Jackson, Mississippi: The pulse of blues, gospel and soul music

Jackson mural depicting the city's icons: Medgar Evers, Eudora Welty, Thalia Mara and David Banner. Photo / Travel South

In the Deep South, Varsha Anjali visits the recording studio dubbed the “last soul company” where the artist who sang one of her favourite songs made her claim to fame.

I was driving alone one evening on State Highway 32 close to Taupō when I heard Dorothy Moore’s Misty Blue on 95bFM for the first time. I felt deep grief and deep love though no one had died and no one had broken my heart. I never forgot that honey sound, that anguished longing. Some 50 years after Moore released that R&B and soul version of the masterpiece, I travelled to her hometown - and to the studio where it all began.

At first glance, the city of Jackson in Mississippi probably appears the same as how people initially saw Moore: unassuming. The land is mostly flat (this is jarring as a Kiwi), the structures are surprisingly sparse, and the streets are noticeably broad. It’s all beige and grey until the fringe clashes with the folding hills of the Piney Woods. But looks are deceiving. Especially in Jackson.

Dorothy Moore poses for a studio portrait in 1976 in the United States. Photo / Gilles Petard, Redferns, via Getty Images

“Mississippi’s race history and all that has plagued us. It’s not good, it ain’t true anymore,” a local - a white man - told me at the Fairview Inn, his oil-slick fingers clutching his lager.

I knew he meant it with the best intentions, but I owed it to artists like Moore to learn. Civil rights history, hardship and resilience in Jackson helped develop the sounds I became enamoured by.

Nestled in a heat-sodden corner of Jackson lies another beige building with a small sign revealing the unpretentious site of one of the most influential record labels in American music history.

Its website said it made “black music for black people”. But this didn’t mean the artists couldn’t be white.

“Malaco has always been, for a long, long time, a very traditional African-American music company,” so began Tommy Couch Jr, president of Malaco Records, as he stood beside a huge black-and-white wall poster of Rob Bowman’s book, The Last Soul Company: The Malaco Records Story.

“We judge the music by the consumer, not the colour of the artist that’s playing it, because there are a lot of black guitar players that are blues singers that do not sell to an African American consumer,” he explained.

“Just from the business side, we judge by where it’s gonna end up ... who’s consuming it.”

Mural of music legend BB King in Mississippi. Photo / Visit Mississippi

At first glance, Couch fit the unassuming Jackson mould, donning a plaid shirt, plain navy trousers and neatly combed hair. Something of a Regular Joe. But when he opened his mouth, he didn’t just speak. He bellowed with warmth. And with that endearing Southern drawl, he was drooling swag. The man was magnetic.

Couch, who inherited the business in 2013 from his father Tommy Couch Sr - a co-founder - loosely showed us around the legendary spaces steeped in history while guessing what we might value seeing. In truth, we wanted to see it all. And we got to.

Those walls were baked with stories and wired with sound. There were frames of the artists who had recorded there scattered all over, including Paul Simon, Jean Knight, King Floyd and ZZ Hill. It wasn’t until I was inside the recording studio that the realisation landed - gently, but permanently: Donna Moore was in this room.

It was silly - and I’m almost embarrassed to admit it - but I was giddy. I was the schoolgirl with a crush, but instead of with a boy, it was with the mic, the drum kit, the fancy digital audio workstation, and the glass that separated the artist from the producer.

“It was pretty much an international record,” Couch said of Misty Blues. "A really big soul ballad."

That ballad became Malaco’s first major hit after they took a gamble and spent their last bit of cash to sell it under their label. It sold millions of copies, was nominated for a Grammy and reached the top 10 in the charts in Aotearoa, Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada.

The company celebrates the “biggest gospel catalogue in the world”. Couch explained to me that a lot of the music was created, and about 40% of it was acquired through purchasing other companies along the way, then continuing to work with those artists in that catalogue.

Like many other industries, Malaco had to change drastically to keep up with digitisation. For them, it paid off. “It got good,” Couch said. “It’s easy to reach people.”

It wasn’t as simple as that, of course. They changed their whole operating model. “We knew what the bottom was ... so we based our business around that,” Couch said.

“We’d say, if we bring Little Milton in and make a record, we’re gonna sell 33,000 records. Now, we may be wrong and sell 100,000. But we’d never sell 30 [thousand].”

While the scene isn’t what it used to be, its influence on contemporary music and the cultural landscape is visceral. In 2017, Google made a commercial using a sample of the 1980 gospel hit Jesus Can Work It Out. Through placements in movies, films, TV and big-time musicians like Kanye West and Drake are incorporating the sounds from Malaco’s collection. “Which used to hurt our feelings,” Couch admitted, “But we’re very thankful”.

Malaco may be the “last soul company” and it’s not going anywhere soon. “The catalogue has been so well put together, so our everyday business is going to be fine if we never put another record out. But we like music and we’re in the music business, so we can pick and choose who we want,” Couch said.

“Nobody in the world has been around as long as we have,” said Couch. “We’re independent and we do it our way. And it works.”

“A lot of other companies look to us to see what we’re doing and how we’re doing it and really seek our advice ... it’s just a lot of pride in the fact that we never should have been able to have made it a year. And we’ve been here almost 60.”

Checklist

MISSISSIPPI, USA

GETTING THERE

Flying with United Airlines from Auckland, there are two stopovers in San Francisco and Houston, before reaching Jackson, Mississippi. Malaco Records is a 30-minute drive northwest of the airport.

DETAILS

visitmississippi.com

The journalist travelled as a guest of Travel South USA.

Varsha Anjali is a journalist in the NZ Herald Lifestyle team. Based in Auckland, she covers travel, culture and more.