#packy axton

[rainingmusic]

Otis Redding - That's How Strong My Love Is

[the-portmanteau]

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Charles "Packy" Axton was the good-time Charlie, tag-along son of Estelle Axton, sister of Jim Stewart with whom she cofounded Stax Records.  Packy played saxophone in studio sessions and with the Mar-Keys, possibly playing on the early break out hit, Last Night, though there's a lot of debate on who exactly was on the final cut of that song due to all the edits (86 according to fellow Mar-Keys member Terry Johnson) that brought it together.  He was a man always on the look out for a party to crash, a scene to make, and trouble to get into so, despite possibly (again, a debated matter) being the impetus that lead Stax, then Satellite Records, from country western to R&B and soul, he was never in the good graces of uncle Jim, nor was he much liked by band mate Steve Cropper who eventually left the touring Mar-Keys after a power struggle with Packy to work in the Stax studio and form Booker T & the MGs.  These tensions eventually lead to Axton becoming a pariah at Stax, and a move across the country to the west coast, where he recorded with the Packers, and yet another move back home to Memphis where he bummed around Ardent Studios, ran the Satellite Records store, and played with the Pac-Keys, the Martinis, and others until his death in '74.

Hopefully, you've been listening to track as you've been reading this and come to the most distinctive part of the song - the unmistakable sound of someone throwing up.  For a long time, I thought that this was imitation, a person feigning regurgitation for the sake of novelty, something to tie the tune to the title.  There's something about it that sounds forced, faked and its due to the lack of contextualization; there's a heave, but there isn't a splash.  Every close-eyed memory I have of hugging toilets, crawling floors, hurriedly opening car doors, ends with splat or splish or splash, the most memorable of which is, to continue with the theme of the post, the time I first got hung over drunk.  I had somehow talked my way into riding with Mike Pontius as he delivered another someone to their home, and had passed out somewhere along the way.  I woke up in the back seat of the car, rushing to get a McDonald's bag under my face, heaving once, twice, and then, heard but not seen, the sickening resonance of wet paper giving and the sound, the sound missing from the Martini's recording, of bile hitting car interior.  Throwing up in someone's car is truly one of the worst things you can do to that person and to this day I bear the shame of that and I am sure the car bares the odor of my vomit because that is a smell that, once it arrives, never, ever, leaves.  I am truly sorry Mike, wherever you are.

Oh, but I was wrong about Hung-Over.  I had reversed the order of conception from the reality of the situation; the song came first, vomit and all, and was then titled, for obvious reasons.  Robert Gordon in his excellent book, It Came From Memphis, relates an excellent account. 

(Packy) would put together a band in the studio, hum a riff, and create an instrumental in as much time as it took to arrange it.  In an afternoon, he could do four or more songs, labeling them according to sound, like "medium tempo garbage or "fast trash." On one, he insisted of an eight-beat break early in the song, telling the band he'd fill it later.  Coming off a bender, he was rooting through tapes for something to sell, and had the engineer put that one on while he went to the vocal booth to fill the hole.  A break is common on instrumental records; Last Night has one.  Packy is dead now and there is no way to know what his intention was, but when the time came for him to say whatever he wanted, Packy took a breath, opened his mouth, and vomited.  Puked all over the placed and recorded it perfectly on tape.  He named the song Hung Over.

The master's of reissue over at Light in the Attic put out a collection of post-Stax Packy Axton tracks, Late Late Party 1965-67, earlier this year.  It's definitely worth picking up.

[skritchskritch-taptap]

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Stacy Lane "No Ending"

I can be prone to hyperbole about music. Imagine that...waxing enthusiastic about something about something I love. So take what I'm about to say regarding the new compilation of songs featuring Charles 'Packy' Axton, Late Late Party 1966-67 however you want. But for me, it's THE COMPILATION/ REISSUE OF THE YEAR! So far, anyway. Packy Axton was the son of Estelle Axton and the nephew of Jim Stewart, they the ST and AX of Stax records. Packy was a saxophonist and founding member of The Mar-Keys, whose hit "Last Night" helped put Stax on the music map. By the mid-1960s, his drinking made him persona non grata at the label and studio, and he tuned to fronting a bunch of Memphis-based bands like the Packers, the Pac-Keys and the Martinis. That their recordings pretty much sounded like Stax songs recorded in a garage at 3 in the morning will give you some idea why I love this so much. The stone soul groove is always there, but with a casual, loose take that gives these songs a feel all of their own. While I was tempted to post a greasy, honking instrumental from this compilation, the track I'm posting was one half of a one-off single issued by soul vocalist Stacy Lane, with backing from Packy and whatever band of Memphis masters he pulled together. I really cannot recommend this album highly enough.