Music Credits:

“Dorthaan’s Walk,” written and performed by Rahsaan Roland Kirk from the album, Booggie-Woogie String Along For Real.

“NY” written and performed by Kosta T from the album Soul Sand. Used courtesy of the Free Music Archive

Jo Reed: This is Art Works, the weekly podcast produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m Josephine Reed. Thursday, August 20th, at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, 5:00 p.m. Pacific, we are celebrating the 2020 NEA Jazz Masters. You can get all the details at Arts.gov. So it seemed like a good time to get better acquainted with our 2020 NEA Jazz Master, who’s the recipient of the A.B. Spellman Award for Jazz Advocacy, that longtime force of nature, Dorthaan Kirk. For more than four decades, Dorthaan Kirk has been a major force at WBGO Jazz, Newark Public Radio, the only full-time jazz-format station in the New York area. Called Newark’s First Lady of Jazz, Dorthaan has been active as a curator and producer of jazz events, primarily in and around Newark. She is an avid supporter of musicians and of jazz education for children. Dorthaan grew up in Texas and went to college in California, where she met her husband, the brilliant jazz instrumentalist, Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Dorthaan might not have been a musician, but music was always a part of her life, as was radio.

Dorthaan Kirk: I grew up listening to music on the radio. I left Houston in 1955 to go to Los Angeles to go to college. Do you know my mother didn’t even have a TV then? So radio listening was very big. We listened to big bands. We listened to R&B like Ruth Brown and the likes of that, the Clovers. I remember “One Mint Julep,” and there was a station from Del Rio, Texas, where they played country music. I also grew up on country music, and to fast-forward to WBGO, I used to tell the people how I loved Dolly Parton, and they thought that was just really out of the box, and I explained to everybody I grew up in Texas on country and western music and of course the blues. When I moved to Los Angeles, I was drawn to jazz. At the time, I did not know that jazz was America’s art form. Jazz was our music of the day, much like hip-hop, rap and what have you is the music of today, and the truth be told, we didn’t know it was America’s art form or anything like that. It’s what everybody did back then, and at that time it was jumping. You had music all over Los Angeles. You even had the Sunday-morning jam sessions, and you had a theater there, which is where I first saw Miles Davis on Adams Boulevard. There was a theater, and when the clubs closed, artists would perform there, and they would start at 2:00 in the morning, and when that was over, again, you could even go to the breakfast jams that they would have. So it was everywhere. That’s what we did.

Jo Reed: As Dorthaan became more interested in the music, she started opening up her dining room to jazz musicians for a taste of home.

Dorthaan Kirk: As you know, jazz musicians’ life is traveling on the road, which means hotels and restaurants. So, having said that, a lot of the jazz musicians would have a certain family in town that they were close to, and, consequently, that family would invite them over to their house so they wouldn’t have to eat at a restaurant, and they could have a good, home-cooked meal. I met Rahsaan-- I don’t know if you know this, but I met him when I was married to my first husband, and I met him through a mutual-friend musician in Los Angeles, and when Rahsaan would come to town he became one of the artists that came to my house to have a good, home-cooked meal.

Jo Reed: For the uninitiated, here’s a little background on Rahsaan Roland Kirk. He was a musical powerhouse, a great jazz multi-instrumentalist who played the trumpet, the tenor saxophone, the flute and many other instruments, often simultaneously, and I’m talking about multiple horns and/or woodwinds for 10 to 20 minutes at a time. He was an absolute original. His knowledge of music was both wide and deep.

Dorthaan Kirk: He had over 7,000 albums. Rahsaan collected music anywhere from Southern white gospel to classical and everything in between, and whenever he had an idea to record an album, he would think about it, and he would draw off a lot in that collection, and if you listen to all of the albums that he made, none is like the other one, but he always had a concept, and Rahsaan’s world was listening, and he listened to everything.

Jo Reed: It makes sense that Rahsaan’s world would be listening, since he lost his sight at a very young age, and maybe that factored into Rahsaan Roland Kirk having a great musical mind.

Dorthaan Kirk: Rahsaan played 45 woodwind instruments. I couldn’t name them all if my life depended on it, but he played 45 woodwind instruments. His favorite, I might add, was the tenor saxophone, and he always felt that he never got the credit that he thought he should have for being astute on the saxophone alone. He was really, really known for playing those three instruments at a time. When we went to Australia on a tour, they did a press conference in the airport, and I have clippings from that, because it was in the paper somewhere, and he had a digeridoo that he was playing, and that’s the indigenous instrument of the Aboriginal people. So anything that was a woodwind, he played it.

Jo Reed: Dorthaan and Rahsaan married in 1971. By then they’d moved east, first to New York City and then to Philadelphia, before putting down roots in New Jersey.

