CELEBRATING 25 YEARS

PROUDLY PUBLISHED FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL ARKANSAS MISSISSIPPI’S SOCIALIST EXPERIMENT: KATIE GILBERT ON A RADICAL VISION FOR JACKSON

GARY STEWART, HONKY-TONK MAN BY DAVID RAMSEY

FICTION BY JESMYN WARD

A MAGAZINE OF THE SOUTH • FALL 2017 AND KEVIN A. GONZÁLEZ

KAVEH AKBAR, DANIELLE CHAPMAN, CHRIS OFFUTT, AMINA GAUTIER, DIANE ROBERTS, CORMAC McCARTHY, YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA, ROSE McLARNEY AND FREDERICK McKINDRA ON BLACK SELFHOOD IN LITTLE ROCK a mission statement for a project the men “Ben E. King,” she said, pointing at the always had a hard time defining. Pickett’s singer. “My father and Ben E. King were very question, the crux of their unfinished, un- good friends. I’m talking very good friends. titled song, was one the old friends had never He really got me through my father’s death. stopped asking in the years since they first He was very true.” She pointed to the man Soul joined together in the late sixties: Soul Clan dressed in a three-piece suit and a cowboy is . . . what, exactly? hat. “. When my father first Meeting “Soul Clan is happiness,” Pickett sang next got sick, he was there. Very spiritual, very over the E to C-sharp minor progression. kind. He used to call me his goddaughter.” “Soul Clan is loneliness,” he tried again, be- She turned to another photo from 1981. BY fore cutting the take short. “You’re playing The quintet posed in front of the same liv- JONATHAN BERNSTEIN the wrong chord!” he shouted at the backing ing room window that was just a few feet band, who by this point had grown frustrated from where we were sitting. Ursula, who is themselves, confused as to why they hadn’t quiet and reserved, like her father, paused yet begun rehearsing their extensive set list for a moment and looked up from the scrap- for the following evening. (“We spent so book. “Let me tell you, this house brings back much time putzing around with that Soul such memories of all the personalities that Clan theme,” said Rubenhold.) have been here.” The Covay household was ilson Pickett was singing nonsense. Ben E. King took over the . a place where celebrity musicians gathered It was a sunny midsummer after- “Soul Clan is love and joy,” he ventured. for barbecues and song swaps, the unofficial W noon in Englewood, New Jersey, Covay belted the next line, “Soul Clan is clubhouse for in New York but the soul legend was toiling in his base- Ben E. King,” before the ever-humble Burke City. “You know when you watch those old ment studio, fumbling around with words to offered: “Soul Clan is Solomon Burke.” movies and everybody’s having a good time?” a song he couldn’t figure out how to finish. Burke tried again: “Soul Clan is Don Co- she said. “It was one of those.” “Soul Clan is blah-nah-nah,” he mumbled vay, Soul Clan is .” Though we often conceptualize the soul in his sacred rasp. His band played through “Soul Clan is Wicked Pickett,” Covay sang greats—Etta, Percy, Marvin, Aretha—as as the singer tried again, “Soul Clan is dah- right back. distinct, iconic individuals, sixties r&b was nah-nah.” Pickett took up the mic once more: “A lot genuinely collaborative in spirit and com- Gathered around him were some old of y’all don’t know what the Soul Clan is,” munal in nature. During a time when the friends: Solomon Burke, Don Covay, Joe he shouted to his imaginary audience. “And music industry had cracked open its doors Tex, and Ben E. King. The five men had con- I wanna say . . . Soul Clan is peace and joy.” to black popular entertainers without fully vened at Pickett’s house to prepare for the His next line isn’t sung directly into the letting them in, young singers like Pickett, at-long-last reunion of the Soul Clan, the microphone, so it’s hard to tell, precisely, Burke, and Covay, relegated to the r&b charts onetime supergroup of r&b what he mumbles, but it sounds a whole and the chitlin’ circuits in the small world of singers that hadn’t existed