“To this day, I don’t know why I cut that album!” Carla Thomas, “Queen of Memphis Soul,” is thinking back to a time 55 years ago, when she recorded something that defied all expectations, her album Sweet Sweetheart. She’ll be discussing it at the Memphis Listening Lab with host Tonya Dyson and mastering engineer Jeff Powell this Friday, October 10th, at 6 p.m. When the U.K. label Ace finally dug it out of the vaults for a CD-only release in 2013, it was a revelation. Now, with Craft Recordings having put it out on vinyl for the first time this April, it’s still turning heads.
Yet Sweet Sweetheart stands out among Thomas’ other Stax albums in two ways: It was recorded at American Sound Studio, not Stax, and it was never released at the time. “And so,” reflects Carla, “I forgot all about it.” Decades went by. Now, with the Craft release out, she’s remembering.
Album producer Chips Moman, who passed away in 2016, started at Stax in its early days when it was known as Satellite Records. “Chips cut ‘Gee Whiz’,” Carla notes, referring to the first top 10 single she and the fledgling label cut back in 1960, when she was only 17. “He was at Satellite, and he was so cute, little curly-headed Chips! And he did not like [Stax/Satellite co-founder] Jim Stewart. I didn’t realize it. I’m getting ready to cut ‘Gee Whiz,’ not knowing anything that’s going on between these two producers, right? I love Chips, and I don’t want to say anything bad about him, but he couldn’t even get along with Ringo!” The famously amiable Beatle would end up working with Moman in the 1980s. A full 20 years earlier, Moman was already irascible and ended up leaving Stax for American in 1964.
Somehow, though, Moman and Stewart came to an agreement in 1970 that Thomas would cut a solo album outside of the Stax house, a relatively rare occurrence, with the exception of Stax sessions conducted at Ardent Studios at the time. Even then, frictions lingered. “There was just something between those two people, Chips and Jim,” says Thomas. “He thought Jim was kind of stupid. I said, ‘Jim is not stupid. Don’t say that! Jim is giving us a chance here to record!’”
And record they did, with Moman giving Thomas a free hand in picking her material. Today, she does a spot-on imitation of Moman’s rural Alabama accent as she recalls their first day of working on Sweet Sweetheart: “He said to me, ‘Whatchoo wanna cuht?’ You know, he’s real country,” she laughs. But that single question took the album to a new place, distinct from all the work Thomas had previously done. It was to become arguably the most personal album of her career.
She was already forging her own path, distinct from others in the Stax orbit. By 1970, she notes, “I’m living in L.A. now! I was listening to Carole King, James Taylor, the Bee Gees. I covered everything! I just cut what I liked. I was just having fun!” She adds that Moman ultimately did bring material to her for the project, some co-written by his wife. “He was married to Toni Wine, and she wrote a song on there — Lord, I cried the whole time I was learning it. At first I didn’t want to cut it because it’s so sad.”
The final product was an outlier in the Stax catalog at the time, perhaps explaining why only a single was released from those sessions, “Hi-De-Ho (That Old Sweet Roll),” a slowed-down King/Goffin track, its pop elements enlivened by Thomas’ warm, soulful vocals. Elsewhere on the album, James Taylor’s earthy “Country Road” becomes a beat-driven celebration of freedom. And the Bee Gees’ “To Love Somebody” is a startlingly intimate testament to heartbreak — Thomas makes the song her own.
Now, half a century later, Thomas is left wondering what might have been. A little wistfully, she sings a snippet of the lyrics, “Walking on a country road …” before adding, “If they had put that record out, I think it would have been a hit record. Because I knew all these people [in L.A.], I was where I was supposed to be. I was doing more pop. They would have had a pop artist! Just think if I had done that!”