Dorthaan Kirk: We decided to move to New Jersey. He had to be close to New York. Why? He had to hear the music, and he had to go to Pontus [ph?] Music and Rubin’s [ph?], who was the horn-repair guy. So he made the decision that we would move to New Jersey, and what he wanted to do was to have students, private students, to come to the house, which we redid the whole basement. Rahsaan always wanted to do something so that he didn’t have to travel on the road all the time. Rahsaan felt like jazz musicians shouldn’t have to stay on the road 300 days a year to make a living, and Rahsaan was one of those artists that was in such demand, if his agent, who was Jack Whittemore, had accepted all the gigs he got requests for, he could’ve worked 365 days a year.

Jo Reed: But Rahsaan did tour extensively. Dorthaan went with him 95 percent of the time, but she’s quick to point out she had her own life and her own things to do with one exception.

Dorthaan Kirk: My only obligation was to be with him and collect the receipt to give to the accountant when we got back. He was very, very business-minded, unlike a lot of the musicians. He took unemployment and federal taxes and all of that out of the musicians’ pay, because he always felt like if he didn’t want to take a gig, the musicians shouldn’t have to suffer. So that’s why he paid into unemployment. But I collected all of the receipts to send to Mr. Chastson [ph?], who was our accountant at the time. He had somebody that traveled with him. He had a number of people over the years that traveled with him. Every city he went to, he had to go to the record store or the music store. Even if he had just been to the record store last week, that’s what he did. That was one of his passions. So if he wanted to go to the record store during the day, he had someone to go with him and to assist him with his instruments and what have you at the club. I saw a lot. Even though it was 7 short years, it was like 20 years, because so much is in my head that I did in that short period of time.

Jo Reed: He died tragically young at 41.

Dorthaan Kirk: He did.

Jo Reed: He left you his music. He left you his publishing company.

Dorthaan Kirk: He did, yes.

Jo Reed: You had to get business-savvy.

Dorthaan Kirk: Yes. It’s interesting that you would say that. One of the first things that he did was to have me to read the book on the business of music that was written by Bill Krasilovsky. I read that book, and I had no idea what it was talking about; however, as he made albums and so on and so forth and I would hear him talking business talk, I would refer to the book. So when he died, I had a pretty good knowledge of what was what, and guess what? Mr. Krasilovsky became my attorney, and this was his philosophy. He said he had made a lot of money being the representative for rock stars, and he was very, very into helping small publishers, such as myself.

Jo Reed: Then, a few months after Rahsaan died, Dorthaan received a fateful phone call about somebody who was beginning a radio station in Newark, New Jersey.

Dorthaan Kirk: Rahsaan died December 1977. He had friends and fans all over. One of his friends from Boston, who worked in public radio, by the name of Steve Robinson-- and Steve and I had a long talk, and he said, “Well, Dorthaan, what are you going to do now?” Of course, my response was, “I have no idea what I was going to do.” So Steve says to me, “Well, there’s this guy that lives right here in Newark, and he’s starting a radio station.” I said, “Yeah, and?” He’s like, “Well, why don’t we ask him to hire you?” I said, “Steve, I don’t know anything about radio.” Steve was a person that always had great ideas. Some of them worked, and some of them didn’t. So he said, “Well, I’m going to call him.” So he called him up. His name is Bob Ottenhoff, and so we met at Sparky J’s, which was a jazz club. I had a long talk with Bob, and he just said, “Yes, I’ll hire you,” and I thought, “These young white guys are nuts.” I think they were both somewhere in their late 20s at the time, and so long story short, we moved into the current WBGO January 1979 with absolutely nothing but a couple of old desks, and I believe the dollars that we had-- I think Bob had a $75,000 grant. That’s how we started, and now it’s 40 years later, and everybody said it couldn’t be done. It was very bold to start a jazz radio station and especially at that time, and as I look back, everybody was so young and so innocent and so on the same page. I don’t think anybody ever thought about it not working, and as we look back, when I see the different people, we’ll talk about, “Remember when we did this? Remember when we did that?” That was crazy, but it worked. I don’t know if you can digest this or not, but our very first fundraiser on air we raised $25,000. That was amazing back then. We thought we had turned the world around. So, between that and between asking for funding from different corporations, Bob was a great fundraiser. We did a lot of events early on, where we had sponsors, and if you have sponsors to pick up the tab for the expenses for your event, everything after that is net and gravy, and so all of those different things helped us to grow. As the years passed, we got more and more credibility, which meant places like Prudential and the bigger guys like that had started to fund us, and that’s how it was done.

Jo Reed: Dorthaan became the special-events and community-relations coordinator at WBGO, and she hit the ground running with successful event after successful event. Take the WBGO Jazzathon.

