Soul Survivor: The Bar-Kays’ James Alexander in Conversation
The Bar-Kays’ lone founding member reflects on his half-century-plus in R&B — and details a tragedy that changed the course of American music.
by Jeff Tamarkin
Credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images.
December 10, 1967 is one date James Alexander will surely never forget. That was the day he lost all but one of his bandmates in the Bar-Kays, and their employer — soul music giant Otis Redding — in a plane crash. It fell to Alexander to identify the bodies. “It took three days,” says the bassist, now 73. “On the second day is when I identified Otis. He was still strapped into his seat.”
Alexander had pulled what he thought was the short straw that day. Redding and the Bar-Kays, the singer’s Memphis-based backup group and budding hitmakers in their own right, had finished a few dates in Cleveland when they boarded a small private aircraft scheduled to take them to their next gig in Madison, Wisconsin. The plane was too small to accommodate all of the musicians, so Alexander and another member of the band’s entourage instead took a commercial flight to Milwaukee, making plans to meet up with the others later.
“We were waiting for the pilot, who was going to pick us up and take us to Madison,” Alexander says. “But we didn’t hear from anyone. We didn’t panic at first; then, finally, [we were told] that the plane had gone down. We said, ‘The plane has gone down?’ From that point on, I was in shock.”
James Alexander was just 19 years old. In time, the story unfolded: The twin-engine plane had plunged into Lake Monona, several miles from the airport. Along with the 26-year-old Redding, four of the Bar-Kays, a valet and the pilot had perished.
The Bar-Kays had been together only a year, serving as Redding’s traveling band and launching a promising career as a stand-alone all-instrumental unit. They’d scored a Top 5 R&B hit (which also reached No. 17 on the Billboard pop chart) earlier in 1967 with “Soul Finger” on the Volt label, the Stax Records offshoot that also released Redding’s music.
Most of their colleagues assumed that the tragedy marked the end of the group, but within several months Alexander and Ben Cauley, the band’s trumpeter and the only survivor of the accident, had assembled a new lineup. In short order they added a vocalist, Larry Dodson, and gradually shifted toward a more funk-oriented approach. By early 1972, the revived Bar-Kays, who’d meanwhile teamed up with Isaac Hayes and other Stax luminaries, were back in the R&B Top 10 under their own name with “Son of Shaft.” They went on to place more than two dozen additional singles on the Billboard R&B chart, with several making the Top 10. Their albums, among them 1977’s Flying High on Your Love, 1979’s Injoy and 1981’s Nightcruising, were critical and commercial successes as well.
More than a half century after the Bar-Kays’ formation, Alexander still leads a lineup of the group — he calls himself “the last man standing,” the sole founding member still living (Cauley passed away in 2015). They recently released a new single, a ballad titled “Perfect Gentleman,” which sports a contemporary sound yet also harkens back to the heyday of soul. Alexander recently spoke with TIDAL by phone.
What is your new song, “Perfect Gentleman,” about?
Well, the message is very simple. Every woman would like to have a perfect gentleman if she could find one. It’s just a guy saying, “Hey, you ain’t got to worry about nothing else. I’m gonna take care of everything. I’m going to run your bathwater. I’m going to do all of that stuff.”
Vocalist Larry Dodson left the group in 2017, after nearly 50 years. What did he contribute to the Bar-Kays?
Larry is a unique individual. He came out of a doo-wop group called the Temprees. Before Larry, we were a total instrumental group. We got him into the band and he caused the band to go to new heights and became iconic in the process. A lot of people copy his style, especially his earlier style. We used to do concerts in Los Angeles, and Rick James would be in the front row. He had a big Nikon or Canon camera with the big lens on it, taking pictures of Larry’s every move. They later became best friends.
You still live in Memphis. What was the city like when you were first coming up?
It was good and bad. It was great because you have a lot of different people, Black and white, making music. In the music industry, Black, white, yellow, green, we didn’t see that being a problem. But I mean, this was the city that assassinated Martin Luther King, for crying out loud.
Where did the name Bar-Kays come from? What’s a Bar-Kay?
It’s a weird story because we had this desire to own a ranch. We said, “If we ever get a ranch, it’s going to be called Bar-Kay Ranch.” That’s one part of the scenario. The other part is we were driving down the street. We saw this billboard that said Bacardi Rum, and believe it or not, that played into the name Bar-Kays too. Don’t ask me how we got to that point, but in a weird kind of way, between the Bar-Kay Ranch and the Bacardi Rum, we ended up with the Bar-Kays.
You were signed to Stax Records within a year of the formation of the band. How did that happen?
[Booker T. and the MG’s guitarist] Steve Cropper was the A&R guy at Stax Records. We got an appointment to see him and we thought we did a pretty good job, but Steve thought we was just OK. But he said, “In about a week or so, y’all guys can come back and give it another shot.” So we went back and auditioned again and he said, “Nah, I don’t see too much happening with you guys.” Then we went to Stax a third time, and the president of the label, Jim Stewart, asked us to play something for him. We started playing this little groove. He said, “What is that?” We said, real casual, “Oh, it’s just a little groove that we play onstage.” He said, “Wait a minute.” Then he ran up in the control room, and he didn’t even have a talkback button, but he just gave us a signal. He said, “Play it from the beginning,” and 30 minutes later we had “Soul Finger.” That was pretty good for some guys that didn’t know what the fuck they were doing.
