Here Comes the Night (42 page)

The civil rights movement had long before entered the soul idiom. The songs gave voice to a nation’s unspoken thoughts—a fresh soundtrack for changing times, a bulletin board on the country’s wall—and, in turn, spread the word in profound, immeasurable ways. The Impressions brought “Keep On Pushing” to the charts, and even the steadfastly populist Motown label invoked the call for unity in “Dancin’ in the Streets.” At the same time Stokely Carmichael demanded “black power,” the healing gospel impulse was trained on the black community from their radios.

Soul was the leading edge of black Americans’ newfound sense of self-awareness; they heard their language in the songs and saw themselves in the music, where they could not as easily find their lives reflected or represented in all-white mass media such as
Leave It to Beaver
television or John Wayne movies. Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)” on the radio was not just pop music; it was the sound of liberation, a celebration of all-black America coming out from the shadows.

Also like the civil rights movement, soul music seemed to emanate most radiantly from the Deep South. “Hold On I’m Coming” by Sam & Dave, the duo Wexler assigned to the Memphis label Atlantic distributed, was only the latest killer soul side to come out of the Stax studios. Wexler sent Wilson Pickett back two more times to Memphis after “In the Midnight Hour” before Stax owner Jim Stewart banned any further outside production by the label.

Whether Stewart’s slamming shut the door was a result of Pickett being such a pain in the ass or Stewart’s desire to retain the signature
sound of the studio and house band Booker T. and the M.G.’s for his own artists, he deprived Stax staff writers such as Steve Cropper of opportunities. Cropper’s “634-5789” from Pickett’s final Memphis sessions hit the charts in February. But almost as soon as Wexler was shut down in Memphis, a record came out of nowhere from a small Alabama backwater that brought a studio in Muscle Shoals to the attention of Jerry Wexler.

Rick Hall had been at the center of a small, disparate enclave of struggling music business professionals around Florence, Alabama, since he recorded the 1962 hit “You Better Move On” with local singer Arthur Alexander (who wrote the song) at his Muscle Shoals studio in an old candy and tobacco warehouse on the road to Wilson Dam. Joe Tex cut his 1964 breakthrough, “Hold What You’ve Got,” at Muscle Shoals. Hall did okay himself putting out Jimmy Hughes records on his FAME label.

A small cadre of songwriters and musicians developed around the area. But Hall didn’t hear the song as a hit when Percy Sledge, a twenty-five-year-old hospital orderly who was Jimmy Hughes’s cousin, first brought his group, the Esquires, to Hall’s studio. Songwriter Dan Penn did hear something and suggested they go see Quin Ivy, who Penn knew was starting a studio in nearby Sheffield.

They caught a magic instrumental track with a set of descending chords on the Hammond B-3 organ, but Ivy wanted them to change the lyric, so “Why Did You Leave Me” became “When a Man Loves a Woman.” When they were done, they had no idea what to do other than take the tape over to play for Rick Hall, who immediately sent the track off to Jerry Wexler at Atlantic. Wexler quickly cut a deal for the master with the neophyte producer, who rejected Wexler’s suggestion that he add his own name to the songwriting credits. Ivy thought that would be dishonest.

Wexler also sent the tape back to record over because the horns went flat on the fade. Back at the studio, they puzzled over the prospect,
took a couple of passes at rerecording the track, but, in the end, sent the serendipitous original back to Wexler, who apparently didn’t realize until sometime after the record was released that they put out the first version with the out-of-tune horns. “When a Man Loves a Woman” by Percy Sledge was not only a number one hit when it was released that April, 1966, but it was also one of the defining moments in the emerging sound of soul.

When Wexler sent Pickett down the next month to Muscle Shoals, the singer looked out the plane window as it landed and saw black people picking cotton. He was met at the airport by Hall, who Pickett had no idea was white. In fact, to Pickett’s immense surprise, the entire Muscle Shoals scene—the songwriters, the studio musicians—were young white Southerners.

