Any good songwriter knows that you must always, always keep one’s ears open. That’s because inspiration can come at the most unlikely times, and in the most offbeat manner.
In early 1966 the songwriting team of David Porter and Isaac Hayes found themselves inside the Stax Records recording studio on McLemore Avenue in Memphis. It was a little after 1:20 a.m. when the pair—fresh from hours of nightclub hopping and listening to live music around the town—were inspired to work on some new tunes themselves.
Perhaps Porter had imbibed a number of beverages, because before they could start work, he really, really needed to pee. After about 90 seconds of disappearing behind the restroom door, an impatient Hayes called for his partner to hurry up.
“Hey, man! Porter yelled. “Hold on, I’m coming!”
Almost as soon as the words came out of his mouth, Porter thought that would be one helluva song title. Twenty minutes later, the pair had completed “Hold On, I’m Coming.” And with the distinctive triple horn blast the punctuates the opening and throughout the record, it became a huge hit the label’s act, Sam and Dave.
Porter and Hayes would write more hits for the duo, including “Soul Man,” “I Thank You,” “Wrap it Up,” and “When Something is Wrong with My Baby.” They’d also pen “B-A-B-Y” for Carla Thomas, “I Take What I Want” for James & Bobby Purify, and “Your Good Thing (Is About to End)” for Lou Rawls. The Blues Brothers would later have a huge hit with their cover of “Soul Man,” and the Fabulous Thunderbirds with “Wrap It Up.”
Porter tells his life story in and out of music in The Soul Man: The Life of David Porter (392 pp., $32.99 hardcover/$19.99 paperback, Independently Published, written with Redwriter).
The future tunesmith grew up poor with a single mom and siblings after his father died, and three things drove him: the church, his mother, and the radio. Barely out of his teens, he was already the father of three and separated from their mother, working at a grocery store and then selling insurance. Though he harbored show business ambitions, mostly as a performer, and would sing at pick up gigs.
He began hanging around his hometown’s Stax Records and its adjacent Satellite Record Shop, dropping in as often as possible and talking up co-owner Estelle Axton. Eventually charm, drive, and skill got him a foot in the studio next door, where Axton’s co-owner and brother, Jim Stewart, took him on as a salaried employee.
Childhood friends like William Bell and Booker T. Jones would also gravitate there, and Porter was one of the “original six” musicians/writers who helped steer the label into a powerhouse producer of soul and R&B music and great success. And once paired with Hayes, the duo began to hit it big.
Admirers of Stax Records will find plenty of stories (though not especially revealing) here about Porter’s dealings with Booker T and the MG’s, the Bar-Kays, Rufus Thomas, Sam and Dave and other acts. Porter writes it was he who suggested that the label’s biggest star, Otis Redding, switch the first and last verses of his unique song “(Sittin’ On) the Dock of the Bay” before recording it. Redding listened, but the next day he and most of the Bar-Kays were killed in a plane crash.
Porter also says it was he who brought Al Bell into the fold. The personable and persuasive DJ would start off in promotions but move into a VP position. He aggressively pushed Stax music into the world while keeping a keen eye on the business end and trying to convince Stewart to expand into other areas. In these pages, Porter seems almost too in awe of a figure who is more controversial in the eyes of many others.
A poor contract that Stewart signed with Atlantic Records, which distributed Stax records during the company’s initial Golden Age, meant that when it ended Atlantic had the sole rights to all those hits, as well as some acts, including Sam and Dave. The larger label took it all, meaning the scrappy Stax—and David Porter—had to start from scratch.
And against all odds, Stax became even more commercially successful, largely thanks to an unlikely superstar: Porter’s partner, Isaac Hayes. Rebranding himself has a performer with a distinct visual image (bald head, beard shades, vest made of gold chains), his expansive drawl made albums like Hot Buttered Soul, Black Moses, and the soundtrack for Shaft giant successes.
It inspired Porter to kickstart his own performing career, but with much more modest results, peaking artistically with the concept album Victim of the Joke?…An Opera.
And though no one could have foreseen a future of rap sampling and royalties, he writes that some creative additions he made to a cover song have since been sampled many times, including by The Notorious B.I.G. But because he didn’t “split” the song into two parts, only the original writers of the song covered would get paid—to Porter’s eternal kicking of himself.
Though in later years, he would profit when samples of his work appeared in songs by Mariah Carey (“Dream Lover”), Wreckx-n-Effect (“Rump Shaker”), Will Smith (Getting’ Jiggy wit It”), and, yes Biggie Smalls again (“Who Shot Ya?”).
After Stax was forced in bankruptcy and ceased operations in 1976, he continued to work with new owners to exploit the post-’68 music but left disenchanted. He was adrift for a number of years as a somewhat messy personal life unfolded, though childhood friend Maurice White—by now a huge success of his own as the leader of Earth, Wind and Fire—got him writing again.
The last few decades have seen David Porter write hundreds of more songs, start other music-related labels and companies, and both get involved with or outright found music education program and venues, which may mean more to him personally than any gold record.
Though the now 84-year-old member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame occasionally humblebrags and airs feelings of getting screwed on production and performing credits, David Porter’s story is integral to telling the tale of American soul music. As his most famous tune and the title of his memoir note, he got what he got—the hard way.
