VMP Magazine

To help people who bought VMP Anthology: The Story Of Stax Records dive deep into the catalogs of the artists featured in our box set, we’ve created primers for every artist featured.

To help people who bought VMP Anthology: The Story Of Stax Records dive deep into the catalogs of the artists featured in our box set, we’ve created primers for every artist featured.

Sam & Dave are known as one of the most successful soul groups and phenomenal live acts of the late ’60s. The story goes that while on the Stax-Volt Revue tour in Europe in 1967, their live show was so high-energy that Otis Redding himself complained at one point that he didn’t want to perform after them, the implication being that Redding didn’t think he could live up to the bar that they set. Not bad for a duo that essentially formed by accident.

To help people who bought VMP Anthology: The Story Of Stax Records dive deep into the catalogs of the artists featured in our box set, we’ve created primers for every artist featured.

To help people who bought VMP Anthology: The Story Of Stax Records dive deep into the catalogs of the artists featured in our box set, we’ve created primers for every artist featured.

To help people who bought VMP Anthology: The Story Of Stax Records dive deep into the catalogs of the artists featured in our box set, we’ve created primers for every artist featured.

To help people who bought VMP Anthology: The Story Of Stax Records dive deep into the catalogs of the artists featured in our box set, we’ve created primers for every artist featured.

In November, members of Vinyl Me, Please Classics will receive Knock On Wood, Eddie Floyd’s iconic 1967 debut LP, released on the legendary soul label Stax. Floyd was one of Stax’s most consistent, and consistently great, performers, writing many hit songs and performing others, including the title track from this album — one of the biggest non-Otis Redding hits from Stax. Read more about why we picked this title over here. You can sign up here.

Below, you can read an excerpt from our exclusive Listening Notes Booklet that is included with our edition of Knock On Wood.

“It felt like I almost got kidnapped into going. I didn’t have a choice. They snatched me up, said, ‘You’re in the military now. You belong to Uncle Sam,’ and I woke up the next morning in Fort Polk, and was like, ‘What is this? What just happened?’”

— William Bell

Two blocks from the Wisconsin state capitol building, and 150-odd feet away from Lake Monona-- an eight square mile lake that, along with neighboring Lake Mendota, creates the isthmus that forms the downtown of the city of Madison--is the Monona Terrace Convention Center. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the Monona Terrace Convention Center has two matching, four story pillars as its anchors, each of which features a beautifully maintained rooftop garden. On the northern pillar--near where you can enjoy a $6.95 plate of snap peas from the Lake Vista Cafe-- are three benches, centered around a solitary plaque that begins “Otis Redding: King of the Soul Singers.”

If you haven’t heard, the Classics Subscription selection for October is Carla Thomas’ Comfort Me, the singer’s sophomore album, recorded when she came back to Stax after taking some time off to go to college after he first singles made the label’s success possible (“Gee Whiz” gave you Otis Redding).