in more than a de- lot like this: “Help us with the Soul Clan.” Southern soul, came of age together in the cade. The following evening, July 24, 1981, backseats of cramped tour vans and the back the revived group would be performing at a n January, I took a train to Queens to visit stages of unkempt barrooms. When they got sold-out show at the Savoy in Manhattan. Ia secret shrine of sixties soul. The former famous, they remained the closest of friends. Leon Rubenhold, Pickett’s guitarist in the home of Don Covay sits on a quiet, sub- By the tumultuous summer of 1967, eighties, remembered that day in Englewood urban street where his daughter, Ursula, Southern had become a cultural when I called him to ask about the Soul Clan. now fifty-three, has lived almost her entire force and its icons had become keenly aware “The rehearsal was very disorganized and life. It was a few days after the presidential that they were worth more than what they without much direction,” he said. “The only inauguration and the Women’s March, and were seeing in returns. For the r&b stars of person that had their shit together was Ben the city was buzzing with talk of communal Atlantic Records, it was a time of budding E. King.” Rubenhold had kept a recording of energy, the radicalism of togetherness. A political consciousness. had become the session, and a couple days later, he sent fitting time to think about the Soul Clan, a involved with the Nation of Islam. Burke, me a digitized copy. It’s a curious piece of pop mostly forgotten group whose chaotic com- never one to infuse politics into his music, music history: the only known live recording mitment to collectivity struck me then, more would soon debut a new verse for his version of the Soul Clan, twenty-three minutes of than ever, as profound. of the New Orleans standard “Get Out of My later recall Redding saying. “It would give nick writes of the Soul Clan in the 1986 book Fifty years later, Ursula Covay is just one fits and starts and spontaneous commentary Ursula was in a reflective mood. The two- Life, Woman.” (“Get out and vote now baby, I us more leverage in the business. No more Sweet Soul Music, one of the few available of several children of the Soul Clan, many that capture the group in all its chaotic glory, year anniversary of her father’s death was might run for President,” he sang in October getting messed over by the white promoters chronicles of the group. The artists had sold of them musicians themselves, who have a document of strained cooperation and bick- less than a week away, and she had brought ’68, a month before Nixon was elected. “Yo u and managers.” Brown declined (A union? tens of millions of records collectively, and recently begun to rediscover and fully ap- ering that, every so often, flickers into brief out a meticulously organized scrapbook that won’t have a chicken in every pot, but I’ll give Why would the Hardest Working Man in as soul was beginning to dip on the charts preciate their parents’ bond. In the past few moments of shared musical transcendence. chronicled his career. “Let’s date it back to out stamps to pay your rent.”) Show Business do that?) but Burke, Covay, after dominating through the mid-sixties, the years, they’ve reconnected with one another, For the majority of the recording, the where I remember,” she said, flipping the That summer, called his Tex, King, and Pickett rallied around Red- men decided to see what sort of musical po- tossed around ideas for next-generation group was working out a new tune to serve binder open to a photo of her father with friend . “I want us to form a ding’s idea. The concept had been “kicked tential, and perhaps sociopolitical influence, reunions, and, echoing the spirit of their as their reunion show’s introductory theme, his Soul Clan comrades. union of black entertainers,” Brown would around for close to two years,” Peter Gural- they could harness as a communal whole. fathers’ friendships, commiserated over

