Review: 'Memphis Boys' book/CD

"Memphis Boys: The Story of American Studios" is a long-overdue history of an underrated studio that spawned some of the greatest pop, rock and soul music from 1964-72. 

The Memphis music factory operated in the shadow of Sun, Stax and Hi studios, but for a short period was the place to record. Stars parading through the studio during that period included Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield, The Box Tops, Neil Diamond, James Carr, Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke and most famously, Elvis Presley. It was at American that Elvis covered "Suspicious Minds," written by Mark James, an American staff writer and sometime solo artist. 

 The story is a good one: Producer Chips Moman gets unceremoniously bounced from Stax and sets up shop in a non-descript building in a tough part of Memphis, surrounds himself with crack musicians and songwriters, and slowly builds a reputation for getting the best out of performers known and unknown. 

"Memphis Boys" comes in two parts:

1. a detailed book written by Roben Jones
2. a companion but separate 24-track CD sampling a wide variety of the studio's songs.

The companion CD from the wonderful reissue label Ace Records s almost a must-have to help bring to life Jones' descriptions of the songs in question. An added bonus is the CD booklet, which surprisingly has much better and more informative photos than the book. 

The book itself contains tons of detail, almost overkill in spots. Jones' admittedly is too close to the story, and she frequently empties her notebook by including the tiniest of details that do nothing to move the story along. 

The cast of characters is a tight clique, and Jones only compounds that by including a few too many inside jokes, unremarkable side stories and elaborate descriptions of hundreds of individual songs. This would be welcome in spots -- for landmark albums or songs, for example -- but Jones takes this approach over and over, even for recordings that fell short of the studio's standards. 

The narrative is mostly confined to the studio personalities themselves (including the great Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham), and not the outsiders who benefited from the brilliant work done behind them. 

For example, Atlantic Records, the pre-eminent soul and R&B label of the time, struck deals with American to have its band back Aretha, Burke and others. Ahmet Ertegun, Jerry Wexler and Tom Dowd -- Atlantic honchos who had a huge impact on music of that era -- all played major roles in building a strong bond between the label to America Studios . Yet none were interviewed for the book. Jones said Dowd died just as she was beginning research. But Ertegun was alive for several more years and she notes that she didn't think she needed to interview Wexler -- who has since died -- because he was widely quoted elsewhere. Not taking the initiative to interview two of the most influential people in Southern soul and R&B of that era is unacceptable for something described as the authoritative history of the studio.  

"Memphis Boys" is flat-out exhausting, burdened both by the detail and a strange decision to paginate two columns per page, which makes for hard reading in this format. There's a reason 99 percent of books are published in one column -- it's because that format is more visually inviting. 

OK, having said all that, I'm glad I read the book. I'm a huge fan of Memphis soul and music, and there's much to like in "Memphis Boys,"  but I recommend it only for hardcore fans of the genre or city.