Dorthaan Kirk: Our first Jazzathon was 24 hours. It was held at Fat Tuesday’s, and we started out at midnight. Clark Terry and his group was performing at the club that particular week. We started at midnight on a Saturday night and went through to midnight Sunday night, and this is how it worked. For $10 you could come in, $10. Remember, this was back in the early ‘80s. For $10 you could come in and hear 4 hours of music, and when that was over, those people had to leave, and others would come. We had different musicians for different of those shifts. The musicians performed for free. This is one of the events that we look back and say we were nuts to do it, but it worked. The club got all of the publicity, and they got the proceeds from the bar. We got the proceeds from all of the people coming in, paying $10. So that was one of the things we did. We used to have an annual record fair. We used to have singles parties. Every New Year’s Eve we used to do a live broadcast to three cities across the country, and WBGO was the producer of that. When we would do those special events, not only would we benefit from whatever they paid on the door, but you’re exposing yourself to more people that may not have known about you. Consequently, they’re going to contribute when you fundraise.

Jo Reed: Dorthaan also turned the halls and the waiting room of WBGO into a community art gallery.

Dorthaan Kirk: Well, one of the things that I’m most proud of was the WBGO gallery. WBGO hosted art exhibits. We would have a huge reception, and we would invite the public to come in. The artwork was generally up for two months. So as long as the art was up, we had a promo on the air that said the public could view the artwork during regular business hours. So we always had people in and out all of the time, because WBGO was located a block from the art center, a block from the hotel, kind of in the heart of downtown Newark.

Jo Reed: So Dorthaan was creating cross-cultural alliances and bringing the community into the radio station, which proved crucial for WBGO. But perhaps the event she is most proud of creating and producing is the WBGO children’s concert series.

Dorthaan Kirk: That children’s concert series started out in WBGO’s performance studio, and we would do two performances, 11:00 and 1:00 on Saturdays, free and open to the public, and the grandparents, the parents, the aunties, uncles, whatever, would bring the kids. The idea of the children’s concert series was to introduce young people to jazz, hence doing something to create a new audience for jazz, because jazz supporters are getting older. They’re leaving here. There’s a lot of competition in jazz now. There’s so much to look at on TV, on the Internet, etcetera, etcetera. So that was the purpose, and this was the structure. The musician had to come up with a theme. It could be improvisation. It could be rhythm, whatever they came up with, and whatever their theme was, that is what they presented to the young people. If it was improvisation, they would explain what that meant and have different of the people in the band to play something or what have you. They would have the young people at the end to ask questions. Some of the musicians that I hired would have a lot of interaction with the young people in the audience. That was a very hard project, and I will tell you why. Just because the musician knows music and he’s great at his craft or what have you, it had to be a very special person to have to relate to young kids. So it had to be interesting enough to hold the attention of a really young person and maybe a little older, but I was able to ask different musicians to recommend, and I would talk to different people, and before I hired a musician, I would talk to them a lot about his or her presentation, what have you. So it worked out. I produced that series for 25 years plus. We started in 1993, and I retired in 2018, and over the years I am so happy to say a lot of those young people that came to the concerts when they were little, whether they came with their parents, their aunties or whatever, they have now grown up, and they have little kids, and they have brought them to the concerts. I just think that’s wonderful.

Jo Reed: Bethany Baptist Church did not have great attendance at its Saturday service, but its minister loved jazz, and Dorthaan was one of the congregants. So he had an idea, and in January 2001, Jaz Vespers was born.

Dorthaan Kirk: Dr. Moses William Howard Jr. came to Bethany. He came up with this big idea making a Jazz Vespers in a Baptist church, which is unheard of, okay? I was the one that scheduled them. We started off with seed money from the deacons. They gave me $5,000 to start out with. We were to present Jazz Vespers October through June. In the summer, people go on vacation, etcetera. I started out using various local artists. We did promotion on WBGO, meaning the announcers would talk about it. It would be on the music calendar, and when we first started, I asked WBGO announcers to come and host the event and introduce the musicians. At my church, we don’t charge for anything, so we couldn’t say it’s $20, $25 or what have you. Rather, it’s a freewill offering, and so we would just ask the people to support it, because we had to pay the musicians, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. There came a time when we did get some funding from Essex County Department of Cultural Affairs, so as the time passed, I started to ask bigger-name artists. I have to be careful, because I don’t want to pigeonhole anybody. The larger the artist, the more the audience grew, and I would let them know we won’t be able to present the Randy Westons and the Jimmy Heaths to you all the time, but I promise you one thing. We will only bring you the best.” So through working at WBGO and knowing all these artists and new artists and what have you, I have been able to expose the musicians to people that they never would’ve been exposed to before, and also the audience has gotten to see tons and tons of musicians, because we’re now celebrating 20 years. That’s a lot. Jazz Vespers has become almost like the big club to go to in Newark. Newark, in spite of its growth with all of the apartments and the arts centers and all of that, it doesn’t have a jazz club. There is the Pirate that presents on Friday nights, but at Bethany, even though it’s only once per month, I bring in the bigger names and what have you. So it’s become the in place to go to.

