Chris Herrington|Memphis Commercial Appeal
It’s an anniversary year for Memphis music, with both Stax and Hi/Royal celebrating their 60th birthdays with various concerts and events over the past year. To honor these dual pillars of Memphis soul music, and a little more like them, I offer one writer and lifelong fan’s opinion on Memphis’ 60 greatest soul songs.
Making a list is to make a series of choices even before you start ordering candidates. Parameters and caveats come with the territory, so here are a few:
I’m defining classic soul as a specific period within a longer lineage of rhythm and blues, starting roughly in the early 1960s (even if these soul-identified labels/studios were founded a little earlier) and dispersing into other subgenres by the mid-1970s. In artistic essence, soul was the secularization of black gospel, mirroring the political activity of the church during the concurrent civil rights movement. The integrationist impulse in an essentially black music was marked by the white faces among the musicians, songwriters, and producers, if less so among the singers.
While Memphis’ instrumental heritage is unfathomably rich, I set non-vocal tracks aside as tangential. Perhaps this is a cheat to free up more spots. Regardless, we’ll acknowledge that Booker T. & the MGs’ “Green Onions” and “Time is Tight,” the Mar-Keys’ “Last Night,” Willie Mitchell’s “Soul Serenade,” the Bar-Kays’ “Soul Finger” and others are obviously part of the story.
Memphis soul influenced Memphis rock, and you could make an argument that the Box Tops’ “Soul Deep” and Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds” deserve to be here. I set them aside.
Stax in particular sometimes released music recorded elsewhere, and I included some of that, but decided that sure shots such as Mel & Tim’s “Starting All Over Again” and the Staple Singers’ “I’ll Take You There” belong more to Muscle Shoals.
And, finally, while 60 songs is the bare tip of a massive Memphis soul iceberg, that’s especially true of the work of Otis Redding, Al Greenand Sam & Dave, who are heavily represented here but could have placed even more titles on the list. To paraphrase our late Arkansas neighbor Levon Helm, of The Band, when it comes to those artists, I took what I absolutely needed and I left the rest.
1. “The Dark End of the Street” —James Carr (1967): In a city whose classic soul scene was dominated by two labels, Stax and Hi, is it possible the greatest song came from neither? I submit for your consideration “The Dark End of the Street,” written by American Studio mainstays Chips Moman and Dan Penn during a break from a poker game, sung by Carr, recorded primarily at Royal Studio, and released on the smaller Goldwax label. (And covered by just about everybody.)
“Written” seems wrong. This greatest of “cheating” songs feels more like a discovery than a creation, like some ancient public domain title that was floating in the air. Carr applies his haunting gravity without the usual melismatic embellishment. He lets the song’s deathless words carry it. After an echoey intro from guitarist Reggie Young, the band similarly holds back while leaning in. It feels like there’s a thick novel’s worth of experience in it.
2. “Love and Happiness” —Al Green (1973): Green is as associated with eros (romantic love)as any singer, but this visionary anthem could be read as a sermon on agape, its higher form. Co-written with Teenie Hodges, whose guitar sets it off, Green offers a romantic promise that suggests a civic benediction, a soul rewrite of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness:”“You be good to me/I’ll be good to you/We’ll be together.” And let it be so.
3. “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)” —Otis Redding (1965): Co-written with singer Jerry Butler, and it starts with a waltz-like rhythm similar to Butler’s “For Your Precious Love.” But the Stax crew matches Redding’s almost uncomfortable intimacy with a more dynamic rise-and-fall structure that finally gives way to helpless pleading. The next year, Redding would release a single called “My Lover’s Prayer.” He’d already submitted his greatest one.
4. “Soul Man” —Sam & Dave (1967): Perhaps it suffers from overexposure. But try to listen with fresh ears: Steve Cropper’s guitar intro as an old friend walking through the door. Horns, then full rhythm section, then Sam & Dave tumbling behind in succession. David Porter’s lyric a Statement of Principles, a pinnacle of soul philosophy. (“Got what I got the hard way/And I’ll make it better each and every day.”) And there are few things in all of recorded sound as exciting as the mingling of stray licks and exhortations (Play it, Steve!) that bubble up each time chorus gives way to verse.
