Music
In 1972, the largely black Watts community came together for a massive Stax Records music event that was captured in an exciting, newly released documentary
Thursday 23 February 2023 at 16:33 GMT
During the long, hot summer of 1965, Memphis soul singer William Bell traveled to Los Angeles with Stax Records labelmates Booker T and the MGs, and Rufus Thomas for a club date that drew crowds from the predominantly black neighborhood Watts attended. “We had such a great reception there,” he said. “It was so popular that people were turned away at the door.”
At the same time, Bell felt tension in the air. “There was a feeling in the black community that something had to give way,” he said. “People were tired of being oppressed. It was like a volcano waiting to explode.”
A few weeks later, it happened in a way so profound it made history—for both righteous and pernicious reasons. On the one hand, the so-called Watts Riots of 1965 — dubbed by others as the Watts Uprising — made clear to the world the depth of the anger black citizens felt at the racism they faced in everything from the police to housing to education experienced . On the other hand, the protests escalated into a scuffle that included mass arson, looting and shootings that left 34 people dead and a community more desperate than ever.
After the rubble, young community leader Tommy Jacquette created an annual Watts Summer Festival to benefit the area and empower citizens. Little did he know that seven years later, this humble festival would grow into something huge and enduring. In 1972, Stax Records and its artists – including Bell, Isaac Hayes, the Staples Singers, The Bar-Kays and others – returned to Watts for a benefit concert called Wattstax, which drew over 100,000 people, mostly locals. The event, which resulted in not a single act of violence, was captured in a documentary and live album, each of which became classics. Now, for its fiftieth anniversary, the Wattstax film returns to theaters, along with a new box set containing all six hours of the original show for the first time. The latter is particularly significant because so much music had never been released before. “It’s an answer to a prayer,” said Wanda Hutchinson of singing group The Emotions, who performed at the event. “There was so much great music that people who weren’t there didn’t get to hear.”
On the other hand, given the many obstacles the organizers faced, it is amazing that the event took place at all. “It was a huge undertaking for us,” said Al Bell, who was then president of Stax Records and is not related to William Bell. “We tried to do the unimaginable,” added Deanie Parker, who oversaw the label’s public relations and helped organize the event. “We came from across the country, from Memphis, and we had never done anything like this before.”
Regardless, Al Bell was determined to do something for the Watts community ever since he saw that area engulfed in flames in 1965. “It was all over TV,” he recalled. “I had never seen this kind of rebellion before. It scared me, but I also knew very well what was causing it.”
Bell himself has been stopped multiple times by Memphis police for no reason, he said, mirroring the police harassment incident that sparked the Watts riot. In addition to helping the people in the area, Bell wanted to create an event that “would show the world what kind of people we really are. We had been so misunderstood. Many white people would think that if they saw two black people dating, there would be a problem. We had to live with that.”
Stax’s mission to counteract this mindset began modestly. The company had just opened its first West Coast office and the person charged with running it, Forrest Hamilton (son of famed jazz drummer Chico Hamilton), had the idea of building on Jacquette’s original Watts Festival. When she and the other organizers began brainstorming an event, they had venues in mind with a capacity of just 2,500. Then they looked at 5,000. But when Stax started talking to locals and when they all had their own stars on board, they got more ambitious and believed they could have a chance to fill a stadium. If that seemed like pipe dream at first, it struck the folks at the venue they eventually secured—the Los Angeles Coliseum—as downright ridiculous. “They took me for this black kid from a little record label in Tennessee,” Bell said. “They had no respect for us – none.”
He believes the people at the Coliseum only agreed to put the show there because they didn’t think it would draw that many people. But that was before Stax got busy promoting the show on black radio and in newspapers, in the streets and in the skies, with streamers promoting it from behind prop planes. When it became clear that Wattstax was actually going to draw a huge audience, “they came up to us and said, ‘You can’t perform here,'” Bell said. “Fortunately, our chief counsel had put a clause in the contract so they couldn’t get out of the agreement.”