Hall came from country music, but he was trying to establish himself in the business, not pursue a particular musical vision, when this regional soul scene began to coalesce around his operation. The young musicians who came around were a different matter. Dan Penn pin-balled between singing like Ray Charles, James Brown, and Bobby “Blue” Bland. He was a teenager as thoroughly drenched in this music as anyone. He wasn’t pretending or imitating and he was like a natural wonder to the other Muscle Shoals musicians, who admired his level of expression.

These white Southern musicians belonged to a new generation schooled in black music at the source, from radio stations such as Memphis’s WDIA, all-black broadcasters since 1948, that swept through the entire South in 1954 after adding a mighty fifty-thousand-watt transmitter. At nights on Nashville’s WLAC, the white deejay John R.—John Richbourg—cut another clear channel swath through the South, reaching as far north as Brooklyn, playing the race records and making with his
Amos ’n’ Andy
jive. A twist of the dial, and black culture, hidden away from their parents in a more segregated era, was readily accessible. For this generation of Southerners, the real divide was not
so much black and white as rich and poor. These were the musicians behind the new Southern soul.

The Drifters practically epitomized the calcified, old-fashioned rhythm and blues, with the group’s lineage extending back to the bad old days of conks and Jim Crow. As he told
Record World
, Berns carefully constructed “Up in the Streets of Harlem” as a bid for renewed relevance by the group.

Borrowing from the kind of social realism Mann and Weil used in the Animals’ “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” (which would have been a Barry Mann solo single on Red Bird if his publisher hadn’t pulled the plug at the last minute) or their “Kicks” by Paul Revere and the Raiders, an alarmist but tuneful antidrug screed apparently inspired by the ongoing dissolution of their colleague Gerry Goffin, Berns plants the Drifters almost defiantly at 125th Street, far north of their fabled neon lights on Broadway.

Berns gives the record an introduction with a distant echo of “Tell Him” and rides into the chorus on a lightly sinister Cubano groove, as he shoehorns a boy–girl subtext into his harsh landscape of
tenements and dirt
. It is a pseudoepic that tries too hard.
Billboard
figured the other side as the potential hit—baritone vocalist Charlie Thomas singing the old Solomon Burke album track Berns wrote three years before with Ertegun, Leiber, and Stoller, “You Can’t Love ’Em All”—although the optimistic review (“should quickly re-establish the talented group on the charts”) did not prove true.

The third song he cut at the January session at Atlantic Studios, a simple, sentimental remake of the old Dean Martin hit “Memories Are Made of This,” made a little noise on the pop charts when it was released in March, but “Up in the Streets of Harlem” was really the last swing for the grandstands by the storied group. Neither side of the single even bubbled under.

Still, there was much to celebrate. Wexler sent a limousine to pick up Mr. and Mrs. Berns and bring them to the dinner at his Great Neck
mansion. In under a year, Bang Records had turned out to be successful beyond anybody’s imagination. Wexler summoned all four partners and their wives for a celebration dinner. Mica Ertegun attending such affairs made it a rare event indeed.

Prosperity smiled on all their enterprises. Atlantic was once again flush with hits. “Good Lovin’,” the second single by the white rock group the Young Rascals, earned a number one hit earlier in the year. During the first quarter, the label kept nine or ten singles on the
Hot 100
every week. Stax was hot for Atlantic, with hits by Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, and Carla Thomas on the charts.

Sonny Bono pulled something of a fast one and signed Cher as a solo artist to United Artists. Her solo singles were currently doing better than their Sonny & Cher duo records for Atlantic, where the previous year they clicked with three crucial Top Tens on Atco (including the worldwide monster “I Got You Babe”). But Wilson Pickett was selling records for Atlantic and there was that massive number one hit by Percy Sledge out of Muscle Shoals. Furthermore, album sales on Atlantic doubled from the previous year, the company benefitting from an exploding market in long-playing albums of pop music. Ahmet even brought Bobby Darin back to Atlantic, who earned his first Top Ten in three years with “If I Were a Carpenter.”