5. “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” —Otis Redding (1968): Conceived in the aftermath of his triumphant trip to California for the Monterey Pop Festival, it posits road weariness as a metaphor for Redding’s career journey, seeking a place of succor. Recorded in Memphis on Dec. 7, 1967, three days before Redding died, it emerged as a kind of self-penned epitaph, with Redding’s whistling carrying us off into the mystic when words become insufficient.
6. “I Can’t Stand the Rain” —Ann Peebles (1973): It’s ostensibly a lament for a lost relationship. But the rain against Peebles’ window pain, literalized in the song’s electric timbale open, is as deep an object of contemplation as Otis Redding’s bay tides. Here, though, the elements represent not peace, but emotional peril. Peebles made it a Top 40 hit. Nearly a quarter-century later, Missy Elliott took the song back to the bank, with a rap rewrite —“The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” —that might be Memphis soul’s greatest hip-hop moment.
7. “Try a Little Tenderness” —Otis Redding (1966): A complete soul symphony in three movements and 200 seconds. A Memphis Horns fanfare opens into a deliberate first verse. Al Jackson Jr.’s metronomic drumming shifts into mid-tempo midway through. Redding and the band bring it home with all the fury they can summon. You could call it the soul “Stairway to Heaven,” except that it came five years earlier. The song was a Tin Pan Alley standard. Redding and the guys on McLemore Avenue destroyed it so that it might live.
8. “Take Me to the River” —Al Green (1974): A third meditation on water imagery in the Top 10, and perhaps the one most fully Memphian, with rivers more central to our identity than rain or, certainly, bays. A secular song about being cleansed, it also lives in the friction between gospel and R&B that created soul. Green wrote it with Teenie Hodges and recorded it, but Syl Johnson’s funkier version was the single and the hit. Take your pick, but this list deems Green’s a kind of Platonic ideal of soul.
9. “Tramp” —Otis Redding & Carla Thomas (1967): Otis and Carla improvise on a Lowell Fulsom R&B song, enlivening it with some classic battle-of-the-sexes banter while the band embellishes the original’s bare-bones track. The Memphis Horns take the riff but Al Jackson, Jr.’s drums take lead, and probably deserve equal billing. The Otis/Carla dynamic reflects real cultural differences between the duo and also Memphis’ place as the urban beacon of a rural region. “You know what, Otis? You’re country. You’re straight from the Georgia woods,” Carla charges. To which Otis asserts: “That’s good.”
10. “Hold On, I’m Comin’” —Sam & Dave (1966): The origin story of this Isaac Hayes/David Porter creation derives from what one said to the other during an elongated stay in the john. The final work is pure urgency and momentum distilled in 155 rumbling, tumbling seconds. Sam & Dave call out, and Al Jackson Jr. delivers them home.
11. “You Don’t Miss Your Water” —William Bell (1961): One of Stax’s foundational singles, Bell’s self-penned breakthrough is essentially a country ballad driven by black gospel piano, a kind of re-imagining of the “great wedding ceremony” between country and blues that had been conducted crosstown at Sun a few years before. Country-influenced artists from the Byrds (1968) to Sturgill Simpson (2016) would claim it.
12. “Let’s Stay Together” —Al Green (1971): Green’s biggest and most familiar hit. Break-up songs are probably more plentiful in the soul/pop canon than make-up songs, but, on the latter front, Green’s signature has become a standard.
13. “A Nickel and a Nail” —O.V. Wright (1971): Released by Houston’s Back Beat Records, but pure Memphis, recorded at Royal, produced by Willie Mitchell, played by the Hi Rhythm house band, and taken to the dark end of the street by Wright, whose desolation is more existential than romantic.
14. “These Arms of Mine” —Otis Redding (1962): The subject of Redding’s Memphis origin story, where he is said to have shown up as the valet for another artist (Johnny Jenkins) and left a star. The then-unknown 20-year-old from Macon stretches out the opening refrain —“Theeeese arrrms of miiine” —until he reaches immortality.
15. “Belle” —Al Green (1977): Self-produced by Green, without Willie Mitchell’s assistance, this farewell to the singer’s pop muse —“It’s you that I want but Him that I need” —is itself touched by grace. At nearly five minutes, it’s probably the longest record on this list, building Green’s testimony in layers until it dissolves into a kind of singing in tongues.
