Stax Records of Memphis always portrayed William Bell as a sensitive soul. The sleeve notes to his 1967 album The Soul of a Bell describe him as "a warm, sincere, pipe-smoking man" and further informs his fans they are listening to someone who enjoys golf and swimming. This is hardly the stuff of soul-shouting and house-wrecking, but then William Bell has never really fitted that particular mould anyway.
Bell, born William Yarborough in 1939, had every intention of becoming a doctor and, even after his first hit, You Don't Miss Your Water, he still intended to return to medicine.
Despite his commendable, though rather square intentions, however, Bell was to become one of the most influential figures of the period. As a singer, a songwriter and an innovator he was certainly the one who set the trend at Stax and paved the way for Otis Redding. Now living in Atlanta, he no longer smokes a pipe, yet still manages to contemplate the many twists and conflicts in his long career with a rare and mellow ease.
"I started in the Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee and for a long time my mom wanted me to become a gospel singer. She sang in the choir and I had to be in church with her every Sunday. There was a lot of feeling and emotion in the music, and there still is in the Southern sections of the US, and I thought about being a gospel singer for a while. But then a friend of mine entered me into a talent contest when I was at high school and I got an entertainment bug. I was still singing in the church choir at the time but I really wanted to do secular music - so there was always that little conflict. "My mom also wanted me to become a doctor and I was at college for one semester when I had a hit record. So I dropped out. I was thinking that I would stop school, go out and make the money and then come back and finish my college education and then become a doctor. But I have no regrets about not going back. I realised after a year of touring behind a hit record that this is what I wanted to do and, above everything else, that I could make a living at it. I think I just put the idea of college and becoming a doctor on the back burner."
That talent contest was in 1956 at the famous Palace Theater in Memphis and Bell performed with his band the Del Rios. As part of their prize for coming second they were given an audition for Les Bihari's Meteor label in Memphis and a contract for one record. Alone on a Rainy Day was released with Bell backed by The Bearcats Rufus Thomas' band, and it bombed.
There may or may not have been another record called Just Across the Street but, whatever the truth of it, it also evidently bombed. This limited exposure and experience hadn't done Bell any harm, however, and he was invited to join Phineas Newborn's 14-piece band as a singer.
After a spell on tour, Bell signed to Stax Records which was then just about to enter its quite spectacular period as Soulsville USA with William Bell at the very heart of it. Memphis was about to do it again. It had a proud musical history and it had always been a place where great music had mutated, developed and grown. Sam Phillips at Sun Studios had, not long before, unleashed Jerry Lee and Elvis Presley and, long before that, places like The Palace Theater were already rocking to the guitar of B.B. King and swooning to the voice of Johnny Ace. Bell remembers this as a period of great excitement.
"When I was a kid, that was just at the beginning of that legacy even though people like W.C. Handy had paved the way even before that. I got to hear people like Junior Parker, Bobby Bland, B.B. King and of course Rufus Thomas. I got to see these people every day. So music was a way of life and having the chance to meet these kind of people instilled in me the desire to become a performer. Apart from that I was listening to Nat Cole, Big Joe Turner, The Soul Stirrers and people like that. One of my first concerts was at 14 when I went to see a Sam Cooke concert.
"That kind of solidified what I wanted to do in life. I was mesmerised. I was in about the fifth or sixth row back from the stage and I just sat there with my mouth open watching him perform. He was one of the best. I loved him with the Soul Stirrers when he was singing gospel and then after You Send Me I was totally flabbergasted by his performance and demeanour on stage. I don't think we really realised the extent to which these people would make impressions upon the musical scene - I don't think they did."
When Bell signed to Stax Records, the label had already scored a few successes with Rufus and Carla Thomas and the Mar-Keys but it had not yet quite found its own identity. Neither, for that matter, had William Bell. He was still intending to study medicine and, to complicate things further, he had received a draft notice. He was to be called to the army in two weeks but nothing happened and Bell just hung around Memphis waiting for the call. It was then that Chips Moman, a producer and writer at Stax, invited Bell to record what was to be his first major hit You Don't Miss Your Water.