Jo Reed: You have gotten so many awards, First Lady of Jazz, on and on and on, and now you’re an NEA Jazz Master. Can you just say what that means for you to be named an NEA Jazz Master?

Dorthaan Kirk: Overwhelm. I’m never speechless. Anybody know me know I talk all the time. I was absolutely speechless. It’s overwhelming, little old me, and I must say it’s because of the support of all these musicians coming to my rescue, as I call it, and they have never hesitated. They trust me. That’s probably why I’ve been able to do all the things I have over the years, because the musicians know I’ve got their back.

Jo Reed: So many congratulations. It is so well deserved.

Dorthaan Kirk: Thank you. As we like to say, it is truly a bright moment.

Jo Reed: That was 2020 Jazz Master, the recipient of the A.B. Spellman Award for Jazz Advocacy, Dorthaan Kirk. Remember to join us on August 20^th at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, 5:00 p.m. Pacific, for an online live concert to honor the 2020 NEA Jazz Masters. Learn all about it at Arts.gov. You’ve been listening to Art Works, produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. Just a note, the music you heard during the podcast is called “Dorthaan’s Walk.” It’s from “Boogie-Woogie String Along for Real,” and it’s the final album recorded by Rahsaan Roland Kirk. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.

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Music Credits:

“Born Under A Bad Sign” performed by William Bell, written by William Bell and Booker T. Jones, from the CD William Bell, Collector’s Edition: Greatest Hits, used courtesy of Wilbe Records.

“Born Under A Bad Sign” performed by Albert King, written by William Bell and Booker T. Jones, from the CD, Born Under a Bad Sign (Stax Remastered) used courtesy of Craft Recordings.

“You Don’t Miss Your Water,” “Trying to Love Two,” “I Forgot to be Your Lover” written and performed by William Bell, from the CD William Bell, Collector’s Edition: Greatest Hits, used courtesy of Wilbe Records.

“This is Where I Live” from the cd “This is Where I Live” written and performed by William Bell, used courtesy of Stax.

 

 

Jo Reed: That is singer, songwriter and 2020 National Heritage Fellow William Bell—singing one of his many hits, “Born Under A Bad Sign.” And this is Art Works, the weekly podcast produced by the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed.

William Bell was the first male solo act signed to legendary Stax Records in the early 1960s. With his great sense of melody, rhythm, and lyrics as well as one of the best voices in the business, Bell played a pivotal role in creating a new genre of music known as Southern soul or the Memphis sound.

Bell is one of the great balladeers—sophisticated and soulful—with lyrics that caught the ear…. And as successful a songwriter as he is a singer. His songs have been covered across genres. His first big hit, “You Don’t Miss Your Water” was later covered by Otis Redding and The Byrds. “Born Under A Bad Sign” was written for Albert King but covered by rockers, soul singers and bluesmen. Billy Idol scored a big hit with William Bell’s song “I Forgot to be Your Lover” and so did Jaheim.

After Stax records closed in 1975, Bell moved to Atlanta and formed his own record label. He released “Trying To Love Two” in 1977, which reached number one on the R&B charts and was the biggest hit of his career.

For several decades, Bell performed occasional world tours and special concert appearances but focused on production and songwriting. Then in 2016, he signed with the newly revived Stax Records and released the LP This is Where I Live, and won his first Grammy Award for Best Americana Album. And that’s all I’m saying—you can hear the rest from him.

I spoke with the amazing William Bell recently—Here’s our conversation

 

Jo Reed: William Bell, congratulations on being named a 2020 National Heritage Fellow.. so well deserved. One of your many awards but I’m thrilled you received this one.

William Bell: Well thank you so much. I feel very fortunate and humbled and blessed and I’m just elated to be in that category, so thank you.

Jo Reed: Sure. Now you were born and raised in Memphis. Was music always a part of your life? Did you grow up singing?

William Bell: I grew up singing in church at about 6 years, 7 years old I was singing with the church choir. My mom sang in the choir and of course when I was about 9, I think I graduated to singing solo with the choir behind me. So yes, I’ve been singing, I would say most of my life.

Jo Reed: And songwriting, you’ve been doing that most of your life too and as I recall, that began pretty early as well?

William Bell: It did. I was an only child until I was about 10 years old and I was kind of a loner and that.. just writing poems and stuff like that was kind of like an outlet for me and then when I started singing in church and everything, I started putting stuff to melodies and everything around, and then so I’ve been pretty much writing since I was 9 or 10 really.

Jo Reed: You know, if somebody landed here from Mars and never heard of Stax records, how would you describe it to them?

