4-CD set ‘The Soul of Designer Records’ restores missing chapter in Memphis soul and gospel music history

by | Jun 18, 2014 | Uncategorized | 0 comments
NEW FOUR-CD
SET OF HISTORIC “LOST” GOSPEL RECORDINGSRESTORES A
MISSING CHAPTER IN MEMPHIS MUSIC HISTORY
The Soul of Designer
Records
captures the nexus of Bluff City soul and spirituals, pays tribute to the
entrepreneurial spirit of label founder Style Wooten and to
legendary guitarist/producer Roland
Janes
MEMPHIS, Tenn.— If passion and fervor
were electricity, the performances on The Soul of Designer
Records could put the glow in every neon sign in the city on the
Mississippi River where they were recorded.

The four-CD set will be
releaed by Big Legal Mess
Records on September 30, 2014


Between
1967 and 1977 Designer label founder Style Wooten
and his studio main man Roland Janes, a heroic figure in
Memphis music, produced between 400 and 500 gospel singles. Many of the artists
they recorded came from Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas, but as the label’s
reputation grew they began arriving from more far flung locales — Chicago, St.
Louis, Boston, Ohio, the Carolinas, Florida, California — sometimes literally
waiting in line for their turn to cut at Janes’ Sonic Studios.
What’s
astonishing is how seamlessly this set’s 101 songs by dozens of groups and solo
acts lock together. That’s due to more than the unbridled sound of pure faith
welling up in the varied voices of such largely obscure performers as
Elizabeth King, who wails like Aretha on
“Testify for Jesus,” and Rev. Leon Hammer, who howls like
Blind Willie Johnson on “He Won’t Deny Me.” Many of these
numbers share a badass, wild-eyed energy — the same primitive, reverb-soaked
mojo that drives the classic Memphis rockabilly, garage rock and
blues that was Janes’ specialty. The protean roots rocker also plays
guitar on many of these sides, drawing on a do-it-all trick bag of riffs that
range from needlepoint blues licks ’n’ leads to funky James
Brown-style strumming to bristling country bends to unrepentant power
chords.
The Designer singles also capture the evolution of
Memphis blues and soul as reflected in their sanctified cousin of a genre. The
musical timeline starts in 1963 with the traditional quartet approach of
Grand Junction, Tennessee’s Gospel Songbirds,
who telegraph call-and-response vocals over simple blues chord changes, followed
by the hot Bobby “Blue” Bland boogie of the Dynamic
Hughes Gospel Singers’ “Beautiful City.” It climaxes in the
Hendrix-fueled six-string of Elgie Brown, whose 1975 “When
Jesus Comes” and “A Helping Hand” navigate a psychedelic sea of wah-wah, phase
shifter and distortion pedals.

The
Fantastic Gospel Travelers
Along the way there are stops for the
New Orleans second-line grooves of the Foster
Brothers, the driving post-Stax urgency of the
Magnificent Soul Survivors and the Mahalia
Jackson-influenced Cora Bell Watkins, whose 1973 “Love
King Jesus” sounds like an anachronism among the frequently percolating singles
of Designer’s later years, wrought in the city where the Staple
Singers and Al Green were cutting Top 40 pop crossover
smashes.
 