16. “Knock on Wood” —Eddie Floyd (1966): Co-written by Floyd and guitarist/producer Steve Cropper during a stormy night at the Lorraine Motel and recorded as a demo for Otis Redding. Instead, Floyd’s demo was released and became an R&B chart-topper, with Al Jackson Jr.’s “knocking” drum break as the song’s trademark hook.
17. “B-A-B-Y” —Carla Thomas (1966): Where her breakthrough, “Gee Whiz,” is girlish, this sultry Hayes/Porter song, five years later, is the sound of Thomas all grown up. (“When you squeeze me real tight you make wrong things right.”) It got new life in 2017 by being featured in the film “Baby Driver.”
18. “Born Under a Bad Sign” —Albert King (1967): Six years earlier, the Beale Street-bred Bobby “Blue” Bland had released the classic album “Two Steps From the Blues,” a kind of soul precursor. Here, on a Booker T. Jones/William Bell co-write, King crafts perhaps the greatest blend of blues and soul. The song is timeless, elemental even. King’s piercing guitar leads and authoritative testifying nails it in place.
19. “Walking the Dog” —Rufus Thomas (1963): Thomas had another animal-themed dance hit six years later with “Do the Funky Chicken,” but this Top 10 breakthrough is probably the most charming record of a charming career. If it sounds like a party broke out in the studio, well that’s essentially what happened. In this case, the Stax house band is the dog Rufus takes for a walk, whistling and exhorting them “C’mon now! C’mon! C’mon!” Guitarist Steve Cropper and sax player Packy Axton wag their tails at the head of the pack.
20. “Tired of Being Alone” —Al Green (1971): Here’s where you can hear Green’s musical future crystallize. Teenie Hodges’ clean, sinuous guitar line, a fat bass sound, a gospel-schooled chorus, a late drum fill (Al Jackson Jr?) that pulls the song back for a big finish, Green riffing idiosyncratically off his own composition. There’s a lot going on here, but under Willie Mitchell’s guidance it sounds of one soft, supple, distinctive piece. In the context of 1971, it sounds like a revelation.
21. “Respect” —Otis Redding (1965): “That little girl stole my song,” Redding reportedly said when Aretha Franklin transformed “Respect” a couple of years later. He was right, but it was already a classic, with Al Jackson Jr. powering it and the Memphis Horns responding to Redding’s call.
22. “Wait You Dog” —Mable John (1967): John was the older sister of gone-too-soon R&B pioneer Little Willie John and spent different stints backing up Ray Charles as a Raelette. Legends both, but, man, did she make some great, under-the-radar records in a brief solo stint at Stax. The Steve Cropper/Eddie Floyd-penned “Wait You Dog” —a “B” side! —moves as fast and cooks as hot as just about any Stax side. And when John opens by chastising the target of her derision —“Now don’t stand there crying when you know, yeah, you been lying” —you can see him slinking back under the porch in shame.
23. “In the Midnight Hour” —Wilson Pickett (1965): Pickett wasn’t a Stax artist, but Atlantic Records honcho Jerry Wexler brought him down to work with the Memphis crew, and Pickett and Steve Cropper co-penned and recorded this soul standard. Pickett promises his “love” will come tumbling down and then bassist Duck Dunn and drummer Al Jackson Jr., in particular, turn that promise into sound.
24. “Biggest Fool in Town” —Gorgeous George (1965): One of Stax’s greatest obscurities, this apparent one-shot from an Atlanta singer variously described in the barest biographical snatches as a “valet,” “tailor,” and “emcee,” is a deep-soul tour de force. The mystery man named after a flamboyant 1940s/1950s wrestler offers unforgettable, ravaged-voice testimony through the fadeout. (“I even bought everything on your back/I even bought the hair on your head.”)
25. “When Will We Be Paid” —The Staple Singers (1969): In 1963, on the National Mall, Martin Luther King Jr. came to cash a past-due promissory note on behalf of all African-Americans. Six years later, and a year after King was felled 2.5 miles from the Stax studio, soul’s most civil rights-connected group, with Steve Cropper producing, takes up his cause. And they bring receipts.
26. “You’ve Got My Mind Messed Up” —James Carr (1966): Carr’s first significant single for Goldwax introduces a soul singer to rival Otis Redding or Sam Moore over at Stax. A bluesy guitar lick (Reggie Young?) and brass punctuation (Memphis Horns?) sets the stage, while Carr’s careful vocal caress builds to a pulpit fury by the end.
