look at minority and women being business
02:28 owners, all of those things were part of the Stax story.
02:31 So we've sort of incorporated all of that into the Music Academy.
02:36 One of the best things about the Music Academy is that if a young person wants to play, they
02:43 want to learn music, then we've got a space for them.
02:46 They have an opportunity to pursue music to the next level and follow after the legends
02:53 that they are reading and hearing from.
02:55 They were invited to play Lincoln Center's Summer Series, and when the show was, when
03:01 they were putting the show together, it was just like, who can play with us?
03:07 And of course, every time the name Booker T. Jones comes up.
03:11 I guess you could say Booker T. is paying it forward, helping out a neighbor.
03:15 After all, he says he got interested in music from his neighbor's father, who was a band
03:19 director and made beautiful sounds.
03:21 My neighbor, his father was a band director and he was from Florida, and he would play
03:26 the oboe at night, and that's just an arresting instrument.
03:29 It's a sound that you never forget if someone plays the oboe beautifully, and I wanted to
03:34 learn to play that instrument.
03:36 Well, it just so happened they had one oboe at Porter Junior High School in Memphis, Tennessee,
03:41 and it was the only instrument left in the band room after everybody chose their instruments,
03:46 so I picked it up and finally was able to teach myself to get enough strength in my
03:51 jaws and my embouchure here they call it, and play the oboe in the Porter Junior High
03:56 School band as a fourth grader.
03:58 So I started taking music theory at Booker Washington High School in tenth grade.
04:03 I was the only person in the class.
04:06 The chorus teacher, Mr. Pender, stayed after school to teach me music theory, because I
04:12 would have to pass a jury at Indiana.
04:14 It's a knowledge, how well do you know music, how well do you know the notes, how well do
04:18 you know time, how well do you know cadence, how well do you know key signatures, so many
04:23 of the aspects that had to be second nature.
04:26 And then I switched to another lead instrument, clarinet.
04:29 My father bought Amarill Music in downtown Memphis.
04:31 My father made payments for me to play a B flat clarinet.
04:36 And so then that led to saxophone.
04:39 And I played E flat alto saxophone and B flat tenor saxophone, and finally the big E flat
04:45 baritone saxophone, which is the instrument that carried me through the little green curtain
04:51 into the studio at Stax Records.
04:53 E flat baritone saxophone.
04:56 So I was a multi-instrumentalist at a young age and it was just a perfect fit for me to
05:02 be there at those satellite studios.
05:05 I have to call it that.
05:06 The name of it then in 1960, 1959, 1960, was Satellite Records.
05:12 As for what it was like being in a multi-racial group in the South during the height of the
05:16 civil rights movement, Booker says it was truly an afterthought.
05:21 To be totally honest, the racial aspect was a second thought.
05:25 It was not a primary concern somehow.
05:27 I don't know how that happened in Memphis, Tennessee, but we were mostly interested in
05:32 each other as musicians.
05:34 And the people were chosen as musicians, not necessarily what their skin color was.
05:39 And that was abnormal for Memphis, Tennessee in 1959 and 1960.
05:46 But it started to work because the music started to happen and people understood each other.
05:51 And I think it was kept secret, maybe purposely.
05:55 I think the powers that be were not aware of actually what we were doing until we actually
05:59 had some success.
06:01 The Stack story was definitely an example of when you put, when everyone has a seat
06:05 at the table, that the outcome is amazing.
06:10 Because it's the contributions of all of these people who may not have had a chance to play
06:15 together if that space didn't exist.
06:18 I think it's so relevant in the world that we live in today, is we talk about who should
06:24 be at the table.
06:25 Everyone should have space.
06:27 And there was a huge incentive for success at Satellite because the main motivator there
06:33 was Estelle Axton, Mrs. Axton.
06:36 And she had mortgaged her house to buy a tape machine for her brother.
06:40 And she wanted us to make some hit records.
06:43 So she wanted to sell records in her record shop so she could pay her husband back for
06:48 all the money they borrowed to build this place.
06:51 They sold a lot of Motown records out of her shop.
06:53 But Stacks had an individuality.
06:56 There were so many talented individuals in Memphis that I'm thinking of.
07:00 Floyd Newman, who was a baritone sax player.
07:03 That was one horn that people played, and I played it also, that gave Memphis a different
07:08 sound from the other records.
07:09 Most of the Memphis records had that low, rich sounding horn on the bottom of the horn.
07:15 Led by Floyd Newman and Hank Crawford and people that played baritone sax.
07:19 Hank went and played it for Ray Charles in New York.
07:22 And he was from Booker, Washington.
07:24 So we had all these unique individuals that we could copy from and emanate.
07:34 It was just rich with talent.
07:36 Booker says he was inspired by so much rich talent throughout the years.
07:40 And I remember I was driving down McLemore Avenue and I heard a song come on by Quincy
07:47 Jones' band.
07:48 And Ray Charles was playing organ on it.
07:51 And it was called "One-Minute Jewelers."
08:00 And I heard that organ and I fell in love with it.
08:04 It sounded so good I thought if I could learn to play like that I would be so happy, that
08:09 would make my life.
08:10 And of course the dream came true.