"I was always writing songs and poems even as a young kid. Later when I got into the musical field I realised that I got the same gratification from performing and I realised that I had a genuine love for it and realised that I wouldn't have been as happy if I had become a doctor. Writing songs and poems was a relief valve for me a way to put my feelings a down and a form of escapism you might say. "When Chips Moman asked me to write something I didn't really think that it would lead to anything but I thought, well it can't hurt and so I put down a demo. You Don't Miss Your Water was supposed to be a demo record but then everything mushroomed because they loved it, they released it and it became a smash hit. It was a kind of a fluke."
Fluke or not, Stax had a big hit on its hands and Bell was suddenly the label's major star. A year later, after almost 300 one nighters performing with Solomon Burke, Jerry Butler and James Brown as part of Henry Wynn's package shows, he became even more of a star and, by far, Stax's most accomplished performer. In 1963 when he was enjoying another hit with Any Other Way, Uncle Sam suddenly remembered Bell's number and he was finally drafted. The writing of hit songs was cruelly replaced by bugle-calls, drill and training in jungle combat.
"It was like just beginning a career that you love and all of a sudden you got two years to serve in the military. I spent a few months of training Stateside and then I was shipped to Hawaii. Then the unit that I was in was sent to Formosa. It was most of the single guys who were sent over to Vietnam but I had gotten married in the meantime and so mine was more or less like a support unit. I spent two or three months over there and then was shipped back to Hawaii and did the rest of my tour of duty there.
"That was quite a blessing. I always trusted in God. I had a very deep rooted religious conviction and I always figured that I would come home alive - but it was just a blessing that I didn't have to go to Vietnam."
When Bell returned to Memphis however, he had lost pole position at Stax.
He had been replaced by no less than Otis Redding and could see that the music, though still based on his earlier records, had changed just a little too much to suit him. But Bell still had many friends at Stax notably Booker T. Jones of Booker T and the MG's with whom he would write many memorable hit songs including the Albert King classic Born Under a Bad Sign. The label itself was also loyal to Bell and gave him enough space in which to smoke his pipe and work out what was to be done about these changed circumstances, and just how he might keep up with much more dramatic star performers like his new friend Otis.
"After two years away it was like starting all over again. The label had embarked on a kind of music that was a little different from what I did.
"It was more of a funk up-temp stuff and I'm more of a balladeer. So I asked Jim Stewart at Stax to let me take a little hiatus from recording and see what I could write that would fit me. He believed in me enough and let me do that and the very first record that I recorded was Everybody Loves a Winner and it put me back out there again. It showed that even with the popularity of Otis Redding and Sam and Dave and the Rufus Thomas era, that I still could come up with a viable product for the company and a hit record for myself. When they were pairing off writers to collaborate together, Booker and I just gravitated together.
"We had known each other for many years from we were teenagers. He was the church organist in the church I went to and we went to the same high school. At first we wrote a couple of things for me and that clicked and then we were asked to write for other people like Albert King. Booker had the gospel organist's feel that I liked and I had that gospel rooted church lyrical and melodic feel that he liked."
Bell speaks highly of Otis Redding. They learned much from each other and when Redding died in 1968, Bell recorded Tribute to a King in his memory.
He also had a hit that year with Private Number recorded as a duet with Judy Clay and in 1969 he started his own production company and label in Atlanta. In 1977 Trying To Love Two became his biggest American hit and, in yet another of the many strange twists in Bell's career, it had been recorded for Mercury Records because Stax had finally closed down just the year before. These days, William Bell remains a polite and unassuming figure who still performs about five dates in a month. He would be the last man to attach any significance to his role in the development of popular music and he certainly shows no signs of annoyance about any of the showier vocalists who replaced him while he was in the army. All he does is laugh about it gently and thank you very sincerely for showing an interest in the music. "I'm basically a loner, introspective and a quiet person. Everybody Loves a Winner characterised me as a balladeer and it was an area I was comfortable with. I think they had enough up-tempo guys!"