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Also by Robert Gordon:

Respect Yourself, November 2013
Hardcover / e-Book
Lost Delta Found, August 2005
Hardcover
It Came From Memphis, November 2001
Trade Size

Respect Yourself
Robert Gordon

Stax Records and the Soul Explosion

Bloomsbury
November 2013
On Sale: November 12, 2013
480 pages
ISBN: 1596915773
EAN: 9781596915770
Kindle: B00EME5MMG
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction

The story of Stax Records unfolds like a Greek tragedy. A white brother and sister build a monument to racial harmony in blighted south Memphis during the civil rights movement. Their success soon pits the siblings against each other, and the brother abandons his sister for a visionary African-American partner. Under integrated leadership, Stax explodes as a national player until, Icarus-like, the heights they achieve result in their tragic demise. They fall, losing everything, and the sanctuary they created is torn to the ground. A generation later, Stax is rebuilt brick by brick and is once again transforming disenfranchised youth into stellar young musicians.

Set in the world of 1960s and ‘70s soul music, Respect Yourself is a character-driven story of racial integration, and then of black power and economic independence. It’s about music and musicians—Isaac Hayes, Otis Redding, the Staple Singers, and Booker T. and the M.G.’s, Stax’s interracial house band. It’s about a small independent company’s struggle to survive in an increasingly conglomerate-oriented world. And always at the center of the story is Memphis, Tennessee, an explosive city struggling through volatile years. Told by one of our leading music chroniclers, Respect Yourself will be the book to own about one of our most treasured cultural institutions and the city that created it.

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