Malaco Records: An inside look at ‘The Last Soul Company’ | Print-features

And yet, outside of a small fiercely loyal fanbase and a handful of music aficionados, the label remains relatively unknown in the wider world. A new illustrated book, titled “The Last Soul Company: The Story of Malaco Records,” seeks to give the label its proper due.

“When I tell people Malaco has been around for 50 years, when I tell them it’s the longest-running independent label in American music history, and it’s the world’s biggest Black gospel label, they’re like, ‘Really?'” says Rob Bowman, author of “The Last Soul Company.”

“For many (people) who don’t live in the Memphis/Jackson area, or even if they do, they’ve never even heard the word Malaco. It’s a story that’s been under the radar and buried to a certain extent, but deserved to be told, because it’s a fascinating one.”

Founded by partners Tommy Couch Sr., Wolf Stephenson and Mitchell Malouf in the late 1960s, during the course of its 50-plus-year history Malaco has existed in various forms: first as a booking agency, then a recording studio, then home to a hot house band, and ultimately a record label that has flirted with and found success across a number of genres from soul-blues to gospel.

Like the other Southern institutions it was modeled after — namely Stax Records in Memphis and FAME in Muscle Shoals — Bowman notes that Malaco “by sheer logic, is a story that shouldn’t have happened.”

Bowman is no stranger to telling such tales. A longtime professor of ethnomusicology at York University in Toronto, he spent several years in the Bluff City in the 1980s, eventually getting his Ph.D. at the University of Memphis. In 1997 he published the first history of Stax Records, “Soulsville U.S.A.”, a landmark study of the label.

In the late-’90s, Bowman was asked to pen liner notes for a Malaco 30th anniversary box set, a project largely documenting the label’s history in secular music (he also started work on notes for a companion box on the company’s gospel work, which never materialized). His Grammy-nominated essay recounted the history of the label to that point — but a few years ago, Malaco co-founder Tommy Couch Sr., reached out to Bowman again, with the idea for a lavish coffee table book that would tell the complete story of Malaco as part of the company’s 50th anniversary celebration.

Bowman recalls that the first time he ever interviewed Couch, the label head famously observed that Malaco “makes black music for Black people.” Bowman knew first-hand the unique dichotomy of the Malaco profile.

“When I lived in Memphis I always had Black radio on and I heard Malaco recordings day and night, both soul-blues stuff and gospel stuff. It’s amazing how much Malaco dominated those kinds of charts and that world,” he says. “But if you went up to Chicago or New York, or much less Toronto, Malaco was non-existent. In a way, Tommy would have been more correct saying Malaco makes Black music for Southern Black people, and even more specifically Black music for older Southern Black folks, 35, 40 and up.”

For much of its early history, Malaco would record artists like Mississippi Fred McDowell, King Floyd and Jean Knight and license its material to bigger companies and major labels. The Malaco house band — anchored by Carson Whitsett and Larry Addison on keyboards, James Robertson on drums, Ray Griffin on bass and Dino Zimmerman on guitar — was in demand unit in the early ’70s, recording with the likes of The Pointer Sisters, Rufus Thomas and Paul Simon.

But as studio bookings dried up and tastes changed in R&B into the mid-’70s, Malaco struggled — with co-founder Mitch Malouf leaving the company; eventually executive Stewart Madison would take his place among the owners.

The company was scuffling along into the early ’80s, a period where the tiny label suddenly found itself home to a slew of veteran soul and blues acts who’d fallen out of favor with the mainstream.

“All those soul-blues artists Malaco signed — Little Milton, Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland, Johnnie Taylor — they were all anachronisms at that point. The only reason they signed with this small company in Jackson, Mississippi, is because none of them could get a deal anywhere else,” says Bowman.

“These artists had all been big stars — certainly in the Black world, and at least some had crossed over significantly in the ’60s and early-’70s. But that world had ceased to be popular music for younger Black Americans. By the late-’70s and 1980s, disco, funk, and hip-hop had replaced it. And Malaco became the home for these anachronistic artists.”