William Bell: Well, I would describe Stax as a home away from home for the neighborhood kids. Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton allowed us kids to come in and actually she had a record shop so it was just kind of like a magnet for all the neighborhood kids, and she put a speaker out there on the sidewalk so we could hear all the latest songs and records that came out and we just congregated and danced. So when they built the studio in that theater building, they allowed us to come in and learn a craft, hone a craft and just make a living at it, so I would describe Stax as a surrogate home and everybody within there, even during that time which was the segregated era, but everybody within there were mixed with black and white and we were like family.

Jo Reed: You know, there was so much.. that was unusual about Stax. As you mentioned, this was the segregated south and at the same time, its doors were open to everyone and the sound of the music being produced was clearly different but also the way music was made. So I wonder if you could describe the sound that, in fact, you helped create there, what’s known as the Memphis sound, how would you characterize it?

William Bell: Well I would say it’s part of everything we were exposed to on the radio which was gospel, blues and back then they called it rhythm and blues and of course when we started at Stax, we mixed all of those ingredients, a little bit of gospel, a little bit of blues, a little bit of country and western and we called it soul music because you was singing it from the heart.

Jo Reed: You had incredible house bands at Stax, Booker T. Jones and Booker T. and the M.G.’s and then Isaac Hayes later on was part of the house band and you know, so on and so on and from what I’ve read and I wonder if it’s true, that there really wasn’t a strict demarcation between the control room and the studio.. that musicians were basically going back and forth and the sessions would run for as long as necessary. Is that true or is that.. has that become a myth?

William Bell: No, no, that is very true. We didn’t have a time.. a clock on the sessions. What we did was a lot of times we’d come up with the ideas and if we had the song, we would work it up in the studio. So all of the musicians, Steve, Duck, Al and Booker were a part of the rhythm section and Steve Cropper. So we worked it up in the studio and.. until we were pretty much satisfied with the arrangement of the rhythm and all of that, and we put the vocals down and back then, we only had like about four tracks so you had limited possibilities. You had to.. have to put the rhythm on one track and the vocals on another and then you left the track open for the horn, then whatever backup voice is another track, so.. then you kind of blended it together. But back then it was very early on and we just did what we felt. It was not.. we didn’t know we were going to create something for longevity or anything like that but we just wanted to be creative and hear our songs on the radio. So, that was a part of it and we were like family and a mixed group. Of course Booker and Al Jackson were the black portion of Booker T and the M.G.’s and then you had Steve and Duck Dunn who were like the white counterparts and.. but the whole organization of Stax was mixed and like I said, inside the confines of Stax, we were like family.

Jo Reed: You were the first male solo artist signed by Stax and you wrote a massive hit which you recorded, “You Don’t Miss Your Water”, I would love to have you to talk about that song. Do you remember what inspired it or what was it like being in front of that microphone singing your own song?

William Bell: Yeah, “You Don’t Miss Your Water” came about early. Actually it was Satellite Records when I cut it and they had to change the name because there was another entity in California or something with the name Satellite so they changed it with Jim’s last name which is Stewart, S-T, and then Mrs. Axton his sister, was Axton and so they did S-T-A-X and there you have Stax. But You Don’t Miss Your Water, I had a vocal group at the time and I was singing locally in a club on the weekends with the group called The Del-Rios and we did the backup work for Gee Whiz behind Carla Thomas, so that’s how we came to the attention of Stax Records. And when we.. a couple of the guys were older and they were drafted, they had the draft back then, and they were drafted into the military and that left me and Louis Williams and of course, he formed another group and I went solo and I was on tour with the Phineas Newborn Orchestra in New York and we had a day off, a Sunday night, and it was raining, and I was homesick, missing my girlfriend and all that stuff, and I came up with this song, You Don’t Miss Your Water. And when I came back, of course, Chips Moman approached me about singing something solo, being an artist on Stax, and I had about four songs I had written while I was touring with them.. the Phineas Newborn Orchestra, and I went in and cut “You Don’t Miss Your Water” which was a combination of kind of country, kind of gospel, kind of blues kind of song and that idea turned into southern soul music, so, it worked.

Jo Reed: It sure did. How old were you?

William Bell: I was about 17 at the time.

Jo Reed: So there you are, you career is taking off, you’re touring and then suddenly you hear from your draft board.. what happened?

William Bell: Of course. I had applied for college and then when I got the hit record I said, “Well, let me.. instead of going to school, let me make some money,” like all college kids, “And then I’ll come back to school next semester.” So what I did was went on the road with the Phineas Newborn Orchestra and got a chance to travel all over the US of A. And of course, when I didn’t start the school after graduating from high school, I didn’t start college right away, I was drafted into the military also because I had just turned 18 and then at that particular time if you were 18 and weren’t in school, you were open for draft and I got drafted. Well actually I was able to tour for about a year and a half behind You Don’t Miss Your Water and I had a big hit record and I released a second record called, Any Other Way and then I was at the Apollo and of course, that’s when the touring was you had one-nighters and mom finally caught up with me because I had a whole week at the Apollo Theater in New York, and she caught up with me at the Apollo and of course, informed me that I had a draft notice from the government. So I flew home hoping I could get a deferment and of course since I was about 2 weeks late, I went in and of course they immediately put me into the military.

