"It's Defined My Life"

"Green Onions started the 'Memphis soul sound', that deep organ. Years later, in the 70s, I was sitting in a restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard and this dude jumped up and started dancing on the table, plates flying. Everyone was laughing, then he just took off. I said: 'Who was that guy?' It turned out to be Keith Moon from the Who, paying me a form of tribute. Shortly afterwards, the Who used Green Onions in Quadrophenia, and it became a hit in the UK all over again."

In The Guardian, Booker T. Jones and Steve Cropper explain "How we made Booker T and the MGs' Green Onions."

"What I Had to Say There Couldn't Be Said in Two Minutes and 30 Seconds"

"Hayes deconstructed his cover songs, using their melodies merely as suggestions to elongate and twist. Then, he shocked the tunes with the psychedelic guitar distortions of a then teenaged Michael Toles. Over these oceanic songs, Hayes treated his backup singers as either sirens or witnesses, luring and mirroring him in equal measure. He also employed plush orchestrations, in the process patenting a style that would become his signature–symphonic soul."

Jim Farber at The Guardian revisits Isaac Hayes's Hot Buttered Soul.

A Hero to Most

"'My music is a combination of country music, gospel, and rhythm and blues,' Elvis explained in 1971. He attuned the sounds of white gospel quartets, black gospel spirituals, rural country, and urban blues to the same frequency as his spirit, providing a tour of the musical milestones and memories of his young life. It wasn't black. It wasn't white. It wasn't blues. It wasn't country. It was the transcendence of classification made possible only in the multicultural, multiethnic American experience."

David Masciotra at The American Conservative defends Elvis Presley.

"The Greater Likelihood Is that He May Have Died before His Prime"

"But 'Dock of the Bay' wasn't an ending, or shouldn't have been. Rather, it was a beginning. According to the song's co-author, Steve Cropper, Redding was obsessed with the Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (which had come out weeks before Redding wrote the song), and was looking to 'change his style.' And 'Dock of the Bay' is a remarkable turning point in Redding's catalogue: By 1967 he had mastered the barn-burning dance number and the candlelit love ballad, but 'Dock of the Bay' is another thing entirely, a song about homesickness that Redding turns into something elemental, existential. It's been covered by artists ranging from Bob Dylan to Sammy Hagar--understandable considering it's one of the best songs ever written--but no rendition approaches the power and depth of Redding's original. It is personal, bold, warm and warming, completely magnificent. And written and performed by a man who was only 26 years old."

Jack Hamilton at The Atlantic praises Otis Redding.

Crusader Cat Honor

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for voice actor Lucille Bliss, clothier Bernard Lansky, and historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown.

Coastal Memphis Minutes

The New York Times publishes obits for environmentalist Peter Douglas, television journalist Mike Wallace, and saxophonist Andrew Love.

Give Out but Don't Give Up

"During those decades, Eggleston also spent time in the Chelsea Hotel romancing Warhol superstar Viva and sharing accommodations with Sid and Nancy. Back home in Memphis he counted as confidants indie-rock godfather figure Alex Chilton, cult music producer Jim Dickinson and the great Stanley Booth, author of one of the best (if not the best) books on rock music ever, The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones. Rock groups of impeccable taste have been licensing Eggleston's images as cover art since Chilton's band Big Star's Radio City (1974), and David Byrne even set an entire film (True Stories) in an Egglestonian universe."

Gustavo Turner in the LA Weekly reviews LACMA's "William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961-2008."

"The Likes of Which I'd Never Seen"

"'These were southern guys, nice folks, quiet, and Otis would be up there in the dressing room while the band was warming the audience up. He'd get his tie on, then put his coat on. One of the other musicians came up and Otis said, "Hey man, you catch your groove?" And he said "Yeah, I caught a groove." And Otis said, "Well, I guess I'll go down." He was totally casual, because he'd done this 1,000 times. I thought, "That's neat—and now he's going to go down and fire up this band like a locomotive and get it going.["]'"

In the Los Angeles Times, Randy Lewis interviews Ry Cooder about Otis Redding's 1966 concerts at the Whisky a Go Go.

I Never Travel Far, Without a Little Big Star

In The Commercial Appeal of Memphis, Jody Callahan and Bob Mehr report the sudden death of Alex Chilton.

Bruce Elder in Salon provides an appreciation.

Sight and Sound

The New York Times reports the deaths of painter Kenneth Noland and music producer Willie Mitchell.

Sound and Vision

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for record producer Jim Dickinson and Walt Disney's first star, Virginia Davis.

I Never Lost Control

"The main problem with Handy is one of image. Formally trained, he taught music on the college level, and through the blues compositions he astutely copyrighted and published out of an office on Broadway, he became internationally renowned and prosperous. Handy exuded erudition, urbanity, polish and affluence. That statue in the park off Beale Street portrays him well, dressed fastidiously in a double-breasted suit and tie, smiling and looking less like our received version of the Father of the Blues than the Moneyed Out-of-Town Uncle of the Blues. Maybe if he hadn’t been so rich and fey, people like Joni Mitchell would have been familiar with what he played."

In The New York Times, David Hajdu reviews David Robertson's W. C. Handy: The Life and Times of the Man Who Made the Blues.

Soul Man

Dean Goodman of Reuters reports the death of Isaac Hayes.

Sweet Soul Music

"The label came to life in the late 1950s when Mr. Stewart, a white bank teller, and his sister Estelle Axton took over an old movie theater in a Memphis neighborhood that was becoming predominantly African-American, with plans to use it as a studio. Mr. Stewart’s interest in music initially did not extend beyond country. But, as he points out here, 'The wind blew in, and we were smart enough not to fight it.'"

Ginia Bellafante reviews the new PBS documentary Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story in The New York Times.