Life was good at Atlantic Records, although Wexler still hoped to sell the company. He was putting together a package behind the scenes that he hoped would play better than the abortive ABC sale. Wexler could never be satisfied with success. He always wanted more. Berns would be surprised to find out how much more.

After a lavish dinner, served by tuxedo-clad black servants, washed down by vintage French wines, as the men lit cigars and sniffed their brandy glasses, Wexler delivered his pitch. The entire Web IV deal had been so successful—the publishing company, as well as the record label—everyone was proud of Berns and felt it was time to make a real partnership with all equal partners—25 percent
apiece. It was an outrageous proposal that was against Berns’s own best interests.

As Wexler spoke, Ilene Berns felt anger rising. She knew her husband would be furious, but she also knew he would give the bastards what they wanted just because they asked. It wasn’t fair. Even if he changed his mind, she knew he would never go back on his word. She spoke up.

“Why would he want to do that?” she said. “You already have your company. You already have half of Bert’s company. This is Bert’s baby.”

Wexler slammed his hand down on the table, stood up, grumbled something about talking business around women, and stormed off.

She was right. Berns was angry with her. When they climbed in the back of the limousine, he told her she embarrassed him. “Bert, I love you,” she said, and told him that Wexler and the Erteguns had no right to take what was his when they didn’t have anything more than $17,000 at risk. They rode in silence for some time. Around the Midtown Tunnel, he put his arm around her and smiled. “I love you,” he said.

Wexler was furious. He phoned Berns the next day and told him the deal was over. Berns didn’t even know what he was talking about. “Either you buy me out or I buy you out,” said Wexler, naming a price he thought Berns couldn’t afford, but that he wouldn’t mind paying—$300,000.

Berns was stunned. He had no idea what set Wexler off. He didn’t have the money. Wexler had been his closest friend, his coconspirator, his biggest fan, his patient teacher, his father confessor, all that and more rolled into one all-encompassing relationship. Berns, who lived on the edge of death, saw Wexler’s greed and anger as mortal betrayal. He would not allow him to prevail. Encouraged by his wife, who told him to sell everything, do whatever he needed, Berns begged, borrowed, cajoled the money. He inveigled his distributors into giving him advances. Whatever it took, he made it happen.

His last Atlantic session came in July 1966. He cut a couple of numbers with the Drifters, including a Bert Berns–Jeff Barry song, “Aretha.” Tom Dowd was surprised to hear from Wexler that he needed to clear directly with Wexler’s office any requests from the studio for tapes or whatever from Bert Berns. Berns was now persona non grata at Atlantic and Dowd always wondered what happened.

Berns was also now the sole owner of both Bang Records and Web IV publishing. Berns outlined big plans for the label when he talked to the trades. He unveiled a new r&b subsidiary, Shout Records, with releases by the Exciters and Jimmy Radcliffe. He announced the signing of Freddie Scott, Bobby Harris, and Roy C. to the new label. He spoke about plans to reach the Spanish market by signing the blind Cuban music great Arsenio Rodriguez, who had been living for many years in the Bronx, and Berns wanted to expand into folk music with another signing, vocalist Ronnie Gilbert of the Weavers.

Berns also noted the great new r&b sounds coming out of the South.“The sound is happening down there, not up North,” he told
Billboard
in July. “Joe Tex and Otis Redding are among a host of top talent, all from the South.”

As for his former partners at Atlantic Records, Berns said the split was entirely amicable. “I will always be grateful to them for the help they’ve given me in getting Bang started,” he said.

*
Eice Cherry and Noah Kaminsky were two pseudonyms Diamond contemplated for his Bang Records debut before settling on his given first and last names, without the middle name, Leslie.