27. “Big Bird” —Eddie Floyd (1968): Proof that Stax could have been a hard rock label if they’d wanted, launched by Duck Dunn’s bass rumble and Steve Cropper’s ringing riff. Booker T. Jones, who could do anything, produced and co-wrote with Floyd.
28. “Who’s Making Love” —Johnnie Taylor (1968): The West Memphis-bred Taylor had once been Sam Cooke’s hand-picked replacement in the gospel group the Soul Stirrers. Cooke had left gospel to become a secular sensation, but he was never this secular. Taylor leads a teasing treatise on the games people play, pushed along by one of the most rubbery, propulsive tracks to ever emerge from Stax. Taylor lets loose an opening scream and Al Jackson Jr. and Duck Dunn treat it like a starting pistol. Everyone else just tries to keep pace.
29. “I Feel Like Breaking Up Somebody’s Home” —Ann Peebles (1972): Sometimes a great song title can get you half the way there, but a great singer still has to take you home. Here Peebles is alone and restless, but instead of sending her back into her memories, raindrops against her window send her out into the streets, where no-one else’s relationship is safe. The background vocals play at an angel on her shoulder (“Don’t break it up”), but against the slinky, bluesy backdrop, we don’t believe them. Neither does Peebles.
30. “Trying to Live My Life Without You” —Otis Clay (1972): Ripped off by the Eagles seven years later under the name “The Long Run,” then properly credited, by place at least (“an old Memphis song”), by Bob Seger, who sought to make amends. But stick to the source, this itinerant gospel/soul/blues singer’s funkiest record and biggest hit, for Hi Records.
31. “Jesus is Waiting” —Al Green (1973): Three years before Green took the pulpit at his own Full Gospel Tabernacle, this “Call Me” album cut was both a promise and a foreshadowing. As a composition, it was a kind of instant soul-gospel standard. As a recording, Green is brilliant, but maybe it’s Leroy Hodges’ bass that really brings you to the altar.
32. “Cigarettes and Coffee” —Otis Redding (1966): Set “early in the morning, it’s a quarter to three,” it sounds brooding on the surface, but listen close and this Redding non-single is a hymn to domesticity and contentment. The horns don’t cry, they swoon. It even climaxes with a proposal. In the fadeout, Redding’s found the one combo that goes together as well as the song’s titular vices: “I got you and you got me and we have each other ...”
33. “When Something is Wrong With My Baby” —Sam & Dave (1967): Soul music’s greatest duo tended toward uptempo, but their deepestgospel-schooled harmonizing is on this slow-burning testament to romantic fidelity.
34. “Gee Whiz” —Carla Thomas (1961): On paper, it wasn’t much, an expression of teen romantic longing and innocence in the vein of the then-ascendant “girl group” genre. But Carla Thomas wrote it at 15, in a 10th grade notebook, and put all her yearning into it when she recorded it at 17. The strings and doo-wop-style backing vocals depart from what would become the Stax sound, but this was the label’s, and thus Memphis soul’s, first national hit.
35. “Woman to Woman” —Shirley Brown (1974): Stax founder Jim Stewart came back from a two-year studio hiatus to produce new label discovery Brown, who performs the song, including the opening “rap,” with such relatable intimacy it would probably land her daytime TV hosting gig today. Al Jackson Jr. and Duck Dunn reunite, lending the song a molasses groove —slow, thick, and sweet.
36. “Private Number” —William Bell & Judy Clay (1968): Stax was known for its feel, but Booker T. Jones was probably the label’s most schooled musician and this might be the greatest fruit of his sophistication. Jones co-wrote with Bell and produced, with his own string arrangement and low-key guitar making the song something of a stylistic departure. With Otis & Carla’s “Tramp” more of a one-off, “Private Number” is the Stax male/female duet closest to what Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell were then doing for Motown.
37. “Wrap it Up” —Sam & Dave (1968):The Sam & Dave/Hayes & Porter partnership was so irrepressible in the late Sixties that somehow a record as hot as “Wrap It Up” ended up as a “B” side, to the equally ecstatic "I Thank You." Every person in the studio is showing off for all two-and-half-minutes and somehow still grooving in unison.
