CRIME HUNTER: Murder, music and the Memphis sound of Stax Volt

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Murder has been a chaser for music since classical composer Alessandro Stradella took a knife to the guts in 1682.

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Sadly, that sour note would not be the last. The homicidal tally would take some of the greats — Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, Little Willie John who was shanked in a Washington prison while serving a sentence for manslaughter, country star David “Stringbean” Akeman, and Tupac Shakur, among countless others.

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One of music’s murder mysteries that endures to this date is the unsolved killing of revered Stax Volt drummer Al Jackson Jr.

Jackson was called the “Human Timekeeper” for his intuitive beats that made offerings from Stax soul legends like Sam and Dave, Otis Redding and Eddie Floyd cook.

He was the rock behind the storied Stax house band, Booker T and the MGs. The Stax band was an anomaly in the turbulent 1960s in the segregated South. It featured two Black men and two white guys, Steve “The Colonel” Cropper and Donald “Duck” Dunn.

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“Al Jackson was the greatest single stroke player I ever heard in my life,” Cropper told Jim Payne in the book Give The Drummers Some! “He’d just throw something in there every now and then and you’d go, Wow! Or he’d do some little tom thing that would come out of nowhere.”

Inside the studio at 926 E. McLemore Ave. in Memphis, Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream was a reality.

But by 1970, Cropper and Jones were gone and Dunn and Jackson were in high demand as sidemen. Jackson worked extensively with another Memphis legend, Al Green, and co-wrote a number of his hits.

The quartet who formed the MGs missed each other’s chops. And in 1975, the group that gave the world Green Onions planned on a reunion.

And here’s where the mystery of Al Jackson’s murder gets murky. It remains unsolved and Memphis homicide detectives guard its secrets like the crown jewels.

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On Sept. 30, 1975, Jackson had been slated to produce a recording session in Detroit. But who was going to miss the “Thrilla in Manila” slugfest between  Joe Frazier–Muhammad Ali to be televised at the Mid-South Coliseum?

It would be a welcome respite for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame drummer, who faced a steady stream of turmoil on the domestic front.

Jackson and his wife, Barbara, were estranged and to underscore the point, she had shot Jackson twice the previous July but he skipped pressing charges. He filed for divorce and planned to move to Atlanta.

When he returned from the fight, there were intruders in his house who allegedly told the soul superstar to get down on his knees. Then the killer shot him five times in the back. His wife later ran into the street screaming for help.

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The problem for detectives was that nothing was missing. Jackson’s wallet and jewelry were still on his cold body.

At the time of Jackson’s murder, Stax Volt was drowning in a cesspool of federal indictments and the company was imploding. Did Al Jackson Jr. know too much?

Given that his estranged wife parked two bullets in Jackson just months earlier, one would think that maybe detectives would have taken a closer look at the new widow. At the time of Jackson’s murder, Barbara was making time with an unnamed Memphis cop.

In addition, Barbara Jackson was close pals with blues singer Denise LaSalle. The singer had been spotted that day at the Jacksons’ Central Ave. home in Memphis. Also spotted at the drummer’s home was LaSalle’s boyfriend, Nate Doyle.

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It is suspected that LaSalle told Doyle — on the run from heists in Florida — to meet her at Jackson’s house.

Doyle was wanted by the FBI for a series of violent bank robberies. Ten months later, in July 1976, he went down in a hail of bullets in a shootout with cops in Seattle.

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LaSalle, who now fashions herself as the Queen of the Blues, was indicted by the feds for harbouring Doyle.

Who killed Al Jackson — and why — remains a musical mystery.

“I got my ideas about Al’s death, but it’d just be speculation,” Donald “Duck” Dunn told The Guardian in the 1990s.

The late bass player still lived in Memphis and was tight with Jackson and well aware of his marital problems.

“I think the guy who actually did it was the guy killed in Seattle. I’ve heard the rumours about Denise LaSalle and all that, but … heck, I just miss Al.”

For more on Stax Records, read York University professor and musicologist Rob Bowman’s stellar Soulsville USA, The Story of Stax Records.

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