It was the best show at SXSW and here's to hoping it is the best show of the summer at the Hollywood Bowl. Stax Records, the label that gave Memphis its musical identity in the 1960s and remains a standard-bearer for Southern soul, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year with concerts celebrations, reissues, a PBS documentary and a revival of the label by its new owners, Concord Records.
The Hollywood Bowl will be home Wednesday to the show that was previewed at Antone's during SXSW and put Booker T.  and the MG's behind two underrated legends, William Bell and Eddie Floyd.Isaac Hayes emceed that show - he continues to recover from a stroke - and he is expected to perform at the Bowl. Naturally, they will be performing songs by the label's greatest artist, Otis Redding, and it is highly likely that some Sam and Dave material will be thrown in as well.
For all the giddiness that surrounds the celebration of Stax and its sister label Volt, there is still a scar that dates back to Warner-owned Atlantic - and then CBS Records - driving the label into the ground in the early 1970s and the city of Memphis refusing to do anything to save the label's old HQ, a shuttered movie theater dubbed Soulsville U.S.A. Memphis spent the last 30 years of the 20th century attempting to recover from its place as the city where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and the Stax legacy paid a price; the city seemingly wanted to wash away its black history, attracting the tourists with Graceland and Sun Studios. In the last few years, with the revival of Beale Street as blues-driven tourist outlet, Memphis has come to embrace its place in soul music history and even launched a Stax museum.
Some of the blame for the vanishing of Stax, too, lies with the former catalog owner, Saul Zaentz and Fantasy Records, which provided little followup to the label's brilliant three box sets that brought together every A and B side ever issued on 45 by the label. Those three spectacular box sets, buoyed by Rob Bowman's expert liner notes, are a model for any label attempting a completist approach to an era - and for a few years in the early 1990s, there were soul music fans wondering where they would find the Mad-Lads, the Soul Children or Barbara Lewis. (Rufus Thomas did actually enjoy a bit of a revival at the time.)
Best part of the 50th is getting Bell centerstage with a band equal to his talent. He continues to record, but the lack of financing is always apparent in the sound of his efforts. If there is one musician from Stax's past that should be ushered back to the label, it is he. And Wednesday, not only will we get Hayes, Bell and Floyd, Mable John, the former Raelette and sister of Little Willie John, will sing as well.