38. “I Can’t Get Next to You” — Al Green(1970): This wasn’t the first time Memphis had done Motown; check out Otis Redding’s version of the Temptations’ “It’s Growing.” But Green came of age in Michigan before landing under producer Willie Mitchell’s wing, and this first meaningful Memphis hit links his two homes. The Temptations' original was one of Motown’s more overactive constructions. Green and Mitchell slow it down, smooth it out and thicken it. But if this “I Can’t Get Next to You” mixes Motown and Memphis, it also links two other soul institutions. Harder than the sound Green and Mitchell would soon perfect together, it’s also the emerging star at his most Stax-like. The fadeout squeal may be the first time Green gave goosebumps.
39. “Respect Yourself” —The Staple Singers (1971): In the 1970s, Stax sent a lot of its recording to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and here’s where the two soul meccas probably best come together, with some recording apparently done in both places. The topical, gospel-inflected song was written expressly for the Staple Singers’ distinctive style by Stax songwriters Mack Rice (“Mustang Sally”) and Luther Ingram. That its message was so mutable —Progressive? Reactionary? Whatever you want to hear. —probably helped it become a big hit in such fraught times.
40. “How Can You Mistreat the One You Love?” —Jeanne & The Darlings (1967): Hayes & Porter were best known for their work with Sam & Dave, but one of their most infectious creations is this comparatively obscure, finger-popping romantic prosecution from a family “girl group” out of Arkansas.
41. “You Won’t Do Right” —Bobby Marchan (1964): Marchan was a drag artist and nightclub performer who bounced around the Sixties soul/R&B scene and had a cup of coffee at Stax, where he collaborated with co-writer Steve Cropper on this showstopper, Marchan’s near-falsetto wailing and testifying playing off of Cropper’s after-hours blues licks.
42. “I Got a Sure Thing” —Ollie & the Nightingales (1968): Co-written by leader Ollie Hoskins with Booker T. Jones and William Bell, produced by Jones, and further evidence that Booker/Bell is an underrated Stax team. The vocal group call-and-response gives it a different flavor from most Stax hits, and the focus on domestic contentment stands out in soul writ large. “When I come home in the evening/My aching back she’ll rub/My dinner’s on the table/And my woman’s in the tub,” Ollie observes, and it makes him scream like Wilson Pickett.
43. “What a Man” —Linda Lyndell (1968): A drawling, bluesy white girl from Florida, Linda Lyndell found her way onto the R&B circuit and in Memphis for a couple of sessions. In the second one, she sang the hell out of “What a Man,” made it a hit, and then mostly disappeared. A quarter-century later, hip-hop group Salt-N-Pepa sampled the record’s unforgettable liquid introand reworked the song into a hit all over again.
44. “Pouring Water on a Drowning Man” —James Carr (1966): With the guitar shaking its head in commiseration and the horn section acting as Greek chorus, Carrdescribes his plight with a particularly hard-edged vocal. The misfortune is so profound even the victim chuckles in disbelief.
45. “Don’t Be Afraid of Love” —Oscar Mack (1963): Mack was an opening act for Otis Redding, whose manager, Phil Walden gets a co-write with the singer here. Redding later recorded it too, but with its swooning horns and proto-ska rhythm, the original is an underrated Stax gem.
46. “Cause I Love You” —Carla & Rufus (1960): Carla Thomas, piano-playing brother Marvell, drummer Howard Grimes (future Hi Rhythm member), and Booker T. Jones (on sax!) were all teenagers when Carla and her disc jockey father cut this, um, unconventional duet, the first record at what would be Stax’s McLemore Avenue studio and a local/regional hit that launched the label.
47. “Mr. Big Stuff” —Jean Knight (1971): Recorded by Jackson, Mississippi’s Malaco Records and licensed by Stax, but, hey, Jackson is close enough and this massive Stax hit creates so much happiness that we’re claiming it.
48. “Son of a Preacher Man” —Dusty Springfield (1968): “Dusty in Memphis” was a misnomer, the celebrated British singer allegedly too intimidated by Bluff City’s American Studio to lay down her vocals there. She and her back-up, the Sweet Inspirations, cut vocals in New York. But the real soul here isn’t the singer or even the song, so written-to-order it was offered to Aretha Franklin, who turned it down and then came back and did it anyway. It’s the Memphis-made music, under Chips Moman’s direction, especially Reggie Young’s harmonic guitar and Tommy Cogbill’s smooth bass, the later effect achieved by greasing the strings with Vaseline.