Jo Reed: Two years is a very long time to be away from a young, promising career in music?

William Bell: It was and I spent a year and a half overseas. This was just at the beginning of the Vietnamese uprising and all of that, and so I spent a year and a half overseas and I didn’t hear a lot of American music and so I had to.. when I came back, thank goodness, Stax had my career and contract retroactive from the time I went in so I still had a couple of years.. two and a half years, left on the contract. And so I had to really reorient myself into what was happening musically on stage and on the radio and of course Jim Stewart was gracious enough to let me do that and I wrote a couple of songs with Steve Cropper and the things.. and David and Isaac wrote a couple of things for me because when I came back, Otis was a big star, Rufus Thomas was a star and of course, Carla Thomas was a big star. So I had to.. when I went in, I was number-one on the totem pole and then I was at the bottom of the totem pole when I came out, so I had to really play catchup. So, I wrote a song called, “Everybody Loves a Winner” and that’s the first hit record after I came out of the military.

Jo Reed: And of course the Otis you’re talking about is Otis Redding who was a great friend of yours?

William Bell: Yes. I met Otis when I came home on furlough from basic training and he came in and he and I just kind of clicked and hit it off as friends. And so when I came back and got the hit record we did some touring together, about a year of touring and everything and so we hung together when we weren’t touring and then just when we were touring, it was just a joy. It was like competition between us.. friendly competition, but we became good friends and of course you know, the rest of it after his death and everything, I wrote “Tribute to a King” as a tribute to him.

Jo Reed: Well I was going to ask you because you can sing everything but you really just love ballads and boy, can you sing a ballad, andyou love them as a singer and as a writer, and I’m wondering if your background in church music, it somehow relates to that?

William Bell: It does. Singing gospel is a great foundation for melodic structure and lyrical content and being able to deliver the emotional range of a story. So that’s where my foundation was and so when I write personally for myself or for any other artist, that’s the way I approach it. I just want to write about life and write the realistic point of view and maybe how I would relate to it if I were in a certain situation if I’ve got an idea, hypothetical idea, for a song. So it’s just a.. they say that soul singers never sing the same song the same identical way at any given performance and that’s pretty much true because you’re creating as you deliver the idea and the song and however you’re feeling at that particular given time, that’s how you relate to it.

Jo Reed: Well your voice is just extraordinary, as somebody said, “He could sing about kicking puppies and you would still love him that voice is so smooth.”

William Bell: <laughs> Well thank you and thank who said that.. I do appreciate that.

Jo Reed: I wish it had been me but it wasn’t.

William Bell: <laughs> But that is something that you learn in gospel and also when I became a vocalist with the Phineas Newborn Orchestra. I was able to sing jazz and standard stuff and he had a big band kind of like a Count Basie band. So I was surrounded by just fantastic musicians and it was like going to university and they took the time to.. they were hard on me but because they loved me and they wanted me to be the best at what I could be.

Jo Reed: I would like to talk about a couple of the many, many, many songs you wrote and recorded.. just too many hits to talk about. You and Booker T had known each other and worked pretty closely together. And one song that you wrote with Booker T was “Born Under A Bad Sign” which has been recorded by 80 million people, but I think Albert King was the first to record it. What do you remember about that one?

William Bell: Well, I was one of these artists that if I were not on tour, I was in the studio because I wanted to learn all of the aspects of recording, how to mic drums, how to.. what that button is for and sometimes when Jerry Wexler or Tom Dowd would come in, I would pick their brains and they were gracious enough to tell me the inner workings of the recording process. So I was in the studio when Albert was recording and he didn’t have enough material. So Jim asked me if I had a song that Albert could do and of course I had this one song that I was going to start for myself and I had a verse, a baseline and a chorus and that’s all I had.. so one verse, a baseline and a chorus but I told him that I had this song and so I sang it for Albert and he just loved the idea and so Booker and I went over night to his home and wrote the song, stayed up all night, wrote it, came back the next morning and cut the track and put Albert on it and that’s how Born Under A Bad Sign came about.

Jo Reed: And another early Stax song was a gorgeous song, sung beautifully by you and also covered by many, many, many, many people, “I Forgot to be Your Lover?”

