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Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion

Amazon.com Price:  $8.85 (as of 08/05/2019 18:14 PST- Details)

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Description

The story of Stax Records unfolds like a Greek tragedy. A white brother and sister build a monument to racial harmony in blighted south Memphis right through the civil rights movement. Their success soon pits the siblings against each and every other, and the brother abandons his sister for a visionary African-American partner. Under integrated leadership, Stax explodes as a national player until, Icarus-like, the heights they achieve result in their tragic demise. They fall, losing the whole lot, and the sanctuary they created is torn to the ground. A generation later, Stax is rebuilt brick by brick and is once again transforming disenfranchised youth into stellar young musicians.

Set on this planet of 1960s and ’70s soul music, Respect Yourself is a character-driven story of racial integration, and then of black power and economic independence. It is about music and musicians–Isaac Hayes, Otis Redding, the Staple Singers, and Booker T. and the M.G.’s, Stax’s interracial house band. It is about a small independent company’s struggle to continue to exist in an an increasing number of conglomerate-oriented world. And at all times on the center of the story is Memphis, Tennessee, an explosive city struggling through volatile years. Told by one among our leading music chroniclers, Respect Yourself is the book to own about one among our most treasured cultural institutions and the city that created it.

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