Back in 2008, when I was beginning to research Soul of the Man: Bobby "Blue" Bland, I spent an intriguing and insightful day with Wolf Stephenson and Tommy Couch Sr. at Malaco Records in Jackson, Mississippi, where they, along with Mitchell Malouf, three Old Miss frat brothers, had founded the company in 1967.
Wolf was particularly generous with his time and reminiscences of the company's beginnings, ups and downs, and all-arounds. From the early years, when both Couch and Stephenson were still working part-time as pharmacists and recording whoever, whatever they could to make ends meet, to the first big hits by King Floyd ("Groove Me") and Jean Knight ("Mr. Big Stuff"), to Dorothy Moore's two-million copy megahit "Misty Blue," through some lean disco years, until Texas bluesman Z.Z. Hill surprisingly hit it big with his "Down Home Blues, a throwback to earlier soul and blues music that most in the business thought was long since dead.
From there, their course was set for the next several years to come, as Malaco, with the expert advice of veteran promo director Dave Clark, signed the great soul-blues artists that no other record company wanted: Latimore, Denise LaSalle, Little Milton, Johnnie Taylor, and, of course, Bobby Blue Bland.
Wolf was particularly generous with his time and reminiscences of the company's beginnings, ups and downs, and all-arounds. From the early years, when both Couch and Stephenson were still working part-time as pharmacists and recording whoever, whatever they could to make ends meet, to the first big hits by King Floyd ("Groove Me") and Jean Knight ("Mr. Big Stuff"), to Dorothy Moore's two-million copy megahit "Misty Blue," through some lean disco years, until Texas bluesman Z.Z. Hill surprisingly hit it big with his "Down Home Blues, a throwback to earlier soul and blues music that most in the business thought was long since dead.
From there, their course was set for the next several years to come, as Malaco, with the expert advice of veteran promo director Dave Clark, signed the great soul-blues artists that no other record company wanted: Latimore, Denise LaSalle, Little Milton, Johnnie Taylor, and, of course, Bobby Blue Bland.
As I was leaving from that first visit, Wolf gave me a brief tour of the warehouse and pulled off the shelf and handed me a big box CD set of Malaco hits that had been packaged for Malaco's 30-year anniversary in 1999. Included in the box was a 44,500-word, 108-page booklet by Grammy Award Winning Author Rob Bowman (author of tons of liner notes and Soulville U.S.A.: The Story of Stax Records). Now, at Malaco's 50th anniversary, Bowman has expanded the booklet to include a bunch more photos from Malaco's archives, as well as how, with the passing of most of the old blues artists, Malaco transitioned to becoming the world's largest gospel music producer and to providing today samples for a myriad of modern rappers and hip-hop artists everywhere.
So somehow, through it all, with some luck, lots of hard work, and plenty of perseverance, Malaco Records has outlasted all the other once-successful independent record labels--Motown, Atlantic, Stax, Chess, et al.--to become, with Tommy Couch Jr. now at the helm, the oldest and still flourishing independent record company...by focusing, in different ways over the years, on one thing: recording great Black music primarily for a Black audience.
So somehow, through it all, with some luck, lots of hard work, and plenty of perseverance, Malaco Records has outlasted all the other once-successful independent record labels--Motown, Atlantic, Stax, Chess, et al.--to become, with Tommy Couch Jr. now at the helm, the oldest and still flourishing independent record company...by focusing, in different ways over the years, on one thing: recording great Black music primarily for a Black audience.
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