PBS broadcast a Great Performances episode Wednesday night on the Stax/Volt record label, the pre-eminent home of deep southern soul.

Otis Redding (the 40th anniversary of his death will be marked on Dec. 10; return to this space at that time), Wicked Wilson Pickett, Sam and Dave, Booker T and the MGs, Issac Hayes, The Staples Singers -- all of them recorded for Stax/Volt.

Here's one anecdote about Redding as noted by the NYT preview of the documentary:

One day in the early 1960s, a young man who worked as driver and baggage handler for a group called Johnny Jenkins and the Pinetoppers lugged its instruments into the studios of Stax Records in Memphis, where the band was scheduled for a recording session. As it happened, the young man sang too -- in a husky tenor -- and spent his idle hours that afternoon begging people to hand him a mike.

By the end of the day, no one had given him a shot, and the label’s founder Jim Stewart felt guilty. Mr. Stewart was simply that kind of guy. The task of hearing out the eager aspirant fell begrudgingly to Steve Cropper, guitarist for Booker T. & the MGs, one of the label’s popular bands. As Mr. Cropper tells it in “Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story,” a “Great Performances” documentary tonight on PBS: “He started singing ‘These Arms of Mine,’ and I know my hair lifted out about three inches. I couldn’t believe this guy’s voice.” It belonged to Otis Redding.

Lots of Stax/Volt artists had that quality.

The problem with Stax/Volt wasn't the quality of the artists. Bad luck and management problems led to the label's demise by 1975. Posthumously, it never really carved a place in the cultural landscape the way that Motown did. The NYT again:

That this constitutes one of the crimes of American music history is an argument “Respect Yourself” makes by the pure virtue of its narrative.

One horrible cultural crime is that when I visited Memphis in the fall of 1992, the Stax/Volt studios at  McLemore Avenue and College Street no longer existed. There was a vacant lot there and a plaque. That building should have been hallowed and protected ground as much as the Sun Studio building is.

However, when I left Memphis, I did so driving west across the great, muddy Mississippi River into Arkansas. While I was doing that, I was listening to Sam and Dave's Soul Man and Hold On, I'm Comin', and it put a smile back on my grumpy face. :)

Since then, the label has gone through a bit of a renaissance. In 2003, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music opened on the original site. Back in December, the Concord Music Group acquired the Stax back catalogue from Fantasy Records. Concord has set about reissuing classic old Stax material and plans to record some new stuff.

I wish them luck. I do worry that while the music is eternal, it also originates from a specific time, place and culture that doesn't exist anymore. Soul music the Stax/Volt way reminds me of a quote by Red Smith, a famous sportswriter from an earlier century: "Writing is easy," he said. "All you have to do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."

When someone like Redding sang, he didn't just open a vein. He ripped his heart out and threw it to the ground.

While that era and style can't be recreated, neither should it be forgotten (and who knows, maybe some brilliant young artist who listened to his parents or grandparents' records will take what was great about '60s southern soul and update the sound for the Oughts) . I'm glad PBS did the documentary. And I think I'm going to have to book a return trip to Memphis one of these days.

And finally, here's Otis singing Try A Little Tenderness:

Oh hell, this popped up in YouTube right after: James Brown performing Ain't It Funky Now in Paris in 1971. Enjoy!