Al Bell: Too Easy to Sing Bad
By The Associated Press

07/10/2004 08:46:28 EST

DANNY JOHNSTON/AP Photo

BRYANT, Ark. - Listen up, Britney and Beyonce.
Al Bell, former Stax Records owner and Motown president, thinks fancy digital recording equipment is a crutch for today's pop singers.

"What I've seen it do is allow a person with mediocre talent excel because of the technology and maintain that mediocrity," Bell said recently. "So they get on stage with the headsets and they're lip-synching because they can't really sing as well as they sound on the record."

The man who wrote the lyrics to the Staples Singers' "I'll Take You There" and brought the world the funk of Isaac Hayes and the catchy "Whoomp! There It Is" used analog 24-track reel-to-reel machines in the 1960s.

But the studio he works in now has computers, boards with hundreds of dials and a half-dozen TV screens to view musicians.

"It's not as it was in the past," he said. "When we were doing it with Otis Redding or Isaac Hayes, they were in the studio for two days doing 40 or 50 takes before they captured the magic."

Bell, 64, now works as a consultant for independent Alpine Records in Bryant, a suburb of Little Rock. The company has studios filled with the latest gadgets that can record today's sound but that can also, with Bell's ear, catch yesterday's soul.

Associated Press
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Who is Al Bell you might ask?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Wattstax Executive Producer Al Bell

In the 1970's, two of the largest African-American owned businesses in America were Motown Records and Stax Records. Al Bell is the former owner of Stax Records.

During his years as head of Stax Records, Al Bell, in conjucntion with Larry Shaw, introduced marketing and promotional innovations, which changed the direction of the nation's music industry.

Stax Records worked with Melvin Van Peebles on the release of his revolutionary film Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song and with MGM Studios on the release of the film Shaft, demonstrating marketing and promotional techniques that woke the film industry to the potential in the black marketplace and led to the black film renaissance of the 1970's.

In the 1980's, Al Bell became head of the Motown Records Group and worked with Berry Gordy in the sale of Motown to the MCA/Boston Ventures Group. After Motown, he discovered the music group Tag Team and released "Whoomp! There It Is" which sold over 5,000,000 single units. This record was one of the biggest selling singles in the history of the music industry.

Al Bell was asked by "the artist" formerly known as Prince to release a single record for him, after his label Warner Brothers Records turned him down. Using his unique style of marketing and promotion, Al Bell released "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World" and gave Prince his biggest selling single ever.

http://www.wattstax.com/p...lbell.html
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=
A few STAX artists:
Booker T and the MGs
William Bell
Eddie Floyd
Albert King
Otis Redding
Sam & Dave
Johnnie Taylor
Carla Thomas
Rufus Thomas

tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...rmusic.htm