Jesse Jackson and Isaac Hayes at the Wattsstax Festival Photo: Stax Records
However, they tried to intimidate Stax executives by stressing that they would be liable for any damage to the turf on the field where the powerful soccer team, the Los Angeles Rams, would play the next day. To mitigate this, the show’s organizers had to buy expensive insurance, which they almost had to claim due to what happened during Rufus Thomas’ set. The singer urged fans to get out of the stands and onto the fields. “But when we told him that couldn’t happen, Rufus, being the great entertainer that he was, made it a part of his accomplishment to get her back in the stands,” Bell said.
As the film captures, Thomas turned what could have been a chaotic part of the event into one of the most entertaining, using his humor to persuade fans to return to the stands. As a result, they didn’t even have to involve security, whose role was a sensitive issue for the organizers from the start. “We had to ask ourselves, ‘Who is going to be security? And how much should we have?” Parker said. “We didn’t want to imply that we didn’t trust the viewers – people who already felt disenfranchised and left out. The focus was on making sure security looked like the people who were at the concert and keeping it to a minimum.”
Bell relied on a few people recommended by his friend, filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles. “He told them not to have guns, and it worked,” Bell said, despite members of both the Crips and Bloods gangs being at the show. Another issue had to do with maximizing the event’s legacy. To make it more than just a one-off concert, Stax combined his own funds with those of famed documentary film producer David Wolper to finance a Wattstax film. For the filming, Wolper brought in director Mel Stuart, whose last work was Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. That meant both the producer and the director of the film would be white. “It was a problem,” Parker said. “They had the know-how and the contacts that opened doors for us. But we had to teach the white people what we wanted to achieve.”
For one, they wanted their film to be more than just a concert documentary. To that end, on another occasion, they filmed a mix of locals and hired actors (including Ted Lange, who would go on to star in the TV series The Love Boat) to talk about many aspects of the black experience. The conversations covered topics ranging from racism and integration to food and sex. Stuart felt the film needed a comic book commentator as well. Bell found a brilliant man in young Richard Pryor, who had just been signed to Stax. Pryor opens the film with the sober acknowledgment, “We all have something to say, but some are never heard. Over seven years ago, the people of Watts stood together and demanded to be heard.”
Pryor’s later comedy bits are scattered throughout the film. Along with all the chatter from locals and actors, the footage contains more conversation than music, which became a problem. “I definitely remember 100,000 people singing along to my song Knock on Wood, but that wasn’t in the movie,” said musician Eddie Floyd. “A few other artists I know were also disappointed that their work wasn’t on screen.”
At the same time, the film features many incredible performances, from Kim Weston’s rousing opening reading of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” often referred to as “the black national anthem,” to a highly theatrical performance by The Bar-Kays. The band’s leader, James Alexander, said they intend to make their entry even more theatrical. “We had the idea of riding carriages into the Colosseum like gladiators on white horses!” he said with a laugh. “But we were told we couldn’t have carriages chasing the field.”
Still, the highly animated Bar-Kays almost eclipsed the show’s headliner, Isaac Hayes, despite appearing in the legendary Shaft/Black Moses mode. “He was kind of mad at us,” laughed Alexander.
Ultimately, however, the spirit of the event inspired all artists. “It was an out-of-body experience for her,” Parker recalls. “When they came backstage after their performance, they were on cloud nine.”
Mavis Staples at Wattsstax Festival Photo: Stax Records
Emotions’ Wanda Hutchinson had an experience that day that she said helped her challenge some of her own assumptions about race. “At one point I saw these weird guys with waist-length beards arriving in a limousine,” she said. “Later I found out they were ZZ Top! Based on their looks I thought they were playing honky tonk. When I finally heard their music, I was like, ‘Wow, these guys suck!’ I profiled them, just as we are profiled!”
In conversations with various Wattstax musicians and organizers 50 years later, they all said that too many of the problems black people faced then remain today. “It seems we haven’t learned anything from history,” said William Bell.
But Al Bell prefers to emphasize the positive. “The grand total of the black community agreed that day,” he said. “I’ll remember that.”
For Parker, the film and its newly restored soundtrack have the potential to teach worthy lessons to both black and white audiences. “For Caucasians, I hope it makes them curious enough to go back and examine what motivated us to take this kind of venture in the first place,” she said. “For black people, I hope they use it as a mirror and whatever they see in that mirror that needs improvement, restoration or enjoyment, they will embrace it and see how they can get more of it today.”
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