Sunday Tunes: Wattstax edition

Some tunes from the documentary Wattstax, centered around the August 20, 1972 concert at the Los Angeles Coliseum on the occasion of the 7th anniversary of the Watts Riots, but also including commentary from Richard Pryor and, somewhat oddly to later eyes, Ted Lange (who would go on to play Isaac, the bartender from "The Love Boat"), as well as a panoply of Watts residents. Put on by the premier label of southern soul, Memphis, Tennessee's Stax Records, home of Otis Redding, Booker T. and the MGs, William Bell, The Mar Keys, Johnnie Taylor, the Sweet Inspirations, Eddie Floyd, and many others, including of course everybody below.

The rest of the vids are live performances, but the movie opens with The Dramatics: What You See Is What You Get, one of my favorite tunes from that era of Stax, so I include it in spite of my general predilection for live music in these posts:


The rest of these are presented out of chronological order due to rationales that I will explain. Rufus Thomas, here doing The Funky Chicken, was part of duet that first garnered Stax the attention of Atlantic Records, which led to a distribution deal allowing Stax to expand much more than they might have in the earlier years and also led to Atlantic artists Aretha Franklin and Sam & Dave to come record in the Stax studios with house band Booker T. and the MGs, producing a number of hits for the former and almost all the significant charting tunes for the latter. So, Rufus gets first ups (nothing bad happens to the dude at end, I'm pretty sure):


The other half of that early duo with Rufus? His daughter Carla Thomas. Here she is with Pick Up the Pieces:


Appearing for the second time here at Sunday Tunes, the Staple Singers, with Respect Yourself, garner the middle slot by process of elimination solely:


The headliner for the evening was Isaac Hayes, who prior to his own recording career taking off with Hot Buttered Soul, his second album, was songwriter with David Porter for many of those aforementioned Sam & Dave hits and, after Atlantic severed its relationship with Stax and pulled Sam & Dave out of the Stax studies--basically never to be heard from again, the Soul Children, among others. Some of you young'uns might remember him better as the culinary artist forced to abandon his vocation because of his religious beliefs. Anyway, here he is near or at the height of his popularity with the Theme from Shaft, introduced by Jesse Jackson:


Finally, if you thought Isaac's look was 70's outre (how does one add accent egouts in blogger?) check the Bar-Kays in the following. But, what do you expect from "the son of a bad..." "Shut your mouth!"? Son of Shaft is the tune, which explains its placement (fans of Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back might recognize a sample or two from this clip):