- 14 - FALL 2017 “30 Invisible Visibility Portraits, Freshmen Year ’87, September” (2016), ©Shoshanna Weinberger, shoshanna.info OxfordAmerican.org - 15 - their own peculiar struggles navigating es- The idea, Burke would say years later, was father faced during the decades he spent said Solomon Burke bigger than the Soul if he’d sing on Shaffer’s new . “How tate payments and convoluted publishing to “benefit our people, and to benefit our fighting against an industry he viewed as Clan by yourself.” about this,” Covay responded. “How about royalties. own selves and our own families, to incor- deeply hostile to black entertainers. Nonetheless, the group was deeply opti- we reunite the Soul Clan?” Speaking with Veda Pickett, Wilson’s porate our own publishing companies, to “Though the Clan’s plan died before it mistic about its second chance. The months Joe Tex had passed away, and Burke de- daughter, I was struck by how resolute she establish our own writing pool, to agree reached the communities,” writes Denise leading up to their 1981 reunion found the clined, for financial reasons, to be involved, was in her anger, not about her own father’s to do each other’s songs, and to keep each Sullivan in 2011’s Keep On Pushing: Black men at their scheming and dreaming best: but Covay began organizing once more, legacy, but about Solomon Burke’s, con- other’s names alive in the records, and the Power Music from to Hip-Hop, “Burke’s talks of a Broadway engagement, an album, arranging a third coming of the group for vinced that he’s never received the credit songs and the shows.” idea for a benevolent, black-owned corpo- an educational documentary film. A contract Shaffer’s album, Coast to Coast. Covay, Ben that he deserves as a songwriter. As Ursula Around the time of Redding’s sudden ration would become manifest in later de- was drawn up for a thirty-five-date North E. King, , and unofficial explained, her own father’s experience was death in late 1967, Burke requested one cades.” Between Russell Simmons, Puff American tour, with plans to perform in member reunited to sing echoed in those of his comrades: “I don’t million dollars in funding from Atlantic Daddy, and Beyoncé, it’s hard to think of a Europe and Japan. Potential energy. on “What Is Soul.” know everybody’s individual story. But I Records. and ’s major black entertainer whose framework “These five guys are the black Beatles,” It was another fitting question for the could pretty much tell you that if my dad label, having just been purchased by Warner for their business empires-cum-artistic Sparkie Martin, promoter of the Savoy re- Soul Clan, one without a firm answer. “Soul was sideswiped, misinterpreted, underrat- Bros., was entirely uninterested in their collective can’t be traced back to the Soul union, said at the time. “Here is a group that is Jerry Wexler and Ahmet,” Covay sang in ed, under-acknowledged, under-known, soul roster’s extra-musical ambitions. (When Clan, a group whose “chance on change,” has had 125 years collectively of r&b expe- the song. “The funkier you are, the bigger under-everything, then I know they have Wexler is asked about the proposition years Sullivan writes, “proved to be a down pay- rience, who have sold 25 million records Cadillac you get.” Hearing the line for the been too.” Today, the Soul Clan children later, Guralnick writes that he “just laughs it ment toward the security of all musicians between them, and who are the pioneers first time, I thought of Melanie’s words: are much less interested in what their fa- off as a typical Solomon scam and fantasy.”) who followed.” of what they do. And they can come back here’s a Cadillac and some new clothes . . . thers’ group achieved on paper—musically The Soul Clan’s grand vision was swiftly During their brief existence, the Soul like ‘Beatlemania.’” now give us all your royalties. Covay’s line or otherwise—than they are inspired and rejected. Clan insisted upon complete autonomy, But despite a flurry of media excitement is humorous, but it also feels like an open imprinted by its collective spirit. Solomon Burke’s dream was on my mind refusing all outside support. Perhaps as a and celebrity extravagance surrounding wound. “They were brothers in music,” Ursula last December when I met with his daughter, result, they released only one single: “Soul their Manhattan debut ( was In 1992, Covay suffered a debilitating said. “They wrote together, hung out to- Melanie Burke McCall, who was spending a Meeting” b/w “That’s How It Feels” in the in the audience), the show itself, as one stroke that would leave him largely immo- gether, traveled together, fought together, few weeks recording a new album of gospel summer of 1968. The songs were written reviewer put it, was a “disorganized, disap- bile for the rest of his life, eliminating any loved together, and made deals together.” and r&b in the wood-paneled basement stu- and produced by Covay, and he recorded pointing reunion that started late, peaked chance of another reunion. Still, the Soul Woman Walk That’s the word most of the children of the dio in a friend’s home in New Haven. “We them with help from Bobby Womack. The rarely, and ended with organizer Don Covay Clan’s surviving members continued to cling Soul Clan use today to describe their fathers’ used to call Wilson Pickett ‘Uncle Wilson’ rest of the group (including Arthur Con- walking mikeless among the others with to the group’s ideal. Until his death in 2010, the Line bond. Brothers. and Don Covay ‘Uncle Don,’” she told me ley, who had replaced Redding, and minus a tambourine hung around his neck like a Solomon Burke, for one, never stopped talk- within moments of meeting her. Speaking Pickett, who had left the band) separately dog collar.” ing about the Soul Clan, shouting out the fundamental principle of