Book Review: 'Respect Yourself' by Robert Gordon

[mjzee]

The key to understanding a lot of what takes place in this beautiful, maddening world is contained in a single sentence of Robert Gordon's marvelous history of Stax Records, the tiny Memphis studio that soared like Icarus, crashed to earth and changed the world of music in the course of its flight. Describing the company's initial liftoff, co-founder Jim Stewart said: "It happened quickly, but not in a manner that was conscious and direct."

More here:

WSJ

(As usual, if the link doesn't work, try Googling the thread title.)

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I'd be interested in that. Not out 'til mid-Jan 2014 Amazon UK say.

MG

[robertoart]

It might be out as an 'ebook'. Sometimes they put em out online before the hard copy books.

[JSngry]

I'm afraid I have a rather serious problem with this:

The Stax story has been told in bits and pieces in countless musical histories over the years; Robert Gordon pulls all that together, fills in the gaps with his own research, and rolls out a cohesive narrative with the arc of great literature.

I'm hopefully sure that Mr. Gordon is a fine gentleman of musical historianism, but this review reads and sounds like this never existed:

Well, it does, and I have not only read it with much lasting gratification, but also found it to present a totally different arc than the one implied by the WSJ review. (for one (main) thing, the Atlantic screwing and the death of Otis was far - FAR - from the death knell for Stax, or even the beginning of the end. Al Bell hustled his ass off and put together a FANTASTIC rebound, lesser people WOULD have been killed, but Stax was NOT!!!! Also, Bowman goes into a fair amount of specificity towards the role that Union Planter's Bank played in, if not exactly engineering, at least facilitating - or at the very least not at all being disposed to averting - the Chapter 11)), so either this review is careless or Mr. Gordon's book is, or both.

Either way - based on this review, I'm distrustful of this new book and haven't even read it. I would be open to malleability if someone who has (or will) read both can do a legitimate Contrast and Compare, but until then, Mr. Gordon's book is projected as having the whiff of Romanticism, which is all well and good, but Mr. Bowman's book has the funky odorousness of Reality, and that is the scent which prefers itself to me.

And anybody who is interested in this area who has not yet read Soulsville USA should take the very first opportunity - as in ASAP RIGHT NOW - to do so.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Haven't seen the Rob Bowman book before. Will pursue. Probably both.

MG

[paul secor]

And Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music covered much of the Stax story (among other things) before Rob Bowman's book.

[JSngry]

And ok, also, this - WTF is THIS?

They started putting together a house band, with Donald "Duck" Dunn on bass, Steve Cropper on guitar and Booker T. Jones on keyboards; as Booker T. and the M.G.s, they released their own records, notably "Green Onions" in 1962, a bluesy instrumental with a danceable Hammond-organ line. In a city seething with racial tension, the three men were a testament to the silliness of segregation; Dunn and Mr. Cropper were white and Mr. Jones black, yet they were all musicians.

As in, Al Jackson was a figment of the imagination? The new original research has uncovered proof that "Al Jackson" was the name that Bernard Purdie used when he wasn't going by "Ringo Starr"? Or what, exactly, that Al Jackson wasn't there and that the MGs were not 50/50 black/white, but in factt 2/3 white/black? That Al Jackson was not pretty much the backbone of all things Memphis, Stax/Hi/EVERYTHING, and that it was his murder (still unsolved) that put the final damper on that entire scene, a spirit who could be occasionally/reasonably imitated while present but not to be replaced once gone?

I'm sorry, but WHAT?

This may very well be a fine book, but this WSJ review is pretty much predisposing me to call bullshit on the whole affair. I'll need conclusive convincing to the contrary before proceeding otherwise.