What’s
also astonishing is that none of this — the variety, the quality and durability
of the material, the consistently impressive level of talent — was calculated.
Designer was a “custom” record label, a now-vanished musical equivalent of a
vanity press. With few exceptions, the groups and artists who recorded for
Designer paid owner Style Wooten a fee, advertised once in the
’60s at $469.50, for cutting two sides in the studio. There were no fancy talent
scouts involved. Performers contacted him, and anybody with the cash, sometimes
paid in rolls of quarters on the installment plan, could make a record — just
like Elvis did on his first visit to another famed Memphis
institution, Phillips Recording Service.
“His
attitude was: ‘Come in and cut a record and I’ll give you 25 copies. When you
sell those, come back and buy another 25,’” Roland Janes
told Michael Hurtt, who authored The Soul of
Designer Records’ entertaining, informative liner
notes.
If the artists slated to record hadn’t brought
sufficient musical support for the work at hand, Janes would strap on his guitar
or call on his cast of studio players to fill the keyboard, drum or bass seats
as needed. Typically the performers that cut for Designer were amateurs: truck
drivers, barbers, school teachers, farmers, housemaids and factory workers who
played gospel music on the side. Most came to Sonic Studios as
part of a long-weekend pilgrimage to play gigs around Memphis and the Delta.
Some were more accomplished. Memphis’ own Jubilee Hummingbirds,
for example, launched the careers of soul greats James Carr
and O.V. Wright and remain in operation today. They’re
represented here by four tunes including the tremolo-guitar spiked “Stand By
Me.” Others, like the Mighty Blytheville Aires of
Blytheville, Arkansas and Alberta Powell, for whom no
biographical details can be found, literally had their day in Sonic and quickly
slipped into history.

Style
Wooten,
co-founder of Designer Records
What nearly all of Designer’s customers shared besides
religious conviction was the wide-eyed thrill of recording in a real studio for
the first time, and that’s audible throughout this ambitious
collection.
The Soul of Designer
Records is
also a tribute to Style Wooten and Roland
Janes, who were truly mavericks in an industry, city and era known for
iconoclasm.
Wooten
was a literal giant of a man, standing six-foot-six and with a full, furry beard
and a wax-tipped handle bar moustache. Born Jesse Corbett
Graham in 1921, he was an enigmatic character who led a band, ran a
trucking company and started a music management company that all bore his
adopted moniker before launching Designer when he was already in his forties. He
also founded the pop oriented J’Ace Records.
Wooten
knew how to make a homemade blackjack, enjoyed driving the smallest cars that
could contain his broad frame, had issues with alcoholism that toppled his first
marriage and is rumored to have left secret bank accounts all over Memphis when
he died in his sleep in 1998. As his son Jason told Hurtt, “You knew parts of
him, but you never knew all of him ’cause he never told anybody.” Yet those who
did business with Wooten spoke of his fair, honest and pleasant
nature.
Janes
and Wooten intersected shortly after Janes opened Sonic in 1963. By then Janes
had already laid the foundation for his place in music history. Starting in 1956
he was the house guitarist for Sun Records, playing on singles by Jerry
Lee Lewis (including “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On”), Billy Lee
Riley, Charlie Rich, Sonny Burgess and many others who would define the
sound of rockabilly and nascent rock. He also became a skilled engineer and
producer, developing microphone placement and tape-to-tape recording techniques
that helped revolutionize recording. Janes built Sonic after a faltered attempt
at running his own Rita Records label. And at Sonic he minted
the sound of Memphis ’60s garage rock, working with a plethora of teenaged bands
with names like the Yo-Yo’s, Flash & the Casuals, the
Rapscallions and the Memphis Charms. On weekends he
and Wooten made gospel recordings for Designer.
Janes
closed Sonic in 1973, leading Wooten to purchase his own gear and move the
Designer Records operation into his home at 3373 Park Avenue in
Memphis. But Janes kept on as a session player and producer until his death last
year, at age 80, once again manning the board for Sun Records
founder Sam Phillips at Phillips Recording,
and cutting tracks for a string of albums by his many torchbearers, including
Mudhoney’s Tomorrow Hit Today in
1998.
By
the early 1970s, Designer Records was one of the most successful independent
gospel labels in the United States due largely to its sheer volume of releases
and Style Wooten’s unmitigated willpower. And while today many of the artists
who took advantage of Designer’s services have given up performing, and a good
many have also given up the ghost, The Soul of Designer
Records upholds Wooten’s promise that for a reasonable fee their
musical pursuits will be immortalized. 

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