William Bell: Yes, “I Forgot to be Your Lover” was a song that.. when I really started touring, some of those tours back then in the early days would last for six or seven months and I went on the road and of course, I had a girlfriend and went on the road and left her for that long and we would talk every other day or something when we would stop long enough and of course you get homesick and that’s how the idea for I Forgot to be Your Lover came about. That was one of the songs that I did but it’s been covered by a lot of people and it’s always been successful with the people that cut it so I guess a lot of different genres of music, from Billy Idol, to Jaheim, to you name it, have cut it and they all had hits on it which I’m elated over, but it was one of those songs that anybody that tour a lot or that’s in this business they can relate to and people that you leave behind can relate to it.

Jo Reed: Well things unfortunately did not go well for Stax financially and it ended up having to close and you ended up moving to Atlanta. Why leave Memphis and why go to Atlanta?

William Bell: after Stax closed, my management was in Atlanta. So I moved to Atlanta. I actually had thought seriously about.. I was so disillusioned about getting out of the music business. <laughs> So what I did was my manager and I started a company here in Atlanta. I had a production company so we started a record label to write and produce for other artists, so that’s what I did for like three years and of course, at that time, Charles Fach out of Mercury, was distributing our Peachtree label, so he was constantly at me about doing something for Mercury Records. But I was comfortable writing and producing for my own label and everything. But finally he prevailed and I agreed to do four sides for Mercury and I cut the tracks for the song "Trying to Love Two," and of course that turned out to be a million seller for Mercury on my first release with them, and which-- as you might say, it pulled me back into the music business.

Jo Reed: I bet it did. How did you find out it sold a million copies?

William Bell: I was on a flight to California, and I don't know how <laughs>-- how they did it. But I was on this flight, and the stewardess asked me to stand up, and at the time I'm wondering, "What did I do now?"

<laughter>

William Bell: So I stood up in the middle of the aisle, and they announced that-- somehow Charles fashioned [ph?]-- Steinberg, or Irwin, who was the president of Mercury at the time. They had that done, and they announced to the people on the plane that I had just sold a million copies of this song, "Trying to Love Two," and of course, I got all the applause. Kind of embarrassed me in a sense. But that's how I found out <laughs>.

Jo Reed: You started your own label, Wilbe Records, which you still have, and you record yourself and you record other people, and you toured for some time. I'm just curious about having your own label. And of course, that gives you a lot of freedom, but I would imagine it also gives you a lot of business headaches.

William Bell: Well, it does, but I was accustomed to that because as I said earlier, I was always wanting to know the inner workings of the music business, even before it was fashionable. So I was just really open for any of the inner workings of the business of music, even back then when it was not fashionable for artists to really delve into that. And so when I started the Wilbe label, of course, I was like an old hat at doing that <laughs>. And of course I had a good partner in this with Reginald Jones, was another Jones boy.

<laughter>

William Bell: And he kind of remind me of Booker because he played-- he's one of those musicians that you just hate, you know. He plays about seven or eight instruments fluidly <laughs>. I just say that lovingly. But he and I worked closely together, and we signed up three or four acts that we were successful with, and of course we've still got the label going We do everything in-house, from creating the artwork to taking the photos, doing the videos-- we do it all here at the complex here.

<laughter>

Jo Reed: Well, exactly. There you are. You're doing all this, and then suddenly, Stax is relaunched, and they came looking for you. What made you decide you would do another record with them?

William Bell: Well, I was always doing stuff for the Stax Academy when we put that back into operation, and I was taking the kids on the road with me to do some things. We did the Smithsonian Festival, and we did another festival in Orlando there for AARP and just a lot of things. I took them on the road with me, and those were kids from the academy that we were working with, and of course I still was in contact with people at Stax. So when they approached me about doing something, they wanted to resurrect the Stax label again. So I'm saying, "Okay." It just made sense. I was the first solo act that signed with the original Stax, and now here they came to me again and said, "Would you sign?" And so I took a hiatus from my label-- the Wilbe label-- and signed with them for a year and did a project with John Leventhal, which was a big fan of mine and I was a big fan of his and everything. So we took our time and just created. We didn't want to reinvent the wheel and try to dwell on creating a new Stax, but we wanted some of that ingredient that Stax had, which was good songs, good melodical content, and good production and everything. So we took our time for about a year working on that, both at my studio and at his studio up in New York. And we wanted to broaden it a little bit because now it's world music, so we wanted to broaden it so it's a little bit more than just Southern Soul or soul music. So we just really took our time to write the kind of songs and material that would be a little broader appeal throughout the world, and we came up with "This is Where I Live," and to make a long story short, we were fortunate enough to win the Americana Album of the Year with a Grammy.

Jo Reed: That's right. Your first Grammy, which I find impossible to believe, but yes.

William Bell: Yeah. And you know, it was funny that it was back on Stax again. So I'm saying, "Okay. Great." So it kicked that label back off and everything.

<laughter>

William Bell: So I was just elated over that.

Jo Reed: The sound you two arrived at was just wonderful because it certainly was a nod to Stax, but it wasn't a replication. It wasn't something embedded in nostalgia. It was so current.