49. “I’ve Been Lonely for So Long” —Frederick Knight (1972): A Stax one-hit wonder and one of the label’s odder success stories, with a country-ish guitar sound, tambourine percussion, and Knight leaping from a lead falsetto to a bass refrain to a spoken interlude. It somehow adds up to a fun, memorable record.
50. “Stop Half Loving These Women” —Jimmy Lewis (1973): A later version by Johnnie Taylor might be more well-known, but search out the original, a Volt single by songwriter Lewis, whose admonition to the men in the listening audience, those committing the crime of giving third-class love to first-class ladies, is one of Stax’s richest minor pleasures.
51. “Back for a Taste of Your Love” —Syl Johnson (1973): Johnson was arguably Hi’s most charismatic male singer not named “Al Green.” While Green’s version of “Take Me to the River” gets the nod here, Johnson deserves representation, and “Back for a Taste of Your Love” features one of Hi Rhythm’s most undeniable grooves.
52. “Theme From Shaft” —Isaac Hayes (1971): Hayes’ shift from behind-the-scenes songwriter/producer to solo star coincided with and perhaps prompted a broader shift from classic soul to a new kind of Seventies R&B. His mammoth covers (“Never Can Say Goodbye,” “Walk On By”) may be truer to his artistry, but the indelible wah-wah and hi-hat intro (courtesy of Charles “Skip” Pitts and Willie Hall, respectively) and Hayes’ tongue-in-cheek hardboiled commentary makes “Shaft” the people’s champ.
53. “(If Loving You is Wrong) I Don’t Want to Be Right” —Luther Ingram (1972): One of the great modern cheating ballads, with a dollop of downhome blues. It was written by in-house Stax songwriters Homer Banks, Carl Hampton, and Raymond Jackson, and while Ingram wasn’t the first to record it, he took it to the top of the charts.
54. “Call Me (Come Back Home)” —Al Green (1973): The title track to Green’s greatest studio album —maybe just Memphis’ greatest studio album —is a wary consideration of the gulf between breakup and reconciliation.
55. “Aretha, Sing One For Me” —George Jackson (1972): Aretha Franklin was born in Memphis in 1942 but departed soon after. Twenty-five years later, she found her signature hit in a Memphis song (Otis Redding’s “Respect”). Another five years later, Memphis called out to her with this request from Hi Records songwriter Jackson.
56. “I’ll Go Crazy” —Don Bryant (1968): Before his recent comeback, Bryant was probably better known as a songwriter (“I Can’t Stand the Rain,” “99 Pounds”) than as a performer. But this Hi Records testament shows that he always had it.
57. “Bar-B-Q” —Wendy Rene (1964): The Wu-Tang Clan sampled the percolating intro to Rene’s “After Laughter (Comes Tears),” but I’m going with this civic anthem. Steve Cropper co-wrote and cuts loose on it. The sax player sounds as hungry as Rene.
58. “There Goes My Used to Be” —Wee Willie Walker (1967): Goldwax was more than James Carr, with finerecords from Spencer Wiggins, the Ovations, and others. This non-Carr Goldwax fave swings with the ease of a good Sam Cooke singlebut with a dose of Memphis grit.
59. “Walk Away” —Ann Peebles (1969): St. Louis native Peebles relocates to Memphis to work with Willie Mitchell and Hi Records. With Mitchell's trademark Hi groove still off in the distance, Peebles' debut isa churchy country-soul shouter —less torch song than burn-down-the-house song.
60. “Tell Him Tonight” —Rudolph Taylor (1967): If Goldwax was Stax and Hi’s stepbrother, then smaller studios/labels, such as Sounds of Memphis, were more like cousins. The best rediscovered output can’t match the best of Stax/Hi, or even Goldwax, which makes 60 a hard number to crack. So let this deep soul ballad, sung with gravity by relative unknown Taylor, written by Charles Chalmers (known for backup singing for Al Green and others), and featuring ace American hands such as Reggie Young and Tommy Cogbill, stand in for the legion of Memphis soul on the margins.
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