Malaco Records: 50 years of hits, quirks and memorable sessions

In half a century as vice president and engineer at Malaco Records in Jackson, Wolf Stephenson has seen how quirky artists can be.

Johnnie Taylor, for instance. The rhythm and blues artist called just about everyone “Pete.” And Taylor always looked to the sky before catching a flight.

“He would call,” Stephenson says, laughing, “and he’d go, ‘I can’t make it today, Pete. If the birds ain’t flying, I ain’t flying.’ He would literally check and see if he could see birds flying around. If he didn’t, he took that as a sign to stay on the ground.”

Paul Simon recorded part of his “There Goes Rhymin' Simon" album at Malaco in 1973. Stephenson thought it was weird that Simon changed acoustic guitar strings after every take.

“But (he said) after you play and tighten strings one or two times, the high-end strings lose their brightness. And that affects the harmony of a chord," Stephenson says.

But after 50 years of recording music at Malaco, Stephenson says his most cherished memories aren’t about hit records or the 60-plus Grammy nominations the company’s songs have earned.

“What I love the most is working in a setting with singers and musicians that few people get to see,” Stephenson says. “When they’re onstage, they have it all together. They can do no wrong.

“But in the studio, they’re vulnerable. They’re asking, ‘What should I do here?’ or ‘Do you like the way I sang that part?’ They’re depending on me to help them get their best performances on a record. That’s pretty cool.”

The beginning

Stephenson, Tommy Couch and Mitchell Malouf, Couch's brother-in-law, opened Malaco in 1967, and it became an incorporated business in 1968.

Stephenson and Couch had graduated from the University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy six months apart in the mid-1960s. Both moved to Jackson and got jobs as pharmacists.

“But I’m sitting in Tommy’s kitchen one day in 1967, and he says, ‘I want to open a recording studio,’ ” Stephenson recalls. “And that was the start of it.”

Couch and Malouf ran the business end. "Malaco" is a combination of their last names.

Stephenson, who had worked as an apprentice and eventually became a licensed electrician during high school, took on the duties of the studio control room. He had also promoted concerts by Herman's Hermits, The Animals and The Who.

“It was way more fun than counting pills at the pharmacy,” Stephenson says.

They rented their studio in 1968 to a group who recorded a blues album.

“When they left, Tommy and I talked about the album,” Stephenson says. “Neither of us thought it was very good. We both agreed, ‘We can do that.’ ”

They knew a bottleneck blues player who used to play fraternity parties when the two were at Ole Miss: Mississippi Fred McDowell.

“He lived in Como, and the only way to get in touch with him was to call the Stuckey’s there,” Stephenson says. “That’s either where he worked part time or just hung out.

“He remembered us and agreed to come down and record some songs.”

What Couch and Stephenson didn’t know was that McDowell was a blues legend in Europe and among stateside blues players. McDowell taught Bonnie Raitt how to play slide guitar.

With local musicians Jerry Puckett (bass) and Dulin Lancaster (drums) backing him, McDowell not only recorded enough songs for an album, he told stories about each one.

Before starting, he introduced himself with the tape recorder running. “I do not play no rock 'n' roll,” he said at one point.

That became the name of the album, which was nominated in 1969 for a Grammy  for Best Traditional Blues Album. In 2015, Rolling Stone magazine named "I Do Not Play No Rock 'n' Roll" one of the "10 blues albums Rolling Stone loved in the 1970s that you never heard.”

In 1970, Rolling Stone called McDowell “a priceless, once-every-twenty-years wonder of a musician.”

Stephenson: “We thought, ‘One album, one Grammy nomination. Man, this is going to be easy.’ ”

Their first No. 1 hits

Malaco struck a deal with New Orleans producer and arranger Wardell Quezergue.

“He had artists and he had songs,” Stephenson says.

Quezergue brought those artists to Malaco in a rented school bus. They recorded for three days. Couch and Puckett took the recordings to every label they could think of, including the giants at the time — Atlantic and Stax.

