As you speak about authenticity, I am curious to know what kind of background research you had to conduct for Soul Men? The film makes a lot of references to Stax Records and music history in general.
I watched a couple of Stax documentaries, went to the Stax museum, watched a number of movies, and listened to a bunch of music. I watched a lot of road movies, a lot of buddy films, a lot of music movies just to really see what worked and what didn't, what my version of that movie might have been. I just wanted to soak up as much knowledge as possible. Some of the band members that we used as extras were people that lived in that era. Willie Hall, Skip Pitts and Ben Cauley were musicians that played in the House of Soul scene where Bernie Mac and Samuel L. Jackson sing "Do Your Thing." Skip Pitts and Willie Hall also played on a number of Isaac Hayes' hits. Ben Cauley – who's a trumpeter in that scene, with a red suit – was a member of The Bar-Kays whose plane went down with Otis Redding. He was the only survivor of that plane. I wanted to include him in the movie and pay homage to people that have been there and lived it.
As you were going through this research process, what was the most interesting bit of knowledge that you learned about Stax Records?
Wow! There are so many stories. It was an integrated company. It was started by Jim Stewart, a white guy, and his sister, Estelle Axton. One of my favorites is about Otis Redding, a skinny kid that was helping a bunch of musicians load in one day. When they were doing a session, he kept on bugging one of the MGs about playing a song for him. The guy had been putting him off for a long time. After a while, he said, "Okay, fine. We'll play you a song." He sang and they were like, "Holy cow!" A star was born. The music that I had heard throughout the years in movies and in the airports and television shows and commercials that was familiar to me was a lot of Booker T and MGs' music, instrumental music. I never knew that many of those songs were by the group, like "Green Onions" – that was a song that I've heard for a long time. So there were things like that. Isaac Hayes was a songwriter for years and years. The first album that he made at Stax was a disaster, because they tried to put him in a box. On the second record, he said, "Listen, don't put handcuffs on me and let me do my thing." He made "Walk On By" and it was huge. You know, Stax has a real rich history.
Article comments