In 1982, Malaco released “Down Home Blues,” a record by journeyman Texas singer Z.Z. Hill. The record proved to be a massive hit — it stayed on the Billboard charts for the next two years — and ushered in a soul-blues boom for the label.

“Much to everyone’s surprise there was still a huge audience for this music. This audience was quite alive and well and listened to radio and would go to shows,” says Bowman. “I remember when I was in Memphis I would see Malaco artists at Club Paradise, and it would be sold out, with a couple thousand people there to see Z.Z. Hill or Lattimore. And the records were selling tonnage for a small label. For Malaco this was gold.”

The soul-blues success in the ’80s secured Malaco’s place in the firmament of African American musical culture. “As a company they’d struggled for 15 years, and twice nearly went bankrupt in that time,” notes Bowman. “But they were smart enough to capitalize on the fact that there was a community nobody knew was being underserved and really desired this kind of music.”

But by the early-’90s the soul-blues boom was fading. “That audience became older and consumed less,” says Bowman, “the mom and pop record stores that had been the bedrock of Malaco’s business, were going out of business, and the radio climate changed.”

Fortunately, for Malaco, they’d already been building a parallel success in the gospel world. In the mid-’70s, they’d begun signing old gospel quartets, groups that had flourished on defunct labels like Peacock and Nashboro. “Malaco, as they did with the soul-blues artists, picks up all these quartets that no longer have a home — The Jackson Southernaires, The Soul Stirrers,” says Bowman. “Nobody wants them, but Malaco will work with them. The success of the gospel acts spawns a whole new era for Malaco.”

In the late-’80s, Malaco found itself at the forefront of another gospel trend: mass choirs. In 1988, the company released an album by Jackson’s Mississippi Mass Choir. The album would become the No. 1 spiritual record in the country, spend 45 weeks on the Billboard charts, and become the largest selling album in gospel history to that point.

“Malaco blew the roof of the Mississippi Mass Choir and would become the dominant label in the whole mass choir phenomena of the last 25, 30 years,” says Bowman. Over the years, Malaco would grow its gospel holdings even further. “Malaco has now become — through its acquisitions of the Savoy and Apollo catalogs — the biggest Black gospel label in the world.”

Over the last two decades, as the internet and the digital revolution has upended record sales and traditional labels, Malaco has continued to thrive.

“Tommy Couch Jr., who is now one of the owners and president of the company, he is as smart as his father is,” says Bowman. “He saw the digital revolution beginning with the Napster period. He was so far ahead because he realized the way forward to survive is give the music away for free.”

Malaco’s digital presence, especially on YouTube, is staggering. “They are continually digitizing and uploading thousands of tracks, from all the catalogs they’ve bought going back to 1940s. They put it all up there — records you’ve never of, records I’ve never heard of. Records that didn’t sell in their time — they don’t care,” says Bowman. “They put them all up for free. But they make their money on samples.”

Among those who’ve sampled Malaco and Malaco-owned music include Drake (“Furthest Thing”), DJ Khaled featuring Nipsey Hussle (“Higher”), John Legend and Rick Ross (“Who Do We Think We Are”), 2 Chainz (“Threat 2 Society”), Wale (“Sue Me”) and Kanye West (“God Is”), among many others.

“The sampling world has been very good to them. The whole idea of crate diggers, they are now really YouTube diggers to a great degree,” says Bowman. “And often what’s being sampled — like with Drake, for instance — is not the soul-blues tracks, but the gospel material. There is a wealth of material there.”

“Also, overseas licensing is another area that’s grown. It’s amazing how Japanese and European labels have picked up obscure Malaco stuff and now those songs are getting used in commercials and films,” notes Bowman. “Malaco still manufactures some CDs and now is pressing vinyl given the resurgence with LPs, but they embraced the digital world massively and in a way that was so ahead of its time. That’s why Malaco has survived and thrived as the rest of the music business has struggled.”

For Bowman, the essence of the Malaco story is the company’s constant evolution and reinvention. “Serendipity and adaptability are probably the two key words when you talk about Malaco,” he says. “That’s how they’ve survived for 50 years, and why they’re well positioned for the next 50.”