physics is the about her father, Melanie was equal parts recorded their individual vocals. Consider- When I asked Martin how far any of the group during his concerts and constantly How the Women A difference between potential and kinetic bitter and nostalgic. At fifty-seven, she is ing its scraped-together origins, the B-side is conversations about the group’s big plans— reminding interviewers how unjustly they in Country energy. Hold an object ten feet above the much like him, an effusive, expressive per- a moving declaration of camaraderie; if the the tour, the album, the film, the Broadway had been treated. ground and its energy is entirely potential, son who’s just as prone to conspiratorial Soul Clan strove to be a symbolic r&b union, show—ever went after their Savoy perfor- In their later years, the Soul Clan mem- Music Changed or stored, waiting to be unleashed. Once resentment as she is likely to joyfully erupt, “That’s How It Feels” was their picket-line mance, he shook his head: “Nowhere.” bers kept in touch with each other’s families. released, the object picks up speed, and the mid-conversation, into song. protest, with its five members testifying to Every so often, Burke would check in on our Lives potential energy converts into kinetic en- When I brought up the notorious million- the hardship they faced growing up in the he second generation of the Soul Clan Ursula, she told me. “Hey goddaughter,” ergy, the energy of motion. dollar advance the Soul Clan had requested Jim Crow South. “Soul Meeting,” the more T has come to understand their fathers’ he’d say, “how you doing?” During one BY HOLLY GLEASON The Soul Clan was pure potential energy. from Atlantic, Melanie’s eyes got wide. “I up-, if generic, of the two songs, was collaboration not so much as a tangible mu- such phone call several years before Burke From the outset, the group was a gather- would say they were probably laughed at. chosen as the single. According to Billboard, sical group but rather as a , died, Ursula, who served on the PTA at her 236 pages ing of passions, a bouquet of motives, each Back in that day, you know what they called one in Charlotte was convinced one that still endures today, long after its daughter’s Catholic school, was telling him 5.5 inches x 8.5 inches member with his own conception of what us. Like, ‘Nigga, seriously? You gonna start “Soul Meeting” would become a hit; an- last living members have passed. Solomon about the school choir. Burke interrupted: isbn: 978-1-4773-1391-6 the communion represented. Covay viewed a business? Not without me being the head other, in Tallulah, Louisiana, deemed it their Burke’s son Gemini has formed what he “Your school has a choir?” it as a rejoinder to Sinatra’s Rat Pack, a way of it. You can have this much of it.’” She “Leftfield Pick” one week, but that was it. calls a “Soul Clan Two,” Sons of Soul, with A year later, he called back. “You still $24.95 hardcover to formalize and rebrand his musical friend- pinched her thumb and index finger to- The record entered the charts in August, just Joe Tex Jr. and the sons of involved with that choir?” Burke asked. ships. Pickett saw it as a way to prove his gether. “As small as a mustard seed. That’s barely gracing the R&B Top 40. By Septem- and Johnnie Taylor. “The Soul Clan didn’t “Listen—find me three people in that choir standing among his contemporaries and, how black artists were treated. It was, ‘We’re ber, it had completely vanished. dissolve,” said Ursula Covay. “I don’t want who are doing excellent in school, who are perhaps, to earn a load of cash. going to make this look good so here’s a Ca- to say the word ‘end,’ because ‘end’ puts a trying hard and have a love for the music,” Burke had the largest dreams, conceiving dillac and some new clothes. We’ll help you hen the Soul Clan re-formed thirteen period on it.” he told her. Burke laid out his plans for a university of the group as a grand experiment in black buy your new house, but now give us all W years later, they once again had no Of its original members, Don Covay, the musical scholarship. He had one stipulation: of autonomy and entrepreneurship that could your royalties.’” managers to negotiate internal squabbles group’s foremost cheerleader and architect, the money, he insisted, would not be given help shift some of the power, money, and At one point, Melanie pulled out a huge and mounting pressures, no agents to bro- understood this best, constantly searching under his own name. texas press influence away from the white-run music file of legal documents—birth certificates ker deals, and no handlers to monitor their for occasions to will the group’s dream of So when three girls received scholarships industry. He dreamed that the Soul Clan and songwriting contracts—she’d put to- backstage partying. You can hear on Ruben- collective brotherhood into existence. “The later that year, they were likely confused, would buy land, invest in black-owned busi- gether for a legal case over estate payments hold’s rehearsal demo that tempers were kind of love we had,” he once said of the but perhaps a bit curious, when they read nesses in the South, and create trust funds, that she claims have been denied to her and flaring on the eve of their live debut: “You group, “was an everlasting situation.” In on their certificate that their scholarship had www.utexaspress.com scholarships, and foundations to help sup- to her siblings. Melanie sees it as part of a shouldn’t have said that,” Pickett calls out 1989, Covay’s close friend , been funded on behalf of something called port future generations of black musicians. larger struggle, the same struggle that her to Burke at one point. “You shouldn’t have David Letterman’s bandleader, asked Covay the Soul Clan. ø

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