All passed on every song.

“We decided to choose one and put it out ourselves,” Stephenson says.

King Floyd’s “What Our Love Needs” was the A-side single Malaco decided to push. Floyd took the song to New Orleans DJ George Vinnett and asked him to include it on his station’s playlist.

Vinnett said his 13-year-old daughter was having a sleepover that night. He was taking them several new records to check out and agreed to include “What Our Love Needs.”

Vinnett phoned Floyd the next day. “You have a hit on your hands. Once they played your record, that’s all they listened to. I heard it so much, I can recite the lyrics.

“But it’s not the A side. It’s the B side. ‘Groove Me.’ ”

“It blew up,” Stephenson says. “Atlantic agreed to promote it and pay us royalties.”

“Groove Me” was a crossover hit, reaching No. 1 on Billboard’s Soul chart and No. 6 on its Hot 100.

Someone from Stax soon called Malaco.

“Was ‘Groove Me’ in that stack of tapes y’all brought us to listen to?” the caller inquired.

Indeed, it was.

Stax wanted to listen to them again. Out of that came Jean Knight’s “Mr. Big Stuff,” another crossover hit in 1971 — No. 1 on Billboard’s Soul chart, No. 2 on the Hot 100. It was nominated for the 1972 Grammy for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. It sold more than 2 million copies.

“The weekend we recorded King Floyd, Jean Knight and those other artists was the most important weekend of our careers here at Malaco,” Stephenson says. “It was the first true sales success we’d had. And it really got our name out there.”

1 song helps save the company

By the mid-1970s, Malaco's deal with Atlantic "was getting a little thin," Stephenson says. "Albums by all these British rock bands were the hot thing."

Malouf left the company in 1975. “Me and Tommy were looking at each other, wondering what we were going to do to get us going again,” Stephenson says.

They had recorded a song in 1973 with Jackson singer Dorothy Moore, who was a backup singer on most Malaco sessions. “We shopped the song around, but everybody passed on it,” Stephenson says.

In 1975, Malaco released the record and hoped lightning would strike.

It did. “Misty Blue” reached No. 2 on the R&B chart and No. 3 on the Hot 100. Billboard ranked it the No. 19 song for 1976.

“It really pulled us out of a (financial) hole and got us going again,” Stephenson says.

RELATED: Dorothy Moore says 'Misty Blue' meant for her

No to disco, yes to R&B

Business slowed down again in 1979 when disco became the rage.

“You also had rock groups selling millions and millions of albums,” Stephenson says. “So a whole bunch of great blues and R&B artists were sitting around with no record deals.”

Malaco hired well-known promoter Dave Clark, who began to recruit artists to Malaco.

Z.Z. Hill recorded his album “Down Home” in 1981, which stayed on the Billboard soul album chart for nearly two years. The song “Down Home Blues” was called the best blues tune of the 1980s.

Other acts followed: Denise LaSalle. Little Milton Campbell. Latimore. Bobby "Blue" Bland. Johnnie Taylor.

“That was a nice successful run for us,” Stephenson says.

Malaco 2018

Couch is chairman of the board. Tommy Couch Jr. is president. Stephenson, 74, remains as vice president and still engineers on occasion.

“We’re doing a lot of gospel stuff,” Stephenson says. “That’s one genre where CD sales are still pretty good.

“We’re also working with some singer-songwriters who are of the Americana genre. Ron Etheridge is one. Jason Turner is another.”

Malaco gets a lot of calls from ad agencies and movie producers looking for “obscure songs that nobody has heard, but are catchy and fit what they need. We’ve hired somebody to just work in that area.”

Malaco is also in the process of converting all its old master tapes to digital. Those masters survived a 2011 tornado. The historic studio, located on Northside Drive, did not.

“It hurt when it happened, and it still hurts,” Stephenson says. “But the new studio is a good place to work and we have a lot of pictures and memories to hold on to.”