08:12 But yes, it was Ray Charles and what they were doing in New York City and up in Seattle.
08:17 And they also had our man, Hank Crawford on baritone sax.
08:22 That was the music that sort of got me into maybe thinking maybe I could be a musician.
08:26 There's such a wealth of talent in the world now that there are so many people that are
08:30 playing instruments and creating instruments and creating new genres.
08:37 Music has really blossomed from what the little music, the 12-bar blues that we started with
08:43 in Memphis.
08:44 And in 1965 and 1966 I'm not sure, my sister got a call from Atlantic Records wanting me
08:51 to come and play with this guy named Bobby Darin.
08:53 And we went out to the studio.
08:55 That was a new experience for me.
08:56 It was not like Stax at all.
08:59 Music was on the organ and there was a little red light there in the studio and the light
09:03 came on and I walked down and sat out and one, two, one, two, three, four.
09:08 You record it.
09:09 Oh my God.
09:10 What page are we on?
09:11 That was the first Hollywood recording session that I was on, which was so unlike Memphis.
09:16 It was so professional and they had three hours.
09:19 But it was an honor to be playing on that Bobby Darin album that morning.
09:23 I finally found my place in the song and caught up.
09:26 That was probably my most memorable first recording session outside Memphis.
09:31 I think the biggest challenge I had in the business was I was living in Malibu.
09:36 I had an apartment on the beach.
09:38 This guy came running down the beach and I said, "It looks just like Willie Nelson."
09:43 It was Willie Nelson.
09:44 He came in my gate, went in and he had rented the apartment downstairs.
09:49 So we naturally said hello and met.
09:51 We had people we knew in common and started jamming.
09:55 And he said, "Why don't we play these songs in the studio instead of out here on the deck?"
10:00 So then he asked me to produce the album and that was Nashville, 1976.
10:05 We got some big help from Emmylou Harris and her husband, Brian.
10:09 They let us have their house in Hollywood.
10:12 Her husband had a truck, a recording truck with a beautiful machine in it.
10:17 And we recorded what we thought was a good album.
10:19 We took the album to Columbia, CBS in Nashville.
10:23 We had a meeting and they listened.
10:25 But they put out about 500 copies, fortunately.
10:30 And those sold.
10:33 But I was probably most politically out of place musically there in Nashville as a producer.
10:42 But Willie stood up for me.
10:44 He fought for me.
10:45 And what's a life minute without a life lesson from this master musician?
10:49 My life lesson would be if you can maybe get out of the past, get out of the future and
10:55 make the most out of the very present moment and what your hope is for the future and what
10:59 you think maybe the future might be.
11:01 And we don't really have a guarantee.
11:02 We have the past.
11:03 We can look at that.
11:04 But is it any good now?
11:06 I'm not sure.
11:07 But we have this moment right now that we can appreciate and live to the fullest.
11:13 And that's what I try to do.
11:16 And what's next for the Stax Music Academy and the museum just across the street?
11:20 David Porter, songwriter, artist, producer, he's doing a Q&A session in Studio A. And
11:29 we're really excited about that.
11:31 But we also have some artists that are coming in the studio and doing special performances.
11:36 That'll happen during the course of the year.
11:38 And then for the Music Academy, we start a new school year.
11:42 So it's another year of helping students, helping young people.
11:46 They have a lot of performances that happen during the year.
11:49 Their Black History Month program that we do for the Academy has about 150,000 school
11:54 kids around the country that watch it and participate with the study guide.
11:59 And then at the end of the year, we'll have another group of young people that graduate
12:05 and will be heading off to college and paying for college through music scholarships.
12:09 So it's always moving forward.
12:12 It's amazing the people that come through the museum.
12:15 We do a family day once a month.
12:17 And we thought that the family day would be like most museum family days, where lots of
12:22 kids come.
12:23 But what we found is it's a multi-generational experience.
12:27 People bring their grandkids and tell them how they remember this song and tell them
12:32 stories.
12:33 It's interesting to see how the music translates across different generations and their stories
12:40 of connection with the music.
12:42 When artists come to town, they want to come to the museum and walk through.
12:48 And Memphis is a music town.
12:50 You know, you have a lot of options as far as music museums go, but we're very proud
12:54 that we're the fourth driver of tourists to Memphis.
12:58 So that speaks within itself that the impact that soul music has had and continues to have
13:05 is, you know, it's deeply rooted in people's lives.
13:10 There's energy at that location.
13:13 It's good energy.
13:14 And I'm seeing an example of it now in Pat.
13:17 I remember Dani Parker and how she dreamt of having a school and an academy and a museum.
13:25 And I see it going from generation to generation now that I'm 78.
13:30 And I think people should go to the Stax Museum and the Stax Academy just for the energy.
13:37 When I went, it was amazing.
13:39 I could feel just like it did when we were recording the great songs.
13:44 It's amazing how there are energy centers on the earth.
13:47 And that's one.
13:48 Maybe it's in the water.
13:49 I don't know what it is, but it's there in Memphis.
13:51 To hear more of this interview, visit our podcast, Life Minute TV on iTunes and all
13:56 streaming podcast platforms.
13:57 (upbeat music)