Al Bell

Arkansans who listened to KOKY radio when it first hit the airwaves in the late 1950s almost certainly recognized the disc jockey who signed on by saying...

“This is your six-feet-four bundle of joy, 212 pounds of Mrs. Bell’s baby boy, soft as medicated cotton, rich as double-X cream, the women’s pet, the men’s threat, the playboys’ pride and joy — the Baby Boy Al (and he then rang a bell) Bell.”

DJ Promo Photo from Bell’s early days at KOKY Radio in Little Rock, Arkansas
DJ Promo Photo from Bell’s early days at KOKY Radio in Little Rock, Arkansas
Bell followed his DJ work at KOKY with periods at WLOK radio in Memphis and WUST in Washington D.C.
Bell followed his DJ work at KOKY with periods at WLOK radio in Memphis and WUST in Washington D.C.

The voice was Al Bell’s, a young college student who had worked for and marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and eventually became one of the most influential people in the music business.

Al’s DJ Patter

Born Alvertis Isbell on March 15, 1940 in Brinkley, Ark., Al Bell started his career as a disc jockey in high school, where he was president of the audio-visual club and spun records at sock hops. After graduating from Philander Smith College, Bell started working as a disc jockey at Memphis’ famed WLOK radio station.

Black and White Telephone

Putting Stax on the Map

Jim Stewart and Bell collaborating at their shared desk at Stax
Jim Stewart and Bell collaborating at their shared desk at Stax Photo © API, Bill Carrier, API Photographers, Inc.

It was during this time in the early 1960s that he met Jim Stewart, who had rented an old movie theater in Memphis and turned it into the Stax Records recording studio. Bell promoted Stewart’s records there and later in Washington, D.C. at WUST, (where he worked from 1963 until 1965) until Stewart hired him as Stax Records’ first national promotions man and brought him back to Memphis.

Bell instantly breathed new energy into the mom-and-pop record company, vigorously putting his marketing skills to work and helping shape the careers of some of soul music’s greatest artists, including Otis Redding, Johnnie Taylor, the Staple Singers, Isaac Hayes and numerous others.

Helping Break Otis Redding

In 1967, Stax lost all of its catalog to Atlantic Records in a fine-print debacle from a 1965 contract. In the same year, the label lost its most promising star, Otis Redding, who was killed in a plane crash with most of the members of the his traveling backing band, the Bar-Kays. Just a few months later, Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis and Stax’s atmosphere of racial harmony began to suffer.

Bell with Stax signee Mavis Staples of The Staple Singers
Bell with Stax signee Mavis Staples of The Staple Singers
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Bringing Stax Back

Faced with a record label on the the brink of collapse, Bell began a project that would usher in a new, successful era for the label. The project, dubbed the “Soul Explosion”, was an attempt to rally the label and its artists by recording 30 singles and 28 albums in a just a few months (almost 300 songs in all), employing new staff, expanding Stax’s space, and commandeering other studios in Memphis and beyond to prove that Stax was still viable and could still crank out hit records. The new vision also incorporated more social consciousness from the label, particularly in the African-American community. When the music was finished, Bell organized a massive sales and media blitz, which led to financial and commercial success that ushered Stax into a new era with a new look, new energy, and a lot of money.

Bell was instrumental in launching Isaac Hayes’s solo career during this time. Bell encouraged Hayes, who had previously been a songwriter and session musician, by giving him complete artistic freedom over his Soul Explosion record. As a result, Hayes’ second and third albums, “Hot Buttered Soul” and “Black Moses”, were like nothing the music industry or music-buying public had ever experienced. The records caused a total paradigm shift in the music business, paving the way for more black artists to record complete albums when they had previously been limited to recording singles.

Black Moses and Shaft Soundtrack vinyl album covers
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“We absolutely changed the landscape of popular music with those albums,” Bell said. “We helped make it possible for artists like Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson to achieve the kind of greatness that they reached.”

As Stax’s new era unfolded, the company diversified under Bell, who had become an owner of the label by 1972, with founder Jim Stewart still on board. Bell also worked on Stax’s film projects, where he collaborated with MGM on the soundtrack for the movie Shaft, the theme song from which won Isaac Hayes an Academy Award (the first ever Oscar given to an African-American in a non-acting category).

Jesse Jackson, Isaac Hayes and Al Bell talking outside Stax recording studio
Jesse Jackson, Isaac Hayes and Al Bell talking outside Stax recording studio

Bell also organized and produced Stax’s landmark Wattstax concert festival in Los Angeles in 1972. The festival drew a crowd of more than 112,000 people, the second-largest gathering of African-Americans in history at the time. The concert was filmed and featured in the 1973 film Wattstax: The Living Word, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival received a Golden Globe nomination. Under Bell’s guidance, Stax became the second-largest African-American owned business in the United States.

Immediately following Wattstax, The National Association of Television and Radio Announcers named Isaac Hayes’ Shaft its Album of the Year.
Immediately following Wattstax, The National Association of Television and Radio Announcers named Isaac Hayes’ Shaft its Album of the Year.

After its meteoric revival, Stax Records became involved in a complicated downward spiral and was finally forced into involuntary bankruptcy in 1975. “I went from a man that owned a company whose masters were valued by Price Waterhouse at $67 million to a man that could scrape together 15 cents from time to time,” Bell told The New York Times in 2009.

Snapping Pencils

Al Bell Presents

Today, Bell lives in North Little Rock, Ark. and owns and operates an Internet radio station, www.albellpresents.com. In addition to the long list of awards he received throughout his career, he was awarded the music industry’s highest honor, the GRAMMY Trustees Award, in February 2011. The Trustees Award puts him in the company of an elite group that includes The Beatles, Frank Sinatra, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Ira Gershwin, Dick Clark, and others who have made industry-changing contributions to music in their lifetimes.

Far from resting on his laurels, Bell began an Artist Career Development and Entertainment Creation Division of Al Bell Presents in 2013, to help create and develop the careers of those he refers to as “new, up-and-coming, one-of-a-kind and authentic rare performing artists.”

In this capacity, he said, "Al Bell Presents is performing and arranging all of the functions that managers, promoters, marketing firms, booking and talent agents have done historically. The focused objective of this new venture is to develop an artist's career across the entire spectrum of his or her potential, generating income for the rest of their lives."

All uncredited photos courtesy Stax Museum of American Soul Music Archives

About the Author

Tim Sampson

Tim Sampson

Tim Sampson is the communications director for the Soulsville Foundation, the nonprofit organization that operates the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, Stax Music Academy, and The Soulsville Charter School. He is founding editor of The Memphis Flyer newspaper, former editor of Memphis Magazine, and author of the book All Mimes Must Die.

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Knox Phillips

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What Others are Saying

  1. I remember Al Bell. Ms Bell’s baby boy. He was a great DJ here in DC. I was a student at McKinley Tech High School, my friends and my sister used to go to WUST to actually see him do his show. He did dedications for us and let us pull the UPI and AP news from the teletype machines. He was always friendly always welcoming.

    Diane PW Barker

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