In the six­ties, just as Berry Gordy up in Detroit was dri­ving the Motown sound, down in Mem­phis the most influ­en­tial cre­ator and pro­mot­er of that crossover of blues/soul/pop music known as the Mem­phis sound was Stax Records, found­ed in 1957 by Jim Stew­art and Estelle Axton (Stewart/Axton = Stax). Unprece­dent­ed in that time of racial ten­sion and strife in the South, Stax’s staff and artists were eth­ni­cal­ly inte­grat­ed, includ­ing their leg­endary house band Book­er T & the MGs, who played on hun­dreds of record­ings by artists includ­ing Wil­son Pick­ett, Otis Red­ding, and Bill With­ers.

Anoth­er suc­cess­ful Stax act was Sam & Dave, made up of har­mo­nious­ly-com­pat­i­ble soul singers Samuel Moore and David Prater, and today let’s enjoy their 1967 record­ing, Soul Man, writ­ten by Isaac Hayes and David Porter. Hayes had found the inspi­ra­tion for the song in the tur­moil of the Civ­il Rights Move­ment. In July 1967 he had watched a tele­vi­sion news­cast about the after­math of the 12th Street riot in Detroit, Michi­gan, and not­ed that black res­i­dents had daubed the word “soul” onto their build­ings in the hope that the riot­ers would pass them by – anal­o­gous to the bib­li­cal sto­ry of the Passover, it was their way of say­ing “Please don’t wreck my build­ing, I’m one of you” (so to speak). The idea mor­phed in Hayes’ mind into an expres­sion of pride and defi­ance: “I’m a soul man!”.

The MGs were draft­ed in to record the song, with the help of horns from that oth­er reli­able Stax house band, the Mar-Keys, and the result was an instant smash that would enter the Gram­my Hall of Fame. Sam and Dave take it in turns to sing the vers­es, join­ing in togeth­er for the cho­rus­es, and com­ple­ment­ing each oth­er seam­less­ly. One of Steve Cropper’s gui­tar licks is intro­duced by the excla­ma­tion “Play it, Steve”, a nuance that was repeat­ed some years lat­er when Soul Man was includ­ed as one of the soul clas­sics paid trib­ute to by the mak­ers of 1980’s The Blues Broth­ers movie (in which Crop­per makes an appear­ance).

Here’s a TV appear­ance by the duo singing Soul Man (sans Crop­per and thus sans the “Play it Steve” snip­pet but hey…) to an audi­ence that does­n’t quite yet know how to move to the rhythm!