William Bell: Well, that's what we were trying to do. We were trying to be current enough but still retain that essence of good song, good melodic structure, and good lyrical content.

Jo Reed: I’d like to touch briefly on the documentary "Take Me to the River," I'm curious how you got involved and what made you want to sign onto it and what you wanted to accomplish by doing it.

William Bell: Well, "Take Me to the River" was a process that they had done a couple of days of filming on, but they were just doing recording sessions. And the producer Martin Shore wanted to use me on something, and of course my thinking at the time was, "Okay. We've been approached a lot of times by stuff that just didn't have it right-- not quite right," but I was open enough to talk with Martin. And when I talked with him, he was just passionate about wanting to do it right and wanting to get it right. That's why he wanted to get me involved in all of this. And he had talked to Snoop Dogg, and Snoop Dogg was a fan, and he wanted to do it with me. So, I saw how dedicated he was in telling the story of Stax and telling of the new ideas. So my next question to him was, "Can we use the Stax Kids?" So he said, "Absolutely," and he then got the idea "Why don't we do this? Why don't we just cross genres? Since Snoop wants to work with you, then why don't we just cross genres between hip-hop, rap, and blues and soul?" And that's how we started out doing that, and it took us a little while to get all of the sessions done, but everybody had such a wonderful attitude. There were no egos, none of that among the artists and everything that came in to participate, and it was just a labor of love and we learned so much in doing that. We learned that it was actually the same story. The hip-hoppers and rappers are telling it from their generation; we told it from our generation in the '60s; and before that, in the '50s and '40s, people like B.B. King and Bobby Bland and all those people told it from their era. So it was the same story perpetuated through the years, and we learned so much from each other.

Jo Reed: Tell me who the Stax Kids are.

William Bell: The Stax Kids are the kids that attend the Stax Academy. And now, once we resurrected the Stax Museum, we also built an academy where the kids can go like we did in the studio. They can go to the academy-- just neighborhood kids and everything-- and learn the process of doing music. And you've got so many talented kids, and they learn every aspect of it, from songwriting to performing to dance to engineering and both sides of the spectrum of music. So that's who they are, and I've used the band and dancers on the road with me and even in Europe on some dates, and they're just wonderful kids that are so talented. And I look at them almost like a proud grandfather because they remind me of me when I was coming along at 12 and 14. So we use them. In "Take Me to the River," you can hear some of them in "Take Me to the River," some of the horns and some of the rhythm players and everything, the little drummer and guitarist and everything. And they learned so much from it, and we were so happy that they were included in this because-- and then we took them on the road when we started touring on some of the performances. So they just learned a lot, and a lot of the kids have gone on to be million-seller writers. And this girl Evvie that did backup for us, she won for the first episode of "The Four," and she has signed with Motown now. So it is just a wonderful thing to be able to pass that torch on to the youngsters and the kids and let them realize their dream.

Jo Reed: Finally, in closing, what are you looking forward to right now?

William Bell: More longevity.

<laughter>

William Bell: No. I really do. I just had a birthday, and I'm really fortunate to be around this long and being a viable entity in the business. That's number one. And I feel very fortunate to do that. I've got all my health and strength, and I'm still working with kids and teaching them, and I've got my own publishing and production company and business. So I'm having a good time in my old age doing what I love doing, and I've been doing it my whole life. Right now we're just hunkered down, trying to be creative and create different ways of being a viable entity in the music business.

Jo Reed: And aren't we lucky that that's what you're doing? William Bell, thank you. I have so much to thank you for-- your time, certainly, but the music and the happiness you have given me throughout the years. I am so grateful to you.

William Bell: Well, thank you so much. And we need people like you. There are a lot of people that grow into making an artist who they are, and they don't get to shine in the spotlight enough. But you've got a lot of the stations and the different managers and all these people that work behind the scenes-- the writers, producers... and the fans, of course, and people like you-- the media. We are elevated because of you, and we don't forget that. We don't take it lightly.

Jo Reed: Oh,thank you, and many congratulations again on the 2020 National Heritage Fellowship.

William Bell: Thank you. Thank you so much. And again, hopefully we will be able to do the celebration virtually or meet, maybe, hopefully in '21, or at least by '22.

Jo Reed: I hope so. I really do. And please take care until then. Thank you.

William Bell: All right. Be safe.

That is singer/songwriter and 2020 National Heritage fellow, William Bell.

Because of the pandemic, the annual celebration of the new class of National Heritage Fellows will take place virtually this year.

Details will be available shortly at arts.gov. You've been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. And don’t forget to subscribe to Art Works and leave us a rating on Apple it helps people to find us. And follow us on twitter @NEAarts.

For the National Endowment for the Arts, I'm Josephine Reed. Stay safe. Stay Kind. And thanks for listening.