Isaac Hayes is highlighted in several ex-
hibits, and rightfully so. You can see his Oscar, won for scoring the film Shaft. It was the first Academy Award presented to a black composer for a soundtrack. As cool as that award is, nothing compares to Isaac’s custom Cadillac Eldorado, fully equipped with unique amenities like a refrigerated mini-bar, televi- sion, 24-carat gold exterior trim and white fur carpeting on the floorboards. Shut your mouth! Talkin’ ‘bout Shaft! There are great exhibits on many of my fa-
vorites like Little Milton, The Staple Singers, Booker T & The MG’s, Ike & Tina Turner, Al Green, and my favorite of all, Otis Redding. I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Stax - you can feel the soul oozing out of the walls. By the way, Delaney & Bonnie Bramlett
recorded their debut album at Stax. Their names are on the full wall list of Stax artists. Can you dig it? (For a real primer, I highly recommend
the DVD Respect Yourself: The STAX Records Story)
The next stop was the legendary SUN Stu-
dios (
www.sunstudio.com), the home of rock- abilly and the building where Elvis Presley got his start. Once again, I was in my element. Just knowing the history of all the great music that was recorded in this studio gave me goosebumps. My mind was reeling as I re- called a conversation a few years back with Cowboy Jack Clement, who was the man re- sponsible for recording the accidental session that came to be known as the “Million Dollar Quartet,” featuring Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins. “Well, first of all Carl Perkins was cutting a
session,” recalled Clement during our 2006 interview. “Sam [Phillips] was engineering it and I am sitting in the control room and Jerry Lee had been in town for a few weeks and then I was using him on session, and I had convinced Sam and Carl to hire Jerry Lee to play the piano and that is the reason Jerry Lee was there. He was hired to do piano. The thing we did that day that was memorable was "Matchbox." Johnny Cash was there be- cause Carl had invited him and they were good buddies. The session was about to end and Elvis walked in with a small entourage and of course everything just sort of stopped. Sam had gone next door to Taylor’s Restau- rant. “They were all talking and pretty soon
started jamming on some old gospel tunes, and the mikes were still out there so I turned on the volume because I was still in the con- trol room. I was thinking that I would be re- miss not to record some of this so I put on a tape and walked out into the studio and moved a couple of the mikes around where the people were jamming and stuff and let it roll. Every time the tape would end I would put another one on. So I think that there was about a total of about one and a half hours of it recorded that day. Nobody thought much about those tapes and they just set there in the control room and now it has found it’s way onto a record. I think they are going to
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