What was it like to record for Stax?
Stax was like a big family. Everybody actually loved it. Everybody worked together for one common goal. That’s why that label was able to turn out so many hits. Other than Motown, it’s one of the most iconic brands as it relates to urban music. You’ve got other labels, but when you talk about soul and really downhome music, Stax is it.
“Soul Finger” was your first release, and it became a substantial hit. How did that quick success change things for the Bar-Kays?
We just took it in stride. We knew we were good, but we didn’t know we would attract Otis Redding wanting us to be his backup band. We didn’t quite know what we were doing.
How did you come to be Otis’ band?
We met Otis when he was doing a show at the big venue here [in Memphis] at the time called the Mid-South Coliseum. He was invited to come down to the club [the Hippodrome] that we were playing in. When he heard the band, he asked the club owner, “Do you think they know some of my songs?” We played a couple of songs behind him, and after that he said he wanted us to be his band.
Basically, he was ready to fire his band on the spot. But what stopped us from going with him immediately was we were still in school. He said, “Well, I’ll talk to y’all parents and get y’all a tutor.” Our parents said, “No way, José.” Our parents said that we weren’t going anywhere until we graduated from high school. All the parents were in harmony on this. They said, “No, y’all not going on the road with no Otis until you finish high school.” The day that we finished high school, we left and flew out and the first stop playing with Otis was the Apollo Theater [in New York].
What was that like?
Very hostile at first. We had one outfit, and we were playing the Apollo for 10 days. You can’t have just one outfit for 10 days. The outfit took on a life of its own. Before the 10 days was up, they started warming up to us.
Can you detail for us how you found out about the crash and what happened next?
We [Alexander and auxiliary singer Carl Sims] were waiting for the pilot to come to Milwaukee and pick us up, to take us to Madison. When we didn’t hear anything for a while, we tried to call the control tower and the hangar we took off from, to find out if they heard anything from the plane. They hadn’t heard anything at that point. Then later, the authorities in Madison called me — and don’t forget, this is before cellphones, so they had to locate me — and asked me, “Are you James Alexander?” And they said, “We’re going to send a detective car down to Milwaukee to pick you up.” We said, “A detective car? For what?” They said, “Apparently, the plane has gone down, but that’s all we can tell you right now, ’cause we don’t have no radar. We don’t have no information, nothing.” Then they told us that the plane had crashed and from the looks of it, there was no survivors. After I arrived in Madison, I had to go down to the morgue and identify all of the people.
Do you still think often about those who passed away?
Oh my God, I unbelievably miss them. We were closer than some blood family members. We were together every single day. When I say we did everything together, we literally did everything together.
How much time passed before you and Ben Cauley, the only survivor of the crash, decided to keep the Bar-Kays going with new members?
It was a short period of time. This [the crash] happened in December of 1967 and by April of 1968 we were debuting a new group. We were only teenagers, but we had always said that if anything ever happens to one of us, whoever was left should carry on. That has resonated in my spirit. That’s why we were able to get the band back together so quick. I don’t know my ass from a hole in the ground, but I’m thrown into the task of being the spokesperson for the group. Ben Cauley supported me, but he didn’t want to have anything to do with the logistics or trying to put everything together. He just didn’t want to take that responsibility. So I took on the responsibility of doing all of that, and I have to tell you, it has been a hell of a ride.
You did a lot of work with Isaac Hayes. What was he like?
Working with Isaac was really kind of amazing because, once again, we grew up together. Before Isaac Hayes became famous, he was a songwriter with David Porter. But before that he had a band called [Sir Isaac and] the Do-Dads. Three of the members of the Bar-Kays were in Isaac’s band: the guitar player, me and the drummer. We were playing a nightclub called the Plantation Inn. It was in West Memphis, Arkansas. We played from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m., six nights a week.
In the mid-’70s, Stax folded and you signed with Mercury Records. By that time the band had shifted toward more of a funk sound. How were things different for you at Mercury?
Mercury was pretty rigid. They give you an album release schedule, and they expect you to meet that schedule. But Mercury was a great label to us. We made a lot of money with them.
The Bar-Kays’ music has been sampled on nearly 400 different records, by everyone from Public Enemy to Beastie Boys to Daft Punk. How does that make you feel?
When the whole sample thing started, a lot of the artists were getting away with a lot of stuff and you couldn’t really catch them. But now, you have all these watchdogs and you have all this technology, so it’s hard for an artist to get over on you. Fortunately, our main publisher is Warner Chappell. They make sure that we’re up on the latest technology and who’s doing what.
How would you say the group has evolved over the years?
We changed with the times. We just tweaked it a little bit to the left or to the right and kept it moving. You get on the rollercoaster and you just hold the handlebars tight. I don’t care what nobody say: This whole thing beats working a day job.
You’ve been at this for more than 55 years. How much longer do you think you will do it?
I think we still got some more gas in the tank.
